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The Daily Stoic
There Will Always Be People Who Don’t Get It | Hasan Minhaj Tests Ryan Holiday’s Stoic Knowledge
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom, into the real world. There will always be people who don't get it. Do you think everyone understood why Cato was so alarmed about Caesar? Do you think everyone understood why Thrasia or Agrippinas refused to bend the knee to Nero? Or why Rutilius Rufus made a legal martyr of himself when corrupt interests brought him up on false charges? Of course they didn't. In fact, Rutilius friends begged him to defend himself. Cato and Thracia and Agrippinas were seen as obstinate, alarmist, even annoying. People are busy. People are misinformed. People have skewed priorities and conflicts of interest. They're not always going to understand, they're not always going to get it. Whether it's politics or business or personal, you just can't expect everyone to see what you see. Honestly, if they did, it would probably mean that you're heading in the wrong direction. That's what Chrysippus said anyway, that if he wanted to follow Imam, he wouldn't have become a philosopher. Stoicism isn't about being appreciated. It's not about fitting in. It's about doing what's right. It's about saying what needs to be said. It's about being who you feel you need to be. So if you're waiting for your friends to understand you, if you're holding back until you get approval from family members or colleagues, if you hope 100% of your audience is going to be on board, you're waiting for something that may never come. Do what you believe is right. Do what you believe is just. The rest isn't up to you. So I told you I was at this Airbnb here in Maui on this trip we took and oh man, the mattresses were not good. I did not sleep well. The kids did not sleep well. I wish that they had Helix mattresses. If you've ever slept on a Helix, you'll know why so many people love them. Basically, you take this Helix Sleep quiz that matches you with the perfect mat based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. We've got the midnight mattress at our house. It's, you know, medium firmness, not too firm, not too soft. And that's probably why it is their top selling model. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. They've got free shipping, seamless delivery, and the whole process is super simple. They deliver the mattress right to your door. With free shipping in the US and you can rest easy with the Happy with Helix guarantee that ensures seamless returns and exchanges risk free experience. The Helix Guarantee is designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new mattress and includes a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Just go to helixsleep.com stoic for 27% off that's helixsleep.com stoic For 27% off make sure you enter our show name at checkout so they can know we sent you helixsleep.com stoic Look, I like home cooked meals. I just like the process of getting all the stuff to then cook at home. I don't like having to think about dinner and I like when it's time for dinner. I want the dinner like pretty fast but then I also want to eat well and I like stuff that tastes good. That's like a pretty complicated set of needs there and it actually fits perfectly with today's sponsor. And it's why we love HelloFresh. They take the mental load of what's for dinner off your to do list. HelloFresh makes it easy to do more home cooking with recipes that feel good and taste delicious night after night. They have more than 100 recipes every week. It doesn't matter what your allergies or preferences are. You can make something work. They've got three times the seafood with no upcharge and you can even have guests over make them grass fed steak ribeyes or serve seasonal produce like pears and apples and asparagus. We love HelloFresh and I think you'll love it too. Just go to hellofresh.com stoic10fm to get 10 free meals and a free zwilling knife which is $145 value on your third box is valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as a discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Okay, so in the fall I went and I did something in New York and I posted about it on Instagram or something and I got a text from Hasan Minhaj who said hey, why didn't you tell me you were in town? We should have, we should have linked up. And I said I didn't tell you I was in town for two reasons. One, I thought you live in like Connecticut and two, I just didn't think you would want to hang out with me. And he said no, no, no. First off, I have an office and a studio in New York and I would love to see you. Tell me when you're gonna be in New York next and we'll do the podcast and we'll get together. And I was like, sweet. That's amazing. Hasan Minaj and I, first off, I'm a huge fan of his comedy, but we had very different, yet also very similar childhoods. We both grew up in Northern California, although when people think Northern California, they don't think Sacramento or Davis. But that is Northern California, and it's a very. Well, Joan Didion was right when she called it the Midwest of California. Anyways, I've gotten to know him. We got connected, I think, over something with the Sacramento Kings. He's a Kings fan.
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B
I'm a Kings fan.
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A
I love his comedy. He'd read some of the books. Anyways, he did have me come out to the studio and we had a really awesome conversation. I wanna bring you a chunk of that. If you don't listen to his podcast, Hasan Minhaj doesn't know is hilarious. It's produced by Lemonada Media. You can watch it on YouTube. You've almost certainly seen a million of the clips. He's hilarious and actually does a really great interview. And I thought I'd bring you a little chunk of that. Go listen to the whole episode. I'll link to that. But in the meantime, here's me talking with my friend who I'm glad that I told I was in town.
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C
So we're gonna play a simple game. I am going to read you a quote from one of these 12 philosophers.
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A
You tell me who said it, okay?
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C
However, there is a catch. Some of these are from Kanye West.
