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Hi, everybody. I'm feeling very stoic today.
So we're going to use what exactly is stoicism as our weekly select selection.
This one was released in July, July 4th, in fact, 2017.
What a great 4th of July topic.
Learn all about stoicism right here, right now.
now welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio hey and welcome to the podcast i'm josh clark with charles w chuck bryant guest producer noel jerry's jerry's been out a lot lately chuck have you noticed uh Uh, no. No, I haven't really either.
Of course. Jerry's got big life things going on.
She does. Buying and selling houses.
She's like a real estate mogul.
Visiting the mall. Doing all sorts of stuff.
Uh, we're just a couple of deep thinkers hanging out on the stoa.
Yeah. Specifically, uh, what is it?
it this so uh i did you practice the word this pronunciation at all i i tried to pronounce a lot of this um but you know ancient greek uh you know the phrase it's all greek to me yeah it comes from not being able to pronounce these things it's quite literal uh the the stoa poikili i think that's probably pretty close man so can i start this with a couple of quick thoughts sure first of all I took a I took four different philosophy quizzes before we'd recorded like like what kind of philosophy do you subscribe to type quiz yeah you know the ones that are super accurate right because they can figure
that out in eight to fifteen questions sure and then you can move on and find out what Muppet you are so here's here's my results here for the first one i was epicurean okay uh the second one existentialism all right uh third one atheist existentialist oh and the fourth uh nietzsche slash stoic nietzsche was a huge critic of stoicism i'm surprised they put those two together well that that is chuck though you know what i'm saying yeah yeah you're you're a contradiction in terms you're yin and yang well i am the reason reason why i took these is because when i was uh doing the research on stoicism
um i found me i found myself a lot of times going yep yep totally and then a lot of times going no that's really not me same here same here and i think um the even the stoics from back in the day realized that there were very few very very few actual what they called sages walking around stoic sages who who really fulfilled every aspect of this to a T.
And I think one of the reasons why Stoicism today is making a comeback and it's so appealing is because, well, there's two reasons.
One, more than kind of a navel -gazing type philosophy where you're trying to figure out the nature of existence or something like that, it's more a blueprint for existing day -to -day in a in a useful happy way sure and then secondly it's a you can kind of pick and choose it's almost like a buffet you can pick and choose what aspects of it you want to adopt or use and no you know Greek ghost is it gonna come along and spear you in the face with the trident right uh yeah sure punch uh yeah and i think that's i mean first of all the age of reason fascinates me to no end um and second i've kind of wanted
to cover some of the the great philosophies of all time this sounds like a good start well it is but it's just kind of daunting because people spend like that's their life's work you know and and for us to try and summarize any of them in 30 to 45 minutes is kind of like you you know i don't know what philosophy you would liken that to foolishism yeah dunceism uh that's what we do you know well let's how about this if this one goes well maybe we'll take it as a sign that we can tackle some other ones but you're absolutely right like even the even just like say the internet encyclopedia of philosophy
which has meant you know it's it's sharp and it's detailed and it's exhaustive but but it's also clearly meant for lay people interested in philosophy, right?
It's just stoicism is so involved that it's not possible for us to really capture all of it, even in an overview, you know?
Or just hitting the highlights.
We can't possibly hit all the highlights.
There's just too much to it.
And that's just stoicism.
I still say it's worth talking about, though, just because it's so interesting.
thing so if I get up in the middle you're gonna pull me back I'll just keep going well I like the Urban Dictionary definition yeah stoic is someone who does not give a beep about the stupid things in this world that most people care so much about stoics do have emotions but only for the things in this world that really matter they are the most real people alive mm -hmm and then in their little example is a group of kids sitting by the porch stoic walks by one can says something very mean hey you're a blankety blank and you blank blank and the stoic says good for you and keeps going right so part
of me really like i hear that and i'm like man i am so that person on so many levels but then sometimes i'm totally not and i think what the difference is or what matters is well it depends on if they say something that matters to you or if something does matter to you like i might get really riled up about some stuff right well that would make you not stoic that doesn't rile anyone else up but i also some things that really make other people irate i'm just like man can't change it it is what it is uh and i only can get upset about the things i can change yeah if you could apply that to To everything,
you'd be pretty high up there in the stoic pantheon.
I'd be a stoic five -star general.
Pretty much. Five -finger punch guy.
All right, so we beat around the bush.
I mean, that was a pretty good definition, actually, even though it was from the Urban Dictionary.
We should say we picked that one up from an Aeon article, Why Stoicism is One of the Best Mind Hacks Ever Devised.
Yeah, it was a good one.
By Larry Wallace, yeah.
Yeah. You did a good job kind of giving an overview of the whole thing.
I think Larry Wallace is one of the great modern Stoicists.
Maybe. There's plenty of them running around these days.
