The Daily Stoic

Look, there’s no way around it: Part of Stoicism is accepting that a lot of what happens in the world is outside our control . Some people have taken this to mean that the Stoics were resigned to their fate—that they were willing to tolerate the status quo and despair of the idea of improving the world or society. Of course this is rather silly when one considers that Marcus Aurelius and Cato and...

In Book Six of Meditations, Marcus gives himself (and us) a command to keep an important idea in mind. “Meditate often,” he writes, “on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe.” He is speaking of the Stoic concept of Sympatheia, the idea that “all things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other. Why should we think about this...

In his new book, The Laws of Human Nature , Robert Greene concludes his final chapter with this meditation on mortality: “Many of us spend our lives avoiding the thought of death. Instead the inevitability of death should be continually on our minds. Understanding the shortness of life fills us with a sense of purpose and urgency to realize our goals. Training ourselves to confront and accept this...

Where did Marcus learn to be Marcus? Ernest Renan writes that Marcus was very much a product of his training and his tutors. But more than his teachers and even his own parents, “Marcus had a single master whom he revered above them all, and that was Antoninus.”   All his adult life, Marcus strived to be a disciple of his adopted step-father. While he lived, Marcus saw him, Renan said, as “the mos...

The response to the Daily Stoic emails can be a fascinating peek into human psychology. One email, because it makes a fairly objective point about Donald Trump’s temperament, produces a record number of unsubscribes. Another, because it mentions Winston Churchill without condemning British imperialism, gets all sorts of angry comments on Facebook. We are alternatively criticized for being too libe...

In his short new edition of How To Be Free , A.A Long observes the relative ease he had translating Epictetus from ancient Greek into English. This is because, he says, Epictetus’s “conversational manner and short sentences suit our modern idiom.” According to Long, Epictetus avoids complex sentence structure and needless verbosity. Better still, he tended to use simple, direct metaphors and dicti...

Tolstoy believed his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, A Calendar of Wisdom . Like in The Daily Stoic , each day in that book is a meditation on a theme of ancient wisdom which provides insights for self-improvement. In a June entry (published in the early 20th century, but clearly both timeless and very timely), Tolstoy speaks about how to fight evil and improve society....

It would be hard to find a deeper, darker yet more philosophically interesting short film than the “Silly Symphony” that Walt Disney produced in 1929. And while many Disney franchises were built around classic stories and fables, one might have trouble naming one more directly based on an ancient art form than “The Skeleton Dance.” Animated by Disney’s most trusted animator, Ub Iwerks, this six-mi...

It’s so easy to take progress and luxury for granted. Warren Buffet has talked about how somebody today--with the comforts of heating and air conditioning--has what a 15th century king could have only dreamed of: being cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Yet how many of us have sat in the seasonally appropriate climate of our home and felt bad that we didn’t live somewhere bigger or nicer? ...

Why did Marcus Aurelius spend those precious hours in his tent, writing by the lamplight, even on the nights and mornings he strained under the burdens of his war-time duties? It wasn’t for our benefit. No, he never expected Meditations would see an audience. He was writing for himself, to himself, as a way to practice the principles of the philosophy we are still following today. He was journalin...

Dr. D.T. Suzuki, a 20th century Japanese author who was largely responsible for popularizing Buddhism, Zen, and Shin in the West, was once approached at the end of a dinner party. “How is it, Dr. Suzuki,” the woman asked, “we spend the entire evening asking you questions and nothing is decided.” He looked at her and replied, “That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.”   While the Stoics, notably...

“Nature gave us friendship,” Cicero wrote, “as an aid to virtue, not as a companion to vice.” What he meant was that friends are supposed to make you better, not make you worse. Friends are supposed to reinforce your good habits, not encourage your bad ones. It was Marcus Aurelius who said that we take the shape of the thoughts we have most often. He would probably agree to an extension of that lo...

