Stoicism： The First Self Help Philosophy is Still The Best
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
168.73817
Summary
Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that originated in the third century BCE with Zeno of Sitium and was further developed by thinkers such as Cleonisis Chrysisyphus Seneca, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. They believed that the universe is an orderly, rational whole often referred to as the logos, and that human beings as rational creatures share in this order and have the capacity to live in alignment with it. The Stoic ideal is to understand nature s laws, accepting what is beyond our control and living according to reason and virtue.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
hello simone today we are going to be talking about stoicism we are going to be doing an
00:00:06.520
overview of the philosophy of stoicism investigating how it relates to the modern world
00:00:13.040
and where it differentiates from our own philosophy and belief system which i see as as we go into
00:00:20.320
stoicism you're going to see that they are highly related to each other and if anything you could
00:00:26.220
see our larger philosophy as just building on the stoic philosophy really wow to why we are doing
00:00:34.080
this youtube told us to we've been trying to figure out how to grow the channel and youtube was like
00:00:38.700
your audience would like to hear about stoicism and so i'm like well dang let's go into it stoicism
00:00:44.480
is an ancient greco-roman philosophy that originated in the third century bce with xeno of sitium and
00:00:51.820
was further developed by thinkers such as cleonisis chrysisyphus seneca epictus and marcus aurelius
00:00:59.880
i can't get a common thing on the show okay marcus aurelius okay at its core stoicism is not just
00:01:06.500
a theoretical system of thought it is very much a practical philosophy aimed at cultivating inner
00:01:11.620
virtue emotional resilience and harmony with the broader natural order stoics understood philosophy
00:01:17.580
as a way of life something to be enacted in one's day-to-day conduct rather than treated as an
00:01:22.780
abstract intellectual pastime which is something i really appreciate about the stoic philosophy as we
00:01:28.080
get into it is it is very much designed around sort of guiding actions instead of something to just
00:01:37.520
talk about idly like this is good or this is good and i think in a way that can make it better for
00:01:44.260
daily life than other philosophies because the stoic philosophy is going to help you make day-to-day
00:01:53.400
decisions much more than the more abstract philosophical frameworks you might interact with
00:01:59.240
but unlike let's say a modern you know there's like modern self-help-y sort of ideologies that are
00:02:06.800
sort of meant to help you live a healthier life stoicism covers a lot more than that so it has its own
00:02:12.840
sort of metaphysical framework so stoics believe that the universe is an orderly rational whole
00:02:19.240
often referred to as the logos human beings as rational creatures share in this order and have
00:02:25.340
the capacity to live in alignment with it the stoic ideal is to understand nature's laws accepting what
00:02:31.080
is beyond our control and live according to reason and virtue so huge part of stoicism is accept the
00:02:38.060
things you cannot change okay and they think that a lot of the negatives in an individual's life comes
00:02:42.800
from not accepting the things you cannot change however this is part of their metaphysical
00:02:47.520
understanding of reality rather than just like life advice so to drill on that a bit further
00:02:55.000
they held that the universe is governed by the logos the rational principle and human beings as
00:03:00.780
rational agents have the capacity to align themselves with it to do this one must use reason to see
00:03:06.680
belong personal biases fears or desires stoics believed in a concept called okiosis the idea that
00:03:13.500
individuals have natural ties and obligations extending outwards first to themselves then to
00:03:19.500
their family community and ultimately to the wider human polis a stoic would reflect on these
00:03:27.500
so does that make sense to you simone and like what are your thoughts on on this more broadly this idea of
00:03:35.900
tying a moral mandate to action and to act on reasoned virtue to a metaphysical understanding
00:03:44.720
which is that logos sort of reasoned virtue is the principle that governs our reality and that you are
00:03:53.120
acting in alignment with the the sort of the it's not a god exactly it's almost sort of like a clockwork
00:04:00.160
god of virtue that you are aligning yourself with the clockwork god of virtue when you act in a virtuous
00:04:06.480
way it sounds extremely like our world view which is more driven by like our understanding of quantum
00:04:13.560
physics and just rational behavior and pragmatism but i mean that's if it ain't broke don't fix it this
00:04:21.740
sounds great yeah you can go to our track series to learn more about our worldview or our nietzsche
00:04:26.220
video which i think did a pretty good job of laying out our modern worldview so here i've talked a lot
00:04:30.780
