The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Robert Greene Talk Plagues, Politics, and Polarization

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

In today’s episode, Ryan talks with his mentor, author and strategist Robert Greene. They discuss historical links to today’s pandemic, the 2020 US presidential election, Robert’s thoughts on making alive time out of the state-imposed quarantines, and more.This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Visit http://foursigmatic.com/stoic to get 15% off your order.This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic and receive 20 free travel packs with your first purchase.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicAnd follow Robert Greene:Twitter: https://twitter.com/robertgreeneInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/robertgreeneofficial/Homepage: https://powerseductionandwar.com/Get Robert’s latest book, The Laws of Human Nature: https://geni.us/pmH4See 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. For 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 dailystoic.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I could not be more pleased to bring you this conversation, which I still pinch myself every time I get to have Robert Green. It's probably been the largest intellectual influence in my life, you know, probably greater than even the Stoics in that Robert is flesh and blood and has

been able to sort of specifically guide and help me with problems in real time. But I got to know Robert now, well over 10 years ago, I dropped out of college, partly to work for Robert. I was his research assistant. He taught me how to be a writer. He personally gave me many of the books and ideas, which have shaped my work, and just generally been an incredible advocate

and an incredible human being in mentor. He's the Godfather to my son. You know, Robert is just one of my favorite people in the whole world. And so I had some time on Saturday this week and I shot Robert a message and I said, hey, would you want to just sit and talk for the Daily Stoke podcast? And he said absolutely. And so we scheduled around his afternoon bike ride and my afternoon swim with the kids. And what we recorded are some thoughts on Robert's hero, Paracles, and how a leader cut from the same cloth as Paracles might sort of guide humanity out of this COVID-19 pandemic.

We talk a little bit about modern politics and media. If you're a Republican, there might be some things that you object to, but, and I said, this is important, but that's actually something we talk about. I wanted to talk about this sort of rise of polarization, how inordinate we angry and irrational people seem to get these days when they hear viewpoints that they disagree with, that they don't like. So we talk about that, which is an important theme from Roberts Book the Law of Human nature. And then we talk about this critical concept of a lifetime dead time, which we've been speaking about so much here on this podcast. And I wrote about an ego as the enemy. I tell the story about how Robert first gave me that idea when I was deciding to become a writer.

And Robert explains what a lifetime dead time means to him and how he's been trying to apply that idea since he had a stroke almost two years ago now and how he's reacting to being quarantined out there in Los Angeles. So I won't belabor this introduction. Robert Green is someone who I feel needs no introduction, at least if you're familiar with this podcast, what I talk about because I talk about how the 40 laws of power and mastery and the 33 strategies of war and the laws of human nature are just all-time classics, books that people absolutely need

to read are just critically important and how Robert is one of those thinkers that if you're not familiar with, you are depriving yourself of real knowledge and wisdom and Robert happens to be a follower of the Stoic, so you can get some sort of Stoic ideas interspersed inside of his works. So listen to this with Robert Green. I can't wait to hear what you think.

And you can follow Robert Green on Instagram. He's started to be active there. He's got a huge Facebook presence. And you can sign up for his email list at power seduction and war.com. for his email list at PowerSeductionAndWar.com. So, Robert, I was, without having to talk too much about current politics, I've been thinking a lot recently about one of your heroes, parakelies. And so I wondered if you've given any thought to, how would a great leader like parakelies

who faced a plague and war and all sorts of civil strife, how would he respond to something like the pandemic that we're in the middle of right now? Well, the ironic thing is when he advocated, he came up with a particular policy for fighting against Sparta that was very unpopular a strategy that sort of launched the Peloponnesian War And the irony is that It entailed with drawing all of the Athenian forces into Athens itself and letting the Spartans kind of you know Take over the land and and do whatever they want to kind of a waiting game But because everybody was enclosed in Athens a plague broke out at that time,

and Pericles ended up dying from the plague. But his whole idea was to try and find a way out of the trap that politics normally puts you into, which is it's emotion-based. It's all about pleasing a narrow little band of a tribe that is loyal to you and playing this incredibly partisan game. And you kind of pretend that you're being rational, kind of pretend that your patriotic

kind of pretend that you're doing everything for the greater good of Athens, but really you're incredibly selfish and it's very emotional-based. And Pericles was obsessed with finding a way out of that trap because he thought the Athenian democracy was a beautiful thing and he wanted to see if there was a way to make it where it would be a little bit more stable because they were changing leaders like every year or every two years and there were all these incredibly vicious factions etc. every two years and there are all these incredibly vicious factions etc. So as I explain in the book, he says it's human nature to want to worship something, to one love something. And he would, yes, opposed to the others, he would truly love rationality. He would base everything on his

relationship to the goddess Athena. He would step back and he would try to decide what really, really is in the greater interest of Athens at that time. And so that kind of was what he based all of his decisions on. And he never faced a crisis like the plague and ended up being what destroyed him, but he did face many, many other crises.

