You Make Your Own Good Fortune

It can be deceiving to hear the Stoics talk about an indifference to external recognition or rewards. Marcus says that fame is meaningless. Seneca talks about how success or wealth is out of our control and therefore not to be prized. Don’t want what other people want, they say, don’t get sucked into meaningless competition.So does this mean that the Stoic doesn’t try? That the Stoic is resigned to whatever happens to them in life, caring about nothing, uninterested in improving or growing? No, of course not. The Stoic is still incredibly ambitious—only they focus on an internal scorecard versus an external one.A similar sentiment was well-expressed by the entrepreneur Sam Altman, who has helped thousands of startups over the years with his work at Y Combinator, when he was interviewed by Tyler Cowen for the Conversations with Tyler podcast:“I think one thing that is a really important thing to strive for is being internally driven, being driven to compete with yourself, not with other people. If you compete with other people, you end up in this mimetic trap, and you sort of play this tournament, and if you win, you lose. But if you’re competing with yourself, and all you’re trying to do is — for the own self-satisfaction and for also the impact you have on the world and the duty you feel to do that — be the best possible version you can, there is no limit to how far that can drive someone to perform. And I think that is something you see — even though it looks like athletes are competing with each other — when you talk to a really great, absolute top-of-the-field athlete, it’s their own time they’re going against.”Competition, Altman’s friend and mentor Peter Thiel has said, is for losers. When you try to beat other people, you set yourself up to fail. But going against yourself—trying to improve yourself—that’s a competition you have control over. It’s one you can win.A Stoic triumphs over themselves, over their own limitations, and in this—even if the margin is small—is the most important victory of all.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

19 Huhti 20193min

Laura Ingalls Wilder had a hard scrabble existence. From the Kansas prairies to the backwoods of Florida, she and her family eked out a life from some of the most unforgiving environments on the planet. That’s what being a pioneer was really like. It wasn’t glamorous, it was hard.Yet, what comes through in her work is the joy and happiness and beauty she managed to see despite all that hardship. “There is good in everything,” she later wrote, “if only we look for it.”That’s what many of the best Stoic exercises are about—looking for the good. Or at least realizing that we have some choice in seeing things one way or the other. As Epictetus said, ultimately it’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgment and opinions about things that do. So, conversely, we choose not only to not be upset, but to be happy, to be grateful, to see life as an adventure that we can make the most of. The task before you today is to look for that good, in anything and everything that you do. Because it’s there. If Laura Ingalls Wilder could find it in a one room cabin, amidst tragedy and terror and pain and pestilence, then you can find it at the office, in traffic and in the confines of modern life. We all can. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

18 Huhti 20192min

In a conversation on “You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes” about Martin Luther King Jr., the screenwriter and director Adam McKay talked about the distinction between two words (and concepts) that we commonly conflate: Have you noticed the difference between dignity and respect is a big one? People that fly off the handle and get angry too much always talk about, ‘I’m not being respected.’ But respect is something you can’t control, right? Dignity is inside you, dignity is yours.This is a brilliantly made point, and it aligns perfectly with Stoicism. Remember, to the Stoics the two big categories that everything had to be sorted into were the things that were up to us and the things that are not up to us. Although it is nice to be respected, that really isn’t something that is up to us. But acting with dignity? Maintaining our own standards—our self-respect? That’s ours. Always. Even when we are under duress, facing adversity, or someone is attempting to humiliate us—dignity remains firmly in our control, provided we don’t give it up. This is what made Cato such a towering figure to Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and generations of Stoics. He didn’t care what other people thought about him, what they said to him, what they did to him. Sometimes public opinion lined up with his moral compass, sometimes it didn’t, but he never let that sway him from following what really mattered. Even when they showered him with curses or tried to kill him, he stuck fast. As McKay would go on to say in the interview, while we “can’t really control what they’re doing...we can control how we react.” It’s hard to describe Stoicism better than that phrase. Because that’s what dignity is about. That’s why it’s much more important than “respect.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