It was Heraclitus-- a favorite of Marcus Aurelius --who said that “to be self-controlled is the greatest of excellence.” Isn’t that the truth? It’s why we admire athletes and Navy SEALS and the Civil Rights Activists of the 1950s and 1960s. To see someone being provoked with horrific language and threatened with bodily violence--only to ignore it. To see someone under incredible pressure and perfo...

In a very short period around 2003, the musician Rosanne Cash lost her sister, her step mother, her father , and her mother. It was a series of blows that rocked her, even as stoic and strong as she was. She would write later in her wonderful memoir, Composed, that rather than harden her--though these losses were quite hard on her--they helped her forge a deeper understanding and connection to oth...

William MacAskill is a fascinating guy. He is the youngest Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He’s one of the founders of the Effective Altruism movement . He’s written a great book called Doing Good Better - Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference and given a popular TED talk . Will also happens to donate every dollar he earns over $30,000 each ye...

In one sense, it’s hard to argue with the statistics that any individual’s vote makes a difference. One person out of so many? When more than 50% of the population doesn’t even bother? In a country of gerrymandering and voter suppression? In the other, it’s stunning to think that the 2016 US Presidential Election , which saw some 135 million votes, was decided by roughly 77,000 ballots across thre...

So much of what we do as a society could be described as arguing with reality. Turn on cable news and you’ll find talking heads screaming at their upset viewers about how whatever has happened as part of the story of the day is “Just not normal!” Look inside most businesses, especially legacy businesses, and you’ll see otherwise smart and capable individuals putting everything they have into not r...

Here’s a line from Seneca: “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Meaning, we spend so much time worried about how bad things are going to be, that we actually torture ourselves more than the thing we’re worried about ever could (that is, if it happens at all).This is an interesting tension in Stoicism. After all, isn’t Seneca the guy who also said:We should project our thoughts ahead of...

Like you’ve never cut in line, on purpose or on accident.  Like you’ve never done something selfish or spoken with an attitude.  Like you’ve never been jealous or petty or mean.  Of course you have. You’ve done all these things. We all have.   Yet when other people do them, it’s somehow different. It’s a transgression. A violation. That’s why we stew. We plot. We shower them with insults. Because...

A few years ago, conservative commentators in America began using a term for young college students--mostly liberal--who insisted on #noplatforming speakers they disagreed with: Snowflakes. It was said with both a sneer and well-meaning wisdom because the world just isn’t going to work if you think you can block out or censure everything you find objectionable.  But here’s the problem. It’s totall...

You’ll likely know Charlamagne Tha God as the host of the nationally revered radio show The Breakfast Club where provocative celebrity interviews help drive the daily national conversation about issues related to hip-hop, race, society, and politics. Lesser known, the unique and compelling media personality is a Stoic. When Daily Stoic saw Charlamagne sharing pages from The Daily Stoic book across...

On one of his more arduous hunts, after days of patiently tracking (and weeks of planning before that), crawling through the dirt and enduring difficult conditions, Theodore Roosevelt finally got the bull caribou he had been chasing. It was a big animal, felled by several shots in a chaotic confrontation.  “It was one of those moments,” he later wrote , “that repay the hunter for days of toil and...

A few miles outside Rome, along the still-smooth stone-paved Appian Way, is a tall brick tomb that is rumored to belong to Seneca . Unfortunately, no one is certain if this rumor has any truth to it. There is no sign that marks the tomb. There is no clear archeological proof that the bones or ashes of the famous Stoic ever laid underneath it. What the tomb looked like in ancient times is uncertain...

When we get dumped or we fail or we lose someone, we often hear that “Time heals all wounds” or some such remark, all of it in consolation. Obviously this is meant well, but it’s also frustrating--if only because it’s trite...and way too simple.  As Rilke wrote , “Time does not ‘console’ as people say superficially; at best it puts things in their place and it creates order.” There is a Zen story...

One of the things that separates us from other people--indeed that has been responsible for our success--is our ability to be strict and self-disciplined. Where other people are fine making excuses or taking shortcuts, we are not. Where other people wing it or do what’s easiest, taking the path of least resistance, we don’t. That’s really the essence of Stoicism and why those of us who have commit...