And what got him through them was the fact that he thought of it constantly expanding his base of trying to say the majority of Athenians, what is in their interest, not what's for me, from the wealthy class or the middle class or the poppers, what's the majority of Athenians? What are the decisions I can make that would be in their interest? And so, if we had a parakelies now, and God that would be our dream, and we're right now we have the anti-parakelies

as a leader, right? You couldn't think of anyone more different. It's not a ridiculous far-fetched thing because a lot of presidents in our history have faced terrible crises, you know, most namely Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and they had a kind of paraclean strategy, which was thinking long-term, what is it going to look like in two or three years, and how do we get through this, not by polarizing the populace, but by trying to bring

everybody together and make this kind of a team thing and we're all in this together and how are we going to rationally get our way out of it and base every single decision on that. And so the problem in our political system right now is I don't even know if that's possible anymore. I don't even know if that's possible anymore. I don't even know with the polarization with the various different factions in Congress and the incredible enmity and antagonism between Republicans and Democrats.

I don't even know if it's feasible, but that is exactly the kind of leader that we need right now. Yeah, I was, when you were talking about rationality. What made me think and I think when people zoom out and you look at other countries, you could sometimes see what's working or not working sort of somewhat removed from your own partisan viewpoint. It's interesting that a few of the presidents or prime ministers or

cancers that have done really good, the prime minister of New Zealand, whose name I don't know and then then Onholy Merkel in Germany, both have science backgrounds, and I'm wondering how much that has influenced how they've responded to this. Well, you know, obviously we're facing something that's extremely a new new ground for all of it. It's not like an enemy, like the Confederacy during the Civil War or like Adolf Hitler. This is a very difficult foe. The scientists don't even completely understand it.

I follow this quite often every day on various websites and then papers. They're constantly adjusting what they're learning as much as we are right now from what's going on. But the only way out of this is by following the science, is by following the numbers. It's very simple. The experts who deal with this, most of all,

are epidemiologists. And it's all based on statistics, and it's very simple. And it's all about how do you reduce the number of infections? If one person infects one other person, then you can kind of manage it. But the problem is one person is generally infecting two or three or four, and that's why it's constantly rising. So you have to reduce that number to below one.

So one person is infecting actually less than one other person. And that's when the numbers will start going down and we'll know that we're on the way to really defeating this. And that's the only way out of this. The only way out of this is through science, is through numbers. And science like that doesn't lie.

I mean, it's clear that they don't know all of the answers because this is new for them as well. They've never faced a pandemic of this scale and with a different kind of virus, but they're learning and they know a lot more than we do. But the problem is we live in a culture where even science has been politicized and that is extremely, extremely dangerous. It's not a matter of liberal or conservative. It's about saving as many lives of our fellow citizens as possible,

and being as incredibly rational as we can. And so for several years now, we had a president and a party to be honest with you that has been trying to attack science, that denies the validity of science even in its grounds, which is outrageous, outrageous proposition. They've been doing this for years with global warming, in incredible denial of the statistics and the unmistakable fact that we are destroying the planet.

And so that and other levels, they are anti-science. And so here in a moment where we need experts, where we need people who are rational, who are calm, who are following the numbers, we're in deep, deep due due because our leaders have made many people even doubt the validity of science itself, which is incredibly irrational. If we go back to paracles for a second, because I think your books are obviously a testament to this, it's not just about being right or having the science or sort of knowing the strategy,

because obviously paracles comes up with a strategy that would have won the war against Sparta, but really his genius and great leaders, you mentioned, Lincoln, you mentioned Roosevelt, have not only the ability to see that long-term vision, but then the key thing, which I think we're clearly lacking, you know, I live in a Republican state with a, in a city with a Democratic mayor,

I think I sort of see it all over. I think what you're really lacking is the communication, the ability to persuade, to sell that vision, to get people on board with what you're doing is also sorely lacking. Like, we lack not just the paracly and rationality, but the sort of paracly and, you know, his famous funeral oration and his speeches and thosities are the best speeches in the whole book. He manages to sort of seize that bully pulpit and bring people along with him. And that strikes me as something that a

crisis like this calls for as well. Well, there's several things there. I mean, Pericles actually was not considered the greatest order of all. And later became respected for that. But initially, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war,

the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style of war, the Greek style very calm, he cited sort of fact, it was fact-based, and he sort of shared his strategy and details it. He was a very uncharacteristic Greek speaker, and then later he became kind of, after his death, he became respected

