June 17, 2024 • 20 mins
STOICISM MAKES LIFE EASIER And my guest at 1 is Donald J. Robertson, who extends an invitation to traverse the annals of history and immerse oneself in the crucible of Roman power and philosophy in his new book "Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor". Jerry Seinfeld talked about Marcus Aurelius' impact and the takeaways his teachings had on his life recently and we shall chat about stoicism can release you from the worries and fears many of us harbor on a daily basis. Buy the book here.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We are going to talk a littlebit about stoicism right now, and if
you've heard about it lately, itcould be because Jerry Seinfeld has been talking
a lot about our Stoicism helped himnavigate and sort of be successful in his
life going forward, and I'm pleasedto have our next guest with us.
He has written extensively on Marcus Aurelius, the father of Stoicism and stoicism itself.
(00:22):
He is a writer, a cognitivebehavioral psychotherapist, and trainer. He
specializes in teaching evidence based psychological skillsand is known as an expert on the
relationship between modern psychotherapy and classical Greekand Roman philosophy. Donald welcomes the show.
It's very impressive. Hi, Mandy. Yeah, it was a pleasure
to be here. I'm as excitedas a stoic could no. Wait a
(00:46):
minute, Let's start at the beginning, because there are people listening who are
not familiar with the and I callit the philosophy of stoicism. So give
us a thumbnail sketch. What isstoicism. The first thing to say is
that it's kind of descended from Socratesto some extent. So in the background,
(01:07):
Socrates is kind of the godfather,and everyone said of Socrates, right,
he's the most famous philosopher in theWestern tradition. Cistoicism is a Greek
philosophy. It's about two thousands,three hundred years old. Became very popular
in the Roman Empire. So peoplehave probably heard of Marcus Aurelius, maybe
Seneca. They might have heard ofCicero, who was also interested in stoicism,
(01:27):
orthough he wasn't himself a Stoic.So these famous writers we bequeathed to
us the various books that describe aphilosophy that's about placing more value in your
own character than you do upon externalevents. And the main consequence of that
is that an ancient world that wasbelieved if you follow that philosophy, it
(01:49):
would make you more emotionally, psychologicallyresilient. And that's one of the main
things that people sort of history havebeen drawn to. The philosophy for Stoicism
has kind of become a byword insome ways for what we call today emotional
resilience. Well, is it youmade a joke because we came on and
you said, I'm as excited asa Stoic can be, and that implies
an almost vulcan like lack of emotionin Stoicism, And is that accurate or
(02:15):
is there more of a balance whereyou're allowed to feel joy and perhaps on
occasion you're you feel affected by people, especially people that are close to you.
Well with it? Surprising, Mandyif I told you that the ancient
Stoics wrote books about jokes and wrotesatirical plays, and they actually had quite
(02:37):
a good sense of humor. ChrisIPUs, the second leader of the Stoics
school, apparently died of laughter laughingat one of his own jokes about a
donkey. You know what, That'show I want to go out. Yeah,
I want to go out like that. Yeah, it's a pretty good
way to go right. So theyweren't humorless, I mean, cut along
(03:00):
story very sure. The Stoics believedthat we need to be much more aware
of what's going on with our emotions, and we need to be aware of
the beliefs that cause our anger,fear, sadness, desire, and so
on, and try and replace excessive, irrational, unhealthy emotions and desires with
(03:20):
healthier ones, which is kind ofsimilar to what we do in certain forms
of modern psychotherapy as well. Soit was okay for Stokes to take pleasure
in things, to get excited aboutthings, but they thought, the problem
is that we get excited about thewrong things in life, like money and
reputation and all of these kind ofthings that people get tremendously excited about,
(03:40):
and then lying on their deathbed,they start asking themselves was it really worth
it though, and wondering whether theyshould have invested more time in the pursuit
of wisdom or friendship or moral integrityand those kind of inner qualities instead.
