The Daily Stoic

There's a really good Joan Didion essay on keeping a notebook, particularly, and I jot down the page that it is in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

So that we're still read Slouching Towards Bethlehem about, you know, San Francisco, Hey, Dash, Barry, and, you know, the height of counterculture hippies.

And it's still a view of that that goes against a lot of what was the mythology of Hey, Dash, Barry, right? It's still enlightening enough that like Olivia Rodrigo writes a song based on a phrase from that.

But he says things like, I'll try it. It's hard not to make fun of some of these guys. But this is what he says, like blah, blah, blah lobsters, right? Because alpha lobsters hold their claws up in the air. This is what he writes at the beginning of 12 rules.

So if something's been around maybe 30 years, maybe you can expect it to be around another 30 years.

It's a probabilistic heuristic basically, which is the duration of something that's been around. You can calculate it's going to be around for that duration longer.

So I play around with it. I use it a lot for basically a hedge against modernity and we're constantly getting bombarded by novelty all the time, which is great because it's always nice to have options and choice.

And the reality is most either it doesn't actually change anything or it changes something that was there for a reason. And there's going to be consequences for this change.

But I think there are domains where it is pretty valuable as far as like architecture, diet, health, psychology. Is it another good one? Ways to live sort of systems that have been around for a long time.

One of my favorite parts of the whole book is your little footnote on Iron Rand where you talk about it possibly being a war crime to assign one staffers to read Iron Rand.

But it brought up an interesting, I think I've also read Iron Rand. I think she's fascinating when you're 19 years old and if you don't grow out of it, there's probably something wrong with you.

It's pretty amazing that she writes this long-ass book that is basically propaganda for a philosophy or a viewpoint that it works.

Like it's not the most beautiful work of art but like millions of people have read it. Like it's actually readable and people read it.

I don't find her books entertaining, I find her books so horrific and miserable to read.

It's like so the idea is like because successful brilliant people aren't appreciated enough by society they're just going to take their ball and go home like this is for blasterous like like I just it's so childish and so absurd that like it's almost you get to the end of the book and you're like is this really your argument are you 11 what are you talking about

I started it when the quarantine kind of hit and I'm like there's no better time to read if I'm going to read Atlas Shrugged than maybe now.

What was fascinating is for her to set up all those characters and it I guess it was interesting enough for me to stay with it but it but then in the second half when she when it really went to rolling and there was action and now the people are preaching the ideology and you're figuring it all out you're like how did I get through that first part where she like like I really know Dagny now I mean I feel like Dagny's my sister like I know her and but it took a long time to get to know her which I don't know if you could pull off a book that dense and let's call it modern Gen Z millennial that's right ADD times I that's what I kept going back to could this book be successful today I now know it's it's an you're an author you could extraordinarily difficult and you think it's the book is basically like a series of like 20 page speeches it's like character 20 page page 20 page 20 and you're like when you finish it you're like this shouldn't have worked but somehow it did so artistically it's a feat of genius philosophically it's sort of like the joke about an iron Rand is that her thing is about the virtue of selfishness right I think it's who said do you really find that people have trouble with that you know like if you ever met anyone who wasn't selfish enough like and I think I think that's where it falls short is it's sort of addressing a problem that doesn't actually exist.

he's been to year of his like dressing like George Washington like oh no yeah he was living living by the constitution that's what he was doing he has he has the most patient wife in the world yeah like The Year of Living Biblically yes also an amazing book so good

Her massive bestselling book, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone came out in April 2019. Highly recommend.

And then her journal edition of that book Maybe You Should Talk To Someone the journal was released in November 2022.

during my training, a supervisor once told me there is something likeable in everyone, and to my great surprise, I found that she was right.

Why think of all the buffalo that have died on these plains, he says, buffalo and other critters too, and the Indians have been here forever. Their bones are down here in the earth. I'm told that over in the old country you can't dig six feet without uncovering skulls and leg bones and such.

People have been living there since the beginning and their bones have kind of filled up the ground. It's interesting to think about, he says, all the bones in the ground.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard, he says, completing his rumination, but pretty in sunlight.

Son this is a sad thing, McRae says.

Loss of life always is.

But the life is lost for good.

Don't be trying to give back pain for pain.