for things like the orations, et cetera. But at the time, people thought he was kind of colorless, but the problem that we have is, first of all, you have to have a vision. You can't begin. So there are people out there who are great orators and great communicators, but they don't think. They don't actually look into the future. They don't actually have a plan. They're just good at talking and communicating and being persuasive. And that can be pretty empty and dangerous as well. So if you look at something like people were saying 15, 16, 18 years ago that this was a danger that we were going to face,

this was a problem, right? And then also, if you look at since the crash of 08, this is something I've been following in detail, I've been seeing incredible cracks in business in our economy, even though it was kind of disguised by this incredible bull market that we've been going through. And the thing about a crisis is it's sort of like in engineering, when you want to find out you have a bridge or a building, you want to find out its weaknesses or flaws you can't

see them in the moment because the building looks good. You do a simulation on a computer, you run a simulation of an earthquake or a hurricane and that reveals cracks and fishers in the structure that weren't immediately visible. Well, a crisis like this is revealing all of the cracks in our politics, in our business, and in us personally. And one of them is the fact that so many companies in the United States are deeply, deeply leveraged. They've been playing on this easy credit that has existed since 2008. And so if you're a leader who's thinking long term, who's planning not just month by month like our president or our corporations

that are planning by their quarterly report, as you and I both know very well from American apparel, if you had somebody who was actually thinking of one, two, three years down the line, he or she would have been going through the process like, well right now, we're running incredible deficits, but we have incredible prosperity. Unemployment is really down, interest rates are low. Maybe this is a time to actually try and lower our debt instead of

increasing the deficit month by month by month, so that if a crisis comes, what I'm talking about is a leader who had vision would imagine that a crisis is going to come. And this is what I do in 95% of my consulting work. Because in your in business or in politics, you never foresee the danger that is just around the bend. You live in a kind of blindness. You imagine that the circumstances that are existing now are going to continue on for weeks or months or years. And yet, inevitably, some disaster, some crisis and terrible mistake is looming. And the game that you need to play as a strategist is to foresee that and to plan for it. And if it never happens, great. Maybe it'll happen in 10 years, but

you'll be ready. But if it never happens in 10 years, it doesn't matter. It's the most prudent thing you can do. So a leader can't just be persuasive. I agree with you that's important, and Lincoln and Roosevelt certainly had that. But they have to have a vision. And what separated Lincoln was that he had this insane vision for how to end the war that nobody else believed in.

He saw four or five years down the road. His whole strategy was based on keeping the union together, on not letting fissures occur in the north, from within the north, right? And for keeping his eye, and for also making so that there would be a union after the war, after the South surrendered, so that he didn't create such an embedded foe that it would be impossible union after the war, after the South surrendered, so that he didn't create such an embittered folk that it would be impossible to reconstruct the country.

It was a strategy that required incredible resilience. People were doubting him left, right, and center, but he had this insane long-term vision. So more important for a great leader than just communication skills, which are very important, is the ability to have a long-term vision. And in several of my books, I talk of the story of Zennephon and the Anabasus when they were trapped in Persia and there was like, I forget how many 10,000 of them that they had to get out. And he was the only one that had a vision for how he could get, and he wasn't even the general

or a leader, he was just a writer there, who was a pupil of Socrates, who was there as a kind of a journalist. And they were trapped, and they were surrounded by enemies, deep in enemy territory. And he had a vision of how they would get back to Greece, and it entailed a very detailed vision of all the different steps, and he enacted it.

And I say that that to me is the paradigm for a great leader who can see further into the future and can prepare for a disaster. And it could come up with a coherent rational plan. That is very much what we're missing right now. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think if you can trust someone like De Blasio with Andrew Cuomo, you see the difference. Let's say they have similar visions, which I'm not saying they do, but just one has the ability to sort of seize the medium

of the moment to communicate to rally people. And so that's, to me, that's what's so striking and again, without getting into people's personal politics, I think it's interesting that Biden seems to be unable to seize the moment where all eyes would, like Lyndon Johnson tells that story that he learns when he's a kid on his cattle ranch, he's like, so sometimes there's, when cattle are stuck in a swamp,

he says all that can be done is the sort of, the foreman has to charge in on his horse and take command. Sometimes when things happen, when there's an explosion or a crisis or a collapse, people look for moral leadership, they look for someone who can seize the consciousness and tell a story as Xenenefin did that says, like, hey, if you follow me, here's what will happen.