Yeah, but we'll go back in time and study the beginnings of Stoicism because we're talking about, like you hear the word Stoic today.
Right. And it means, it was taken from this, but it's kind of someone, like sort of a grim face, Stoic, doesn't say much. and that's not what stoicism and they say in our article several times with a capital s really is all about right yeah so these days people typically or i should say these days up to about three years ago people thought of stoics as somebody who could watch their dog get hit by a car and you know their reaction was to raise their chin a little higher up in the air you know like just grin and bear it um as larry put it where i'm on a first name basis with larry wallace lair
of that it's a philosophy of grim endurance tolerating rather than transcending life's agonies and adversities just kind of trudging through um just taking hit after hit from life as it deals deals them to you right that that was the idea of stoicism you can kind of like it's not like that's just radically unlike actual stoicism but it's an outsider's interpretation of what the stoics are actually doing what's actually going on the purpose of the whole thing that outsider's view that doesn't really fully understand it became the popular view until recently until it started to kind of gain some
traction lately yeah and you know throughout the years stoicism has informed some religions uh these days there There are a lot of atheists that are Stoics.
But I like how our article says it.
Above all, it teaches the value of emotional control in living one's life fully.
Yeah, so here's the basis of it.
The basis of it is if you can detach yourself from emotional responses to things, then something that comes along, whether good or bad, is not going to get your goat.
Stoicism is all about protecting your goat and not letting anything get it.
And the way that they do that is by saying, there are very few things that I can control in life.
And everything that I can't control, I'm not going to get riled up over.
You know, lose my job.
Oh, well, it happens.
It doesn't mean I'm any less of a person.
I just need to go out and get another job.
Dog gets hit by a car.
Well, that's really awful because I really like that dog, but I'll just go get another dog or maybe I'll just learn to live without the dog maybe I was becoming too attached to the dog things like that that's stoicism yeah the whole point of it is it's not just to get your goat it's or to protect your goat from being gotten it's about um living a moral life where you're a very good human being and the idea is that the only way to really do that is through things like rationalism and um investigating the universe and being understanding of knowledge and then um pursuing ethics specific ethics um
and they they figured out the best way to do that is dispassionately yeah i think my bumper sticker would say uh on board colon part -time stoicist full -time dreamer okay that is that is a specific yeah yeah right bumper sticker I used to have a lot of bumper stickers in high school and now I loathe them so much really what did you have like oh I had an old volkswagen beetle and uh that was my family actually bought brand new in 1968 and was passed down from kid to kid to kid and it's an heirloom it was it was very cool I thought at the time well it is cool I love those old beetles but I just went
through one of those phases where I was like you know here's a Native American american saying and here's something about mother nature and this bob marley had this to say and oh just yeah i was one of those and now i see those cars with all the things and i'm just like shut up nobody cares maybe i'm a census too yeah for sure i mean uh did you have a 311 sticker no this was pre -311 actually okay gotcha so did your mom come out and be like what'd you do to of the family heirloom no you put stickers all over it no it's funny that that car had a uh the rear floorboard was missing on one side my
dad had a car like that a malibu so you could like see the street uh -huh i had a piece of wood there now that i look back he didn't even have a piece of wood now that i look back i'm like that was extraordinarily irresponsible to be driving around with kids in the back seat yeah with the street visible yeah i love that your dad was just like watch your feet kids yeah easy does it uh all right so look you want to go back and talk about the history a little bit no i want to keep beating around the bush all right let's get in the way back machine and okay we need to really juice it up because we're
going way back got some kerosene got some banana peels and got some airplane glue but that's just for us that's That's right, because it's a long ride.
Ancient Greece is where we're headed, to the time of the great philosophers.
And like we said earlier, sitting here on the Stoa, that was a joke, but it wasn't.
And you said Stoa, you're going to try it again?
The Stoa Poikili. Yes, or painted porch is what it means.
And that was a public space in Athens, Greece.
It was like a portico.
Yeah, where people would hang out and talk and chew the fat.
And that's what I love about this time was people would just, they were just alive with ideas, these philosophical ideas of trying to figure it all out.
Yeah, but don't you think like every once in a while you'd just be like, oh, everybody shut up and just live.
Go do something useful.
Yeah, just stop talking.
No, but I agree with you.