So you've written extensively on Marcus Reeliis the man. You've written extensively on
his work, and I mentioned thisearlier in the show. So I bought
(04:03):
Meditations for the first time when Iwas probably like forty right, I'm fifty
four now, And I tried toread it six or seven times. I
had pick it up, started putit down, pick it up, started
put it down. It just itdid not grab me. But the last
time I picked it up was probablyI don't even know, I think maybe
(04:24):
fifteen years ago, maybe a littlelater or earlier or later. Yes,
I'm sorry, I have jet lagreally bad, Donald right now, I
just got back from Norway and Ihaven't slept much, so please bear with
me as I muddle through this interview. Bus. Yeah, well you're world
traveler as well, and I've lostmy point completely. Yeah. Anyway,
so you said you tried to beatthe Meditations lowis the timesy And it took
(04:46):
care of ice again to thank you. Yes, And when I finally read
it, and I guess I wasready to receive the message, it made
a lot of sense. But itis a challenging concept. It it sort
of throws a lot of stuff againstthe wall. What would you say if
you're a novice and you're going topick up a version of Reflection or Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius, what do youHow do you prime the pump for that?
(05:10):
How do you help someone maybe pickit up faster than I did?
Well, I say life is short, so don't waste your time reading books
that just tell you things that youalready believe and agree with. You know,
if you pick up a book andyou find it challenging and it makes
you kind of question your assumptions aboutlife, it might take a while for
(05:31):
that to grow on you. Butreally that's much more valuable than just hearing
the same old, same old,and the Stoics believed that they were saying
difficult, abstract, challenging things.But at the same time, the philosophy
has survived for two and a halfthousand years. It flourished in the ancient
world. There was a living movementfor over five hundred years, which is
(05:53):
a lot better than Sigmund Freud KarlMarx really achieved with their movements. The
Stoicism really taps into some i wouldsay, kind of perennial philosophical truths,
some quite deep truths. Now itmight take people a while to come to
recognize them, but when they do, people find them radical and potentially life
altering. I've heard from many,many people over the years who told me
(06:15):
they got into Stoicism through all sortsof means. Maybe they saw the movie
Gladiator and Marcus Ovilius is depicted byRichard Harris, and that made them go
out and learn more about the guyand read the meditations. And these people
tell me often that Stoicism saved thelife, are transformed their life, you
know, help them give them asense of purpose and meaning, and at
(06:35):
the same time, maybe a wayof coping better with their emotions, And
isn't that kind of the CrOx ofthe whole thing. It's about learning to
handle and manage your emotions and controlyour emotions because it's hard to go through
life and an emotional roller coaster.So stoicism is a way to take maybe
the highs and lows off and makethings a little more even for us,
(07:00):
to make our emotions more rational,more coherent. And you know that our
emotions shape are quality of life,like absolutely fundamentally. But the other thing
I'd say about our emotions is ifyou're not in control of your emotions,
you know, and you're not awareof them, and they're not consistent with
your values, then who's pulling yourstrings? Like? Who is in control
(07:25):
of your emotions? You're handing AsEpictetus, the famous stoic put he said,
you'd being shamed of handing your bodyover, like enslaving yourself to another
person. But we hand our mindover to other people all the time.
We plug into social media and theInternet and enslave ourselves psychologically to the whims
of social media influencers and marketers,you know, and algorithms online that are
(07:48):
playing or pulling our strings like puppets. You know, people get angry about
stuff that they read in the Internetthat's not even real. So the stoics
want us to take control back,grab a hold of the steering wheel,
and put ourselves back at the centerof our own emotional lives. Is this
something that can be learned or isit inherent? Because when I first found
(08:09):
out about stoicism and I'm reading Idon't even remember. I think I read
an article in the New York Timesor something, and it sounded very familiar.
I was like, Wow, thisis kind of how I am.
But I've also accused of being calledby people in my past because I don't
get worked up about stuff, youknow. I mean, don't get me
wrong, they're upsetting things that havehappened to me, But I'm I'm not
(08:30):
a demonstrative person in that way.And all of this stuff started to make
sense. But is that just becauseI was born that way? Or can
someone who maybe struggles to control theirown emotions learn how to do this.
I'm going to say yes and no. I think some people are born with
more emotional awareness, some people arenaturally predisposed to have more extremes of emotion.
(08:56):
However, I think really stoicism canbe fit all of us because it
teaches us to develop a greater andmore insightful appreciation of what's going on with
our emotions. Stoicism really wants usto understand how our beliefs and our patterns
of thinking shape our emotions and ourdesires far more than we normally assume,
(09:18):
and that's a premise that's shared bymodern cognitive psychotherapy. That insight alone,
I think is one of the mostpowerful things that people could learn today.
