Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Mens sana in corpore sano, a strong mind in a strong body. I think we sometimes think of philosophy as this mental thing, which it is, but it's also a physical thing. The Stoics were active. I try to be active. You should try to be active. You've got to have a physical practice to
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a
with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com. What is it all for? And just a note, Right Thing Right Now is for sale as an ebook right now for like $2.99 on Amazon. So you can check that out. I will link to it in today's show notes. And you can grab a signed copy of
of the actual book from the Daily Stoic story, which I'll link to. So look, we tell ourselves we're accumulating it all for a reason. We're playing the long game. We're building up allies. We're developing a reputation. We're gaining influence, getting people in our debt. We're acquiring freedom, financial or otherwise.
We tell ourselves that this is all for the future, that someday in some big moment of significance we'll use it to make a big bet on an idea, to be independent, to make a hard but expensive or hard but scary decision. But will we? Think of Cicero and Seneca. They accumulated so much political power. They piled up wealth. They had enormous audiences and impressive reputations.
Yet in the moments of great flux and difficulty for their country, when public opinion was perhaps up for grabs, Cicero and Seneca did not do enough. They largely kept silent. They accommodated when they should have resisted or agitated. Think today of Columbia University. This is a school with a $14 billion endowment.
But when threatened by a hostile presidential administration, they folded their academic independence over a threatened $400 million federal contract, which spread out over many years, represented only a small fraction of their annual budget and a tinier one for their reserves.
What was the point of that power? What was the point of their influence? Why accumulate an enormous financial war chest if you don't ever use it? We lie to ourselves. We say courage will come later, that right now we just have to be practical. Right now we have to play for the future. We'll speak out when we're more secure, when our platform is bigger. We'll make that move when we're in a better position. But do you know what happens when that inevitable future arrives?
We tell ourselves the same thing and we make the same excuses. The right thing is not something we should plan on doing someday. We have to do it right now while we have the chance with the resources we have today.
And this is the idea from right thing right now. Martin Luther King says the right time to do the right thing is always right now. In the Jimmy Carter administration, the number one thing you could do to upset Jimmy Carter was tell him that we should wait until after reelection to do this. And I'm fascinated by that. When and how people do the right hard thing now is
not later? How do they use their assets, their power, their influencer platform to do the right thing right now? That's what right thing right now is all about. The stoic virtue of justice, courage, and doing the right thing. They're related. So courage and justice are interrelated, of course. But that's the idea. Courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. That's the series. You can grab the ebook right now. It's $2.99 on Amazon. Very timely, I think. Probably the cheapest it will ever be.
And if you want a signed hardcover, of course, I like to read all my books in physical. We have those over in the Painted Porch, and I will link to that in today's show notes. Wants make you a servant. This is the April 28th entry in the Daily Stoic.
The highest power, this is a quote from one of Seneca's most brutal and fascinating plays, Thiestes, which is worth reading. And I've talked about it in a couple of different entries of the podcast. One of my favorites, of course, with James Romm. But here's the quote again. The highest power is no power if you desire nothing.
In the modern world, our interactions with tyranny are a bit more voluntary than they were in ancient times. We put up with our controlling boss, even though we could probably get a different job
If we wanted one, we change how we dress or refrain from saying what we actually think because we want to fit in with some cool group. We put up with a cruel critic or customers because we want their approval or their business. And in these cases, these powers exist because of our wants. You change that and you're free. The late fashion photographer Bill Cunningham occasionally declined to invoice magazines for his work. When a young upstart asked him why that was, Cunningham's response was epic. If you don't take the money,
They can't tell you what to do, kid. Remember that taking the money and wanting the money, it makes you a servant to the people who have it. Indifference to that, as Seneca puts it, turns the highest power into no power, at least as far.
as your life is concerned. I've said before that my definition of success is spelled autonomy. I want control over my own life. And if I don't have that, it doesn't matter how much money I have, how respected I am, how powerful I am. I'm not that powerful because I can't do what I want. I don't control my day. My wants control my day. My needs control my day. What I've agreed to, what I've signed up to,
controls my day. And I don't like that. It doesn't make me feel good. And it reminds me that I'm wasting this precious resource.
There's a great line in the first episode of Billions. Brian Cobbleman is just such a great writer. But the line in that show, he says, what's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you? And sorry, I know it's a lot of cursing in this episode. But the point is, I actually don't think you need fuck you money. You just need like polite, no thanks money. You just need the power of being content with what you have. There's a Stoic line we quoted on Daily Stoic. Sometimes people don't like it. It sounds very privileged. I believe it's Seneca. He's saying, you know, poverty isn't having little, it's wanting more.
I think he's saying that obviously as a very rich, successful person. What he means is he sees the people who can't say no. Maybe he's even speaking to himself. He wanted to be in the center of things. He wanted to be in the room where it happened. He wanted to throw big parties. He wanted to have beautiful estates. And this puts him in a position where it's hard for him to say no. He doesn't have as much control over his life as you'd think someone in that position is. So the point is,
Tyranny is not just the tyrant telling you what to do. It's not just, you know, living in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Tyranny is not just slavery. Tyranny is also often self-imposed. Slavery is often self-imposed. We put ourselves on a treadmill. We put ourselves in a position of vulnerability. We put ourselves in a position of dependency because we want to
We want to get this. We want to get there. We want to have access to this. We want to be like these people. And that makes us have to agree to do certain things. That makes us need to spend a certain amount. That makes us need to dress a certain way. The people who don't give a shit about any of that, the people who are content with what they have, people who have enough, that's a position of real power.
Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.
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