Overall, it was a pretty thrilling time.
did you take philosophy in college at all no no I didn't I really did not I don't think I took a single philosophy class now that I think about it I even a survey I took the one kind of general class I guess it was the 101 and I actually made an A which I didn't make a ton of A's in college and I remember at the time kind of the same thing about half the class I was like man so fascinating and then the other half I was just like man what a waste of time right like do something useful go like volunteer for a charity go make something out of wood anything all right so back to the stoa we're we're
on this painted porch this portico as it were yeah people are everywhere running their mouths about what they think is important uh and then this dude wanders up a xeno of citium yeah who'd recently been shipwrecked and there were other Zenos not to be confused I know it is confusing there should be one Zeno there can be in all of in all of history there were Zenos of other things but this is Zeno of Sidium and you're right he was shipwrecked and he was wandering around after a trip from Cyprus did you say we're in Athens oh yeah not Georgia no although we did our fair share of sitting around
on porches talking nonsense there as well but that's a porch porch yeah not a Greek porch and so Xeno took a little bit of insight from the cynics and then eventually said you know what I could my kind of forming my own thoughts here and I think everyone else is doing it I have my own philosophy yeah and it's called stoicism yeah named after later late I don't think he called it that I'm not sure he He probably called it Zenoism.
They're like, yeah, that sucks.
We're gonna call it Stoicism after the porch. But this is, I mean, like the Stoicism very quickly became one of the big philosophies at the time.
Oh, yeah. And it rivaled some of the philosophies that it grew out of, like Socratic philosophy.
And like you said, cynicism, the cynics.
Sure. And actually, if you look at Stoicism, Marxism it's kind of a compromise between Socrates or Socrates as Bill and Ted call them yeah philosophy which was that to lead a good life and this was the point of all of the philosophies at this time during this age of reason yeah was achieving what was called eudaimonia and eudaimonia is a life worth living it's thriving it's flourishing it's being happy like real happiness Yes.
Right. That was the pursuit of all of these different ideas that were floating around at the time was how to achieve that.
Socrates had the idea that you achieve that through like 12 cardinal virtues.
And some of them were things you could cultivate in yourself, like courage, a sense of justice, that kind of stuff.
But then there are other ones, too, that had like everything to do with luck, like being good looking was one of them.
Right? If you were ugly, sorry, buddy, you could never achieve eudaimonia, right?
On the other end of the spectrum were the cynics.
And the cynics believed that earthly trappings like wealth and fame and glory, anything like that, was the path to ruin.
And that the true path to eudaimonia was living simply and living in poverty.
And so Zeno comes along and hears all these.
and as he's formulating his own ideas, he's like, Socrates makes some sense over here, and so do the cynics a little bit, but I'm going to put them together.
And that's where Stoicism came from.
It was a compromise between the two where you live a life of pursuing eudaimonia through these virtues, four virtues.
I think there's justice, courage, wisdom, and then and temperance, right?
So you're practicing those four virtues.
So that's kind of a nod to Socrates.
And you don't have to live in poverty.
You can be wealthy, because if Stoicism is anything, it's wealthy people who got into philosophy that weren't quite sure how to feel about being wealthy.
To say, to kind of come to the point that like, having money is not a bad thing.
Right, right. And so what they came up with was...
sure, you can be wealthy and that's OK.
You can prefer to be wealthy, but you just can't be attached to it.
You can't desire to be wealthy because you can't control being wealthy.
And if you pursue being wealthy, you're pursuing something beyond your control.
So if you just happen to be wealthy, that's great.
You can be happy with it, but also be prepared to lose it at any given time.
And that's a big part of stoicism.
Yeah, I think it's so funny, though, to think about like thousands of years ago in ancient Greece, like they spent so much time thinking about living this, all these schools of thought of living this life.
So like, putting so much thought into living life to its fullest and all the different ways that they defined it.
And eventually, like over the years, like as recently as like the generation of our parents and grandparents the united states like the philosophy of life was like you just go to work and you work hard until you die and that's the only thing that matters exactly like all that other stuff is garbage yeah well i think that's one of the reasons why stoicism is is becoming appealing again is this idea that like work seems to be kind of going through a weird transformation doesn't it yeah like it's not like that anymore like that that that ethic is still around for sure but like how many people do
you know work from home like almost entirely a lot a lot and that's fairly new so i wonder if like this changing work dynamic is leading to this resurgence in stoicism that you can find happiness through other stuff i mean part of me thinks this is all like super worthwhile and part of me thinks and it's sort of indulgent and a bit, like you said, navel -gazy and just start practicing good things instead of sitting around thinking about the best way to live life.
Well, we'll talk about criticisms of them later on.
But I think you hit a big one, though, Chuck, is the idea that it's self -indulgent because it demands introspection almost every moment of every day.
Yeah. You want to take a break and then get back to it?
Yeah, I got to get my head together.
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nothing like airplane glue to get your head back on straight just kidding of course everyone sure we're smart guys we don't do that kind of thing no it's pretty tough to be smart and huff model airplane glue yeah it's pretty you're pretty much making a choice between that and being smart That's what they teach you early on.
Yeah. Like, you want to go somewhere in life, you want to huff airplane glue.
It's the one thing Nancy Reagan didn't lie about.
All right. So Zeno got things going.