And you might be naturally more lessemotional or more emotional, but in either
case, learning to understand your emotionsand identify the beliefs are shaping them and
(09:39):
question whether they rational or irrational beliefsis something that I think everybody can benefit
from. And also stoicism doesn't wantus to be entirely cold hearted individuals.
In fact, Marcus really has putit very concisely at the beginning of the
Meditations when he described the Stoic idealas being about being free from irrational and
(10:00):
unhealthy passions and yet full of love. He is what philostorgia and Greek,
which means something like brotherly love,as we would say in English, a
kind of healthy, rational love ofmankind and the world around us. It's
hard when I'm sitting here listening toyou talk about this to not sort of
mentally apply these things to the politicalsystem that we live in right, especially
(10:26):
in the United States. I knowthings are crazy right now in the UK.
Canada is a mess, and Iknow you live up there, so
it feels like everything is out ofcontrol. But that kind of speaks to
the kind of how those underlying beliefsystems affect your emotional and political attachments.
We're opening act of what you're openinga can of work. Show is actually
(10:50):
just like if you went If youwent back in time, right the buff
play of the birth of philosophy ina Saints like as ancient Athens or the
whole of ancient philosophies and Athens.It is the birthplace of democracy. And
the process that early democracy went throughis just the same as the crisis that
it's happening having today. It's eeriehow similar it is. They created democracy
(11:15):
and ancient Athens and it worked quitewell to begin with, and then people
immediately spotted the weaknesses in this systemand they exploited them to the maximum.
And part of that involved exploiting theemotions of the electorate or the assembly in
ancient Athens, by feeding them misinformation, by using rhetoric to manipulate them.
(11:37):
And then professionals came along, wecall them the sophists, and trained politicians
systematically in ways to use rhetoric tomanipulate the audience, and so philosophy evolved
to a large extent, is acountermeasure, a way of people protecting themselves
against the manipulation of political orators andsophist Just like today we have politicians and
(12:03):
the media and social media influencers andso on. They all want a piece
of you, Like they're all tryingto manipulate you with their rhetoric and their
propaganda online, and everyone is sickof it. Right, It's that we're
drinking from this fire hose of bsand stoicism really is, you know,
(12:24):
the last line of defense in away. Why it's about helping us to
step out of that and regain arational control of our own lives and our
emotions. You know what I doon this show all day every day.
I mean I rouse people's emotions onoccasion, and it's part of the gig.
(12:46):
I guess they say, but it'sinteresting that you just brought up essentially
the history of the Roman Empire isso it's tracking with what we're doing now,
and it's not giving me a warmand fuzzy feeling about where we're headed
at this current juncture, because afterthe fall of the Roman Empire, things
did not go well for a longtime. It was the same with ancient
(13:09):
Athens and the subsequently the Roman Empireas well. It doesn't end well,
you know, like you can seewhen the democratic system that they had in
Athens is a better analogy perhaps whenthat collapsed, it ended and dictatorship,
you know, in a regime thatwe call the thirty tyrants, right,
that's what It started off with demagogueesmanipulating the elector or the assembly, and
(13:31):
it ended up with extremists and withpolitical tyrants seizing power. So that's what
people are frightened is going to happentoday. It's, you know, a
reasonable thing to be concerned about,you know. But the defense that we
have against it, first and foremosthas to be to regain control of our
own lives, to regain control ofour own reason, and thereby to contral
(13:54):
regain control of our emotions. Inparticular, I think in the Stoics thought
the big problem for society is actuallyanger, and maybe underlying that anger often
in many cases is a deeper orhidden fear. So I think it's our
fears and our anger that causes problemstoday. You see it all over the
internet written love and the Stoics wantto help us to overcome those irrational emotions
(14:18):
and replace them with healthy concern andrational responses to social problems. I want
to get to your book because we'realmost out of time and we haven't even
talked about your new book, MarcusAurelius, the Stoic Emper. Is this
book about his life or do youdig into the philosophy of Stoicism as well.