17 Huhti 20192min

“They” hold up very poorly in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that Marcus holds up very poorly when “they” come up. Who is “they?” They are the people the Romans referred to as barbarians—the people who lived outside the bounds of the empire. It’s when Marcus speaks (and acts) derogatorily about them—the Christians or the slaves or even the opposite sex—that we are reminded just how long ago he lived.In Marcus’s time, the world was a strict hierarchy, almost a system of castes, and Marcus never really questioned this. In fact, his own identity was strongly tied up in the notion that he was above these lesser beings, these savages, these slaves, these women.Thankfully, society has made incredible progress since then. We’ve granted religious freedom, equal rights, and civil rights...for the most part. But still, tribalism tempts us. Especially lately. We are suspicious of and think less of people who are not like us, who live differently than us, who come from somewhere different than us.In Senator Ben Sasse’s new book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other—And How to Heal, he talks about how the massive technological and sociological changes we are going through on this planet encourage those toxic impulses. We feel threatened, we feel insecure, so we retreat into (or descend into) tribalism. We want to blame other people for our problems, we want to create enemies, we want to focus on what they are doing wrong, and not the urgent (and resolvable) issues in our own lives. And of course, what this blame-shifting tribalism keeps us blind to is how much we all have in common, how 99% of us are just doing the best we can, and how in the end, most everyone wants the same things.To the Stoics, the idea of sympatheia was a bulwark against this temptation to make someone an other. We all come from the same place, Marcus writes (even if he didn’t always live up to it), we are all part of the same larger project. Forget tribes, he says, we are one big hive—we are citizens of the world as much as we are citizens of Rome or America. Do good for your fellow man, he said, or put up with him. There’s no room, or time, for hating or scapegoating.The idea of “they” or “them”—that’s driven by fear. Not reason. It’s not rational, it’s emotional and it’s destructive. Each of us needs to work on rising above it. For the sake of ourselves, our countries, and our world.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

16 Huhti 20193min

When you begin to type “Marcus Lattimore” into Google, the first suggestion is “injury”. On October 27th, 2012, on live television, running back at University of South Carolina Marcus Lattimore suffered a horrific on field knee injury that he would never fully recover from. Lattimore was one of those once in a lifetime talents, but in one play, the football career Lattimore had built his entire identity around all but disappearedSeneca often said that the growth of anything great is a long process, but its undoing can be rapid, even instant. For Lattimore, it was instant. Such a devastating injury could have sent him down a spiral of rage, anger, sadness, and grief. It could have been the last we heard of Marcus Lattimore. But it wasn’t. Instead, he went back to school to earn the degree he promised his mom he'd get. He started a foundation to help athletes who have trouble paying for treatment and rehabilitation for major injuries. And most recently, he returned to his alma mater as the director of player development, mentoring student-athletes for life after football. Lattimore hasn’t spiraled. He’s thrived. And his impact now quieter but far more powerful than it would have been in the NFL. In our interview with Marcus for DailyStoic.com, Marcus said he wouldn’t change what he went through:The more I detached from the situation and gained a higher perspective, the more I realized how much I had grown up and started looking at the positives. Without my knee exploding on television I would've never fully grasped the positive impact I had on people which influenced starting a non-profit. I would have never known who was really there for me. If you want to know your true friends go through adversity. I would have never started reading and I wouldn't have the self-awareness I have today which I consider my most prized possession.In every situation, that which seems to be the end of our path can actually be showing us the start of it. Think back today in your own life, we all have those tough setbacks that turned out to be a great breakthrough. The worst things can become some of the best things. Like Lattimore, it may just take some detachment and perspective to see this, it may be painful and it may come slowly, but it can be worth it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

