The Daily Stoic - How To Have a Great Empire? | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

📕 The Girl Who Would Be Free is an all-ages fable written by the bestselling author Ryan Holiday and illustrated by the prolific illustrator Victor Juhasz. The 148-page book, produced entirely by Daily Stoic and printed here in the United States, is OFFICIALLY AVAILABLE online at dailystoic.com/girl or at The Painted Porch Bookshop in Bastrop, Texas.😡 The Stoics have some of the smartest and most applicable insights about getting your anger contained. For a high level introduction to some of those insights, check out this article: Anger Management: 8 Strategies Backed By Two Thousand Years of Practice. Or if you really want to get serious about conquering your anger, sign up for our course: Taming Your Temper: The 11-Day Stoic Guide to Controlling Anger. 11 days of challenges, exercises, video lessons, and bonus tools based on Stoic philosophy and aimed at helping you deal with your anger in a constructive manner. Learn more here!✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street.

Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy. We're all trying to follow. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background,

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Listen to Business Wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. How to Have a Great Empire Think of the Roman Emperor. They had enormous power. They controlled immense territories. They commanded large armies. They had endless fortunes. Yet one cannot read about an emperor like Nero and not be struck at how powerless he seemed to be. Not in the political, but in the personal sense. As Seneca notes, Nero and his peers were slaves to ambition, to attention, to pleasure, to whims and impulses.

Epic Titus working in that same palace as Senaqa in Nero's palace, notice the same thing. He realized that the free men of Nero's court were actually less free than he was. Epic Titus might have been in chains, his name literally meaning acquired one, but he was less a Titus might have been in chains, his name literally meaning acquired one, but he was less a slave of ambition or lust or fame than the people who owned him or ruled over him, and earning his freedom was far easier than breaking free from those

temptations would be for the wealthier and powerful than and now. In the girl who would be free, Epic Titus' father advises his young child to stop trying to control the whole world and instead conquer the empire between our ears. That is, get a hold of our mind, our desires, our versions, our fears, our passions, our emotions. This line echoes a line from another Stoic slave uttered in real life and not in a fable. Would you have a great empire?" Publius Sirus says,

Rule over yourself. And that's what the journey of stoicism is about. That's what we're trying to rule. Not other people, not armies, not territories, but ourselves first. And if we can do that, we'll not only wield a great power that few possess, but will actually make ourselves worthy of having power over others too. And today is a really exciting day because today we are officially launching, putting out into the world, releasing the girl who would be free, my fable, built around the life

of Epic Titus, the young, formative childhood that makes Epic Titus, Epic Titus, and what we and our own children can learn from that journey. It's like my book, The Boy Who Would Be King, It's Stoicism In Fable Form, based on a true story, but of course, I take some liberties, because what I wanna do is make this accessible and memorable for our kids, for ourselves, for someone who might be on the fence

about these stoic ideas. That's what I built the book around. I collaborated with my friend Victor Ujas, I'm having on the podcast again soon. Today is the day, this awesome book produced here, by Daily Stoic. Printed here in the US is officially available everywhere, books are sold, but you can get some awesome bonuses, including the ebook and audio book for free. If you've got a DailyStoic.com slash free, I hope you check it out. We've got signed copies at the painted porch also. Enjoy the book. Can't wait for free. It's got a dailystoke.com slash free. I hope you check it out. We've got signed copies at the Painted Porch also. Enjoy the book.

Can't wait for you to read it. Thanks to everyone for your support. 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 pollists. 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 Stoke sort of 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 200, sorry, 2000 years ago? No, they didn't. They read books. They had conversations. They observed things first hand. So I think what the Mita 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, or in the armed forces, and you're trying to wrap your head around this conflict, the United States is in China, are you more informed, you know, 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 that's not that much has changed, right? When the conflict with North Korea started to bubble up while he was Secretary of Defense, he re-read this kind of war, Farron Bex, you know, 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. And 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 subscribe to the New York

Times. I just try not to read it every day, and I try not to obsessively scroll on Twitter as well. every day and I try not to obsessively scroll on Twitter as well. All right, so what non-stolic books have changed your philosophy and the principles you base your life on? I'll give you a couple. Mansourge 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. Actually, no, I guess 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 hold us back from accomplishing what we want to do, are sort of fears and worries and laziness. Super influential to me as a writer. Ticknot Han, Nata Stoic, he's a Buddhist, but his books have been super influential to me. Sorry, I realize a lot of you are listening, so I'm showing this to the camera, and they're not understanding. Ticknot Hans taming the tiger within is one I would definitely recommend. Also, his book on healing the inner child is very good, and then probably no one's writing is influenced, no living writers writing is

influenced me more than Robert Green's The 48 Laws of Power, his book Mastery, his book 33 Strangers 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 laws. I'm always crushing my enemy totally or taking credit and letting others do the work. When 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, 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 Reles says, you know, the best preventives to not be like that. And so he might, you know, ask you to think about what's actually going on. This is hard to do in your seven, right? But 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?

So 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 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 rain and someone is cheating and gouging and budding me with your head. This is what do you do, right? You don't cry about it. You don't, you know, complain to the referee, you take note of it, you adjust your strategies accordingly. So you probably don't spar with this person anymore, right?

You know, 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 gonna 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 Stoke

would take action most clearly is if they saw someone bullying someone else. So I think the idea of those two stoic virtues of courage and justice, I think a stoic 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 he 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. Alright, 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 epipetus 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 if you really are 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 us. Inf us at Daily Stoke. So fire those questions at us info at DailyStoke.com and we'll see you next week with more answers and more questions. Thanks. Being able to control your anger is a difficult but worthwhile goal. We'll take time and effort, won't be free, but by changing your perspective and

developing techniques to control your temper will ultimately be achievable and life-changing. So take the first step on the path to a calmer and more fulfilling future. Check out at dailystoke.com slash anger. 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 add 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 Bellasai.

And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E'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 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 Brittany's fans form 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. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.