(14:39):
I talked about his life, butI try to connect it with his
philosophy. We have two main sourcesfor Marcus Aurelis is incredible. We have
his meditations. It's like a windowinto the soul of the most powerful man
in the world, where he's literallywriting down the struggles that he's having and
how he's coping with them internally usingStoicism. And then we have these Roman
histories that describe his outward life.Is Emperor and his career, how his
(15:03):
reign went. And you know whatI tried to do, I think for
the first time, is to weavethese two things together, the story of
his inner psychological development and his outwardpolitical career as Roman emperor. Like I
wanted to integrate them so we couldhave a more rounded understanding of Marcus Averulius
and also maybe in some ways viewhim in certain regards as a kind of
role model, you know, forthe type of person that we some of
(15:26):
us might want to be today,or the type of leader that we might
want to have today. I gota good question from our text line,
Mandy. Some would say that Jesuswas a Stoic. I'm wondering what your
guests may think of this description thatfrom Andy. I mean, I think
there are similarities between all the greatphilosophies and world religions, and there's definitely
(15:50):
common themes. The Storics talk aboutthis fact that the best ideas are kind
of shared, and so I thinkthey'd have a lot in common with Jesus.
I wouldn't say that el Christianity isidentical to Stoicism, but there's definitely
always been a kind of connection betweenthem. The Stoics actually mentioned in the
New Testament. St. Paul andthe Acts of the Apostles goes to Athens
(16:10):
and speaks to some Stoic philosophers,and he actually quotes some lines from a
Stoic poet to them. So theykind of get a little bit role in
the New Testament, and they probablyinfluenced some of the early Church fathers as
well. But throughout history, Christianshave often had a kind of how would
you put it, They've been almostlike frenemies with the Stoics. C Stoicism
(16:30):
has been, in a sense,the main pagan rival for Christianity, and
some Christians have kind of tried tocriticize Stoicism, others have been drawn towards
synthesizing it with their religious views.Many Christians today are, I think,
are again becoming interested in how Stoicismcould be integrated with their faith. And
I wanted to ask that we'll makethis our last question because we're almost out
(16:52):
of time. And I'm talking,of course, with Donald robertson his new
book Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Emperor. I put a link on the blog
today if you'd like to buy thatbook. I am going to be buying
it myself because this is fascinating tome. How does this apply to our
society today? And we were talkingoff the earth. We have a young
generation completely anxious, freaked out abouteverything, and now some of these young
(17:14):
people are finding stoicism. Yeah,how is that all happening? Yeah,
it's become very popular for a numberof reasons. Look again, it's eerily
similar to actually what happened in ancientAthens. I'll tell you right now.
Plato describes the sophists praying on thevulnerabilities of young men, in particular by
(17:36):
appealing to their fear that they weren'tmasculine enough. So we have these orators,
kind of the ancient self improvement gurus, saying to people, Look,
if you want to be a realman, then you have to become more
tyrannical. You have to disregard thesense of justice that you get from the
masses of people. And like theretro that they use is very similar to
(18:02):
what we get in the manisphere today. Like I think, because it's appealing
to the same vulnerabilities in young men. You know, if you want to
be more manly, then follow me. And I know what everyone else is
saying is basically the message that youget from a lot of these influencers,
and it's about fear. Like theseyoung men and are scared that they're not
(18:22):
manly enough, Like they're frightened ofnot fulfilling their role in society, and
so they're easy pickings. Why forpeople who would exploit that anxiety in order
to make money out of them orwhatever it happened throughout history. Why And
many of the Socratic dialogues involve himdealing with guys that were manipulating young men
(18:45):
in that kind of way. Soit's aerially similar to something we've seen many
times happen in the past. Guyslike you know Andrew takes probably the most
notorious one at the moment, right, I think he gives young men quite
bad psychological advice. I'm not somuch. I'll set aside his political views.
(19:06):
I'm not directly concerned with that,but I think he just gives these
guys give bad advice about psychology andhow to deal with their emotions. I'd
ask you this, the young ifyou read the comments section of the videos
of these influencers, do you feelthat the young men that consume their content
by watching their videos and reading theirarticles are becoming more angry or less angry
(19:29):
as a result. It seems tome they're obviously getting more angry, and
there's something I'll right about that.I agree. Donald Robertson, what a
fascinating conversation. Thank you for joiningme today. The book looks absolutely fantastic.