And I think people forget that, you know, FDR had to campaign for the president before he was elected, right? And that's what he managed to do against Hoover is he managed to tell a much more compelling story about what America would get if they changed horses in the middle of the stream, so to speak, right? Like, hey, this is clearly not working, but here's what will happen if you change alliances,

basically. And I, it's so striking to me that, again, whether you like them or not, it seems weird that Democrats can't manage to pull that off given how bad things are and in my opinion, how badly they've been bungled. Well, I wouldn't totally write them off right now. I mean, the thing that worries me the most, not to get too deep into the politics is the things that worries me the most about Biden is the lack

is the things that worries me the most about Biden is the lack of a digital strategy. I don't know, or with someone like Bernie Sanders. You might just like Sanders, but he was quite brilliant at that. He built a very formidable digital army and digital strategy. And I think Biden is incredibly weak in that area, and it's very, very important for this election. It's something that is a strength of Trump, unfortunately. But the thing about, I wouldn't quite rule out what's going on. It's a bit, a little bit, like a Fabian strategy, almost. I mean, FDR himself also had this idea

that you can tire out the American public. Of course, this is in the days that only had radio, so it was a little more difficult to tire the American public out, but he had this idea that you shouldn't really begin campaigning until August. And he used that, I don't know how much he used that with the first campaigning Hoover, but that was definitely his strategy in all subsequent elections. He let the enemy kind of flounder and make all kinds of ridiculous propositions and policy and issue all kinds of promises, etc. And then it would only be like in August that he would actually or even September that

he would actually begin to campaign. And he would wait for the enemy the other side to supply him with all of this material they had committed themselves to so many ridiculous things that now he would come in like a boxer who could kind of playing a rope adobe for a while. And he would just pummel his opponent in two quick surgical months. Now I'm not comparing Biden at all to FDR. He certainly lacks that kind of fighter instinct. That's the thing that we're missing most from him is the fighter part. So a leader isn't

just rational. A leader isn't just somebody with a vision. A leader isn't just somebody with good persuasive skills. It's also someone who is tough and canide and who's got some pugilistic skills as well. Unfortunately, that's probably the only thing that Trump has. And we need something a little bit on a par with that, and we don't have it. But letting Trump kind of destroy himself, giving him enough rope to hang himself, the old Napoleon idea, is not a bad idea. And I don't know if Biden or Democrats coming in now with a very forceful counter vision,

they're gonna be, it's gonna be framed like, oh, you're being partisan right now. You're running, trying to run an election in a time when we're all suffering. Just maybe let Trump just kind of make a bigger fool of himself every day with telling people to swallow bleach and on and on and on. And maybe, you know, maybe I come out fighting.

To me, the critical question is, who does he choose for Vice President? Is he gonna choose a kind of a middle of the road? I'm gonna please everyone choice, sort of which would be kind of a middle of the road? I'm going to please everyone choice, sort of which would be kind of like a clovershure. But will he show a little bit of boldness? Will there be a little bit of a surprise in there? I want to see that element of Biden, because to be honest,

I'm actually also worried he's going to pick sort of a Twitter candidate like an extreme left-wing person to please the wrong people as well. I don't know what that would be. He's not going to be Elizabeth Warren. I know where he could pick who's the the the the state's game runner-up. Yeah, I don't think that that would accomplish anything except for I don't think we need to know that. But anyway, so it's like, I don't really know what kind of leader he is.

I have my doubts, I have my words, but I haven't completely written him off yet. No, no, that's really interesting because I didn't think about it as a Fabian strategy, but I do tell the Fabia story in Stillness is the key. And from what I've read about FDR's campaign against Hoover, is that one of Hoover's complaints is that Hoover was trying to shore up the economy, and he wanted FDR to commit to just like continuity. And, and one of the more sort of Machiavellian moves that FDR made was he let Hoover twist in the

wind. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So that's fascinating. He was my strategist. Totally. I think this is crazy and we'll probably get too far up in the weeds in it.

But I think the out of the Dark Horse candidate for Biden to pick, I think he should pick Michelle Obama. I never heard that. Wow. That would be very interesting. candidate for Biden to pick, I think he should pick Michelle Obama. I never heard that. Wow. That would be very human. She's one of the most famous people in the world. She's loved sort of by all different types of people. It would be huge. Like the one thing, the one group that really doesn't like Trump is college educated women. You know, I think it would be a big out of the box pick. Ryan, that's pretty brilliant. Did you come up with that on your own review? Did you sort of

read that somewhere? I think so. My other strategy for him, I'd be curious what you think. Because Trump so dominates media, I think what I would do, it's like impossible for one person to be more famous than Trump. And so if I was Biden, what I would do is I'd use this time and I'd pick like my whole cabinet, so I'd pick everyone and I'd get commitments on them, although obviously, you know, the president can choose whoever they want after they're elected and ultimately these things

have to be confirmed by the Senate, so it's more of formality. But then I would campaign not as one person, but I would campaign with an administration of people. We've got to get Ryan Holiday in contact with Joe Biden right now. We need Ryan Holiday more than that. I'm sorry. I take that back. We don't need it.