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B
So will I know it by the virulent anti Semitism.
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C
I mean, you're gonna have to navigate this yourself.
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B
Are you ready? Yes.
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C
Okay, let's go with number one. The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
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A
Marcus really is classic.
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C
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
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B
Seneca.
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We suffer more in imagination than in reality. Giving up is harder than trying.
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B
That sounds like Kanye.
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C
Kanye West. Our work is never done.
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B
Kanye.
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Kanye. Correct the fates. Guide the willing and drag the unwilling.
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Ooh, Cleanthes.
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If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures.
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Musonius.
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Rufus.
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Oh, my God, I am a Nazi. Ooh, just really, really think about this one.
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B
Yeah, that sounds like Anya.
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C
Why did stoicism speak to you at a particular period of time in your life?
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B
I think it spoke to me for the reason it speaks to a lot of Young men, which is, you know, how to live a good life, but also an interesting life of how to deal with setbacks and how to be resilient, how to sort of take these feelings and this energy inside you and direct it properly. That's not what they talk about in school, and it's not even really what they talk about in church anymore. Right. And so stoicism, or ancient philosophy as a framework for living, as a way to design your life, I think that it was addressing a big hole in my upbringing, and I think it. That's historically what, like, imagine.
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C
But what was happening in your life that you didn't get from dad, coaches, the church, cousins, teachers, and more. So both me And Ryan were NorCal kids.
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B
Yes.
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C
So what was not happening at Granite Bay that needed to be filled here? Because, by the way, you know, dad didn't hug me. That part of the algorithm, that is. That's catnip to me.
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A
Yeah.
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Yeah. And I wouldn't say my dad never hugged me, but, like, I wasn't that sort of guidance about, like, this is how to be a man, this is how to be a person. This is like, this is what we do, this is what we don't do. There's just kind of this assumption that you'll, like, you'll pick it up as you go. You know, there isn't like a tradition. There's no, you know, like, there's no sort of, this is the coming of age thing. This is what we do when, you know, you turn 13 in our culture.
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A
Right.
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B
There wasn't any of that. And so I think you went to church, right?
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I did.
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I grew up Catholic until we moved across town.
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C
So you have Mass, you have.
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B
Church was too far away.
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C
Okay. Were you baptized and all that stuff?
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B
I'm a confirmed Catholic, so I do think Stoicism resonated in a way, because the teachings of Stoicism and Catholicism are pretty. They share the same cardinal virtues. Like cardinal comes from the Latin cardos, which means pivotal. And so courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. Those are the. Those are the virtues that Zeno lays down in the fourth century B.C. that also, you know, are inscribed in every Catholic Church.
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C
And what was it about specifically, those teachings that resonated with you more than, say, Old Testament, New Testament, that stuff? Because a lot of this stuff predates the Bible.
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B
Yeah. I mean, what I think is interesting about the Stoics and a lot of philosophy is they're making a rational argument. They're not saying, hey, do this or don't do this, or you'll end up in hell. I think fundamentally, Stoicism is saying, like, don't do this because your life will be a form of hell. Right. Like, to not be in control of yourself. To, like the quote you mentioned from Musonius Rufus, he says, you know, if you do something easy in the pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure goes by quickly, but the shame endures. And then he says, but if you do something hard in pursuit of something good, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures. That is, I think that overlaps with the sort of Christian teachings, but nowhere are they saying, like, also God will be mad at you. You know, like, also, you will rot in hell.
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C
What they're trying to do is, are you saying basically it grapples with physical reality on earth as we see it, feel it, and experience it?
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Yeah, I think it's making a relatively rational argument, a logical argument for why some things are good and some things are bad.
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C
How do you think it's so popular right now with titans of industry? You'll. You'll hear that Bill Clinton loves meditations. He'll read it every year. He revisits it.
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B
That's not new. I mean, first off, Stoicism was popular in the ancient world with the quote, unquote elites. Right. This is, this is what you would send your son or daughter. Masonius Rufus writes this fascinating essay, you know, 2,000 years ago, about how, how the question is, should women be taught philosophy? And then the other essay is like, is virtue the same in a man as in a woman?
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C
By the way, is he writing New York Times op eds?
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B
Yes, yes, Hot takes. But he's saying, yeah, ultimately virtue is virtue. It doesn't know gender. So the Stoics are grappling with, sadly, some of the same things we're still grappling with today. But the argument then was like, this is what you want to teach young people so they can grow up to be not just good people, but contributors and leaders in society.
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A
Yeah.
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So I think it's sort of relevance with those people today. Shouldn't surprise us. I think it's more interesting that your sort of regular folks are interested in it. And that probably says something about what a train wreck the world is right now. Like, stoicism is not resurgent and popular because everything's amazing and going super well.
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A
Right.