Peace of mind that comes with living a life of virtue in accordance with reason and nature.
And then other dudes got on boards and, of course, got on boards, got on board. And they were all dudes back then because everything was from the man's perspective.
just want to point that out yeah cuz it's changed so dramatically since then but as some of the other early stoicist Cleanthe's Cato Cato the younger elder younger right Cato the Cailin I'm not sure which Cato I think it's the younger yeah we'll find out from two people who email into let us know Seneca and then a a very important stoesis, well, I'm going to pronounce it epitetus.
Epitetus. Epitetus.
Sounds like a vaccine shot.
It does. E -P -I -C -T -E -T -U -S.
It's that C going into a T that's getting you.
I think it's just epitetus or epitetus.
I think epitetus is what we should go with.
I want another C in there.
I want it to be epitetus, but it's not.
no it's not it's epictetus all right so uh oh and don't forget marcus aurelius man oh well sure i mean he comes a little bit later like he was he was the the ruler of uh infant man what is my problem today it's okay man everyone knew what you meant he was the philosopher king and that was when stoicism was kind of the the most popular thing going Yeah.
Yeah, apparently they moved from Athens to Rome, which I didn't realize this.
I always had the idea that Rome venerated Hellenistic Greece hundreds of years after basically the Greek civilization had just kind of, you know, gone into a bit of a twilight or had gone out of its heyday.
Right. No, there was total cross -pollination.
Sure. including some of these early stoics who traveled from athens to rome and basically with with that move transferred the seed of philosophy from athens to rome from greek to rome to um to rome from greece to rome i didn't realize that there were they were actually like cross -pollinating one another at the time yeah did you know that uh i think i recalled that from deep in my college memory banks nice uh so epitectus tedus man um he had a big role in the stoic movement he was a former slave um which kind of makes sense in form in terms of stoicism he almost in almost single -handedly gives
um credence to uh stoicism because so many other stoics were were extraordinarily wealthy, powerful men, that it's like, yeah, it's pretty easy for you to go through life saying, you know, just take what life gives you if life is giving you nothing but gold bullion all the time, right?
This guy was born a slave, crippled in the knee for life and became a Stoic, one of the great Stoic thinkers and just through his life proved that Stoicism can work.
work. Yeah. And he wrote a handbook at the time was called an Incaridian, and he wrote the Incaridian of Epictetus.
Incaridium literally means handbook.
It means ready at hand.
So it was a very famous handbook, and he attributed, I mean, the first line of it was some things are in our control and others not.
Right. And that kind of sums it all up.
Like he could have said the end, but he decided to dive a little deeper.
I agree with you. I think I think our brand of stoicism has about the same contours because that that that right there, that's all that's everything you need to know right there is some things you can control.
Most things you can't control.
There you go. Like don't get too high, too low.
Right. Don't get too mad about something.
Well, ultimately, I think that's what it boils down to.
I don't really find much of a problem when people are overjoyed.
I don't think that's an issue.
you. And technically with stoicism, that is a, that's a problem.
You should not become overjoyed.
The experiencing joy is fine, but, but just being like overcome with happiness or joy or, um, grief or whatever it is, you're, you're, you're violating one of those four cardinal virtues, temperance, which is just being tempered and even keeled.
Right. So, but I think if you're saying, um, don't get upset about something that's out of your control, don't blame others, don't try to control other people just know that whatever comes you can handle it there you go that's all you need to know for me yeah and you know i mean how many times have you heard me say it is what it is which is an annoying thing to hear and say but it's pretty stoic well it is but it's also in my case like it is what it is until it isn't it just matters if i personally riled up about something you know yeah but i think again though if like there's probably some people who subscribe
to at least modern stoicism listening to this.
And I would guess that they would say that's because stoicism is basically meant to apply to every day of your life.
Like no stoics are really expected to become sages in their lifetimes.
That it's something you just do every single day is try to not get riled up.
But of course, something's going to come along and get you riled up that's just human nature stoicism is trying to put a bridle on that human nature yeah well and this is insider stuff uh i think you and i compliment each other because we rarely get worked up about the same thing just voter suppression well no it happens here and there but just in our personal lives and and everything to do with work like oftentimes i've noticed like Like something that'll rile me up, you're calming me down, and the other way around.
I mean, I think that's one reason we've lasted so long.
Like if two people were so similar that they're constantly worked up about the same stuff, you're just going to be working each other up and no one's going to be there to say, hey man, it is what it is.
Yeah, man. Hey, mellow out.
Here's the Bob Marley bumper sticker.
Exactly. So should we talk a little bit about the areas of study?
Yeah. All right. Well, there are three main ones in Stoicism, and this is all to deal with introspection, which is kind of like all philosophies.
Physics is the first thing, and it's not physics like you think of that you hate studying in high school.
