The Daily Stoic - Justice As A Verb | We Have But One Obligation

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

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Look out, Canadian listeners, this one's for you. Coho is a MasterCard with an easy-to-use app that makes managing your finances easier. Coho lets you earn cash back, borrow, build your credit history, and so much more. Join over 1 million Canadians and sign up for your free trial today. Download Coho on Google or App Store today or koho.ca for more details. Plus for any basketball fans out there, get a $75 e-gift card for nbastore.ca when you sign up with the promo code COHO75. That's code KOHO75. Alice and Matt here from British Scandal. Matt, if we had a bingo card, what would be on there? Oh, compelling storytelling, egotistical white men and dubious humour.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, you will love our podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land. We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. 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 Art 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 stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works. Justice is a verb. The word justice is often associated with courts,

legal systems, and the punishment of a crime. We debate its meaning, its complexities, its flaws, ambiguities, limitations, and inconsistencies. We get bombarded by the new cycle stories of injustices, verdicts that were fair or unfair, people who did or didn't get the justice they deserved. This is all true and important, but the Stoics understood justice

as something beyond just that. Not simply as a noun, but also as a verb. Not something we get, but something we do. Not something we demand for or of other people, something we demand of ourselves. That's why Marx really said, waste no more time arguing what a good man should be, be one. And this is one of the ideas

that I built right thing right now around. Then that's what the subtitle is about. Good values, good character, good deeds. Trying to rescue justice from its narrow legalistic confines and reestablish it as actions that we take, choices that we make, standards we hold ourselves to, the way we treat people, the things we care about, the difference we make for people, the opportunities we accept and turn down.

I wanted to make it about doing the right thing right now. In a world filled with uncertainty, with complex issues, events beyond our control, the commitment to doing the right thing here and now and always is a stronghold in the storm, a guiding light out in the dark. It's also a north star to guide us and a compass permanently pointing north. As it was for Marcus Aurelius, Martin Luther King Jr.,

Emeline Pankhurst, Jimmy Carter, Sojourner Truth, and a bunch of other figures in the book. And it can be that for you. I'm really excited for you to check the new one out. I know I've been talking about it a lot. It's because I work so hard on this thing that I'm just really excited to share it. I don't know, I feel like I discovered some stories

and some ideas in this book that I'm just really excited to share. I'm don't know, I feel like I discovered some stories and some ideas in this book that I'm just really excited to share. I'm sorry if I'm bothering you by talking about it, but anyways, I wanted to tell you about it. And as you know, we've got a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses, which you can grab at dailystoke.com slash justice.

I'll link to that in today's show notes. We're almost out of the signed numbered first edition. So grab those while supplies last. And there's a few more manuscript pages left where I would do my handwritten notes on the manuscript pages that the publisher would send me so you can get some of those plus we can have a philosophical dinner at storehouse across the street from the painted porch where I just ate with my wife just now and I'm back to record a few more before I pick up the kids from their grandparents house so

anyways right thing right now good good values, good character, good deeds is coming out in 10 days. If you could pre-order that would mean a lot. If you don't get the book, I'm just leaving you with a message today. It's this idea that justice is a verb. It's something you do, not something you get. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

I am not recording this in my studio, my house or the studio in my office. I'm recording today's entry in the Daily Stoic. In my car outside Fable Bookshop in Waco, I gave a talk to some executives and marketers for the Dallas Cowboys this morning. I took the whole family. We drove out yesterday. We went to Dinosaur Valley Monument. I want to show my kids all these dinosaur tracks from 100 million years ago. It's one of the coolest things in Texas. Of course, that didn't work because it had been raining so much that they were all very, very much underwater. So we were a little disappointed. We were driving and then we found on the way through Glen Rose, Texas, which is a little town between Austin and Dallas,

we found this cool thing. It's like a swimming hole called Big Rock. So we ended up having a great day swimming at this little swimming hole and made it to Dallas. Gave the talk this morning. We were supposed to spend all day in the hotel swimming pool having fun. Talk went great. Talked about some of the ideas actually I'm gonna talk about in today's entry. But then the drive home. Well, the drive home has been through a horrendous storm,

one of the worst storms that I've ever driven through in my life, and I have had to evacuate for hurricanes before traffic on 35 got down to 20 miles an hour. People were pulling over like crazy. There's tornado watch. So we just stopped at Buc-E's and now we're going to go to Fable because we love little independent bookstores.