about this concept of virtue and you might be thinking well what does that mean in a stoic mindset
00:04:35.340
right central to stoicism is the notion that virtue encompassing wisdom courage justice and self-control
00:04:44.120
is the only true good external things such as wealth reputation health and even life itself are
00:04:51.600
considered quote-unquote indifference meaning that they are neither inherently good nor bad what matters
00:04:57.240
most is how one uses these externals and whether one's actions reflect moral excellence so if you ask
00:05:05.140
them further to define i'm like okay yeah but then define virtue as an action right um because this gets me
00:05:13.140
it's like okay well if virtue is just things that embody wisdom courage justice and self-control
00:05:18.840
anyone could subjectively define anything as virtuous right like that's a really weak system
00:05:24.780
for virtue and they would say in the stoic worldview a virtuous action is one that aligns perfectly with
00:05:30.320
reason and nature virtue is not a contingent property that depends on circumstances or outcomes
00:05:36.080
rather it is stable and complete expression of the rational soul acting in accordance with the cosmic
00:05:41.980
order to quote live according to nature in quote means to understand the nature of the world the
00:05:47.880
universal order and one's own nature as a rational being and to let this understanding guide one's
00:05:53.720
actions here you can almost think of this as like wu-wei if you're talking about the dow philosophy or
00:05:59.940
slack if you're talking about subgenius philosophy at least it seems it i see it more as just in this
00:06:05.640
case efficiency like don't wait you are allowing a way of seeing the world to almost aesthetically
00:06:13.400
guide your actions with the understanding that this will lead to better outcomes but this is tempered
00:06:19.300
by the way of seeing the world that they aspire is dispassionate logic um or rationality um the four
00:06:28.700
cardinal stoic virtues wisdom courage justice and temperance serve as guides virtue is defined as an
00:06:35.520
excellent state of character the perfectly wise person always acts virtuously because they perceive the
00:06:41.260
right course of action through reason hence any act performed from true virtue i.e. from a rational
00:06:48.900
fully informed and morally sound perspective is quote-unquote good in and of itself the stoics
00:06:54.120
emphasize that only true virtue is genuinely good while external circumstances wealth reputation
00:06:59.740
health are indifference that they have no moral value on their own the right action then is the one
00:07:06.360
a perfectly rational agent would choose an action chosen for the sake of doing what reason prescribes
00:07:12.960
independently of personal gain or loss and this is where the pragmatist guide to life is i think
00:07:18.840
strictly builds upon stoic philosophy because i think the big gap in stoic philosophy is yeah but how do you
00:07:28.420
define virtuous if you take something like should i go to war right even once you have removed
00:07:36.360
any personal thing that might overly motivate you to go to war you know like oh personal pride
00:07:42.960
or you have removed potential wealth or potential anger that you may have towards your opponents
00:07:49.120
you still have the problem with the fact that temperance may say not to go to war but courage says
00:07:55.240
to go to war justice may say to go to war but rationality will say you'll cause more suffering in the
00:08:01.200
long run like there it doesn't give you a good heuristic for making these decisions whereas
00:08:07.240
the model laid out in our books of pragmatist guide to life does the problem here being is that the model
00:08:14.600
laid out in the pragmatist guide to life might be too heady for a lot of people and the stoic philosophy
00:08:20.300
i think works really well for the average person yeah but it just breaks down immediately for me
00:08:26.560
when when i hear virtue i just hear cheat code i hear i wish for more wishes because virtue is just
00:08:33.200
like oh just be perfect just be good yeah like just be good and it's like define good what does yeah
00:08:38.540
what does that even mean yeah well they say good is rational and i'm like okay well then define what
00:08:43.600
a rational person should be optimizing right and they go a rational person should be optimizing people
00:08:47.860
acting rationally it's like well that's not it's kind of a circular definition there yeah it doesn't
00:08:53.560
it doesn't so so i think i agree with you i think that that's where it is lacking as a philosophy
00:08:59.120
but in a way it's also kind of a strength because it helps in one of our videos where we talk about
00:09:04.900
like the alpha beta and i think that's like a really bad way to differentiate men and i think a
00:09:10.660
better system is we have a few classes but two of them are knights and kings and kings typically need
00:09:17.720
to always be sort of consequentialist they need to always think through all of their actions
00:09:22.080
uh whereas knights need to be more duty bound in the stoic philosophy i think is the best
00:09:28.420
knight philosophy i have seen of all masculine archetype philosophies uh i would want a stoic
