The Daily Stoic - We Don’t See The Full Picture | We Reap What We Sow

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

History is a lie. It is written by the victors, as the saying goes. Which means the picture it produces is inherently biased by a particular point of view. It’s also biased towards the things we know about, by our common knowledge.✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful

co-author and collaborator, Steve Enhancelman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epipetus Marks Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. We don't see the full picture. History is a lie. It is written by the victors as the saying goes, which means the picture it produces is inherently biased by a particular point of view.

It's also biased towards the things we know about by our common knowledge. But what about all those events that occurred in darkness without any witnesses? One of the most insidious biases that these events produce is that the history that gets reflected back to us is through the prejudices of its time. That is why, for instance, we really only hear about male stoics, men control the levers of power in the ancient world and didn't particularly care about what was happening inside the brains or the hearts of women. The written record appears as if there were few stoic women when in actuality there were many. They just didn't get written

about. Even Seneca notes this, in a letter of consolation to his mother, he reminds her of the story of her sister, who had been married to one of Rome's powerful pro-consists. While on a sea voyage, she lost her beloved husband, he writes, whom she had married as a maiden, yet she bore simultaneously the burdens of grief and fear, and though shipwrecked, she rode out the storms and brought his bodies safely ashore. Oh, how many noble deeds of women he said are lost in obscurity. Not all are lost. We just have to look harder to find them. Marcus Aurelius' beautiful eulogy to his mother at the beginning of Meditations is one. The story of Portia Cato, Cato's daughter is another, I tell it in the lives of the Stokes.

And we've interviewed plenty of brilliant and inspiring Stokes women as part of the Daily Stoke podcast. Three-time Olympic gymnasts Dominique Dawes, the groundbreaking pro-racer-danta-thepatric, the actress-producer and writer Karen Duffy, and a bunch of others. It's also why we made the decision to tell the incredible story of epictetus from a female perspective and the girl who would be free. This was my way of making stoicism more broadly accessible and of making a nod to the many female stoics that Musoneus Rufus surely had, but whose names no one had bothered to write down.

History doesn't fully capture the noble deeds of so many groups, not just of women, but of the poor, of the indigenous, of different people. People who are brave, people who did their best, who lived full and interesting lives that dominant groups simply ignored. This isn't just an injustice to them, it's a crime to us, the students of history, because we miss their perspective, we missed a sentica pointed out, their inspiring, virtuous examples. Anyways, that's why I wrote the girl who would be free, why I made epictetus from a man to a woman.

Moussouriotis Rufus does have female students. Epictetus is just really the only one that we know about male or female. So I thought it was a fun choice. I just heard from so many people who said, you know I read the boy who would be king and my daughter, you know wondered would you do a queen version? And I I wanted to do Marx's release as Marcus Arrely so that story is incredible as it is and I wanted to do Epictetus differently. It's just how I felt. It's been amazingly here from so many thousands of people that have loved the book I hope you can check it out, which you can at dailystowick.com slash girl, or you can pick up the girl who would be free on Amazon,

on Audible at the Painted Ports. I would love for you to read the book, check it out. And of course, as always, I will try to do my best to show as many different perspectives and point of views and stories as I can in this podcast in these emails in my books. So everyone can see themselves across those pages and in those words. And I hope you appreciate that.

We reap what we sow. This is the October 27th entry in the Daily Stoic. 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator Steven Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stoke Journal, anywhere books are sold, and also get a signed personalized copy from me and the Daily Stoke store at store.dailystoke.com.

Crimes often return to their teachers. This is from Seneca's play The Estes, which is a dark, disturbing play to put it mildly, but a fascinating read. It's ironic that Seneca would have one of his characters under this line, because as we know, for many years, Seneca served as a tutor and mentor to the Emperor Nero.

And while there is a lot of evidence that Seneca was, in fact, a positive moral influence on this deranged young man, even at the time some of Sennaka's contemporaries found it strange that a philosopher would serve as the right-hand man to such an evil person. They called him the tyrant teacher. And just as Shakespeare taught in Macbeth, bloody instructions which being taught return to plague the inventor. myth, bloody instructions which being taught return to plague the inventor. Santa Claus collaboration with Nero ultimately ends with the student murdering the teacher. And it's something to think about when you consider whom you work with and whom to do

business with in life. If you show a client how to do something unethical or illegal, might they return the favor to an unsuspecting you later? If you provide a bad example to your employees, to your associates, to your children, might they betray you or hurt you down the road? What goes around comes around, is the saying, where karma, the notion we have imported from the East,

teaches us a similar idea. Sennaq paid the price for his instructions to Nero, and as has been true throughout the ages, his hypocrisy avoidable or not was costly. And so too, will your speed? There's a great tweet that came out March 12, 2019 that I think of often it says me selling, haha, fuck, yes. And it says me reaping, well this fucking sucks, What the fuck? And then there is, of course, the other famous tweet that says, well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions.

As the expression now goes, right, fuck around and find out, that's what happened to Seneca, right? Seneca rolled the dice, thought he could feed the monster, thought he could constrain Nero. He was exactly like a lot of the figures that I talked about in my podcast episode with Tim Miller, the right wing political operative who saw so many people convince themselves, said these sort of minor, savior complexes, that they were very important. They were important enough that they could constrain Trump or get something out of them

that would be good for them. And the shorter it always comes back to bite us, right? The consequences of our actions come back to us, crimes, return to their teachers. You reap what you sow. And this was the biggest mistake of Santa Cousin's life. It's a mistake I've made in my life. I thought I was different. I thought I could make it work.

I thought I was making a bargain that would work out. And it didn't. It never does. So we learn from the Stoics not just what they tell us, what they teach us, what they write about, but the mistakes that they made in their life, right? Marcus Aurelius, his example shows us hopefully something about being a better parent.

Senica teaches us, you know, who to work for, who not to work for, how to detangle ourselves from clearly toxic, unchangeable situations. Senika never unfortunately speaks about this explicitly or explicitly enough, he just sort of hints at it at his plays, but we can learn plenty from this example, and it's why I put it in the Daily Stoke, and it's just a reminder, crimes return to their teachers. The Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa.

The Stoa, Poquile, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can all get together in one place, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space but we have made a special digital version of the stove. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community you could talk about like today's episode. You've talked about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using stoicism to be better in their actual of our parts is interacting with all these people who are using stoicism to be better

in their actual real lives. You get more daily stoke meditations over the weekend, just for the daily stoke life members, quarterly Q&As with me, cloth bound edition of our best of meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff including discounts and this is the best part. All our daily stoke courses and challenges, totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value

every single year, including our new year, new U you challenge we'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at dailystokelife.com. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. I keep a bad glove. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors?

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