You can't get even in business like this.

man is not made for defeat a man could be destroyed but not defeated

if you ask anybody what's your favorite book um and it's a novel they're going to tell you the name of a novel because a character sure captured them and um the book in this regard that i always use as an example it's a book about a a book about a stoic okay the old man in the sea of course it's Timingway Santiago is you can drop a plumb line from the stoics to Santiago and and his resilience and his his efforts in what he knows is a doomed cause at the end of the day um it's a gorgeous book and it i read it at least once a year and you can you know you can read it in a sitting in fact the true first edition of the old man in the sea is not a book the true first edition is life magazine it was published in its entirety in life magazine

a man can be destroyed but not defeated i think that's the essence of stoicism and Stockdale certainly that's the that line comes from uh the old man in the sea Santiago has that line and uh it's just a beautiful book and when Santiago finally stumbles back in after his his his tragic but beautiful adventure on the sea that next generation comes along and helps him there's another piece of this which is what we owe to the generation that came before us back to those millennials

if you haven't read the black swan or antifragil or fool by randomness you absolutely should.

have you read Fooled by Randomness I have not I have heard but what I end up doing run like I'm the opposite of some people I end up reading a book and then I really want to now study it and make sure I know every now and then I'll read something just to go can need to get away and I read and I but I have it's interesting I had to tell my brain this is a book that I'm not taking notes this is a book I'm just going to digest right and enjoy and it's going to take me away and I'm sure I'm going to remember a nugget here there and then there's some books that I go okay I want someone recommended this one just like the one you just did and go okay how do I need to read that when I need to study it and now now review it and then review it again so it my man my wife Kara can like read if she gets everything right yes you need four or five books a week if she gets into it and she can give me the cliff notes and then passes but she passes books to me mine stack up and it would take me a lifetime to read so it took me two summers I just finished this summer reading for the first time because I didn't read it young Atlas shrugged yeah so I mean I mean it's your thousand something pages into a pretty what did you think you know what well this is a controversial right you know what I thought and I thought she was brilliant it was very interesting sociology being from Russia yeah to now probably United States and some of those whether you are all in on her ideology or not what was interesting is I thought she was brilliant into right getting her ideology across and like all ideologies I'm never going to fall on the sword for all of it right but what I try to do in books like that that are right deep and meaningful is okay if I were all in these are the positives if I were all against these are the negatives kind of look at those and see in reality right which ones blended together you know or working or not working so like everything right there's there's probably some thumbs up parts in it and there's maybe some thumbs down parts like I don't know if that could really work but no it's it's what I think about Atlas shrugged is it's very interesting and it's impressive that she was able to make it interesting yet but it's it's also at my I read it when I was 19 or 20 and I think a lot of young men read it at that age and it feels good then as you get older I think you go this is kind of childish like you're like oh you don't appreciate me and my talents you don't love me for all my contributions to society so I'm going to take my ball and I'm going to go to my gulch you know in the middle of wherever and there only around my fellow brilliant people will I be appreciated I my thing is like what would the world look like if people did that it would be horrible so that my my ultimate takeaway on on Atlas shrugged is that it's it's immature does that make sense yes definitely I mean there's we could talk all day you know on that right but going back to the technique of the book I started it when when the quarantine kind of hit and I'm like there's no better time to read if I'm going to read Atlas shrugged than maybe now yeah so I started it last summer I'm a slow reader and this is dense and and then I came back and finished it this summer but what was fascinating is for her to set up all those characters and it I guess it was interesting enough for me to stay with it but it but then in the second half when she when it really went to rolling and there was action and now the people are preaching the ideology and you're figuring it all out you're like how did I get through that first part where she like like I really know Dagny now I mean I feel like Dagny's my sister like I know her and but it took a long time to get to know her which I don't know if you could pull off a book that dense and let's call it modern Gen Z millennial that's right ADD times I that's what I kept going back to could this book be successful today I now know it's it's an you're an author you could extraordinarily difficult and you think it's the book is basically like a series of like 20 page speeches it's like character 20 page page 20 page 20 and you're like when you finish it you're like this shouldn't have worked but somehow it did so artistically it's a feat of genius philosophically it's sort of like the joke about an iron Rand is that her thing is about the virtue of selfishness right I think it's who said do you really find that people have trouble with that you know like if you ever met anyone who wasn't selfish enough like and I think I think that's where it falls short is it's sort of addressing a problem that doesn't actually exist no doubt less this is amazing I can't wait to see you again soon and and yeah we'll do this again looking looking forward to I enjoyed it talk soon talk soon Hey it's Ryan if you want to take your study of stoicism to the next level I want to invite you to join us over at daily stoic life we have daily conversations about podcast episodes about the daily email we actually do a special weekend set of emails for everyone you get all our daily stoic courses and challenges totally for free that's hundreds of dollars of value every single year including our new year new you challenge which we're going to launch in January you get a special cloth bound edition of the best of meditations that we've done you get a bunch of cool stuff it's an awesome community I've loved being a part of it I've loved getting to meet everyone who's trying to take their study of stoicism to the next level love to have you join us check us out at daily stoic life dot com we'd love to have you and join us on this digital stoa that we that we've staked out together and get better every day if you like the daily stoic and thanks for listening you can listen early and add free right now by joining wonder e plus in the wonder e app or on apple podcasts prime members can listen ad free on Amazon music before you go would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on wonder e dot com slash survey