Well, it falls under a larger umbrella term, I guess.
Yeah, they're talking about the natural world, the natural universe, and also what lies beyond it.
And when they say the natural world, they're talking about everything.
um god the divine nature everything that we know and things that we don't know yeah everything we would view as science or like you said nature um yeah all that stuff that's physics and all of it that one of the things the stoics i think if they weren't the first to come up with it they definitely popularized it was the idea that all of this was interconnected yeah which is pretty i mean you take it for granted today like everybody thinks that everything's interconnected these days yeah but um it's to be among the first to kind of point that out or suggest that's pretty pretty significant contribution to
western thought yeah i imagine that was a pretty deep thing when it first started hitting people yeah you know can you just see george carlin being like oh you just blew my mind uh oh because he was socrates man wait no he wasn't so crates he was um no he was the the guide their spirit yeah what was his name oh man i got killed on this we'll just edit this part out i didn't know i had to brush up on my bill and ted i didn't either i surprised myself you should have seen my face you know they kept uh they kept talking about remakes like as recently as a couple years ago i think or not remakes but uh
sequels with the originals oh yeah like keanu reeves is like man i love those movies i'd love to go make another one did you see what what is um so was keanu reeves bill or ted uh why are we even doing this to ourselves boy i want to say he was ted so the guy who played the other guy yeah alex winter oh jeez Chuck wow nice job so Alex Winter was in um what was the Charles Bronson vehicle like his most famous Death Wish Death Wish 3 death wish 3 was what he was in which was when Golan Globus got their hands on it and turned it into like schlock violent like um almost post -apocalyptic movie yeah
um and he's great in it but he's also He's also in a documentary on Golan Globus.
I can't remember what the name of the documentary is, but it's just about how bad the movies they made were and how gleefully these guys made them.
But he's interviewed in it.
That guy hasn't aged a day.
No. He looks exactly— He was definitely Bill.
Okay, so he's Bill.
Yeah. All right, so— So we got that settled.
Physics was done. What's next?
uh logic which uh they wanted to include um social sciences psychology sociology history which i kind of like i'm down with that as far as the philosophies go they wanted to include all this stuff uh but collectively they kind of called this all reason right it was a very big deal uh to stoicism perhaps the biggest deal right and they also were engaged in epistemology which is theories theories of what knowledge is, how we gain knowledge, what's true, what's belief, what's false, how do we differentiate between these things.
And they spent a lot of time investigating this and putting it all under logic because it was through logic that you could investigate physics, which included investigating God and the nature of universe and stuff like that.
And then through all that investigation, that introspection, that navel gazing, you were ultimately figuring out how to best pursue and best live out the third part which was the ethics of the whole thing yeah and you mentioned the four great virtues earlier courage justice wisdom and temperance and the whole idea here is uh it's it's not like you want to block out the bad and only embrace the good you like you want to consider both the good and the bad but just don't let it any of it get in the way of anything that you're trying to pursue in your life right pretty simple yeah and the whole good bad
thing where did you find this this thing on ethics was that the that was the internet encyclopedia of philosophy from there and from their uh entry on it yeah it's pretty pretty good the whole thing was dude you should have seen how how in depth they go though, but I thought this one was a good snippet.
Well, I'm sure, yeah, they dive pretty deep, but I thought this was a pretty good little summation there.
You know, they're talking about, like you said, like money isn't just not good or AKA bad.
Things like this, they called indifference as in I -N -D -I -F -F -E -R -E -N -T -S.
Right. Not indifference.
And it's like not good or bad.
It could be either one.
It's really kind of all about not letting something like that get in the way of your pursuit.
Right. So and again, it went back to wealth.
Right. And this this person in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that like money definitely being wealthy usually is is helpful or beneficial to the individual.
Sure. But it can also not be beneficial where, say, you have a big heroin problem.
Well, the more money you get, the more money you're going to spend on heroin.
So in that case, being wealthy is detrimental to you, not beneficial.
Right. And for something to be a good, it has to be good under all circumstances.
And to a Stoic, there's only four things that are good under all circumstances, which are those four cardinal virtues.
Right. Everything else, like you said, is an indifferent.
and it can either be preferred or dispreferred like wealth typically would fall under being a preferred indifferent whereas say disease having chronic disease would be a disprepare disprepare wow a disprepare indifferent man that's tough though it is but the the point is is whether it's fabulous wealth or or diabetes, they should affect you about the same.
Or you might want one, you might not want to have one, but if you have either one, you can live with it.