We don't need paracles. We need Brian. We need you to do. Do I Brian. We need you. Do I get work? Well, I've heard the idea of nominating a cabinet. I've read about that. And it is a great idea. Some people have countered that saying it's a little early to commit to that and you're going to want some flexibility. But I agree with you, you can always change some of the things depending on circumstances. But I think it's a very good strategy, but I had never heard the Michelle Obama before thing.

And the only thing is she's never run for office, right? So that people will be bringing up her lack of political experience. Sure. That would be the only mark against her, Because people are saying that Biden is only going to be in power for four years. He's too old. He's probably maybe he might even just be a one-term president. So the VP will step in. So that would be like the thing against ACA where she doesn't have the experience.

And it's even something against Kamala Harris, who is somebody I actually in some ways like, but she's only had like three years in the Senate. That would be the only downside of Michelle Obama, but I really really really liked the way you're thinking. It shows creativity, it shows boldness, it shows the kind of thing that Biden needs to do. And the thing is, this comes back to you and your generation because he's got to inspire the millennials. I don't know how he's gonna do it because right now that's like,

seems to be the thing that's lacking the most. Maybe you can answer that about since you seem to be so brilliant here. What would be the strategy for awakening that sleeping giant? I know it, that's why I think it needs to be an out of the box, Tick. Hey, it's Ryan. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors,

and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened,

and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them

by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app. So to tie this back to stoicism, I can almost sense because I get so many emails. Ironically, you know, the right has sort of labels,

sort of left-wing college students as snowflakes because they're, you know, the right has sort of labels, sort of left-wing college students is snowflakes because they're, you know, so politically correct. I can't handle anything. That's ridiculous. The amount of, if you say anything against Trump, the amount of angry emails you get from people, and so I'm curious from a stoic perspective, like when someone senses,

and you've written about human nature, so you know about where this polarization comes from, what would you say to people who feel themselves so triggered by the mention of anything contrary to their political views? That's what I really don't understand. Like, even if I was a Trump supporter, and there's some policies that he has that I actually don't disagree with, and you. And they're certainly Republicans who I like,

who I think are good. So I'm by no means like some sort of partisan, extremist myself, but when people talk about people that I like negatively, it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't get upset when people have different opinions in me. What do you think about where that's coming from? Well, I think to be honest with you, because I have thought a lot about it, I think it's the creeping narcissism in our culture. And I see it in movies, and I very much see it in politics, and I very much see it in individual level. And so this is something, it's a book that I recommend,

I've recommended before to a lot of people. It's called The Fall of Public Man. It's by a sociologist named Richard Senate. I think it was written in the 70s or 80s, the brilliant book. So it's not necessarily my idea, but he traces this kind of the origins of narcissism and politics. And the idea is the politician that you favor, or the ideas that you favor, it's not just ideas, but your ego is involved in it. Your sense of self is involved in it. You're not just identified with the leader,

but your whole personality, your whole identity is now meshed with that cause. So for you to hear doubts about Bernie Sanders, the slightest little flicker of doubt about Bernie or the slightest flicker of doubt about Trump, it's personal. Man, you're attacking me. You're saying that I'm stupid. You're saying that I'm vicious. You're saying something about me. So it's the inability to divorce politics from the personal. And this is a very, very dangerous thing because I agree with you. I mean, I like it when people challenge me, my ideas, when they say, Robert, you know, that's kind of a stupid idea.

Biden is really weak. Democrats have done this again. I don't, and unlike you, I don't agree with everything that they support either. And I like, I like to be challenged. I like to hear opposing ideas. I like people to tell me that I'm wrong. And then, then I want them to explain it rationally. I don't want them to be all emotional. I want them to give me a point-by-point attack of what I have said. And I love it when that happens. And I'm very open to changing my ideas. But in order to reach that point, you have to have a level of security with from within, and you have to be more interested in ideas

than in your ego. I mean, you're the one that wrote the book on that, so I think you, you know, you could speak volumes about that. But people's egos are tied in with their politics. And you're right, some of the biggest snowflakes right now are on the Republican side, or people on Fox News, God forbid you challenged one of them. You know, they just erupt and they take everything personally. And of course, it happens a lot on the left, most definitely.

It's not a left or right problem. It's a cultural problem. And people like Christopher Lash with his book on the Culture of Narcissism were in the 70s. People identify with a try now. They identify not just with Republican or conservative, they identify with libertarian, with Tea Party, with the Bernie movement, a narrow little group,

and that it's like this group reflects who they are. It's kind of a giant narcissistic mirror for everyone to kind of wallow in their own self-love. Oh, everybody is like me in this group, and anybody who challenges me is challenging not just me or my ideas, but they're challenging who I am. And so a lot of this is cognitive dissonance. So for us, this is a, this is a, this would be a terrible mistake for a democratic strategist is to try and appeal to Trump voters by telling them, look, Trump is stupid, he's a con artist, et cetera, because that triggers cognitive distance. That means people have to say, well, I voted for that man.