00:09:36.200
as a follower even more than somebody like if i was giving orders to a subordinate even more than
00:09:41.920
somebody who was a full pragmatist as laid out in the pragmatist guide to life and it's also really
00:09:47.680
interesting to me how it differentiates from consequentialist and deontological ethical
00:09:53.300
subsystems so if i'm looking stoics do not measure the morality of an action based on external outcomes
00:09:59.980
or consequences so they are strictly not consequentialist even if a virtuous action leads
00:10:04.720
to a personal harm or fails to produce beneficial result it remains virtuous and thus the right action
00:10:11.820
the goodness of an action is dependent not on what it brings about but on the moral quality of the
00:10:16.680
intention and the character that produced it but you can see here it's also very different from
00:10:21.800
deontological because it's not based on like rules for their own sake so if i was going to word this
00:10:28.540
differently a consequentialist would say like if i do an action and it leads to a negative consequence
00:10:36.160
and i tried to say i couldn't have known it would lead to that negative consequence a true consequentialist
00:10:43.060
would say you had a moral responsibility to do more research then you cannot externalize the
00:10:48.440
responsibility for your failure here whereas a stoic would say don't overly stress about that
00:10:55.780
you acted with the best information you had access to at the time and you tried to fully acquire all
00:11:01.880
information but i think that this is only kings really have to burden themselves when i say kings
00:11:08.720
i mean people at the top of a hierarchy in terms of like handing down orders and stuff like that
00:11:14.520
have to really worry about beating themselves up for having thought that they had collected all of the
00:11:21.080
information relevant and then it later turning out that they hadn't that is not something that it is
00:11:25.860
good for a random follower to beat themselves up about so i think that stoicism is a more broadly
00:11:31.860
applicable philosophy than the philosophy we lay out in the private described life thoughts that
00:11:37.120
makes a lot of sense yeah i and i i do like in general that philosophy it's something that people
00:11:45.820
training others in bayesian thinking and even poker talk about a lot where when they're training someone
00:11:51.500
how to make optimal decisions and then that person gets too focused on still losing a hand in poker for
00:11:57.700
example even though they may have made all the optimal choices based on the data they had they're
00:12:02.340
like well clearly this isn't working because i lost and they're like there's you did do everything
00:12:07.660
you should not have done anything differently you were 100 optimal sometimes you just lose a hand
00:12:12.060
and i i also agree with you though that at a certain level it just doesn't matter that you you
00:12:18.960
have to frame things a little bit differently because that might you know when the stakes are so high
00:12:25.080
and you're a king maybe you shouldn't be playing a game like poker like you should be playing a game
00:12:31.320
that's that's not based on odds you can't always win because the stakes are way too high for you to
00:12:36.600
risk that kind of thing yeah you have failed by going into such a risky game in the first place yeah
00:12:41.920
yeah but at lower levels it doesn't matter it's just a low stakes poker game so go for it
00:12:46.920
yeah well and this also comes to like our crypto decisions you're like malcolm we made our decision
00:12:51.920
to sell at the time because we'd already made huge gains and you didn't want to risk losing
00:12:57.800
everything uh given that that was probably what was going to happen if the peak of this cycle happened
00:13:02.960
below the peak of the last cycle or wasn't significantly above the peak of the last cycle
00:13:07.720
and you were like you made the right call given that it's like our children and our family's future
00:13:13.360
and the information you used to make that call wasn't hugely off i mean tell me the anecdote i mean
00:13:19.140
the reason why we took out is we're like i don't see it having a long-term future any amount
00:13:22.680
more was current crypto get quantum computing advancements and you told me the story about
00:13:27.440
chamath i think it was on chamath i was just listening to the online podcast and i'm listening
00:13:32.260
and i don't hear that i don't know who's necessarily talking at one point but one of the people on all
00:13:38.260
in and i think it was chamath and i learned about a new quantum chip development that google had
00:13:42.500
released he like mixed missed his next meeting and was sort of in a daze researching the consequences
00:13:49.820
that this has on crypto specifically because it quantum computing will undermine bitcoin pretty
00:13:56.300
seriously once it happens and he ultimately concluded that the timeline was more like i think three to five
00:14:03.020
years but he was in a panic for a moment and again this is just something that i i worry about a lot
00:14:10.140
