The Daily Stoic - Give It Your All | Ask DS

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Cato fought a losing battle. He was trying to preserve a Republic that was old and creaky in a rapidly changing world. He was trying to be honest and good in a political world in which corruption was the norm–clinging to idealism, as Cicero said, and refusing to accept that reality was the ‘dregs of Romulus.’ Cato was going up against the most insatiable of foes, the ambition, the ego of a future tyrant.Yet throughout it, he was implacable–when they tried to shout him down, when they threatened him, when they tried to kill him. Still, he kept trying.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions about lesser known Stoics who we should pay attention to, the relationship between the Stoics and Christianity, and more.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee 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 Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays we not only read the daily meditation but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are.

Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily Stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happen to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... Give it, you're all. Cato fought a losing battle.

He was trying to preserve a republic that was old and creaky in a rapidly changing world. He was trying to be honest and good in a political world in which corruption was the norm. Clinging to idealism, as Srisarah said, and refusing to accept that reality was the dregs of Romulus. Kato was going up against the most insatiable of foes, the ambition, the ego of a future tyrant.

And yet throughout it all, he was implacable. When they tried to shout him down, when they threatened him, when they tried to kill him, nothing could stop him. Was Kato perfect? Far from it. He was enristicrat. He was impractical.

He did not compromise or play well with others. As we talked about in our podcast episode with Josiah, Osgood Kato was not totally in the right, but he was more in the right than Julius Caesar who in the end marched troops against his own country. Kato could have folded, he could have fled, he could have tried to play both sides, he did not. Instead he gave everything to this cause,

he knew was just to give everything to protect the ideals that Rome was founded on. He did not succeed, but he did the next best thing, he gave his best, which is what we have to do when we find a cause that is right. We must be like Matthew Arnold's beautiful poem, the last word. We must be like Kato. They outtalked the hissed the tour, the better men fared thus before the fire, their ringing shot, and past, hotly charged and broke at last.

Charge once more and then be dumb, let the victors win they come, win the forts of Folly Fall, find thy body by the wall. I tell Kato's story in Lives of the Stokes, which I suggest you read. And definitely listen to Josiah's episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast.

I really enjoyed this one holding to it in today's show notes. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something. Obviously, I use my journal, obviously I turn to stosism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't

have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Toxbase makes it easy to find a therapist that you like. It's convenient. It's affordable. By doing everything online, Toxbase makes getting the help you want easy and affordable. So why wait? And Toxbase can help with any specific challenge you might be facing.

That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties. It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers as a listener of this podcast, you can get 80 bucks off your first month with talk space when you go to talkspace.com. Sashdohic to match with a license therapist today and go to talkspace.com. Sashdohic to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the daily stooke. That's ToxPace.com slash stoic. Hi Ryan, thank you. Hi, yeah, of course. I have more of a general question.

I know. Is that because you're an outer space? I didn't have much choice in the background. I'm at work and there's a whole there's a big mess behind me. So I know a lot of the ancient Stoics did not leave a lot of written material. So we focus a lot on the big three, you know, Mark's really a sepikitis cynica because they left the most. Yeah. Whether it's written by them or their students. Are there any other whether it's written by them or their students. Are there any other stoics that left reading material

that we should perhaps learn more about like as we proceed in stoicism? So this book was translated relatively recently and I enjoyed it. This is Musoneus Rufus, who's Epicetus is teacher. And it's called, that one should disdain hardships. And I read this in March last year. I read some of this stuff online before,

but it's basically a set of notes from different talks. So one of them is that women too should study philosophy, should daughters receive the same education as sons, which is more effective theory or practice, that kings should also study philosophy, that exile is not an evil. He writes an essay that exile is not evil, and he's exiled four times on Trump-Tup charges.

He says, he has won on what is the chief end of marriage? Is marriage a handicap for the pursuit of philosophy? Should every child that is born be raised on food, on clothing and shelter? Is one on whether you should cut your beard or not? It's really fascinating. James Stockdale did a number of short books sort of inspired by stoicism, so I would check that out. As far as the originals go, pretty much everything else is fragments. If you read Lives of the Stoics, which is my book,

it gives you pretty much everything that there is from those people, unfortunately, almost everything else is like a letter here or a quote here. The record is pretty sparse. The only thing I do hold up some hope on is that we have now begun to develop the technology where they can take some of the rolled up papyrus that was in tuned in the ashtet places like Pompeii and they can look, they can like x-ray inside it and read it. And so it may well be that in time and read it. And so it may well be that in time, if the works haven't already been destroyed in various

excavations, we may, over the next 50 years, discover or rediscover some of these lost works from the stills, which would be pretty awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Good afternoon. For some of those things, thanks for your book, Egos The Enemy. Yeah. It literally stopped me from, shall we say, talking back to a previous boss that I was working under. All right.