That means that I'm stupid, that I'm immoral, that I'm a racist, and therefore you're only entrenching them in their opinion, because nobody wants to think that what they believed three months ago was wrong or immoral. So they're gonna hold on to it, even though it is wrong or even though it is immoral, they're gonna hold on to it just so they can feel inner consistency.

So cognitive dissonance and narcissism to me are what is created this incredibly inflamed tribal atmosphere that we're living through. Yeah, it's always funny to me, because I know there's like friends, and it's like, I'm not a Trump supporter. So everyone's, I'll talk about like, you know, either an interesting trend with Trump,

or I'll talk about how, as we were talking about how sort of historically, if you look at the leadership, we've seen in this pandemic, I don't think it's been good. And I know there's a number of, you know, sitting Republican senators, some of whom you know, get the daily stoke email every week, or, you know, I know there's people in the administration who read it, they never send me angry emails about it. They tell me how much, you know, we have no

problem. But then, then I'll get all these emails from a random person who can't bear the fact that I managed to insult someone they've never met. And one of the things I think about, there's a great quote from Epictetus that I think they should teach in schools these days. He says, whenever you're offended, understand that you're complicit in the offense, meaning that no one can make you angry, you choose to be offended. And we have this left and right culture where people, like we've given all our agency

over our sense of self to what other people say and do, and then we wonder why we're miserable all the time. Right, I completely agree. I mean, the other thing is, is that we're seeming to lack the ability to think for ourselves, just on an elemental level, a thinking process, where you're able to evaluate ideas on your own, reflected through your own experience,

through your own processes, through your own ideas that you've developed, is something sorely, sorely lacking. So people have, and you see a lot of this on social media, people have these reflexive reactions that they've gotten from other people from other sources, and they're reflecting ideas that are not their own, they're not thinking, they're not reflecting, they're only following like a party line. And so, you know, if I look at like the Democrats, I could say, yeah, I generally agree with them because that's more where my politics are, but there's a lot of things I disagree with. You know,

maybe 60, 65% I agree with, but there's a good percentage at least a third that I don't like, and maybe some of that I like even on the conservative side. But I evaluate each idea in its own light, and I reflect it through my own thinking process. I make it my own. I go through a process where I, this is where we go back to paracles and his emphasis of news and rationality and of Athena.

What I want to do is I want to think about it. I want to reflect before I get emotional and angry. And maybe some of my own ideas are wrong. And maybe I should listen more to other people. And I know that I'm often guilty of exactly what I'm saying right now. And as what I say in laws of human nature, in the chapter on rationality,

the only way to be rational, I believe in this world, is to recognize that you are irrational, that you are mostly following your emotions, that your ideas are generally emotional-based. And with that knowledge, you can then begin to challenge yourself, to question yourself, to question why you believe this. Why do I believe that Trump is better? Why do I believe this policy is particularly pernicious? Is it just because I've heard it on MSNBC or is it because I've reflected about it and there's something

deeply disturbing? To go through that process and understand that you are a human being who is irrational, who is reacting emotionally, is the only way to be truly irrational. And I think that that's something that seems almost impossible today. It's a lot of it comes back to our education system and how people are trained not to think for themselves, but to just sort of swallow whole hog certain ideas that are trendy in universities or in high school or

whatever in the culture. So that's another aspect of the problem that I think. No, I think you're right. And that's another idea from the Stoics, Epictetus, specifically. He's like, when he says, when the weight of an impression hits you, you have to stop and you have to say, hang on. He says, wait a minute. let me put you to the test. And I think that idea of like when you feel something strongly, that should be assigned to you that you need to question it. That

doesn't mean that you're not right to feel strongly, but a lot of the times when you feel strongly, it's going to be because you, some primal or biological or deeply human, irrational streak has been touched. And that's not a good place to be coming from. Like one of the things I've been thinking about is like, of the analogy, I'd be curious what you would think about as a basketball fan. Sometimes a coach has to get upset to invigorate the team.