I'm very interested to give a littlecontext to the meditations, so I'll
be reading this and I appreciate youmaking time for us wherever you are today
(19:49):
in the world. Thank you verymuch. Man, it's a pleasure,
all right. Thank you. Thatis Donald Robertson, What an interesting conversation.
We are going to talk a littlebit about stoicism right now, and if
you've heard about it lately, itcould be because Jerry Seinfeld has been talking
a lot about our Stoicism helped himnavigate and sort of be successful in his
life going forward, and I'm pleasedto have our next guest with us.
He has written extensively on Marcus Aurelius, the father of Stoicism and stoicism itself.
(00:22):
He is a writer, a cognitivebehavioral psychotherapist, and trainer. He
specializes in teaching evidence based psychological skillsand is known as an expert on the
relationship between modern psychotherapy and classical Greekand Roman philosophy. Donald welcomes the show.
It's very impressive. Hi, Mandy. Yeah, it was a pleasure
to be here. I'm as excitedas a stoic could no. Wait a
(00:46):
minute, Let's start at the beginning, because there are people listening who are
not familiar with the and I callit the philosophy of stoicism. So give
us a thumbnail sketch. What isstoicism. The first thing to say is
that it's kind of descended from Socratesto some extent. So in the background,
(01:07):
Socrates is kind of the godfather,and everyone said of Socrates, right,
he's the most famous philosopher in theWestern tradition. Cistoicism is a Greek
philosophy. It's about two thousands,three hundred years old. Became very popular
in the Roman Empire. So peoplehave probably heard of Marcus Aurelius, maybe
Seneca. They might have heard ofCicero, who was also interested in stoicism,
(01:27):
orthough he wasn't himself a Stoic.So these famous writers we bequeathed to
us the various books that describe aphilosophy that's about placing more value in your
own character than you do upon externalevents. And the main consequence of that
is that an ancient world that wasbelieved if you follow that philosophy, it
(01:49):
would make you more emotionally, psychologicallyresilient. And that's one of the main
things that people sort of history havebeen drawn to. The philosophy for Stoicism
has kind of become a byword insome ways for what we call today emotional
resilience. Well, is it youmade a joke because we came on and
you said, I'm as excited asa Stoic can be, and that implies
an almost vulcan like lack of emotionin Stoicism, And is that accurate or
(02:15):
is there more of a balance whereyou're allowed to feel joy and perhaps on
occasion you're you feel affected by people, especially people that are close to you.
Well with it? Surprising, Mandyif I told you that the ancient
Stoics wrote books about jokes and wrotesatirical plays, and they actually had quite
(02:37):
a good sense of humor. ChrisIPUs, the second leader of the Stoics
school, apparently died of laughter laughingat one of his own jokes about a
donkey. You know what, That'show I want to go out. Yeah,
I want to go out like that. Yeah, it's a pretty good
way to go right. So theyweren't humorless, I mean, cut along
(03:00):
story very sure. The Stoics believedthat we need to be much more aware
of what's going on with our emotions, and we need to be aware of
the beliefs that cause our anger,fear, sadness, desire, and so
on, and try and replace excessive, irrational, unhealthy emotions and desires with
(03:20):
healthier ones, which is kind ofsimilar to what we do in certain forms
of modern psychotherapy as well. Soit was okay for Stokes to take pleasure
in things, to get excited aboutthings, but they thought, the problem
is that we get excited about thewrong things in life, like money and
reputation and all of these kind ofthings that people get tremendously excited about,
(03:40):
and then lying on their deathbed,they start asking themselves was it really worth
it though, and wondering whether theyshould have invested more time in the pursuit
of wisdom or friendship or moral integrityand those kind of inner qualities instead.
So you've written extensively on Marcus Reeliis the man. You've written extensively on
his work, and I mentioned thisearlier in the show. So I bought
(04:03):
Meditations for the first time when Iwas probably like forty right, I'm fifty
four now, And I tried toread it six or seven times. I
had pick it up, started putit down, pick it up, started
put it down. It just itdid not grab me. But the last
time I picked it up was probablyI don't even know, I think maybe
(04:24):
fifteen years ago, maybe a littlelater or earlier or later. Yes,
I'm sorry, I have jet lagreally bad, Donald right now, I
just got back from Norway and Ihaven't slept much, so please bear with
me as I muddle through this interview. Bus. Yeah, well you're world
traveler as well, and I've lostmy point completely. Yeah. Anyway,
so you said you tried to beatthe Meditations lowis the timesy And it took
(04:46):
care of ice again to thank you. Yes, And when I finally read
it, and I guess I wasready to receive the message, it made
a lot of sense. But itis a challenging concept. It it sort
of throws a lot of stuff againstthe wall. What would you say if
you're a novice and you're going topick up a version of Reflection or Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius, what do youHow do you prime the pump for that?
