Selects: What exactly is stoicism?

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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.

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 been out a lot lately.

Chuck, have you noticed?

Uh, no.

Nah, I haven't really even.

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.

We're just

a couple of deep thinkers hanging out on the stoa.

Yeah.

Specifically,

what is it?

The stoa.

Did you practice the word, the pronunciation at all?

I tried to pronounce a lot of this.

But, you know, ancient Greek,

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.

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 four different philosophy quizzes before we recorded.

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 8 to 15 questions.

Sure, and then you can move on and find out what Muppet you are.

So here's my results here.

For the first one, I was Epicurean.

Okay.

The second one, existentialism.

All right.

Third one, atheist existentialist.

And the fourth, Nietzsche slash Stoic.

Nietzsche was a huge critic of Stoicism.

I'm surprised they put those two together.

Well,

that is Chuck, though.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, you're a contradiction in terms.

You're yin and yang.

Well, I am.

The reason why I took these is because when I was doing the research on Stoicism,

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

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 really

fulfilled every aspect of this to a T.

Yeah.

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 useful, happy way.

Sure.

And then, secondly,

it's

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 going to come along and spear you in the face.

With the trident.

Right.

Passage.

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 for us to try and summarize any of them in 30 to 45 minutes is kind of like,

you know, I don't know what philosophy you would liken that to, foolishism.

Yeah,

dunceism.

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 is meant, you know, it's sharp and it's detailed and it's exhaustive, but it's also clearly meant for lay people interested in philosophy, right?

It's just just this, 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.

So if I get up in the middle, you're going to 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.

And then in their little example is a group of kids sitting by the porch.

Stoic walks by.

One can say 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.

I also, some things that really make other people irate.

I'm just like, man, can't change it.

It is what it is.

And I only can get upset about the things I can change.

Yeah, if you could apply that to everything, you'd be pretty, 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.

He 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're, I mean, we'll go back in time and study the beginnings of Stoicism because we're talking about, like, you hear the word stoic today,

and it means it was taken from this, but it's kind of someone like sort of a grim-faced 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.

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 their reaction was to raise their chin a little higher up in the air, you know, like just grin and bear it.

As Larry put it,

I'm on a first name basis with Larry Wallace.

Lair.

That it's a philosophy of grim endurance, tolerating rather than transcending life's agonies and adversities, just kind of trudging through

and just taking hit after hit from life as it deals them to you, right?

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 throughout the years,

Stoicism has informed some religions.

These days, 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.

Right.

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 up 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.

But the whole point of it is it's not just to get your goat, or to protect your goat from being gotten.

It's about

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

investigating the universe and being understanding of knowledge and then

pursuing ethics, specific ethics.

And they figured out the best way to do that is dispassionately.

Yeah, I think my bumper sticker would say

on board, Colin, part-time stoicist, full-time dreamer.

Okay.

That is a specific

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?

Oh, I had an old Volkswagen Beetle that was, my family actually bought brand new in 1968 and was passed down from kid to kid to kid.

It was an heirloom.

It was.

It was very cool, I thought at the time.

Well, it is cool.

I love those old Beatles.

But I just went through one of those phases where I was like, you know, here's a Native American saying, and here's something about Mother Nature.

And this Bob Marley had this to say.

And

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.

It's funny.

Maybe I'm a silly rat.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean,

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 the family heirloom?

And you put stickers all over it.

No, it's funny.

That car had the rear floorboard was missing on one side.

My dad had a car like that, a Malibu.

So you could see the street.

I didn't know 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

with the street visible.

Yeah.

I love that your dad was just like, watch your feet, kids.

Yeah.

Easy does it.

All right.

So look, you want to go back and talk about the history a little bit?

No, I want to keep being around the bud.

All right.

Let's get in the way back machine.

And 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 for us.

That's right, because it's a long ride.

Yeah.

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...

Are you 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: 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.

Like, go do something.

Go do something useful.

Yeah, just

talking.

Yeah.

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, not 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, this is so fascinating.

And then the other half, I was just like, oh, man, what a waste of time.

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 on this painted porch, this portico, as it were.

People are everywhere running their mouths about what they think is important.

And then this dude wanders up, Zeno of Cidium.

Yeah, who'd recently been shipwrecked.

And there were other Zenos.

Not to be confused.

I know, that is confusing.

There should be one Zeno.

There can be other

in all of history.