Can it help me put some things in context at the time? Good, two questions you had mentioned. I thought in a recent email, the one of the downsides, the Stoics, was their persecution of Christianity. I wasn't sure if you mentioned Mark and Rollins in particular, Stoics in general. Was there a particular reason for that? And I'm not, since it's in the back of the Stoics, I'm curious what the reasons were for that. Yes, so I actually have a section on this in lives of the Stoics. Let me find it because it's worth reading. There's actually a fascinating novel called Blood of the Martoics. Let me find it because it's worth reading. There's actually a fascinating novel

called Blood of the Martyrs, which is by Naomi Merchusen. It's a novel about Christians in Nero's Court, which she was trying to write. She was writing it as Nazi Germany is rising in Europe and sort of beginning their persecution. So it's a tricky thing. So obviously put it this way. Rome thought that the Christians were heretics and the Stoics at different junctures were in charge of Rome. And so I more think about it as the Stoics did nothing to stop a persecution or a sort of a set of discriminatory practices that they could have done something about. But let me see here. So, Junius Rousticus is Marcus's philosophy teacher who Marcus puts in charge basically of Rome. He's the mayor of Rome. And it's Junius Rousticus who persecutes

or adjudicates the trial of Justin Martyr, one of the most famous Christian martyrs. You can contrast this. Seneca's brother, Gio, who's mentioned in the Bible, adjudicates a case involving St. Paul and lets him go free. So it's not as if the Stoic sort of universally caught up in this, but there is some unpleasantness here. So this is what I say.

Junia Justin had in fact studied under a stoic teacher in Samaria, but left the school in favor of the version in Christian faith. Many of Justin's writings would evoke similarities between the stoics and the Christians. And he may have well been familiar with Junia's Roustic as his own philosophical work. He quite reasonably expected a favorable ruling from his stoic judge. As a devout Christian, he knew that a century before Seneca's brother had fairly judged

and freed St. Paul and Corinth. But this was Rome in a very different time, and Rousticus was not simply a pen and ink philosopher. His job was to protect the peace. These Christians refused to acknowledge the Roman gods, the supremacy of the Roman state. And this was to them crazy, disruptive, and dangerous. Was it Rousticus's job to enforce the laws

to prevent these kinds of things from happening? And perhaps with Marcus away at the front and known to check him, Rousticus was a little lost in the sway of his own power. In her 1939 novel about Christianity and ancient Rome, written as fascism was crushing religious minorities in Europe. Naomi Mitchenson has a stoic philosopher attempt to explain this collision course

between the stoics and the Christians. The Christians were being persecuted, he says, because they were against the Roman state. No Roman ever really bothered about a difference of gods. In religious matters, they were profoundly tolerant because their own gods were not of the individual heart, but only a social invention or had become so. And yet politically, they did and must persecute equally and equally must be attacked by all who had the courage.

So the point is, there's this sort of Roman policy that the Stokes declined to question that puts them on a collision course with a faith or a religion that questions almost all the essential tenets of the Roman state. Does that make sense? No, that seems pretty fair as well, right? I understand why Rome persecuted the Christians is more of the St state. Does that make sense? No, that seems pretty fair as well, right? I understand why Rome persecuted Christians is more so the stoic for Roman more than the Rome of Restore, is that fair to say? I think that's fair to say, but we also

have this idea of learning from the past. I don't have any problem saying, you know, Rousticus sits at the head of this trial of this guy who's basically being set up on bogus charges for being a heretic, and instead of letting him off or exiling him, we're coming up with some symbolic punishment, he orders him to be scourged and beheaded, right? So there were options, and the stoics don't take those options, and that's to their eternal shame.

And there's a quick second part of the question. Do you know of any writers who've written on the relationship, like, positively between Stoicism and Christianity? I think you'd like this book, The Blood of the Martyrs. And then I do think there are some books out there. I've seen them. I just haven't read them. It was only sort of tangentially related

to what I was talking about in Liza the Stokes, but if you find something good, let us know. Thanks, appreciate it. Yeah. So I recently listened to your podcast with Shane Parish from Farneum Street blog. Yes. So I started looking at his blog.

And so he has all these mental models. And he has one article about how to make smart decisions without getting lucky. And so I just wanted to know if you have various mental models about various decisions that you make, various people that you reach out to. Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, I don't know.

I sort of go back and forth on the mental models things. When I read them, I find them very interesting. I just don't know if people actually explicitly use them. I don't know if Warren Buffett, when he's evaluating a stock, actually goes, let's divide by zero here, or whatever the mental model is. I, it's sort of one of these things that makes sense to me rationally,

and then I wonder how they actually get applied. You know, someone's recommending that Shane has a good course on decision making. I would probably agree with that. I did talk about decision making in my interview with Annie Duke. When I had her on the podcast, she's great. And she has a new book about this. So I might start by that. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke 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. 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 Wondery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions.

What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney 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.

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