(05:10):
How do you help someone maybe pickit up faster than I did?
Well, I say life is short, so don't waste your time reading books
that just tell you things that youalready believe and agree with. You know,
if you pick up a book andyou find it challenging and it makes
you kind of question your assumptions aboutlife, it might take a while for
(05:31):
that to grow on you. Butreally that's much more valuable than just hearing
the same old, same old,and the Stoics believed that they were saying
difficult, abstract, challenging things.But at the same time, the philosophy
has survived for two and a halfthousand years. It flourished in the ancient
world. There was a living movementfor over five hundred years, which is
(05:53):
a lot better than Sigmund Freud KarlMarx really achieved with their movements. The
Stoicism really taps into some i wouldsay, kind of perennial philosophical truths,
some quite deep truths. Now itmight take people a while to come to
recognize them, but when they do, people find them radical and potentially life
altering. I've heard from many,many people over the years who told me
(06:15):
they got into Stoicism through all sortsof means. Maybe they saw the movie
Gladiator and Marcus Ovilius is depicted byRichard Harris, and that made them go
out and learn more about the guyand read the meditations. And these people
tell me often that Stoicism saved thelife, are transformed their life, you
know, help them give them asense of purpose and meaning, and at
(06:35):
the same time, maybe a wayof coping better with their emotions, And
isn't that kind of the CrOx ofthe whole thing. It's about learning to
handle and manage your emotions and controlyour emotions because it's hard to go through
life and an emotional roller coaster.So stoicism is a way to take maybe
the highs and lows off and makethings a little more even for us,
(07:00):
to make our emotions more rational,more coherent. And you know that our
emotions shape are quality of life,like absolutely fundamentally. But the other thing
I'd say about our emotions is ifyou're not in control of your emotions,
you know, and you're not awareof them, and they're not consistent with
your values, then who's pulling yourstrings? Like? Who is in control
(07:25):
of your emotions? You're handing AsEpictetus, the famous stoic put he said,
you'd being shamed of handing your bodyover, like enslaving yourself to another
person. But we hand our mindover to other people all the time.
We plug into social media and theInternet and enslave ourselves psychologically to the whims
of social media influencers and marketers,you know, and algorithms online that are
(07:48):
playing or pulling our strings like puppets. You know, people get angry about
stuff that they read in the Internetthat's not even real. So the stoics
want us to take control back,grab a hold of the steering wheel,
and put ourselves back at the centerof our own emotional lives. Is this
something that can be learned or isit inherent? Because when I first found
(08:09):
out about stoicism and I'm reading Idon't even remember. I think I read
an article in the New York Timesor something, and it sounded very familiar.
I was like, Wow, thisis kind of how I am.
But I've also accused of being calledby people in my past because I don't
get worked up about stuff, youknow. I mean, don't get me
wrong, they're upsetting things that havehappened to me, But I'm I'm not
(08:30):
a demonstrative person in that way.And all of this stuff started to make
sense. But is that just becauseI was born that way? Or can
someone who maybe struggles to control theirown emotions learn how to do this.
I'm going to say yes and no. I think some people are born with
more emotional awareness, some people arenaturally predisposed to have more extremes of emotion.
(08:56):
However, I think really stoicism canbe fit all of us because it
teaches us to develop a greater andmore insightful appreciation of what's going on with
our emotions. Stoicism really wants usto understand how our beliefs and our patterns
of thinking shape our emotions and ourdesires far more than we normally assume,
(09:18):
and that's a premise that's shared bymodern cognitive psychotherapy. That insight alone,
I think is one of the mostpowerful things that people could learn today.
