Ryan Holiday

Think of the corruption.

Think of the evil ideas that have come out of that institution over the years.

Again, this isn't to dismiss or demean the things entirely.

It's just to counteract that impulse of jealousy, of envy, of lust, of fear.

There's that expression about if you see a beautiful woman that somewhere someone is sick of that person's shit.

And that's true for everything, every person.

It'll take it down a peg and then help you see it a tad more rationally.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

It's never an accident.

It wasn't some freak of circumstances that allowed Marcus Aurelius to be great amid disaster and unbelievable power.

It wasn't a coincidence that Cato was the last honest man in Rome, a brave and solitary figure standing against the tide.

It wasn't an accident that earned Stockdale the Medal of Honor in the Hanoi Hilton that allowed him to ride out seven years in solitary confinement and torture.

No, it wasn't.

It was Epictetus who said that the whole point of philosophy was to be able to meet whatever life threw at you with, this is what I trained for.

And that is precisely what these men had done.

In fact, Marcus Aurelius thanks Rusticus at the beginning of Meditations for teaching him that he needed to train and discipline his character.

Cato, as we said, trained his whole life in how he dressed, to what he ate, to how he spoke for some future moment when he would need to stand up, defend the Roman Republic.

And Stockdale?

Stockdale liked to joke that his plea beer at the Naval Academy prepared him for torture in prison.

And of course, his study of philosophy didn't hurt either.