with this kind of thing and and i don't and i feel like i made a mistake i'm like i should have done
00:14:16.140
more research i should have looked at more rainbow charts i should have looked at yeah so i took in
00:14:21.740
this case the stoic approach i was like hey i'm making the optimal decision and that there is a very
00:14:26.660
clear expiration date for bitcoin we had made money we should leave before the expiration date hits which
00:14:34.140
could be at any time and you're not looking at it you're like well but now there's this period
00:14:39.900
where we could have held sold later and made more money therefore what we did must have been wrong
00:14:45.620
and so yeah you're taking a different view from the stoic view of we did what was optimal in the
00:14:50.660
moment and i still hold that bitcoin has an expiration date and also that the nature of quantum computing is
00:14:58.480
that's when you when you break bitcoin cryptography using quantum computing and i know that this is the
00:15:04.880
big resource thing like it's it's unlikely that just randos out there are going to be the ones to
00:15:10.320
develop quantum computing and keep it secret but i do think there's a pretty big incentive for the
00:15:17.640
first person to get there to spend a little time profiting off the fact that they can
00:15:22.280
mint bitcoin really easily or they let people know because they can make a lot of money and it's in
00:15:29.280
their best interest now to prop prices up by maybe coordinating with whales and paying them off a little
00:15:33.780
bit i don't know i'm just saying the incentives and the data that i have are such that i'm not
00:15:39.340
comfortable holding on to bitcoin but yeah i appreciate that and what this is like the type
00:15:44.780
of debate we have internally that is related to these sorts of philosophical questions and it's a
00:15:49.880
big life decision right so control and acceptance a defining tenant is the clear distinction between what
00:15:57.460
we can control our judgments intentions and actions and what we cannot external events other people's
00:16:03.160
opinions natural occurrences according to the stoics much human suffering stems from trying to
00:16:09.280
influence what lies outside of our power by focusing on what is within our control individuals learn to
00:16:14.720
maintain inner tranquility regardless of changing circumstances which is sort of what we've been
00:16:19.820
talking about here however while stoicism does not advocate for the suppression of all feelings it
00:16:25.480
encourages the transforming destructive emotions such as anger envy and anxiety through an understanding
00:16:31.840
and rational reflection the stoic approach fosters emotional resilience by challenging irrational
00:16:37.520
beliefs practicing self-discipline and viewing difficulty as an opportunity to develop strengths
00:16:42.680
of character all of which are beliefs that we heavily hold as i've talked about i often see
00:16:47.400
times in my life of challenge as being a gift from god to improve myself and to never look at
00:16:54.000
them with negative to never look at any negative big setback in my life as like a true negative i'm like
00:16:59.340
like with the bitcoin thing like this is something i can learn from right i need to examine how i was
00:17:04.740
making these choices i need to examine how i was and and how might i change how i make decisions in the
00:17:11.060
future based on something i judge as wrong today but i want to point out that there stoicism emerged at a
00:17:18.280
time when the context of bad things happening was so bad things happened way more frequently and made way
00:17:27.180
more seriously like oh you have gangrene you're gonna die soon or oh your infant child just died oh
00:17:35.060
your wife just died like people died all the time people had grave and extremely painful injuries and
00:17:41.660
health conditions all the time stoicism i mean now yeah it's oh i lost a little money in investment or
00:17:47.060
like oh my i got fired or like oh you know that that girlfriend turned me down like these are not
00:17:53.320
what the original stoic masters were dealing with when they were talking about dealing with hardship
00:17:58.180
and i think that this is one place where i think stoicism enthusiasts really need to dig in deeper
00:18:05.240
because they may they may act as though they are the stoic masters in in the face of like my uber was late
00:18:12.060
i i must endure when really this comes down to and then they crumble if they lose their job or god
00:18:20.480
forbid lose a family member when that's so you're saying modern stoics are a bunch of pussies i'm i'm
00:18:26.640
saying that the aesthetic appeals to them but they're not going deep enough and they need to go deeper
00:18:32.220
well and i'd also say and we've talked about what i also really like about this is the idea of
00:18:37.220
learning to redirect and reinterpret emotions such as anger envy and anxiety which is something that
00:18:43.400
we talk about we talk about in our videos like trauma is a scam basically like it's not a real
00:18:48.900
thing it's entirely self-created there was a great study on this that showed that while the amount of
00:18:55.000
trauma that somebody reported that they experienced in their childhood correlated with all the negative
