The Daily Stoic - Be A User, Not A Loser

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

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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 the good life. insight, wisdom necessary for living the 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. Be a user, not a loser. Dr. D. T. Suzuki, a 20th century Japanese author who is largely responsible for popularizing Buddhism,

Zen, and Shin in the West, was once approached at the end of a dinner party. How is it Dr. Tsuzuki, the woman asked? We spend the entire evening asking you questions and nothing is decided. He looked at her and replied, that's why I love philosophy. No one wins. While the Stoics, notably Kate of the Elder, had a visceral disdain for sophistry and debate for debate's sake, they would have agreed with this premise. Stoicism was not a parlor game, nor was it religious dogma with its absolutism and black and white rules.

Stoicism is ultimately a philosophy for life, and life is complicated. It's also a philosophy that embraces the individual and every individual life is different. That's why the writings of Seneca don't fit puzzle perfect, the writings of Marcus Aurelius, which then cells are not perfectly aligned with the teachings of Epictetus,

despite the latter's influence over the former. There is no winner or best among these equals. There is simply a wide breadth of overlapping wisdom designed for a multitude of situations. Our job is to avail ourselves of this information and put it to use where we can. However, it makes sense for the situations in which we find ourselves. What we don't have time for, our pedantic debates about whether so and so was a true stoic, or infighting about whether this person or that person is continuing the stoic legacy properly. There are no winners in philosophy, though there certainly are losers.

The best person to be, of course, is a user of the philosophical knowledge we have available to us. If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystic.com slash email. 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. early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.