And you might be naturally more lessemotional or more emotional, but in either
case, learning to understand your emotionsand identify the beliefs are shaping them and
(09:39):
question whether they rational or irrational beliefsis something that I think everybody can benefit
from. And also stoicism doesn't wantus to be entirely cold hearted individuals.
In fact, Marcus really has putit very concisely at the beginning of the
Meditations when he described the Stoic idealas being about being free from irrational and
(10:00):
unhealthy passions and yet full of love. He is what philostorgia and Greek,
which means something like brotherly love,as we would say in English, a
kind of healthy, rational love ofmankind and the world around us. It's
hard when I'm sitting here listening toyou talk about this to not sort of
mentally apply these things to the politicalsystem that we live in right, especially
(10:26):
in the United States. I knowthings are crazy right now in the UK.
Canada is a mess, and Iknow you live up there, so
it feels like everything is out ofcontrol. But that kind of speaks to
the kind of how those underlying beliefsystems affect your emotional and political attachments.
We're opening act of what you're openinga can of work. Show is actually
(10:50):
just like if you went If youwent back in time, right the buff
play of the birth of philosophy ina Saints like as ancient Athens or the
whole of ancient philosophies and Athens.It is the birthplace of democracy. And
the process that early democracy went throughis just the same as the crisis that
it's happening having today. It's eeriehow similar it is. They created democracy
(11:15):
and ancient Athens and it worked quitewell to begin with, and then people
immediately spotted the weaknesses in this systemand they exploited them to the maximum.
And part of that involved exploiting theemotions of the electorate or the assembly in
ancient Athens, by feeding them misinformation, by using rhetoric to manipulate them.
(11:37):
And then professionals came along, wecall them the sophists, and trained politicians
systematically in ways to use rhetoric tomanipulate the audience, and so philosophy evolved
to a large extent, is acountermeasure, a way of people protecting themselves
against the manipulation of political orators andsophist Just like today we have politicians and
(12:03):
the media and social media influencers andso on. They all want a piece
of you, Like they're all tryingto manipulate you with their rhetoric and their
propaganda online, and everyone is sickof it. Right, It's that we're
drinking from this fire hose of bsand stoicism really is, you know,
(12:24):
the last line of defense in away. Why it's about helping us to
step out of that and regain arational control of our own lives and our
emotions. You know what I doon this show all day every day.
I mean I rouse people's emotions onoccasion, and it's part of the gig.
(12:46):
I guess they say, but it'sinteresting that you just brought up essentially
the history of the Roman Empire isso it's tracking with what we're doing now,
and it's not giving me a warmand fuzzy feeling about where we're headed
at this current juncture, because afterthe fall of the Roman Empire, things
did not go well for a longtime. It was the same with ancient
(13:09):
Athens and the subsequently the Roman Empireas well. It doesn't end well,
you know, like you can seewhen the democratic system that they had in
Athens is a better analogy perhaps whenthat collapsed, it ended and dictatorship,
you know, in a regime thatwe call the thirty tyrants, right,
that's what It started off with demagogueesmanipulating the elector or the assembly, and
(13:31):
it ended up with extremists and withpolitical tyrants seizing power. So that's what
people are frightened is going to happentoday. It's, you know, a
reasonable thing to be concerned about,you know. But the defense that we
have against it, first and foremosthas to be to regain control of our
own lives, to regain control ofour own reason, and thereby to contral
(13:54):
regain control of our emotions. Inparticular, I think in the Stoics thought
the big problem for society is actuallyanger, and maybe underlying that anger often
in many cases is a deeper orhidden fear. So I think it's our
fears and our anger that causes problemstoday. You see it all over the
internet written love and the Stoics wantto help us to overcome those irrational emotions
(14:18):
and replace them with healthy concern andrational responses to social problems. I want
to get to your book because we'realmost out of time and we haven't even
talked about your new book, MarcusAurelius, the Stoic Emper. Is this
book about his life or do youdig into the philosophy of Stoicism as well.
