The Daily Stoic - Have You Been Infected Yet? | There is Philosophy in Everything

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

In the year 165 AD, a plague began to break out in Rome. Brought back from the far eastern corners of the empire, the virus spread from person to person, house to house, until nearly all of Rome was overwhelmed.The doctors could not keep up. Neither could the morticians or the grave diggers. Rome’s economy was devastated. Millions died, millions fled. And the plague simply dragged on, year after year, without serious respite for over a decade.As we reflect now on this third anniversary of our own plague, it’s worth evaluating what you may or may not have been infected with. Marcus broke into tears whenever the victims of the pestilence were mentioned–he knew how much had been lost, literally and figuratively. It’s important, whatever the future holds, that we do not needlessly add ourselves to that casualty list.---And in today's Daily Stoic reading, Ryan ruminates on the importance of balancing the philosophy of study with applying it to real life experiences. After all, philosophy is what you do, not something you say.✉️  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, including the Premium Leather Edition of Meditations.📱 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.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Heart of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stokes with some analysis from me and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works. Have you been infected yet? In the year 165 AD, a plague began to break out in Rome.

Brought back from the far eastern corners of the empire, the virus spread from person-to-person house to house until nearly all of Rome was overwhelmed. The doctors could not keep up, neither could the morticians or the grave diggers. Rome's economy was devastated. Millions died. Millions fled. And the plague simply dragged on year after year without serious respite for over a decade. 36 months ago, history repeated itself all over the world when COVID-19 began to spread in similar fashion. A new virus, the right conditions, and epidemic became a pandemic. Our public health was better.

We didn't futilely burn incense like the Romans, hoping to ward off incense. But in the end, we were at the mercy of a force outside of our control, just the same. We had to adjust. We had to accept. We had to face some of us more directly than others. A very real threat of death, death in the air, bodies and coolers in the streets, plans to use public parks to handle the overflow. Maybe you got COVID, maybe you didn't. Historians debate whether Marcus really has ever actually caught the measles or smallpox that was the

Antenine plague and whether he died of it or not. But Marcus himself was interested in another virus that spread at the same time. As he wrote in Meditations, there are two types of pestilence in the midst of an epidemic, or indeed any crisis. There is the one that can destroy your life and there is the one that can destroy your character. Selfishness, cruelty, indifference to the fate of your fellow humans, cowardice, desperate panic by it. Paranoia, crippling anxiety.

These things were seen in Marcus' time just as they were seen the last few years. The same goes for scapegoating and demagoguery and misinformation and all the other things that crisis can bring out in leaders and populations alike. Perhaps you were infected like this, or perhaps there was something more personal you caught during the pandemic. Bad habits, or relapse, screwed up priorities, skewed values. Firing a bad case of long COVID, the effects of this may last longer than the coronavirus. As we reflect now on this third anniversary of our own plague, it's worth evaluating what you may or may not have been infected with. Marcus broke down in tears whenever the victims of the pestilence were mentioned.

He knew how much had been lost, literally and figuratively. And it's important, whatever the future holds, that we do not needlessly add ourselves to that casualty list. I think for me coming to read meditations as a plague book, as I did starting in 2020, it just totally changed what I got out of Markis and it helped me so much over the last few years. It was in those early days of the pandemic that I wrote the boy who would be king to my own sons to sort of pass along some of the messages of Marcus are really as I had the time.

I tried to decide it. I'd use it productively. And it's also when we decided to do the leather edition of meditations, the one that I turned to the most during the pandemic, which you can also check out at store.dailystoic.com. I hope everyone is continuing to be safe, to be smart. You don't let it rule your life, of course, but you also don't pretend it doesn't exist because it does exist. Certainly, it's existing for other people who are in the hospital with COVID at this very moment. And who knows what the future holds, all we can do is be ready, be smart, and be good to each other.

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Find the right tech for your needs by calling a Dell Technologies Advisor at 877 Ask Dell. That's 877 Ask Dell offered to business customers by Web Bank who determines qualifications for in terms of credit. There is philosophy in everything. Eat like a human being, drink like a human being, dress up, marry, have children, get politically active, suffer, abuse, bear with a headstrong brother, father, son, neighbor or companion. Show us these things so we can see that you have truly learned from the philosophers. That's Epictetus's discourses, 321.

Plutarcha, Roman biographer, as well as the admirer of the Stoics, and sometimes critic of the Stoics, and as it happens, his grandson or his nephew or not quite sure becomes one of Mark's realises philosophy teachers. But anyways, the point is that he didn't begin his study of the greats of Roman literature until late in life. But as he recounts in his biography of Demosthenes, he was surprised at how quickly it all came to him. He wrote, it wasn't so much the words that brought me into full understanding of events,

is that somehow I had a personal experience of the events that allowed me to follow closely the meaning of the words. And this is what epictetus means about the study of philosophy too. Study, yes, but live your life as well. It's the only way you'll ever actually understand what any of it means. And more important, it's only from your actions and choices over time that will be possible to see whether you took any of the teachings to heart. Be aware of that today when you're going to work going on a date, deciding whom to vote for, calling your parents in the evening, waving to your neighbor as you walk to your door, tipping the delivery man, saying, goodnight to someone you love.