00:19:00.180
things we know trauma correlates with it did not correlate with how much trauma they actually
00:19:04.720
experienced in their trial as as recorded by by court orders and if you look at like court order
00:19:10.020
real problems we're definitely yes they they are invented and so much of our our problems and even
00:19:17.520
even emotions like anger envy anxiety these things are largely a personal choice you are choosing to
00:19:24.600
indulge in emotion that does not lead to positive outcomes outside of signaling specific things
00:19:31.580
to the people around you so what i mean by this is i often tell simone i'm like simone i never need to
00:19:40.460
get angry with you if i do not think like i almost basically never get angry with simone but i it wasn't
00:19:47.980
always that way because earlier in our relationship there were moments when it was clear that she just
00:19:53.160
wouldn't fully digest what i was saying if it wasn't said combined with the emotion of anger
00:19:59.860
anger and if i didn't combine it with anger just in one ear and out the other and this is true with
00:20:06.540
kids a lot too where somebody's like why would you show anger towards your kids because they're not
00:20:11.400
fully adults they have trouble judging what things do i actually take in and take seriously and what
00:20:17.920
things do i not take in and take seriously and when daddy says don't do something and his voice
00:20:22.980
contains anger then they are much more likely to record actually don't do this than in my voice
00:20:29.360
doesn't contain anger which is one of the dangers of removing this signaling method from how we
00:20:34.500
communicate with things like children okay next anything you want to say there
00:20:39.120
carry on living in accordance with reason reason for stoics is not cold logic stripped of empathy rather
00:20:46.800
it is the faculty that allows us to perceive what is just to value integrity over expedience and to
00:20:53.820
connect meaningfully with others it is through reason that we understand our duties as citizens
00:20:59.140
parents friends and strive to improve ourselves in our community so again really this worship of
00:21:05.260
reason the problem is reason is not very well defined in a lot of this um now practical ways of living
00:21:11.640
stoically a big part that stoics talk about that is brought up a lot today is to imagine the worst
00:21:18.380
case scenario to help emotionally deal with a potential choice or something that you are anxious about
00:21:24.600
which i find very interesting because that's a an emotional tool that a lot of people still use today
00:21:30.160
do you know the tool i'm talking about here it's okay you're stressed about something imagine the
00:21:39.300
absolute worst case scenario that you are stressed about happens now what are you doing to handle that
00:21:44.860
and a lot of the times what we're stressed about is just not that bad
00:21:50.220
they also in encourage focusing on the present moment uh so rather than worrying about past misfortunes
00:21:59.780
or things that could happen in the future focus on the decisions and opportunities that are available to
00:22:05.300
you right now this is something i agree with to an extent but i would warn against using this to
00:22:12.080
avoid learning from past mistakes if you have not taken away a lesson and and this can be too
00:22:18.860
dispassionately in the moment if you feel like you made a mistake in the past be like what information
00:22:23.880
should i have been considering that i wasn't considering next
00:22:29.200
oh i was just gonna add i this reminds me of when i was on my way to my first date with you
00:22:38.200
and i wrote down on my phone everything that could possibly go wrong on our first date because i was so
00:22:42.240
nervous about meeting you it works it totally works because it was kind of stupid how nervous i was
00:22:49.360
and i realized that after i wrote down everything that could go wrong so here i'm gonna go a bit
00:22:56.260
deeper into the stoic metaphysical philosophy because i find that to be one of the most interesting
00:23:00.620
parts i didn't realize it was i thought it was more like therapy for ancient robins i didn't realize
00:23:10.640
that it was yeah i did too i didn't realize how big the metaphysical religious view yeah this is
00:23:15.220
very interesting so stoics do in fact have a distinct metaphysical framework they were not
00:23:22.120
merely moral psychologists but system builders who saw ethics logic and physics their term for
00:23:27.980
philosophy as integral disciplines in their metaphysics the stoics posited a single rational
00:23:34.860
and provident cosmos governed by the logos an ordering principle that permeates everything
00:23:42.120
this logos is both a natural and divine element ensuring that the universe is fundamentally rational
00:23:49.700
and coherent unlike the platonic tradition which often distinguish between material and immaterial realms
00:23:56.240
the stoics were corporealists they believed that everything that exists is ultimately physical
00:24:02.340
including what we might think of as intangible qualities or forces very similar to our philosophy so far
00:24:10.360
