Defining Your Duty and Character

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world We all have bad habits. Some of us procrastinate. Nearly all of us, as Seneca said, are slaves to something, food or sex or booe or ambition We don't work as hard as we should or we work too hard too quick with our temper or we're too slow to ask for help The point is we're not what we could be And in some cases, we're quite messed up. indndeed, we are all quite flawed On an episode of the Dailyy Stoic podcast with Tim Urban is the creator of But why? And he's the author of this book called What's our Prom? talk to him about his lifelong struggle with some of these very habits, namely ion and procrastination And Tim was quite aware about how his weaknesses in these areas have made things harder for him up the years We also expressed a sincere belief in his ability to change and grow In other words, he was broken but not He retains, despite this discouragement a growth mindset He refuses to relinquish what the Stoics believed was our ultimate power our sense of agency over our own thoughts our emotions and our responses to life You know, it's easy to be cynical about ourselves. We know more than anyone how long we've been struggling with things. We know how ingrained our bad habits are. how hard it's going to be to get over them But we can't give up. We can't quit on ourselves If we don't believe we're capable of change, who will? And if we don't believe we're capable of change, then we are definitely not capable of change. We must remember the hopeful note that Marcus Aurelius strikes at the end of meditations Within ten days, he says You will seem a go to those to whom you are now a beast and an ape if you return to your principles the worship of reason I really wna tell you about the Daily Stoke habits course, Daily Stoke, Hbits for success, habits for happiness It helps you do what the Stokics are talking about, which is how to avoid bad habits, how to form better new habits. I think it's one of the best things we've done. It's six weeks of habit formation, thinking about philosophy, applying it to your everyday life. These are habits I try to apply in my life that Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus and Musonius and all the stokes we've talked about tri to apply in theirs Great stuff based on philosophy, psychology, research history and I think you're really going to get a lot out of it. You can check that out at dailyoke. com slash habits or if you join Daily Stoke Life, which you can join at dailystoke lifeife. coma you get that course and all our other ones for free. So check both those out, Daily Stoke Life and Daily Stoke, Hbits for success, habits for happiness It was on the Senator's way into the Senate that the emperor stopped He basically told him to shut up to stop criticizing the regime. And the senator said, It's my job as a senator to do and say what I think. So the emperor threatened to remove him from the Senate. And so the senator said, That's well and good. But while I am a senator, I will continue to do my job. And so the Emperor Vespasian fixes the Stoic philosopher Helvidius Priscus with a stare and says, if you don't stop going to have you killed. And Helvidus says, you do your job I'll do mine This is what courage looks like. It's not performative, it's not even public It's the politician putting not just their job, but their life on the line to do what they think is right. As rare as this was in the ancient world, I think it's rarer still today. And I want to talk about this story a little bit because I think it provides us some valuable lessons about courage, real courage that we can apply here in the present moment People think that the Stoics were teaching us to become emotionally detached, numb spectators even as the world burns around them. And this is emphatically not what stoicism is or was. And H Videus' example is proof of precisely that. I think it needs to be said. The Stoics believed in and believe in courage, public courage courage to tell the truth, courage to do your duty, the courage to stand out, the courage to stand firm, even when there is power and pressure and fear, even when your interest is in compromising. And very few people embodied that more than Helvideus here this exam Helvidius is a Roman senator who lives in the first century AD. He's not born into some super powerful, important family. He's not emperor, He's not a general. He's just, in many ways, your ordinary politician, but someone who came to believe that philosophy and indeed public service came with obligations He wasn't interested in Stoke philosophy because it would make him more resilient or more productive because he was attracted to the riddles and the puzzles of it. He studied philosophy and he put it into practice because he believed it prepared you for moments like this, because it was a philosophy for the man in the arena. It would be nice if life was soft and safe and everyone got along, but it didn't. right? You're going to have moments where comfort collides with your conscience, where it collides with your career, where there is corruption and temptation, and it's probably safer and better to do what everyone else is doing. For how Vidious philosophy was armor. It was preparation for this moment, a moment which is not unique in history where the most powerful person in the world tries to silence you or tempt you or challenge you or corrupt you. But here the emperor comes to him and says, stop getting in my way, where the emperor comes to in and says, be silent. Where does he draw this fortitude to say, whyy don't you make me? Now this story about how Videious it comes to us from Epictetus. I think Epictetus is an interesting source here because Epictetus was a slave was owned by someone who was high ranking in Nero's court. So Epictetus would have seen lots of Roman politicians, lots of wealthy powerful, important Romans, and he would have seen how they debased themselves, out of fear of Nero, out of greed wanting to profit from Nero, a lack of backbone and spine. And so for him to call out this example with Helvidius, I think is illustrative because he would have seen the opposite of it far more than he would have seen examples Vespassian is not the worst emperor of Rome. Certainly he wasn't anywhere near as bad as Nero or Caligula or even Claudius. He's not as bad as others, but clearly, like so many authoritarian rulers, like so many strongmen, he did not appreciate criticism or opposition, especially public opposition We have this even in democracies, right? The president calls and you don't want to be on the wrong side of the most powerful man in the world. The problem with this is that good governance requires opposition. In fact, by rubber stamping, by being a sycophant, by not speaking the truth when you see it, you are actually doing the emperor or anyone you serve a grave disservice, right? The whole story about how the emperor has no clothes. It's a funny story we tell kids. The true moral, the true lesson of that story is like the emperor is being taken advantage of And then not being well served by everyone around him who's afraid to hurt his feelings. He's not getting the