(14:39):
I talked about his life, butI try to connect it with his
philosophy. We have two main sourcesfor Marcus Aurelis is incredible. We have
his meditations. It's like a windowinto the soul of the most powerful man
in the world, where he's literallywriting down the struggles that he's having and
how he's coping with them internally usingStoicism. And then we have these Roman
histories that describe his outward life.Is Emperor and his career, how his
(15:03):
reign went. And you know whatI tried to do, I think for
the first time, is to weavethese two things together, the story of
his inner psychological development and his outwardpolitical career as Roman emperor. Like I
wanted to integrate them so we couldhave a more rounded understanding of Marcus Averulius
and also maybe in some ways viewhim in certain regards as a kind of
role model, you know, forthe type of person that we some of
(15:26):
us might want to be today,or the type of leader that we might
want to have today. I gota good question from our text line,
Mandy. Some would say that Jesuswas a Stoic. I'm wondering what your
guests may think of this description thatfrom Andy. I mean, I think
there are similarities between all the greatphilosophies and world religions, and there's definitely
(15:50):
common themes. The Storics talk aboutthis fact that the best ideas are kind
of shared, and so I thinkthey'd have a lot in common with Jesus.
I wouldn't say that el Christianity isidentical to Stoicism, but there's definitely
always been a kind of connection betweenthem. The Stoics actually mentioned in the
New Testament. St. Paul andthe Acts of the Apostles goes to Athens
(16:10):
and speaks to some Stoic philosophers,and he actually quotes some lines from a
Stoic poet to them. So theykind of get a little bit role in
the New Testament, and they probablyinfluenced some of the early Church fathers as
well. But throughout history, Christianshave often had a kind of how would
you put it, They've been almostlike frenemies with the Stoics. C Stoicism
(16:30):
has been, in a sense,the main pagan rival for Christianity, and
some Christians have kind of tried tocriticize Stoicism, others have been drawn towards
synthesizing it with their religious views.Many Christians today are, I think,
are again becoming interested in how Stoicismcould be integrated with their faith. And
I wanted to ask that we'll makethis our last question because we're almost out
(16:52):
of time. And I'm talking,of course, with Donald robertson his new
book Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Emperor. I put a link on the blog
today if you'd like to buy thatbook. I am going to be buying
it myself because this is fascinating tome. How does this apply to our
society today? And we were talkingoff the earth. We have a young
generation completely anxious, freaked out abouteverything, and now some of these young
(17:14):
people are finding stoicism. Yeah,how is that all happening? Yeah,
it's become very popular for a numberof reasons. Look again, it's eerily
similar to actually what happened in ancientAthens. I'll tell you right now.
Plato describes the sophists praying on thevulnerabilities of young men, in particular by
(17:36):
appealing to their fear that they weren'tmasculine enough. So we have these orators,
kind of the ancient self improvement gurus, saying to people, Look,
if you want to be a realman, then you have to become more
tyrannical. You have to disregard thesense of justice that you get from the
masses of people. And like theretro that they use is very similar to
(18:02):
what we get in the manisphere today. Like I think, because it's appealing
to the same vulnerabilities in young men. You know, if you want to
be more manly, then follow me. And I know what everyone else is
saying is basically the message that youget from a lot of these influencers,
and it's about fear. Like theseyoung men and are scared that they're not
(18:22):
manly enough, Like they're frightened ofnot fulfilling their role in society, and
so they're easy pickings. Why forpeople who would exploit that anxiety in order
to make money out of them orwhatever it happened throughout history. Why And
many of the Socratic dialogues involve himdealing with guys that were manipulating young men
(18:45):
in that kind of way. Soit's aerially similar to something we've seen many
times happen in the past. Guyslike you know Andrew takes probably the most
notorious one at the moment, right, I think he gives young men quite
bad psychological advice. I'm not somuch. I'll set aside his political views.
(19:06):
I'm not directly concerned with that,but I think he just gives these
guys give bad advice about psychology andhow to deal with their emotions. I'd
ask you this, the young ifyou read the comments section of the videos
of these influencers, do you feelthat the young men that consume their content
by watching their videos and reading theirarticles are becoming more angry or less angry
(19:29):
as a result. It seems tome they're obviously getting more angry, and
there's something I'll right about that.I agree. Donald Robertson, what a
fascinating conversation. Thank you for joiningme today. The book looks absolutely fantastic.
I'm very interested to give a littlecontext to the meditations, so I'll
be reading this and I appreciate youmaking time for us wherever you are today
(19:49):
in the world. Thank you verymuch. Man, it's a pleasure,
all right. Thank you. Thatis Donald Robertson, What an interesting conversation.
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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