And that brings up a huge, huge component of stoicism that's really been blown up and exploded in the 21st century, which is you should take adversity and turn it into an opportunity for growth.
that is a huge aspect of stoicism that's really being practiced and espoused these days yeah I'm down with that like I don't think I like being able to take from all these philosophies and different religions to form your sort of uh pathway through life you know sure like when I hear sometimes I started to read about Buddhism and the whole thing with Buddhism of like every day you start anew and you have a new chance like that really appeals to me too right what I don't like is when either religions or philosophies say like and now they like this is the only way and everything else is BS sure
you know yeah that just that's a harsh buzzkill it really is not only is a BS but I'm gonna kill you for thinking otherwise yeah so So Seneca, who was one of the great thinkers of Stoicism, he was an advisor to Nero.
And we'll talk about him as criticism of Stoicism later on.
But he had a very famous quote where he says, You are unfortunate in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate.
You have passed through life with no antagonist to face you.
No one will know what you are capable of, not even yourself.
self. And that kind of shapes the, that the basis of that idea that no matter what life throws at you, you take it and you say, I'm going to become a better person from this.
Like, oh, this happened.
Well, that's great because that means that I can learn to be better at this.
So my dog just got hit by a car.
I'm going to practice fortitude and make it through this really hard time and become a stronger person on the other side yeah he may as well have said you comma trust fund kid comma sure right exactly and and I mean that that makes a people turn that on Seneca as well but a lot of modern Stoics come to his defense is like no that guy had a harder life than you would think should we take another break yeah all right let's do it and we'll talk about Seneca and Cicero and and all other kinds of weird names.
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So, Chuck, you were saying, you were talking about religion.
Stoicism apparently informed Christianity in a lot of ways.
Yeah, and Buddhism in some ways.
Yeah. Yet atheists embrace it.
It's kind of weird that way.
Yeah, these days. But, I mean, the early Stoics were definitely, they definitely believed in a divine intervention.
It was kind of the basis of the whole thing that this is God's will, so why try to control it?
Who are you to try to control it?
Just roll with the punches.
Yeah, that's a big, when I was taking all those philosophy quizzes, they're all a little bit different, but you saw a through line through a lot of these questions and uh the free will one was in every single one of them yeah like how do you feel about free will and hey there are different ways of asking it but you know that we will what do you think exactly if you want to find out which philosophy that you jive with uh you have to answer the free will question free will question Yeah.
Hey, that's easier to say than dispreferred, indifferent.
Nice work. So one of the big points, especially today for practicing Stoicism, is looking at adversity as an opportunity for growth.
Right. That's just a good tool in life.
Another one, and this one I really, this is where I big time diverge from Stoicism as like a part of a daily practice, is something called negative visualizations.
yeah like uh try and try and imagine the worst case scenario constantly yeah i'm not into that at all no so say you're say you're at like your child's birthday party right and you are not you specifically this is you sure just a general person and you're having just the most intense intense moment of of joy and appreciation for your child according to stoics you should follow that up with a thought about how at your child's next doctor's appointment your child could be diagnosed with terminal leukemia yeah that that is what you should be doing basically all the time negative visualization and the idea is it's twofold
one you're preventing yourself from becoming becoming overjoyed at that moment.
Right. Don't don't do that.
Yeah. Yeah. And then secondly, you're you're exploring how you will feel if your kid does get diagnosed with something horrible or something bad happens and that when it actually happens, you'll say that it's not so bad.
I'm already used to it.
Or you'll be able to confront it through your imagination and say, this is what what i'm afraid of that's not that bad but i mean that's a really extreme horrific example yeah but but it is ultimately it's definitely in step with stoicism that you should be visualizing the worst case scenario all the time yeah i mean and that's one of the reasons stoicism has such a downer reputation uh such that cicero uh wrote a stoic rouse enthusiasm he is much much more likely to extinguish any enthusiasm the student may have to begin with.
Burn. Yeah, it was a pretty good burn.
And, you know, I get that.
Like, who would, if that was one of the first things you learned if you started to poke around with stoicism, 99 % of people would probably be like, man, I don't want to, I don't like the sounds of that.
I like the not having to control everything aspect, but the thinking about nothing but negative thoughts all the time yeah you know and i i get the point of it i just it doesn't it doesn't appeal to me no i mean you shouldn't be pollyanna either um well no it's it's in direct contradiction to the idea of the power of positive thinking right which is stoics like you fool what are you doing all you're doing is setting yourself up for nothing but letdowns when that doesn't actually come true well but i also agree with that to a certain degree you know like the whole like just you can conjure it up
just by thinking positively i think that's on the opposite side equally uh bs sure sure i think so too i'm kind of right down the middle i guess when it comes to that stuff and i think most people are but i think that's what's fascinating about this kind of thing is it's like whoa there's are some people actually are to these these degrees these extremes it's interesting to me well yeah and the other interesting thing is we you know you're talking about christianity and then it's weird how stoicism on one hand like atheists like i can totally see how they'd be down with stoicism but also the whole
notion that uh some believers in god and some christians like give it all up to god because only god can control anything so uh all we're going to do is is pray about it and that's popular amongst stoics as well right so it's just interesting that it has such a wide range as far as from atheism to like the you know serious serious give it up to god christianity right yeah no it definitely yeah it almost it's kind of like it's that buffet thing again where people can come along and take what they want from it and it becomes part of their own philosophy or their own religion or whatever um let's
talk about some of the ways that that it's been used over the years stoicism right okay so there's been a lot of people who have followed stoic thought like adam smith apparently um was very much informed by stoicism when he wrote the wealth of nations because one of the big big big aspects of it was individual liberty one one cool thing about the early Stoics was that everybody's equal.