truth that he is in fact embarrassingly naked and exposed. In the American system, ambition is supposed to check ambition. There is supposed to be by zealously guarding your prerogatives, by being a senator, by not rubber stamping, by speaking up, by criticizing, by saying, I don't think that's a good idea, or hey, that's illegal or hey that's morally wrong. you are actually not just doing your job. you are operating as an important check on power. And we know that unchecked power ultimately hurts not just the leader, but the public. The context of their interaction comes on a day where Vespasian, we can deduce was trying to ram something through the Senate, which was largely a performative body anyway. And he asks Helvideus not to attend. And he's probably asking him not to attend because he knows he's going to oppose it. Vespasian doesn't want the opposition and so he doesn't want an opponent But how Vidia says, lookook, I'm a senator. I have to show up and do my job. I'm not going to, by absenting myself tacitly approve what you're doing. So just here, this is remarkable, right? He's not going along to get along. He's not playing by the fake rules. It's not about him either. In fact, he probably doesn't enjoy the opposition or the conflict. He's just saying like, look, I was elected by the people, I was appointed to this position. I have to do this job Y job comes with duties and responsibilities and I can't abandon them just because it's inconvenient for you, or more importantly, just because you asked me not to. Then what does Vespastian do? He escalates. He says, Okaykay, if you come, just don't speak. But again, Helvidius says, my job is to speak. He says, if you don't ask for my opinion, if you don't do something I disagree with, then sure, I'll remain silent But again, look at the logic here. The logic here is duty and responsibility. He's not like relishing the conflict or the disagreement. He's not doing it because, oh, hey, this is good for my career, this plays well to the media, you know, this is red meat for my base. He's saying like, look, I got to do what I gott to do. And so again, Helvidius and Vespasion are in this inevitable conflict because one doesn't want the person to do the job and the other person is insisting that they do their responsibility and their duty And I think this is the essence of Stoke philosophy, and it's something that we are sorely missing here today You should be able to be comfortable anywhere, but you should also be comfortable in ide your own house. Like your space should feel you should look the way you want it to look. You should have the stuff that you want to have oday's sponsor Wayfare comes in becausecause a budget doesn't need to get in the way of having all of those things with plenty of options for every style you can imagine Definitely find something you like on Wayfare and at a price you can't beat Got a new rug for the living room on Wayfare. normally rugs are just like crazy expensive and then Do I like this rug? Do I not like this rug Book, we know we've got kids, we got a dog. 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We're citizen, we're a senator, we're a parent, we're a city council member, we're on the board of a nonprofit. We're an officer in the Marine Corps or in the Army. And this role comes with certain obligations and responsibilities. Now, these are not just aligned with the customer or the public or whomever, but they are uncontested and uncontroversial But there are moments where these obligations become inconvenient, where they become onerous, where they become complicated, where they become potentially even painful. And that's the test. It's easy to be virtuous when virtue is rewarded, when virtue is celebrated, when virtue is very well understood. It's easy to be honest when the honesty is safe, or there are no stakes. But what happens when you have to say something that you know someone doesn't to They say it's not a principle unless it costs you money. Doing the right thing when it costs you, that's what we're talking about. And it's here that Vespasian makes those stakes explicit. He threatens Helvidius with death, which is power that the Roman emperor has. And death at the hands of the Roman emperor, as Jesus could attest or Seneca, Helvidus' friend could attest is very often extremely painful. And yet even so, staring down his own fate. Olvidia says, you do your job. It's not going to prevent me from doing mine If you think that as the emperor, you have to kill me over saying and doing what I think is right. So be it, I'm going to be a senator up until my final seconds on this bill devotion, that act of duty and responsibility and courage is something that has echoed down through the ages. He's basically saying to the emperor You can control whether you punish me, but you don't get to decide whether I betray my value You can kill me, but you can't make me debase myself. You can't make me be someone other than I want to be. That's something only we can do to ourselves. And that is what stoicism is. I think this is so important, right? Stoicism is not silence, it's not complicity, it is not powerlessness, right? It's not avoiding conflict at all costs. It's not pretending that injustice doesn't matter because it's happening far away or it's happening at levels far above us. It's not emotional suppression And it's certainly not dodging responsibility under the guise of cultivating inner peace. The Stokes believed we had duties to ourselves and duties to other people. This is where the virtue of justice comes in courage and justice are related to each other. The Stokes believed we have a duty to truth to society that if they swore an oath, if they said they would do something, if they believe that they were put here to do a task, they wouldn't let anything get between them in that task, even if that would cost them, even if they'd be criticized for it, even if they'd be attacked And so the Stoics consistently found themselves in opposition to corrupt and tyrannical rulers. Now Seneca plays more of a dual role in Nero's time. and he is rightly flayed by this, not just by historians ever since, but by people in his own time. He was contrasted with, say, Thracia who is just a perpetual thorn in Nero's side as a senator, as Hvideious was. And actually, this group of Stoics becomes known as the Stoic opposition. And time and time again, they stood up when they saw something that was happening that was wrong, when they saw someone breaking the law, breaking the rules. And this goes back to Cato, who is the mortal enemy of Julius Caesar. Again, Thoracia in the time of Nero, Agrippinus this sort petual hereditary hatred of demagogues and tyrants. and then of course, we have Helvidius confronting Vespasian as well. So these are not detached spectators. These are people who are living their philosophy publicly. They have a political philosophy and then they have their actual philosophy and they're applying these things even when it is not safe So this version of stoicism that sometimes you see people talking about on the internet is just wrong. This one that's like, stay out of everything, donon't care. None of this matters. Focus on yourself. