The Daily Stoic

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Tereza, as the Prague Spring happens and the Soviets begin a military occupation, takes the time to rescue a crow that was hurt on the side of the road. Yet when dissidents come and ask Tomas, her husband, to sign a political petition, he refuses. Which prompts a rather interesting sentence in the book “It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out...

In late December, Richard Overton passed away at the ripe old age of 112 and 230 days. When he was born, Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States, and the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery in America, was only a few decades old (for contrast, Richard was nearly 60 when the Civil Rights Act passed). That’s a long time to be alive. That’s a lot of history to live through. But the Stoi...

The Stoics were all about routine and concentration. Epictetus said that philosophy was something that should be kept at hand every day and night. Indeed, his book Enchiridion , actually means “small thing in hand,” or handbook. Seneca , for his part, talked about deep diving into the right books—rather than chasing every new or exciting thing published. “You must linger among a limited number of...

In the movie Gladiator , Maximus, the protege of Marcus Aurelius , says famously, “What we do in life, echoes in eternity.” It’s a powerful, inspiring line, (also tattooed on Lebron James’s arm) one the average viewer might assume that Marcus Aurelius agreed with. Funnily enough, in his actual writings, Marcus Aurelius could not have come out more strongly against this idea. He says at one point,...

This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We call them “resolutions” and they are the promises we make to ourselves about what we’re going to do in the next twelve months. The habits we’re going to quit, the skills we’re going to learn, the standards we’re going to hold ourselves to. On the one hand, it’s a wonderful and inspiring bit of re...

Nearly two thousand years before Rudolph Clausius and Lord Kelvin first expressed the second law of thermodynamics (although there is debate on whether or not the French physicist Sadi Carnot discovered it earlier), Marcus Aurelius was musing on it . “Bear in mind,” he wrote, “that everything that exists is already fraying at the edges and in transition, subject to fragmentation and to rot. Or tha...

The actor Josh Peck recently had Robert Greene on his podcast to discuss the book, The Laws of Human Nature . It’s a fascinating interview, but one of the most revealing parts is when Josh asks Robert about how Robert squares his interest in Stoicism with the rather ruthless and Machiavellian messages of his books.   As Robert explains, we need to understand how the world works, especially if we i...

On December 25th, people all over the world celebrate Christmas, a holiday which marks the birth of Jesus Christ, one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. This was a man who lived two thousand years ago, taught timeless lessons about kindness, mercy, forgiveness, on doing one’s duty, on the dangers of money and the redemptive power of poverty and adversity. It’s pretty remarkable to think...

We can all remember times when it felt like everything was going our way. We were getting the breaks we wanted and opportunities came easy. It was the opposite of Murphy’s Law: What could go right, did . Perhaps we remember a time when we were younger, when it felt like more people were willing to help and teach us. But as time passes, this passes with it. Lucky breaks seem less common. We become...

Just two and a half years ago, General Michael Flynn stood on the stage at the Republican National Convention and led some 20,000 people (and a good many more at home) in an impromptu chant of “Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!” about his enemy Hillary Clinton. A few months later, he was swept into the White House with the Trump Administration, finding himself now the National Security Advisor to the most...

Yet again, Nick Foles has been called up to start at quarterback for the Eagles. After spending another heartbreaking season on the bench behind first round draft pick and star of the future, Carson Wentz—this time despite having won the Superbowl MVP (and the championship) for the Eagles the previous year—Nick Foles is back due to a surprise, late season injury. How did he respond to this opportu...

We all know someone who constantly puts stuff off. Who loves to plan improvements for their health, their finances, their work, their friendships, their relationships. Plan after plan after plan. There is seemingly no end to them. We know these people because we are these people . Every one of us wants to improve, wants to be better, have better habits, live better, think better. But we can’t seem...

Ok, you’ve been doing your reading and your journaling . You’re trying to be conscious of your thoughts and your actions. In short, you’re putting in the work.  The question is, how do you know if it’s working? The journey to becoming a “sage” is one that takes a lifetime. No one hands you a certificate. Wisdom accumulates and builds on itself until one day, well, there you are. If that feels a li...