And when's the National Book Award, right? Yeah. Yeah. Not because like it was, you know, this tell-all by Joan Didiam, but because it was essentially a guide to how to deal with death. And that's what, you know, people still to this day, right?

You know, share it. It's like the number one book you give someone when they've, they've lost someone because, you know, she was so open and transparent about her self delusions and, and also trying to understand what the process of grieving was.

And someone I've read all her stuff, and there's incredible stoke themes in blue nights, a year of magical thinking.

And then she chronicles how she basically can't function for really like nine months after his death that she just doesn't know what to do with herself.

And then three months, she writes The Year of Magical Thinking.

she thinks this book is the chronicle of the worst year of her life. And it's like, life is like, wait, there's more coming.

His book Discipline Equals Freedom is very good.

This, of course, is the plot of Albert Camus' The Fall,

his haunting 1956 novel about a Paris defense lawyer's fall from grace.

Have you read Camus The Fall?

It opens with the story. The guy is walking along the streets of Amsterdam and he hears someone go into the water whether it's a fall or a suicide and he convinces himself that he doesn't hear it, right? That oh, it was nothing. But he comes to find out that someone did die because of his indifference or the rationalization in his head. And basically the rest of the novel he's sort of haunted by this idea.

And then her new book which I just finished No Cure for Being Human and other truths I need to hear.

I do Sena Kla's on the shortness of life

I was rereading the Sena's consolation to his mother who was grieving the loss not just of a grandchild at this time but Sena himself who'd just been exiled

he says stosism offers counsel it offers counsel something to lean on in precisely these moments when we've lost someone

He's got some great books as well that are worth reading. Love your enemies, The Conservative Heart, the road to freedom, gross national happiness and his first book Who Really Cares, which is about charitable giving.

In the amazing and must-read 1946 novel All The King's Men, the character Adam Stanton is like this. Because he is a romantic, Jack Burton, the narrator explains, he has a picture of the world in his head. And when the world doesn't conform in respect to the picture, he wants to throw the world away.

While Adam Stanton was throwing the baby out with the bath, Marcus Aurelius was writing, if the cucumber is bitter, throw it out. If there are brambles in the path, go around.

I'm rereading Robert Penn Warren's kingfish right now oh yeah all the kingsmen all the kingsmen and obviously I read it maybe 10 years ago when I lived in New Orleans and I'm reading it now and it's just like it's remarkable how oh this is just politics today like he's talking about newspapers and you know rallies today we're talking about social media and rallies but it's the same thing

So it's how to stop worrying, which is great. And like each chapter has like a little gem and like you read it and you get this little gem and you're like, ah, and then it like and then it's nice. And then you like you feel you feel like a little relieved.

You feel like a little catharsis and then you can go to sleep.

There is a section in Pressfield's book, The Daily Pressfield that I really like. He actually dedicated this book to me, which is pretty awesome. And he has a whole section of the book called You Can't Be a Pro If You Can't Say No.

Stephen press field has a new book out called the daily press field it's page day book of the best of Stephen press field

check out the daily press field I'll tell you more about it in part two

it's really good it's really good this conversation is really good

That's why Plutarch's Lives, which is another incredible book, has been so popular with ambitious and driven people over the years.

His works on the Stoics of the imminent Greeks and Romans were popular not just in ancient Rome but in Shakespeare's day, popular with the founding fathers, they're popular even today.

We sell them in the bookstore.

His best book was Masters and Commanders. I haven't read that one. He was very young.