So the great basketball coaches will sometimes get technicals on purpose, you know, and like Greg pop of it, but that's a lot. That's fundamentally different than a Bobby Knight who can't control his temper and is doing things that are, you know, damaging to the team or his reputation. And so it might be that getting angry is the proper response, but just because you feel angry in the moment doesn't mean that that's the proper response. Well, it all comes down to a level of self-control and self-awareness. So I'm talking about, particularly in that first chapter

in rationality, the ability to analyze your own emotions. So you feel angry, okay, you take a step back and you analyze that emotion, you go, why am I angry? What is the root of my anger? I'm sure the Stoics advocate something very similar. And you go, is my anger based on something real? Is it based on something I'm immediately facing? Is it a reality? Is it an injustice that's actually out there? Or is it something that I'm projecting on the world perhaps from my childhood or from an argument I had

this morning with my spouse or for something I heard on the news. Where does my anger come from? And then when you can step back and look at it, you might come to the conclusion, no, I am justified. There is an injustice. That boss, he's screwing me out of money that I legitimately deserve. But by the fact that you've stepped back and you've analyzed yourself, you have already won the game. Because now, in responding to whatever injustice there is, you can be strategic. You can say, okay, I'm going to get angry, but I'm going to use that in a way that's based on trying to get results. And you have a degree of self-control.

And yeah, Phil Jackson was also a master at that. And believe me, nobody was seemingly less emotional than Phil Jackson. And you knew that, well, just like as you talk about getting a technical to kind of inspire the team, you'd look at the man and he looked, he didn't look angry, he didn't look upset, but he was playing it, he was playing it, it was a game, it was a drama, it was a piece of theater. But you can only get to that point when you're already someone who has the ability to be strategic and to understand and to not identify so closely with your own emotions. That's the problem. Your anger is so personal, it's so much wrapped up with your ego that you can't step back

and analyze it and therefore be strategic. So, you know, there's a lot of injustice in this world and particularly nowadays in so many areas and it is good to be angry, but it is good to be able to channel your anger productively and get results. And the only way to do that is to be able to have some degree of self-distance and self-analysis.

No, I think that's right. So, to wrap up, I thought maybe where we close is something that you told me, I can't believe now, it was almost 10 years ago, but I think about it almost every single day and pretty much couldn't have been more timely with this pandemic, but it's something I've written about, but all the credit goes to you, and was the perfect thing for me to hear all those years ago. But you make this distinction between

a lifetime and dead time in life. I'm just curious what that means to you, and maybe how you're thinking about a lifetime, you know, being in California, subject to a shelter in place, you know, not being able to travel and having, because of your stroke, just generally been a lot less mobile over the last year and a half or so. How do you think about a live time versus dead time day to day?

Well, it comes from a basic idea. I read it somewhere, I can't even remember where. But the idea was that time, your time, the time that you are alive is the only real possession that you have. Everything else that you have can be taken away from you. Your family, your possessions, your house, your cars, et cetera.

But that time that you have to live, that you're alive, is your only true possession. And you can give it away, and you can give it away by working for other people. They own your time, and you can be miserable. You can give it away by reaching for external pleasures and distractions. That means means the time that you have is really you're a slave to these different passions and these different obsessions that you have or you can make it your own. You can actually come and possess it

and take ownership of this time and make the each moment count. And when you do that, that means that that time is yours. It's alive within you. It's green. It's growing. You own it and you're making it happen. Now for me, it's a very painful process because, I mean, believe me, people are suffering

much worse than I am right now. So I'm very aware of that. But prior to the pandemic, I was kind of a prisoner in that I'm extremely dependent. I had a very active life. My whole life was taking heights and swimming and mountain biking and getting out of my offices. My only way of getting out of my mind and all of my thought thinking and that was completely taken away from me.

So like somebody in prison, I had to sort of learn to deal with that and create my own time. And so, you know, there are moments where I have problems itself. It's a constant struggle. So those moments where I have to do therapy every day, this morning I did two hours and 15 minutes of therapy and it's very boring. I can't explain you how boring it is. The most excruciatingly boring exercises, trying to retrain your left thigh and your left hip bone to move a certain way. And then these kind of weight exercises that are also very boring. That kind of feels like dead time to me.

But how do I make that alive? Well, I turn off all the TV and the music and all the usual distractions. And I use that time to focus very deeply on my body. So I'm learning to use certain muscles. And I'm focusing on those muscles so intensely so that I can begin to feel them. So it's turning into a live time in that. I'm using this very boring routine to know my own muscles on a very deep level. And I haven't succeeded completely. I'm getting better at it. But it. So that when I'm walking, because I've had to completely relearn how to walk and I still

can't really walk that well. I'm trying to go, can I really feel those glutes as I'm trying to move my left leg? Is there a way for me to feel my left knee bending more? So I'm using that to get in touch with my body and it feels like a constant challenge and it's exciting. So a lifetime there is making it something that's like a skill and a thought that's my own that I can use afterwards and it's kind of an in-live anything. But dead time in that sense would be putting on a movie or listening to the news or listening to some music in my headphones

or whatever or just zoning out. That would be dead time. So I'm transferring that. And then when it comes time for my four or five hours of working on the book, that is pure a lifetime for me because that's the most joy that I get out of it. I completely immerse my brain in the experiences and the thoughts of the books that I'm reading and the no cards I'm taking. I've been building that muscle up now for 23, 24 years now. So I've got it down to a bit of an art, but those four or five hours are just pure bliss for me because I'm out of my own problems and I'm trying to think about my readers and my book. And it's very alive.