in fact you could almost see it as a less defined iteration of the philosophy we lay out in
00:24:16.340
techno puritanism their metaphysics also included the idea of a cyclical cosmos which goes through
00:24:22.320
repeated phases of conflagration epicurosis and rebirth always reconstructing the same rational
00:24:31.240
structure while this cyclical perspective was debated among stoics over time the core idea is that the
00:24:37.960
universe is alive rational and purposeful that human rationality is an integral part of this cosmic
00:24:44.280
rationality that we would deeply disagree with um which is interesting how they're so aligned in
00:24:51.760
everything and then they get to this one super mystical framework uh and that's a really common part of
00:24:57.120
mystical frameworks if you go to our three religions video um now i think that there are ways to reword that
00:25:03.160
where we do believe that you likely have multiple cycles that our reality will likely collapse at one
00:25:09.140
point and then restart again uh but it won't restart the same it will restart in a way that is designed by
00:25:15.980
whichever civilization is around at the time of collapse uh one of the the sci-fis that i've written is about
00:25:21.400
somebody who is witnessing this and that that human civilization essentially in time for a big crunch
00:25:29.780
structure is a big crunch in just such a way that it ensures that human civilization will again
00:25:36.360
evolve in the next cycle but anyway your thoughts
00:25:39.520
this is one of the classic tropes where someone does so well so well so well it's like watching a dog
00:25:47.920
you know go go along one of those dog pedigree contest optical courses surrounded by distractions
00:25:54.080
and like there's a metaphysical physical philosophy it's like it's on track it's on track and then
00:25:58.200
oh no one runs up for the treat you're like no no you were so close you're so close and then the
00:26:04.560
mysticism just really pulled it in right well it's interesting as well how much this aligns with early
00:26:11.160
calvinist doctrine and that a lot of that can be seen as almost building on this and really with sort of
00:26:18.160
the treat that you're talking about it reminds me a bit of when i read like urban monoculture self-help
00:26:24.000
books which focus on self-affirmation and self-acceptance and they remind me of like that dog who's just
00:26:29.980
eating every treat on the way down and i'm like no you failed in every step
00:26:34.080
oh look at that cutie but i i really if somebody came to me and they're like
00:26:53.980
i am a stoic how differentiated i am i from your world philosophy i would say that the places where
00:27:02.060
our philosophy differentiates from stoicism is parts of the page that aren't colored in stoicism
00:27:08.340
not a core refutation of any of the core stoic ideas except for the cyclicality of reality and the
00:27:15.040
pointlessness of decisions potentially due to that cyclicality yeah well and i would say that when it
00:27:20.240
comes to stoicism in practice as you see it in modernity there is there oh a great comparison
00:27:28.440
in terms of characters in in media is in parks and rec there is ron swanson who is a true stoic
00:27:35.520
and then there is what is his name christians or something that the the the the healthy guy who's
00:27:42.020
clearly like the neurotic healthy guy yeah yes who like will tell you all about what he's doing and
00:27:46.940
is like trying so hard i want to thank you for being so ruthless and cruel in a meeting the other
00:27:52.920
day you'll have to be more specific what the is this this desk is the epitome of the swedish concept
00:28:00.720
of a jamstodact or equality what about my office and its many walls that becomes a new public waiting
00:28:09.540
room excuse me there's a sign it ramps it park that says do not drink the sprinkler water
00:28:15.400
so i made sun tea with it and now i have an infection sir are are are you listening to me
00:28:22.040
all told we were in there about six hours and no i was not meditating i just stood there quietly
00:28:29.300
breathing my mind was blank i don't know what the hell these other crackpots are doing
00:28:34.680
and i i think it's really important to look at marcus aurelius and and how he practiced stoicism
00:28:43.320
for example so everyone always reads his meditations as their starting point they dive into it and
00:28:48.540
they're like oh yes and then they go on and they blog about it they talk about it all the time and
00:28:52.760
it's this big thing completely forgetting that that marcus aurelius wrote those things just
00:28:58.280
privately this is like his private notes to himself this wasn't him trying to proclaim
00:29:03.020
was it really i didn't know yes and basically it's one of those things that if someone tells
00:29:09.440
me they're a stoic or they're a stoic influencer i'm like oh thank you you've let me know that
00:29:14.380
you're not a stoic and then i see various people just living their lives and i can instantly tell
00:29:20.080
that they're a stoic based on what i understand of the philosophy which is entirely in line with what
00:29:24.760
you said i had no idea there was a whole metaphysical framework that is insane so that's that's my