15 Huhti 20193min

The funny thing about egotistical people is that—despite any power or wealth they might have—they are really easy to manipulate. All you have to do is tell them what they want to hear; make everything seem like it was their idea; play to their vanity and their delusions. The same goes for liars—who are usually quite easy to lie to. There’s even an old saying: You can’t con an honest man. Liars and cheats are always looking for shortcuts and tricks, no matter how implausible or unbelievable they are. And the paranoid? As Seneca wrote, empty fears create real things to be afraid of. The paranoid leader often, unintentionally, encourages the enemies that end up taking them down. All of which is to say that ego and deceit and paranoia are objectively bad strategies. They make you miserable...and they actually imperil the success that people think they help enable. We must steer clear of them like a ship must avoid a rocky shore. If we don’t, we will be dragged in by the current and torn to pieces on the rocks. Look at Seneca’s experiences with Nero. Here was a man driven insane by his own ego and dishonesty and paranoia. He was emperor...but not for long. Centuries later, his name stands as a permanent indictment of how power corrupts (certainly he was an example, for someone like Marcus, of how not to be). Look at Donald Trump today. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with his policies or not—it’s hard to argue that these personality traits have served him well. He’s surrounded by a “team of vipers” who are constantly undermining him and stabbing each other in the back. His fears (and cries) of a “witch hunt” have only caused more investigations. His ego allowed him to be manipulated by partisans with extreme agendas that have little appeal to the vast majority of voters. How long it will go on, we cannot say, but it’s clear every second it continues is less and less fun for him.And so it will be for you, too, if you indulge in these dangerous traits. We must sweep ego away. We must cultivate a habit of honesty and fairness in our speech and our habits. We must cooperate with others rather than protect our interests with paranoid possessiveness. In short, we must be good people. It’s the best strategy. It’s the only way to live and lead.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

12 Huhti 20193min

At the core of legal theory is this idea that there are essentially two forms of liberty—positive and negative. Positive liberty is the freedom to do something, such as the freedom of speech or the freedom of worship. Negative liberty is freedom from something, which is a little more complicated. For instance, in the United States, the Third Amendment to the Constitution stipulates that the government cannot quarter troops in the home of any private individual. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. As FDR famously pointed out, freedom from want and fear are just as important as speech and worship.The complicated part of all this, of course, is where somebody else’s freedom to do something intersects with somebody else’s desire to be free from it.You get to speak your mind...but that may offend or hurt someone else. You should be able to do whatever you want on your own property...but walking around naked blaring music makes it hard for your neighbors to do the same. You should be able to make your own medical decisions for your family...but the decision not to vaccinate affects everyone they meet.The specifics of these issues are the proper realm of politicians and lawyers and not really what we talk about here. Where it does intersect with Stoicism is in that tricky and timeless question from Epictetus: What is up to us and what is not up to us?In a world of snowflakes and outrage porn, it’s easy to get pulled off track and to focus on stopping other people from saying hurtful or offensive things rather than to measure what we say and manage how we respond. We want to get up in other people’s business, when really, at the end of the day, all we control is our own.Which is ridiculous because there is so much to focus on in our own lives. What kind of person are we going to be? What are we going to do with our freedoms? Are our decisions negatively impacting other people? Are we really as free as we like to think we are?And here’s the counterintuitive thing about all of this: Marcus Aurelius talked over and over again about the best way to influence and inspire other people. It was not with force, but by example. If you want to be free from the tyranny of other people’s opinions and bad behavior, feel free to set a better example.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

11 Huhti 20193min

It was the great Athenian leader, Pericles, who said that there was nothing wrong with poverty. It could be caused by so many things—a business failure, the sudden loss of a family’s breadwinner, theft, even just plain old back luck. Like the Stoics, he knew that Fortune could swoop in, and, in the blink of an eye, undo years of hard work and careful planning. But Pericles would not have said, as religious leaders and populist demagogues have tried to argue for thousands of years, that there was anything special or holy about poverty. While it wasn’t necessarily someone’s fault they were poor, and so they shouldn’t be judged for it, Pericles said, there was “real shame...in not taking steps to escape it.” This too matches with the Stoic attitude, both about poverty and any fate Fortune might throw at us. Stuff is going to happen. We are going to experience setbacks. Some of us are going to experience major setbacks--in terms of where we are born, what our parents were like, how other people see members of our race or gender--and none of that is fair or says anything about who we are as people. How could it? We didn’t have anything to do with it happening.But how we respond to those situations--be it poverty or disability or a bad upbringing--hell, that we respond at all, well, that says everything about who we are. Are there big systemic problems too? That will require coordination and political action? Absolutely. But in the meantime, we can start taking our individual steps right now, right this morning, big or small. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

9 Huhti 20192min