Yeah. Right. Doesn't matter whether you're man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, whatever.
Everyone is equal. And this was at a time when slavery was rampant.
Right. Yeah. So that was a big, a big that's a big aspect to that's a big aspect of the wealth of nations is anybody can come along and become a capitalist. You just have have to compete right another place that it popped up kind of famously was in cognitive behavioral therapy yeah which initially when I saw that I was like huh that kind of surprised me but then it all made sense right like exposure to something bad can help you get over it is kind of like that conjuring up the worst possible it's almost numbing yourself to the worst possible thing if If you think about that worst -case scenario
thing all the time, it's almost a way of preparing for that.
Yeah, and it's rooted specifically, one of the founders of CBT, Albert Ellis, was an adherent of stoicism as a younger man.
And what's known as the cognitive model of emotion, which is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, is based on Epictetus' maxim that people are disturbed not by things, but by their view of things.
And that's part of that whole stoic philosophy, which is nothing is good or bad.
There's only good in the four virtues.
Everything else is how you view it.
Whether it's losing your job or winning the lottery, those things aren't inherently good or bad.
It's you, the person experiencing that who bestows good or bad on them yeah and why label things sure i'm down with that yeah a little bit did you hear about uh admiral stockdale yeah i remember that name uh for sure when he came out with his uh with his book uh courage under fire colon testing epictetus's doctrines in a laboratory of human behavior in 1993 he was a famous prisoner of war in Vietnam for seven years endured some of the worst of the worst you can imagine in war and what got him through was certainly not Christianity because he thought that's nothing but false hope well not not only
that he shared the POW camp with people who you who clung to that and and did not make it.
Yeah, so he saw it right up front.
Right. So what got him through was his stoic beliefs.
Yeah, he was a huge, big -time adherent of Epictetus.
He'd studied him in college.
Apparently, he'd read everything that Epictetus had written or said that had been written down and attributed to Epictetus twice from two different translators.
So this guy knew is Epictetus.
And he said, well, I'm a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
I've got some broken bones.
I'm starving. I'm being mistreated.
I'll be here for seven years.
What a perfect opportunity to put Epictetus' teachings to the test in a real life laboratory experiment.
And he said, Epictetus passed with flying colors was Stockdale's final report on it.
Yeah. He said, if Epictetus' lecture room was a hospital, my prison was a laboratory, laboratory a laboratory of human behavior i chose to test his postulates against the demanding real life challenges of my laboratory so man talk about a strong will like to be faced with that and be like well hey this is a great chance to to work on my philosophy of life exactly what else am i going to do but that that follows in and of itself on the whole too of um turning adversity into a room for growth as well yeah man yeah stronger than me let's just say that so um you want to talk about some criticisms
of stoicism well cicero certainly thought it was a big downer yeah um he said well you already said what he said right yeah it basically extinguishes enthusiasm in students not a good thing right and then over the years the fact that some of of the great stoic thinkers of all time have been super wealthy and powerful.
Seneca, Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome.
He basically ran the free world.
I don't know if the free world's right, the Western world for almost 20 years.
And when you sit there and yeah, again, if you say, yes, you can turn anything into any adversity into an opportunity.
If you're super wealthy, you don't have to worry about where your food's going to come from.
Like, yes, of course you can and be a stoic.
And then Epictetus came along and, like we said, kind of erased all that to an extent for sure.
But it is still kind of criticized as like a wealthy person's philosophy.
And it kind of smacks of that a little bit today, too, Chuck, with its huge resurgence in Silicon Valley.
Oh, is that happening?
Oh, yeah. Most of the stoic revival is taking place there.
that's where its cradle is right now well our own article has a couple of good points to talk about it not being as appealing because it lacks the mystique of Eastern practice and then they also said this it's also regarded as a philosophy of merely breaking even while remaining it determinedly impassive yes I don't know if that's entirely fair but it's a it's it kind of catches it a a little bit.
Well, yeah, because the very next sentence is, this attitude ignores the promise proffered by Stoicism of lasting transcendence.
And that one article that you sent talked about the power of indifference.
Right. Which I thought was interesting.
It's not about just like not caring about anything.