00:29:31.100
my thought on it is if people want to be more stoic everything is show don't tell the more you talk
00:29:38.520
or take notes about being stoic the less stoic you are in my opinion i don't know if i agree with that
00:29:45.500
i i'm gonna be sure like marcus aurelius did deepen his stoicism by by writing and i do think
00:29:52.700
that journaling and thinking through your thoughts and thinking through how to get over these things is
00:29:57.000
very important so okay yeah i mean like publicly performatively signaling stuff is is not a very
00:30:02.360
stoic thing to do i would like to add in post here that i didn't know this so i did go to check this
00:30:07.760
and yes marcus aurelius's meditations were written to be completely private in fact they were so private
00:30:15.200
that from the period of marcus aurelius's death in 180 ce there is no surviving record of anyone
00:30:22.800
mentioning the meditations for 700 years until around 900 ce where a recess of cesar a byzantian
00:30:32.100
bishop and book collector discovered a manuscript of meditations he copied it and began mentioning it
00:30:38.060
in his letters and works introducing it to the public discourse that is absolutely wild that a roman emperor
00:30:46.380
could write private diaries and they would stay hidden for 700 years but on top of that it's also
00:30:53.760
such a chad thing to do and such a stoic thing to do to in a world where self-help books didn't exist
00:31:01.180
to literally write your own self-help book for how to become a better person i guess it's it's somewhat
00:31:08.160
similar to what we did with the pragmatist guide to life yeah and i think that the philosophy
00:31:13.820
that we have come to would argue that and it is very much a descendant of stoicism however many
00:31:22.900
historic stoics did identify as a stoic like i don't know if i agree with you on that point i think
00:31:30.020
i think you can you can you can say you're a stoic i guess but
00:31:34.960
i mean as long as you're not blogging about being stoic and telling something about being stoic and
00:31:42.340
being a stoic influencer is in a way a self-defeating goal in that the externalities of
00:31:49.880
being an influencer in terms of the externality positive things that occur in your life you are
00:31:54.820
almost certainly either motivated by how this alters your self-perception or how this alters the
00:32:01.640
other people perceive you which is a very non-stoic thing however rationality may argue to you and
00:32:08.480
virtue may argue to you and courage may argue to you that it is worth being an influencer and
00:32:13.840
spreading a philosophy you see as a fundamental good especially if it's a philosophy that a lot
00:32:18.600
of people know about so that's a fair point for example katie herzog recently defined
00:32:24.800
uh lots of types of online influencers as people who make something that's incredibly hard look
00:32:30.960
incredibly easy like trad wives make make being a homemaker with a lot of kids or who lives out on
00:32:37.860
a farm in a more traditional way look really seamless and easy when it's obviously not or no
00:32:43.500
helen lewis did that yes helen lewis recently defined on the lots of reported podcast influencers
00:32:50.100
of people who make things that look okay the guy said the first take was better you are driving me
00:32:57.140
nuts middle noodle you just don't wanna you don't want to stop you don't want to stop you can't stop
00:33:03.240
helen lewis on a recent blocked and reported podcast episode defined influencers as being people who made
00:33:09.380
incredibly difficult things look incredibly easy and that that happens with trad wives for example their
00:33:14.880
lives are actually pretty difficult you know as she pointed out you don't show a woman like cutting
00:33:20.940
off dingleberries off of a sheep that has been unsure you know and is covered with their own poop
00:33:25.140
you just see the beautiful wait hold on do you consider yourself in this category are you making
00:33:30.540
having a kid look easy or no i'm clearly not making this look easy but i i i think that the same can go
00:33:37.880
for stoicism and and yeah you're right maybe it's still worth it to spread the message just like it's
00:33:42.700
still worth it for ballerina farms to make being a trad wife at least the highlights of it look good
00:33:48.600
because ultimately i think in the end with most of these things even though they end up being harder
00:33:53.800
than influencers make them seem in the you typically remember the highlights of your choices in life
00:34:00.500
anyway when we think back on our kids we don't think back on the time that we had like the 15th time
00:34:06.980
that we just scraped poop out of you know a bathroom that was spread all over the place we think about
00:34:11.420
the hilarious and adorable things that they do and maybe because our lives and memories ultimately
00:34:19.140
become like an instagram highlights reel and not like our actual lives it's worth it for
00:34:25.060
instagrammers and influencers and youtubers and everything else to advertise that because that's
00:34:33.800
what you get in the end well and i think here it's really important is that during the time of the
00:34:39.300
