The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Can You Be Informed Without Cable News?

Episode Date: February 8, 2020

Ryan talks about his upcoming talk in Italy and about James Stockdale, and answers questions from fans. Featuring today's entry from The Daily Stoic. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel.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. Welcome to the Daily Stoke. Or each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at aileastoic.com. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the weekend edition of Daily Stoic. I'm actually just about to rush out the door.

I am heading to Nashville for two talks. And then from Nashville, I'm flying to Frankfurt and then to Venice. And I'm giving a talk at Aviano Air Force Base, which is a US military base in Italy. I'm going to talk to something like 8,000 service members, a bit intimidated by it. I think that will be my largest audience that I've ever talked to at one time. So it would be a little crazy.

I'm excited. I'm going to talk about James Stockdale. If you guys aren't familiar too much with Stockdale, he is worth, like, read his New York Times obituary, read his book, Courage Under Fire. So Stockdale was a Navy pilot. He ends up being introduced to Epic Titus when he's a graduate student at Stanford.

And actually, as he's shot down, he's parachuting into what will certainly be captivity if not death at the hands of the North Vietnamese. He says to himself, I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epic Titus. And so he spends something like seven years as a POW, almost no contact with the outside world. He spends the majority of that time in solitary confinement.

But he manages to cultivate what they came to call sort of a culture of defiance, where they had the secret language between the prisoners. I tell a little bit of the story in the will section of the obstacles away, but they have the secret language with each other. They can soul each other when the prisoners inevitably do break under torture.

I believe Stockdale's Medal of Honor accommodation talks about how he inflicts a near mortal wound on himself the night before he's told that he has to go, basically, I think, speak in front of these cameras. He's going to be used as a propaganda tool by his captors and he says, you know, like, under no circumstances am I going to do this. And what I think so fascinating about Stockdale is that so many of these sort of stork stories are like really ancient, right? Like you hear about Cato or you hear about Epic Titus' sort of defiance under slavery,

you know, the sort of iron will that these characters had. And you go, okay, but that was different back then. I mean, Stockdale only died a few years ago. There are plenty of people walking the earth right now that knew him. We think that the world is so different that, you know, everything is safe and wonderful and that we don't need these sort of tools.

But Stockdale is proof one that Stoicism has survived up until modern times and that these sort of tools, but Stockdale is proof one that Stoicism has survived up until modern times, and that these sort of iron inspirational, larger than life figures still do exist, and that we can still learn from them, that we can be inspired by their example, but also that, you know, you never know, you may sort of need these things in real life. So I'm excited to talk about that. I'm less excited about the very long flight with a number of layovers. One of the things I try to do when I am flying is I try to walk through that pre-meditasha morum thing. We've talked about so many times here in these emails,

I go, okay, what are the delays I could experience? How difficult is it going to be? Can I resign myself in advance to all of those things happening? I'd rather be pleasantly surprised that all the travel goes exactly as expected than pleasantly unsurprised when, oh, lo and behold, the more complexity you introduce into your travel plans, the more delays you happen to experience. So I sort of go into that knowing full well what's going to happen. And then I, you know, what's my plan? I'm going to try to experience. So I sort of go into that knowing full well what's going to happen. And then I, you know, what's my plan? I'm going to try to read. I'm going to try to relax.

I'm going to try to experience some stillness and, you know, amidst the craziness. I want to be ready for all these things to happen. That's kind of how I think about it because, you know, I've done this long enough. That is what happens. I think I spent the night at Newark Airport a little less than a month ago. It was not fun, but I knew that could happen. I did some work on my manuscript, I did some reading, I faced time with my kids, I walked around, I just tried to not let that experience bring out the worst in me and not to make a really ridiculous comparison. But I think ultimately that's what made Stockdale so special such an insanely powerful example of what Stoicism can do.