Think of all the people throughout history who were wrongly condemned and criticized by the mob. From the Civil Rights Activists to Galileo to ordinary people whose lifestyles were hypocritically condemned as perverted or a violation of God’s law. Think of Jesus himself, condemned and nailed to a cross for no good reason.  In a sense, this is a rather dark reality to accept. But it is a fact. Soci...

There is a common complaint drifting through the culture these days: Why did you have to bring politics into things? Can’t she or he just sing/dance/dribble/write/paint? I was a fan until you said ___________.  First off, how fragile are your views that you can’t handle someone articulating different ones? Second, how fragile is your support that you only like people who agree with you? And third,...

So we’ve begun to get serious about our training, both physical and philosophical. Before, we never read, and now we do. Before, we were lazy and slothful, and now we’re regularly going to the gym. Before, we would eat everything we felt like eating—too much of it usually—and now we’ve got a diet and we’re sticking to it.  This is great. We’ve conquered that vice.  Now there is a new danger. That...

“Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn.” It is a verse from the poet Robert Burns. It was a favorite of Ulysses S. Grant as well as Winston Churchill, two men who witnessed the absolute worst of what people can do to each other. The line itself may have been borrowed from a similar observation by a 17th century German philosopher, who remarked that “more inhumanity has been done...

Most of us don’t think of ourselves as irrational. We don’t think we’re reactive creatures. We presume that we’re in control of our emotions, not the other way around. Other people are irrational of course, but what we feel is what reality is.  Robert Greene’s latest book The Laws Of Human Nature begins from the premise that humans, by the way we’re wired, are irrational beings. The part of our br...

Da Vinci painted his brilliant fresco, The Last Supper, and how did they respond? They nagged at him for taking too long. Then, after he finished, they cut a giant hole in the bottom for a door. Marcus slaved away on his private Meditations , a work of incredible vulnerability and emotional exposure, that he almost certainly would not have wanted anyone to see. And what did we do? We not only publ...

News reports re-surfaced earlier this month that the teenaged son of Jeff Flake, the Republican Senator, had made a number of homophobic and racist comments on his Twitter account. When confronted with the remarks, the senator immediately and directly apologized.  As so often is the case these days, to the social media mob—increasingly partisan and tribal—this was not enough. The news cycle kicked...

It’s funny that we spend so much time being jealous of people whose lives we do not even begin to understand. People look at the famous and the powerful and wish they could have what they have. As if those bounties did not come at very high costs! Ernest Renan , writing about Marcus, observed that the “sovereign...is the least free of men.” Look at a telling moment in Obama’s presidency—he showed...

Seneca said that the growth of anything is a long process, but its undoing can be rapid, even instant. Jordan Harbinger built his career for 11 years. With over 4 million monthly downloads, he had one of the most successful podcasts in the world. But then an amicable split with his business partners went sideways—and Jordan lost what he spent 11 years of his life building, in an instant. In our in...

If you haven’t heard of George Raveling, you should. This a guy that Michael Jordan addresses as “coach” even though Raveling never coached the Bulls or the Tar Heels. He’s also been retired from coaching for more than two decades.  In fact, most people who know him call him Coach Rav, not because he’s got a great sense of the game, but because his wisdom about life. On Coach’s website, there’s a...

We like to think that we’re so advanced. That things have changed so radically since the ancient days of tyrants and barbarism. But have they?  Here’s a photo of Jamal Khashoggi's son, whose father was brutally executed mere days before, being forced to shake the hand of the alleged mastermind of his father’s murder: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. There's a television camera in...

Lord Acton’s line is so famous and so undeniably true that most people don’t even know that it’s a quote from a real person: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  It's been proven time and time again in history. When people get power, it changes them. That’s why the biggest breakthroughs in the evolution of government have been around checks and balances on power--so that no...