stoic writers the core fear or enemy to stoicism would have been hedonism whereas today i think
00:34:46.520
more dangerous than hedonism is two things one is is a focus on masturbating or emphasizing a self-identity
00:34:55.740
a way you want to see yourself and use whether it's social media or the way you're presenting yourself
00:35:02.080
to uh masturbate this vision of like for example yourself as an ultra masculine man right like that's
00:35:09.100
a huge uh siren call to many people who would otherwise embrace stoicism end up just trying to max how much
00:35:19.400
they look like a masculine man yeah the second is an abdication of responsibility um which is to say
00:35:27.920
that what we've come to realize is that when people have everything they could ever want the thing
00:35:32.460
that they want the most is to frame themselves and say that they're not responsible for any of the bad
00:35:39.780
things in their lives or any of the you know and fighting that is incredibly important much more
00:35:46.380
important than fighting a desire to let's say drink or something like that while also recognizing and
00:35:53.260
this is of our philosophy which is an stoic philosophy which is to say that the greatest
00:35:57.700
sin is to sin and pretend it's a virtue everybody says everybody says just don't pretend it's a virtue
00:36:04.820
don't drink and say i'm cool and manly for drinking say yes bad that i drink don't play video games and
00:36:13.640
don't spend time online or post pictures online or comments online meant to show how masculine and tough you
00:36:22.340
are and see that as anything other than self-retroferential masturbation that doesn't
00:36:37.520
i like stoicism i think of all the various philosophies that are tumbling around the internet
00:36:43.660
it's one of the better ones and definitely one of the better ones yeah i highly approve of it i also
00:36:50.080
feel really lucky that we live in a time when the the struggles that faced most stoics are very very
00:36:57.340
unusual few and far between um it's not usually yeah although i think we do need more philosophies
00:37:06.760
that help to shepherd us through really hard times in a realistic way and stoicism really does that so i
00:37:13.160
think it's a great thing when that happens because everyone's gonna die everyone in that you ever love
00:37:19.480
is going to die so unless you go out first you're gonna have to deal with that and stoicism seems like
00:37:23.660
one of the better ways to do it love you to death simone
00:37:27.500
what's that for food tonight oh tonight we're doing the your coconut curry
00:37:35.160
barbecue brisket yeah i was gonna ask you if you could put more panang in that and a bit more
00:37:41.720
coconut milk when you reheat that and then panang from your packets no no no that is
00:37:48.940
panang is the you know what i'll mix in the panang because whenever you mix in the panang you don't
00:37:56.080
really mix it in yeah let's mix it into the coconut milk before you pour it in remember panang is is
00:38:02.140
the saying that i asked you to put in before and you ended up having it clumped up in a few spots
00:38:06.700
yeah it clumps really badly so yeah it needs to have to really work with the name to mix it into a
00:38:12.300
sauce before you pour it in well okay yes why don't you come down and show me what you want to do
00:38:17.700
because i'll show you wasn't to simmer it down from and i want to do that with with rice today and not
00:38:23.660
corn mayo muffins of course that's totally cool and i love you to death simone you are a great wife
00:38:29.840
it was so funny that the newest ai somebody asked it what did they ask it like the most
00:38:34.200
controversial ideas oh yeah like you you you know all things known to humankind what are the
00:38:40.500
heterodox and controversial things that you could say about the universe that are you know not being
00:38:48.880
discussed that much online or that are subversive and like to me it felt like seven out of ten were
00:38:55.680
just things that came out of the pragmatist guide to crafting religion or stuff that you say about
00:39:00.120
our religion techno puritanism i'm like oh that's techno puritan that's techno puritan that's in the
00:39:05.100
pragmatist guide to crafting religion that's our metaphysical metaphysical view of the world like
00:39:09.040
wow okay we are we are okay with ai you think you think the ai is is is malcolm pilled
00:39:15.900
or you've made sure that all of your content is in the pile as it were so anyway love you did
00:39:23.500
decimum i love you too let's cook up dinner please please take the cheese josie yeah
00:39:29.300
there's more titan's cheese titan do you want more flower shaped cheese
00:39:46.500
yeah oh that's so nice of you torsten did you guys shape the cheese yeah what shape is the
00:39:55.200
cheese titan that is a dinosaur nugget titan you have one in your plate already why don't you take a bite
00:40:10.500
octavian what are you doing octavian what are you doing i died you died can you also eat your dinner
00:40:19.200
titan you like your dinosaur nugget something stopped you no something shot me shot oh something shot you
00:40:30.900
well you know how to get your hearts back because you have to eat meatballs