Going into Vietnam, there'd been a number of sort of horror stories of prisoner of war camps in Korea. There was no sort of real framework for how POWs were supposed to behave, and it had brought out the worst in a lot of these prisoners, which is totally understandable, and totally reasonable. I mean, this is not what humans are supposed to be subjected to. And so there is an argument that with what Stockdale and McCain

and Bud Day and a lot of these people were heading into that it would bring out the worst in them. And somehow, because of their training, because of their character, because of their commitment and their sense of duty and honor, actually the opposite happened. It brought out the absolute best in them. And I think that's one of the things

I'm excited to talk to these airmen and their women about. That's one of the things I'm excited to talk to the leadership at the base about. And it's going to be exciting and fun, although intimidating. And as I said, a bit stressful to get there. to talk to the leadership at the base about and it's going to be exciting and fun, although intimidating and as I said, a bit stressful to get there. So thanks for listening. Really excited about the stuff we got for you today.

We've got a reading and then we've got some ass daily stoic and I hope you check it out and we will talk soon. I'm going to do a quick reading of the February 8th entry from the Daily Stoic. Did that make you feel better? The quote is from Seneca, moral letters 78. You cry, I'm suffering severe pain. Are you then relieved from feeling it if you bear it in an unmanned way? The next time someone gets upset near you,

crying, yelling, breaking something, being pointed or cruel, watch how quickly this statement will stop them cold. I hope this is making you feel better. Because of course it isn't. Only in the bubble of extreme emotion can we justify any of that kind of behavior. And when called to account for it,

we usually feel sheepish or embarrassed. It's worth applying that standard to yourself. The next time you find yourself in the middle of a freak out or moaning and groaning with flu-like symptoms or crying tears of regret just ask is this actually making me feel better? Is this actually relieving any of the symptoms I wish were gone? So that's from the Daily Stoke audiobook which you can get on, Audible, and I think all the other audiobook platforms. And I think what that message is, I would probably, if you're married,

apply this more to yourself than to your spouse. I don't think asking your wife if getting angry is gonna make her less angry. But I have found when my wife has asked me that, when I've gotten upset, when I've found myself increasingly inconsolable and wanting to yell or shout or hit something, she goes like, look, is this alleviating

any of the symptoms? Is this actually making you feel better? Or is in fact your reaction actually not only making you feel worse because of damage to the people or the things around you? And so I think that's what Sena Kha's point is, is like, look, things suck, we get upset. Bad things happen, we get upset, bad things happen,

we get frustrated. But the question is, is acting like a jerk about it or acting like a brat about it or throwing a tantrum about it, does it actually make it better? It might make you feel better for two seconds, but does it actually make it better? And in the long run, does it make you feel better?

And I think the answer to that is almost always no. Our first question today is, how do you balance the tension between being a good informed citizen and not paying attention to the news? I have an obligation to make decisions as part of our pull list. That means city in Greek, but I don't want to spend a ton of time watching the news, and I also don't want to ignore the news. So I think the Stokes would agree. You absolutely have an obligation to be an informed citizen. I think where they might push back is whether watching the news is the best way to be an

informed citizen. And here's an easy way to maybe determine that it's not. Did they have the news 2,000 years ago? No, they didn't. They read books. They had conversations. They observed things first hand. I think what the media has done a really great job of is convince us that consuming the news

is the best or only way to be an informed person. I would actually argue the people who watch the most news are the least informed. They know the most trivia, they know the most breaking information, but do they know the big picture? And the example I use in some of my talks is like, if you worked in the State Department right now and the Armed Forces and you're trying to wrap your head around this conflict, the United States is in China, are you more informed watching tweets or reading intelligence reports? Or would you do well as many people in the State Department are doing to go read a history of the Peloponnesian War, which is about the sort of trouble of the ascendant

Athens and the dominant Sparta. And this is a sort of a timeless battle. They actually now call this the Thucydides trap. And another example when General James Mattis, who is a sort of practicing fan of the Stoics, is sent to the Middle East. The first thing he does is go read the campaigns of Alexander, because not that much has changed, right?

When the conflict with North Korea started to bubble up while he's Secretary of Defense, he re-read this kind of war, Farron Bex, fascinating sort of timeless book about the Korean war. And you learn often more from history, from studying human psychology than you do from breaking news. So I think they're absolutely right to want to be informed. I would just argue that books, conversations, studying human nature is a better way to become informed.