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C
Perhaps a guidebook or a handbook to the craziness that people are experiencing their day to day.
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B
Yeah. Like Cato's in the fall of the Roman Republic, Marcus Aurelius is in the decline and fall of The Roman Empire. Zeno is there when the sort of world created by Alexander the Great is falling apart. So it's popular again in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Age of Revolutions, the American Civil War. It's popular when shit feels like it's coming apart.
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C
So stoicism, from what I understand, is not a partisan philosophy, but it most recently has been hijacked by different partisan groups. And I wanted to talk to you about that because you're someone who is tried to research stoicism. Dare I say, stoically. You know, like, hey, let me be cool, calm, and collected and write about what these men were teaching. And you're a big reason why stoicism became so popular. But there's also been a huge rise of what I call brocism. Yes, the manosphere loves this shit. If you just go to Twitter right now and you type in any of these names from the quiz, oh, my God, the accounts that are reposting them, you know, I don't know if they're people that I would want to be like, per se.
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B
Which is weird, because when I went to my publisher in 2012 and I was like, hey, I want to write about this obscure school of ancient philosophy.
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C
Yeah.
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B
They were not like, oh, that'll crush it with dudes. Like, this is all an interesting turn of events for you. For me, too.
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C
Really?
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B
I mean. I mean, I understood and thought it could be popular, but I didn't think that it would be this enormous.
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C
You didn't think nerdy tech titans wouldn't read this stuff and be like, I could be Gerard Butler in 300. There is something about that idea of,
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like, I mean, the Roman Empire for most dudes is the Roman Empire, but
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C
Ryan, now it's Michael Jordan, last shot, Marcus Aurelius quote, Kobe Bryant, final game, Marcus Aurelius quote. Like, this is now a cottage industry, but it's something you talk about in the new book, and I'd love to ask you, what is the main difference between stoicism and broicism, in your opinion?
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B
There seems to be this tendency to look at the cardinal virtues of stoicism, which are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, and be like, I don't have to bother with the third one.
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Right.
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Like, I like courage. That's cool. I like self discipline. I like moderation. I like resilience. And then obviously, you know, reading and learning and being smart, that's all cool, but you're telling me that I have to ascribe to a certain, you know, list of ethics that I have to give A shit about other human beings. I don't. I don't like that. And I get it. I mean, my primary and initial interest in stoicism is like, what can it do for me? Right? Like, how can it make me better, stronger, faster, smarter? I get it. That's. When you're 19, that's what's gonna be interesting to you. But, like, the thing Marcus really talks about most in Meditations, like the phrase that appears the most is not, you know, like, destroying your enemies or, you know, mastering your emotions or, you know, being super productive. It's. He uses the Greek phrase. He's writing in Greek, but the phrase for the common good, which he refers to 80 times in meditation. So it was inherently a philosophy about our obligations and our responsibility to and with other people. And so brocism to me is stoicism, when you remove any of the moral elements. So it's this recipe for being a better sociopath, and in some cases, I think, being a better psychopath. And that's, you know, whatever Pete Hegseth thinks stoicism is, is not what I'm sure.
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C
I don't know if you've seen Bobby Kennedy Jr. He was banging out pull ups with Mr. Duffy, just like, hey, this is how we're gonna fix infrastructure in this country?
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B
Sure.
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C
This is how we make people healthy again. You need to bang out 20 pull ups right now.
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B
Yes.
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C
And there's a lot of people that go, you know what? Marcus Aurelius was a dictator, though.
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B
Sure.
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C
At night, he writes in his journal, waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. B1. But the next morning, he's just out here butchering people and I'm sure denying them basic human rights and. Or democratic rights.
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B
This is the. This is where, you know, studying the past requires putting on your sort of big boy pants. You know, there's a Jeffersonian element to it. Sure. Like, all men are created equal is a beautiful sentence that he didn't fully believe.
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A
Yeah.
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But we can take it literally, and we can sort of try to get a bit. A little bit closer to it. Like, there's a passage in the beginning of Meditations where Marx Ruiz thanks one of his friends for introducing him to stoicism. And he says, you know, he's like, for introducing me to Helvetius and Cassius and all these different Stoics. And he says, because the Stoics conceived of, you know, a world of equal rights and personal liberty, where rulers respect the rights of their subjects. And he's describing a beautiful world which the Roman Empire was not remotely like. But that idea, again, it's Jeffersonian in another way. That is the world that inspires the founders 2,000 years later to take a big step towards getting to the ideals of the Roman Republic and the sort of classical virtue. So they're certainly not perfect. And we could list the innumerable flaws of the, of the Stoics. And I have no problem. I have no problem holding Seneca both up as a inspiring, heroic figure and a tragic, disgusting hypocrite. And I think that's perfectly acceptable to do. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank. You. Foreign.
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D
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E
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A
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