It's about caring about only the right things that you have the power to change.
Yeah. And also, though, I also see that even keel aspect, being indifferent, the power of of it i mean think about how much time whenever you you are like super happy about something going right or super upset about something going wrong you're ultimately you're being distracted from keeping on keeping on oh yeah and then you go back to eventually get back to that middle again which is the baseline anyway and so i guess what stoics are doing is staying on that that baseline line and not being distracted.
So they can get further along faster or at a more steady pace.
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely something that's really frustrating in life, which is when you look back and say, man, I've spent two days stressed and worried about something that I have no control over.
Right. And what a waste of time that was when I could have done X, Y, and Z.
One of the big questions I have, it's not necessarily a criticism.
I guess it depends on what the answer would be but my one my big question for stoicism since it's so um it places so much emphasis on the individual and self -exploration and introspection how would a stoic suggest enacting massive social change where something some ill is happening to some large group of people but nothing's going to change unless you go out of your own personal sphere and work to make others change right how do you do that do you just say well whatever it's God's will that these people suffer and be put down by the majority for forever or is there some way that that can be addressed
through the stoic you know philosophy I'm very curious so anybody who knows that write in please yeah maybe that's why it appeals to Silicon Valley right well that's the other thing too right so it also very much smacks when when you hear of it from like wealthy people espousing it to anybody um it smacks of that whole uh aspect of christianity where hey medieval peasant you know how your life is terrible and you're going to live to 35 and all you do is work all the time and you give most of the the spoils of your effort to your king well there's such thing as christianity and your treasure is in the afterlife
so don't worry about this life yeah it smacks of the same thing where you can keep a population placated and not searching for larger social change by saying hey just focus on these four things and everything else is just it just happens and you don't need to get worked up about it at all it seems like a bit of a pacifier too yeah depending on how you look at it it's it's fascinating are we done with with stoicism i'm finished with it okay i think that was a good overview i think so too it's a good thought starter if you uh want to know more about stoicism bud there's a lot more out there than this just
dive in and see what it means to you and again it's a buffet take what you like leave what you don't want leave the curdled pudding behind chris take the perfectly garlic I like the green beans.
Yum. What else did I, did I already say that one part?
Oh, since I said green beans, it's time for listener mail.
I'm going to call this Beagle Brigade slash police dogs.
People love that one.
Man, who doesn't love beetles, beagles on brigade, on parade?
No one. Even people who get busted with whole pigs still are like that beagles, adorable.
adorable. So, uh, this dude, uh, Eric Stover is a sandwicher, meaning he follows our advice, which is to listen to the newest episode as well as whatever from our back catalog he chooses to.
Yeah. He's doing it right.
Listen, yeah. Uh, hey guys, I work in the sports and entertainment business in New York and after 9 -11, the use of bomb -sniffing dogs, mostly, uh, German Shepherds, became standard operating procedure for all events.
A few hours prior to a concert one night, the K -9 units were sweeping all the backstage areas and one One of the bomb dogs hit on an employee locker.
As you can imagine, it caused an immediate and serious response.
A bomb squad was dispatched, and that portion of the arena was evacuated.
Plans were even made to cancel the show.
He doesn't say what show, which I was very curious about.
I'm going to say Three Doors Down.
Okay. After some very tense moments, the police officers open the locker.
Those guys are super brave. Thankfully, they didn't find a bomb, but did find drugs.
An employee must have brought in an extra bump for the show.
Oh man, it was definitely Three Doors Down.
You might be asking yourself, no this wasn't the band's green room.
This was an employee.
Oh no, I know. Three Doors Down's fans are among the most drug addled of all music fans.
Are they? Sure. I thought that was the Juggalos.
No, they put the Juggalos to shame.
Juggalos take time off once in a while, you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's true. You might be asking yourself, how does a bomb dog find drugs?
As it turns out, the dog had failed out of drug school and was retrained as a bomb dog.
Poor guy. That's hilarious.
Isn't it? Poor guy.
Which one? The dog or the guy who just happened to run across the failed drug dog?
I guess everyone. Who still remembered something.
There are no winners here.
I know. I guess he didn't completely forget his drug training, though, and he set off a chain of events that scared the crap out of us.
The story ends with the employee getting arrested.
The show went on, and the fans none the wiser.
My guess is the dog was reassigned to crowd control.
Just barking at people.
Get back in line. Thanks for everything you guys do.
Please let me know if you ever need anything in New York City.
Is that a hint? We don't do drugs, Eric.
Yeah, we're terrified of dogs.
Logs. That is Eric Stover in New York, and I guess he's still in the sports and entertainment business.
Yeah. He's like, you need some sports?
Come see me. I could use some sports.
Thanks, Eric. That's a pretty great story.
Right? That's right.
If you want to get in touch with us like Eric did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio .com.
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