There were Xenos 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 Zeno took a little bit of insight from the cynics and then eventually said, you know what?

I got 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, later, I don't think he called it that.

I'm not sure.

He probably called it Zenoism.

They're like, yeah, that sucks.

We're going to call it Stoicism after the porch.

Yeah.

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, it's kind of a compromise between

Socrates

or Socrates as Bill and Teg call them,

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, 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 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 with luck, like being good-looking was one of them, right?

Yeah.

If you weren't good looking, if you were ugly, sorry, buddy, you could never achieve eudaimonia, right?

Yeah.

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 temperance, right?

So you're practicing those four virtues.

So that's kind of a nod to to Socrates.

Um,

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.

Yeah, 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 okay.

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 the generation of our parents and grandparents in 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

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 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 it's sort of indulgent to sit and a bit, like you said, navel gazey

and like put 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, isn't it?

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.

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, because it's changed so dramatically since then.

But some of the other early Stoicists, Cleanthes, Cato.

Cato the younger or elder?

Younger, right?

Cato the Calen.

Oh man, I forgot about him.

I'm not sure which Cato.

I think it's the younger.

Yeah, we'll find out from two people who email in to let us know.

Seneca, and then a very important Stoicist.

Well, I'm going to pronounce it

epictectus.

Epictetus.

Epictetus.

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 Epictetus or Epictetus.

I think Epictetus is what we should go with.

I want another C in there.

I want it to be Epictectus, but it's not.

No, it's not.

It's Epictetus.

All right.

So.

Oh, and don't forget Marcus Aurelius, man.

Oh, well, sure.

I mean, he comes a little bit later.

He was the ruler of

Anthon?

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 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,

including some of these early Stoics who traveled from Athens to Rome and basically

with that move transferred the seed of philosophy from Athens to Rome, from Greek to Rome, to

Rome, from Greece to Rome.

I didn't realize that they were actually like cross-pollinating one another at the time.

Did you know that?

I think I recalled that from deep in my college memory banks.

Nice.

So Epitectetus, man,

he had a big role in the Stoic movement.

He was a former slave,

which kind of makes sense in terms of Stoicism.

He

almost single-handedly gives

credence to Stoicism.

Because so many other Stoics were extraordinarily wealthy, powerful men that it's like, yeah, it's pretty easy for you to go through life saying, you know, it's 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.

Yeah, and he wrote a handbook at the time was called An Enchiridion, and he wrote the Enchoridian of Epictetus.

Enchoridium 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 our brand of stoicism has about the same contours.

Because

that right there,

that's everything everything you need to know right there.

There's 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.

And technically, with stoicism,

that's a problem.

You should not become overjoyed.

Experiencing joy is fine.

Sure.

But just being like overcome with happiness or joy or

grief or whatever it is,

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

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 am personally riled up about something, you know.

Yeah.

But I think, again, though, if like there's probably some people who list who

subscribe to at least modern Stoicism listening to this.

And I would guess that they would say, that's because Stoicism is is basically meant to apply to every day of your life like no stoics are really expected to become sages in their lifetimes right that it's something you just do every single day is try to not get riled up but of course you're 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 complement 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

everything to do with work, like oftentimes I've noticed like something that'll rile me up, you're calming me down and the other way around.

And 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,

no one, you know, 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 stick.

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, you know, 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.

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.

Yeah, all that stuff.

That's physics.

And all of it, 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

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't you just see George Carlin being like, oh, he just blew my mind?

Oh, because he was Socrates?

Man.

Wait, no, he wasn't Socrates.

He was.

No, he was

the guy.

They're spirit agent.

Yeah.

What was his name?

Oh, man.

I'm going to get killed on this.

We'll just edit this part out.

I didn't know I had to brush up on my villain dead.

I didn't either.

I surprised myself.

You should have seen my face.

You know,

they kept talking about remakes, like as recently as a couple of years ago, I think.

Or not remakes, but sequels

with the originals?

Oh, yeah.

Like, Kiana Reeves was like, man, I love those movies.

I'd love to go make another one.

Did you see what?

What is so?

Was Kiana Reeves Bill or Ted?

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, geez, Chuck.

Wow.

Nice job.

So Alex Winter was in

what was the Charles Bronson vehicle, like his most favorite.

Deathwish.

Deathwish 3.

Deathwish 3 was what he was in, which was when Golan Globus got their hands on it and turned it into like a schlock violent, like almost post-apocalyptic movie.

Yeah.

And he's great in it, but he's also in

a...

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.

And that guy hasn't aged a day.

No.

He looks exactly Bill.

Okay, so he's Bill.

Yeah.

All right, so we got that settled.

Physics was done.

What's next?

Logic, which they wanted to include

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, but collectively they kind of called this all reason.

It was a very big deal to Stoicism, perhaps the biggest deal.

Right.

And they also were engaged in epistemology, which is 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

it's not like you want to block out the bad and only embrace the good.

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 their from their entry on it.

Yeah.

It was pretty good.

The whole thing was.

Dude, you should have seen 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.

They were talking about,

like you said, 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.

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 person in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that like money definitely

being wealthy usually 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.

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.

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 dispreferred, disprepur, wow,

a dispreferred indifferent.

Man, that's tough, though.

It is.

But the point is, is whether it's fabulous wealth 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've 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, no, 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 it BS, but I'm going to kill you for thinking otherwise.

Yeah.

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.

And that kind of shapes

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 fun kid, comma.

Sure.

Right, exactly.

And I mean, that makes a

people turn that on Seneca as well, but a lot of modern Stoics come to his defense as 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 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 these days.

But I mean, the early Stoics were definitely, they definitely believed in divine intervention.

It was kind of the basis of the whole thing that this is God's will, so why, 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

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 free will.

What do you think?

Exactly.

If you want to find out which philosophy that you jibe with,

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, I think.

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 visualization.

Yeah,

like

trying to imagine the worst case scenario.

Constantly.

Yeah, I'm not into that at all.

No, so

say you're at like your child's birthday party, right?

And you are, not you specifically, this is you,

just a general person, and you're having just the most

intense moment 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 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'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 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,

such that Cicero

wrote, a stoic rouse enthusiasm, he is 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 you, 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.

Yeah.

I like the not having to control everything aspect, but the thinking about nothing but negative thoughts all the time.

Yeah.

And I get the point of it.

I just,

it doesn't appeal to me.

No, I mean, you shouldn't be Pollyanna either.

Well, no, 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

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 some people actually are to 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

some believers in God and some Christians like give it all up to God because only God can control anything.

So all we're going to do is pray about it.

And that's popular among 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.

And 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.

Let's talk about some of the ways that it's been used over the years, Stoicism, right?

Okay.

So there have been a lot of people who have followed Stoic thought, like Adam Smith apparently 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,

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, or that's a big aspect of the wealth of nations is anybody can come along and become a capitalist.

You just 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 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 Admiral Stockdale?

Yeah, I remember that name for sure when he came out with

his book,

Courage Under Fire, colon, testing Epictectus'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 that 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 only that, he shared the POW camp with people who clung to that 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 his 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 to flying colors was Stockdale's final report on it.

Yeah, he said, if Epictetus' lecture room was a hospital, my prison was a 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 work on my philosophy of life.

Exactly.

What else am I going to do?

But that follows in and of itself on the whole, too, of turning adversity into a room for growth as well.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

Stronger than me.

Let's just say that.

So you want to talk about some criticisms of Stoicism?

Well, Cicero certainly thought it was a big downer.

Yeah.

He said...

Well, you already said what he said, right?

Yeah.

It basically extinguishes enthusiasm in students.

Not a good thing, right?

And over the years, the fact that some 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.

Well, 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 and you don't have to worry about where your food's going to come from, like, yes, of course you can 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.

It 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 determinedly impassive.

Yes.

I don't know if that's entirely fair, but it's...

It kind of catches it 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 it.

I mean, think about how much time, whenever 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 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.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: 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 big question for Stoicism: since it's so

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 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 you hear of it from like wealthy people espousing it to anybody.

It smacks of that whole

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 spoils of your effort to your king?

Well, there's such a thing as Christianity and your treasure is in the afterlife.

So don't worry about this life.

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, 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 fascinating.

Are we done 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 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.

Take the perfectly garliced green beans.

Yum.

What else 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 beagle it's 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 yes 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.

If you are prior to a concert one night, the canine units were sweeping all the backstage areas, and 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 opened 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 Downs.

You might be asking yourself,

no, this wasn't the band's green room.

This was an employee.

Oh, I know.

I know.

Three Doors Downs 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.

Yeah, I guess everyone.

Still remembered something.

There are no winners here.

Why not?

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.

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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