And I know a lot of people don't have that privilege because they're not working for themselves. They're not able to build something that's just their own. So I'm very privileged in that sense. But I struggle as well, and I struggle as I told you with the boredom that I'm experiencing when I'm doing my therapy. So, you know, that's sort of how it's been for me these past few months. But I have a lot of empathy for people who've never had to deal with this before,

who suddenly are at home, who suddenly have their children and wife at home, and they're not able to go out and do their daily routines. And it's all a matter of thinking of, how can I make this my own? How can I turn this to quote another very amazing writer? How can I turn this obstacle into the way? How can I turn this hindrance, this problem into something that becomes my own? So this time, instead of reaching for distractions, your a live time now is reading books, you know, the best, this was some thought presses that I go through.

I'm trapped in my office. But when I read a book on ancient history, when I read a book about the ancient Greek poet, Safo, I'm transported to ancient Greece to the seventh century PC to the century before, just after Homer, just an incredible thought that someone lived only 100 years after Homer. You know, and it's like I'm traveling all of the time, and it's exciting, I'm not in my office anymore.

I'm out there in the world, I mean, other people's brains, other people's ideas, use this time to get outside of yourself, and get, immerse yourself in great philosophy, in great history, in great biographies, that's creating a lifetime. There are other ideas as well. I could go on for hours, but that's basically sort of the concept as I see it right now. No, I don't know if you remember, but I had come to you. I was then the director of marketing in American apparel and I wasn't happy.

I didn't quite know what I wanted to do next. I was thinking about writing a book. I could see that there was somewhat of a ceiling on my advancement there. There was craziness in chaos. I just started to make a good amount of money there and I was unhappy in thinking about what I would do. That's actually when you came to me with that advice, you said, you know, you said, look, maybe this is going to go on for another year.

Maybe it's going to go on for six months. And you said, look, this can go one of two ways for you. You said, this could be a live time for you or it could be dead time. You could wait it out. You could just sit there. You could collect your paychecks, or you could decide to seize this moment and make it a new beginning of some kind, make it the first steps towards wherever you end up going next. You could look back on this period as one of the most

sort of fond and fruitful periods of your life. He said, this could be the, what sets the table for the book that you're going to write or the new chapter in your career, it just comes down to that choice of a lifetime or dead time. And I even, I remember I wrote it down in a note card and I framed it and I put it on my wall. And it sort of shapes. I try to think about it every time I'm, you know, at a crossroads every time I go through something every time I'm stuck, I just try to think of that sort of dichotomy that you

lay down. And I think a lifetime, verse, dead time, is that's the fork in the road between a sort of a life worth living and a life filled with regret and disappointment. Well, I never really knew the full brunt of the story. I'm glad I'm hearing it now. The gist of it, another way of looking at it, which I've always think of, is making things your own. It was sort of an idea that I tried to communicate a lot in the book that I did with 50 cent, the 50th Law. But the idea is, is the kind of magic or alchemy when you take something from the outside

and you make it your own, you own it, you possess it. And so it's not just time, which is the most important commodity of all, where you make it your own, you own it, you possess it. And so it's not just time, which is the most important commodity of all, where you make it your own, where you're the owner of it, as opposed to working for other people and collecting a paycheck, using that time to read and develop skills and to plan for the future, and to use this seemingly negative experience for the material, for a book, which is what you did, which was so brilliant.

But it's also ideas. Make them your own. So your brain is like a soil that needs to be as enriched as possible. There's many different things in it. So you want to absorb ideas from montagne, from the Stoics, from the Presacratics, from philosophers like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, from contemporary writers, from Victor Franco, etc. And that's so it gets enriched and their ideas become your own. You don't just parrot what what Senica says or Marcus Aurelius

says because that would be to contradict them. You make it alive and alive thought. It reflects your own experience, your own world, and you say, what is this idea of Marcus Aurelius, and how does it relate to my life, and how can I make this idea come to life from within. So it's not just a dead piece of stone that I've, or food that I've swallowed. It's like something that I possess and I've built upon and created on my own. So I want you to think of everything that you do in life as a process of making it your own,

your time, your ideas, your mental life, on and on and on, that's sort of the wider philosophy behind this. That's really beautiful. I don't think I could say it better. So Robert, thank you for the advice. Thank you for everything you've done for me. And of course, thank you for your amazing books and for giving me some of your time on a Saturday. Well, the same to you, Ryan.

Thank you for all that you've given me in my life. And I'm equally appreciative of everything you've done for me as well. 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 Stoic 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.