Look, watch the debates if you don't know who you're going to vote for. If you know who you're going to vote for, watching the debates is just entertainment, probably bad entertainment at that. So that's my attitude. Look, I subscribed to The New York Times. I just try not to read it every day, and I try not to, you know,

obsessively scroll on Twitter as well. So what non-stolic books have changed your philosophy and the principles you base your life on? I'll give you a couple. Mancer's for meaning. I got this from my aunt when I was in high school. Apparently my grandmother had loved it and she sent me even her copy. Yeah, I got this in June 2005. I think this is one of the greatest books ever written by a human being. Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art, the concept of the resistance, which holds us back from

accomplishing what we want to do. Our sort of fears and worries and laziness. Super influential to me as a writer. Tick-Mat Han, not a stoic. He's a Buddhist, but his books have been super influential to me. Tick-Mat Han's taming the tiger within is one I would definitely recommend. Also, his book on healing the inner child is very good. No living writers writing is influenced me more than Robert Green's The 48 Laws of Power, his book Mastery, his book 33 Straders of War. I'm not saying I base my life on the 48 Laws of Power in the sense that I'm always observing the law. I'm always crushing my enemy totally or taking credit and letting others do the work. What I am always aware of is how these laws are operating in the background, if not for me, than for other people, being aware of the sort of timeless levers of power,

that the flaws and tendencies of human nature is deeply important to anyone trying to do anything in the world. So I strongly recommend reading Robert Green's works. How would you respond to a bully as a stoic? That's a great question. I think it's complicated. On the one hand, Marcus Aurelius says,

you know, the best revenge is to not be like that. And so he might, you know, ask you to think about what's going on in that bully's life. Why are they the way that they are? Is it actually fun to be them? Even though they are hurting you, is it actually because it's coming from a place of great pain and weakness and misery for them?

I think he would say this to get you to realize that reacting, lashing out is probably not going to make the situation better, and it allows you to put it in some perspective. The other thing Marcus really talks about, he talks about, he's like, his metaphor is boxing, so you're in the ring and someone is cheating and gouging and budding me with your head. This is what you do, right? You don't cry about it. You don't complain to the referee. You take note of it.

Just your strategies accordingly. So you probably don't spar with this person anymore, right? You don't set yourself up to be abused by someone, but at the same time, you're not so thrown off by it. The reality is the world is going to have bullies. People suck. People do mean things. They don't always know that that's what they're doing. As I was saying, a lot of times it can come from pain and weakness. But I would say that where I think the stoic would take action most clearly is if they saw someone bullying someone else. So I think the Stoke would take action most clearly is if they saw someone bullying someone else. So I think the idea of those two Stoke virtues

of courage and justice, I think a Stoke would be willing to step in. And there is a story in Kato's life. There was some game where older kids were playing a game with younger kids and they locked this kid in like a cage or a room or something. And the story is that Kato sort of jumps in, lets the kid go and he stops the game and says, you know, we're not going to do this. So I think where the stoke would draw the clear line, they might be willing to endure or tolerate or not complain about bullying directed at them.

But what they would not tolerate where they would step in, where they believe they could make a difference would be protecting someone else from bullying. So maybe that's a way to think about it. All right, guys, this has been another episode of Ask Daily Stoke. Thanks for listening. Remember, please send in your questions infoatdailystoke.com. I love the more specific questions. So someone was asking, like, how would you respond to a bully?

I'd love to know, like, some specifics. What's going on? These things aren't just generalities. What I love about epictetus is that most of it is him answering questions to his students, but it's clear that there's lots of sort of context there. Like he really is asking specifics about what's going on. So send over as many specific questions as you want. This is your chance to get free advice for me and us at Daily Stoke. So fire those questions at infoad DailyStoke.com and we'll see you next week with more answers and more questions. Thanks.

Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoke email, go to dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday,

parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondery that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking,

oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong, what would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. is this thing on check one two one two hey y'all I'm Kiki Palmer I'm an actress a singer an entrepreneur and a Virgo just the name of you now I've held so many occupations over the years

that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Pabag Palmer and trust me I keep a bag love 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? What happened to sitcoms?

It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night. But I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits.

Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Bye.