And then let me read today's entry. My producer texted it to me because I don't have a copy of the Daily Stoke in my hand, but it's a short one. May 31st, we have but one obligation. What is your vocation to be a good person? Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.5. The Stoics believed above all else that our job on this earth is to be a good human being.

It is a basic duty, and yet we are experts at coming up with excuses for avoiding it. To quote Bill Belichick again, do your job. I love that quote. I love this thing in meditations, because we think of justice, which is what the new book is about. We think of justice as this legal matter. We think of justice as these sort of complicated moral questions, which it can be. But it's also being a good person. It's keeping your word. It's treating people fairly. It's being honest.

It's being transparent. It's holding yourself accountable. It's trying to be generous. It's being supportive. It's being an ally in all senses of that word. It's being a good business person, not just in the sense that you make a lot of profit, but it's a good business person in that you make your industry better, you treat your employees well, you don't have negative externalities for the environment.

You're, of course, again, trying to succeed, but as the Stoics talk about Chrysippus being one of the early Stoics to talk about it, you're trying to win, but not at the expense of someone else in that you don't try to cheat or get undue or unfair advantages. That's what our real job is. Our job is not what it simply says on our employment contracts, but our job is also our set of personal standards.

And to do that job per those personal standards, just because something's legal or illegal, doesn't determine whether we do it or not do it, right? It has to filter through this personal code first, which is the other sort of weird development in all this. We're driving, I checked my phone in Buc-E's, and I saw the news that the former president of the United States had just been convicted of 34 felonies. An incredible moment in legal justice, right? Never before happened, almost certainly will never happen again. But I think it goes to this idea, right? Whether or not it was strictly illegal to falsify business records, right? Whether that actually rises to the level of a felony, whether he should have been prosecuted

or not, doesn't change the fact that when you cheat on your wife with a porn star, then lie about it and then pay to keep that act private by funneling payments through your lawyer and then overpaying your lawyer so he can pay the taxes on that income. And then generally spinning, you know spinning nonsense and misdirection about it for the subsequent eight years. We know that's wrong. We know this is wrong. So it's a matter of justice in the legal sense, but it's also a matter of justice in you wouldn't

act that way. You wouldn't tolerate a boss or a colleague working that way. You wouldn't want the person who runs your homeowners association. Certainly you wouldn't want the person who manages your retirement accounts to act that way. Because that's not what a good person would do. So these are the ideas I'm thinking about while I'm trying to be calm,

while I'm trying to be rational, while I'm trying to have fun with my kids, while I'm trying to come from my wife who is more rattled by it than I was, trying to stay focused, also a little tired, you know, I tend to get an adrenaline dump after I talk, so I'm, you know, I can feel fried after. So it's just been, it's been a crazy day. I thought I would share that instead of rushing home and actually, you know, I'll tell you a good reason I'm recording this in my car.

Claire, our podcast producer, I don't know what time I'm going to get home tonight. She's going to have to edit this. So by recording it in my car, maybe the audio is not as good for all of you, but you know, doesn't have to keep her up late tonight. So that's why I'm recording this, trying to put into practice today's little Daily Stoic message. And anyways, the new book you can preorder little daily stoic message. And anyways, the new book you can pre order at daily stoic.com slash justice. I'm gonna run in the bookstore and grab some books. And you'll probably see them in a reading list newsletter sometime in the future. All right. Bye, everyone.

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