All of this is philosophy. All of it is experience that brings meaning to the words. I've talked about this a couple of times, but as an example of this in my own life, obviously I've read Marx's Reelice Many Many Times, but in the pandemic, it just hit me in this different way. I realize, well, pandemic and having kids, there's two examples. But the pandemic, you know, realizing, oh, he was writing this during the, during the play. And that this was a lens of filter, of this was affecting the mood and style and tone and directing even what he was thinking about.

And then so as we've gone through COVID, I just came to understand Marcus in this whole other way. My experiences as Plutarch was saying, my personal experience of events allowed me to follow closely the meaning of the words, or rather, it helped me understand the words at a deeper, more profound level. When I had Robin Waterfeld on the podcast, when we were talking about meditation, he says, this great new translation annotated addition

to Marx's Realists, which you should check out we carried in the painted porch, and I did like a three hour interview with him for the podcast, but as I was reading it, I never really, I obviously knew Marx's Realists as a father, but only, I never really, I obviously knew Marx realized as a father, but only once I had kids, I came to understand some of the things that Marx was writing about as a father more deeply, that there was, that it was there hidden in plain sight. This is that idea, we don't step in the same room, tries to come back to the book, you experience something different,

it hits you different, you're, you're looking at it from a different angle, your experiences are forming, informing what's going on. And so realizing that Marcus was talking about having children so often and his relationship with his children, it just, I got something different out of the book. And then of course, COVID and parenting, you know, when you're just worried that something could happen to your kids as many things did happen to Marx really. So, kids, I just got something out of it at a deeper level. But that's not really what today's episode is about or today's entry is about. In fact, it's kind of about the opposite. It's that words are important, of course. But philosophy is something you do not something you say, right?

Obviously, I've written a lot about the stoic principles of, let's say, justice or generosity, right? That's me communicating about philosophy. But, and I was just posting about this on Instagram, I had this, a couple weeks ago, I had this idea, I was like, I've seen what was happening in Ukraine, and I said, like, how can I make a difference? How could I contribute? What should I contribute? What's my obligation to contribute? And I had this idea.

I had someone on my team. I was like, you know those big stack of books, like in the corner of the office, all the international translations go through and give me all the Ukrainian and Russian editions I had. And then I texted my agent and I said, hey, can you like run through a calculation and tell me what the total revenues from me selling rights

to Russia and Ukraine have been over the last 10 years. And he did that and then I took a photo in front of the store and I just said, look, I feel overwhelmed by this. I'm seeing the images on the news. I don't know what to do about it, but what I am going to do is donate my royalties from these two territories to the people who are being affected by what's happening right now.

And I'm not saying this to Bradley. Go look at this nice thing I did. But what happened from doing that about a week later, I got a call from Tim Ferris and Tim said, Hey, I loved your posts. And I was, what are you talking about? The thing you post onris and Tim said, hey, I loved your posts. And I was, what are you talking about? The thing you post on Instagram, and then a week ago, I'm buying,

oh, he was like, I meant the Ukraine thing. And what had happened is that Tim had been thinking about what he could do about it, and he'd seen my post, and he decided to do it. And then Neil Strauss saw that Tim had posted it, and Robert Green saw that I had put, and all of a sudden all these authors decided to do the same thing, right?

And I don't know what that adds up to, but it's a lot of money donated to this thing. And it came from me feeling as this, coming from the seed of what the Stokes say, which is our job is to try to make the little bit of difference within what's our control rate. I don't know if I'm your prune. I can't tell him to stop doing this, right? Like I can't go over there and fight. I'm not in a position to make policy decisions, but I can try to do a little bit

within my own sphere. I can try to put my money where my mouth is literally, and I can try to apply the philosophy, follow the philosophy. And then as it happens, that creates a snowball effect that helps other people, and hopefully, and I've heard from a bunch of other authors that are doing the same now. But the point is, that's what stoicism is. Not like me, I'm the stoic,

because look at what I did, but what I'm saying is that stoicism is not writing about the things, thinking about the things. Stoicism is taking action on the things. It's putting the words into practice. As Epictetus says, don't talk about the philosophy, embody it. It's trickier for me as a writer about stoicism. That's literally my job. I do talk about it, but I also have to try to be about it.

As do you. So I hope, as you listen to Daily Stoke, as you read the Daily Stoke, as you participate in this universe of stuff, as a fellow traveler on this path, I hope you understand that it's not just about the inner work on yourself, it's not just about being a little tougher, a little more resilient on yourself. It's not just about being a little tougher, a little more resilient, focusing on what you control mentally. It's also what you do. How do you apply these ideas in the real world? Which, I tried to do here. I call on you to do the same thing. You can check it out on Instagram. The charity I donated to, I donated to one that's being put on by Flexport. They're like a logistics company. They're donating, they're leading the, they're handling logistics of getting a whole bunch

of items to refugees in and around Ukraine. And then I also donated to a Ukrainian charity called Come Back Alive, which you can Google both of those and find them out. But maybe this isn't the cause for you, maybe it's not what speaks to you, but what can you do? Where can you not just talk about this stoic idea of justice, but where can you actually be about it?

That's what we're talking about, and I hope that inspires you a little bit as well. 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. 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 buildup, 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 Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans formed the free Brittany 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. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app.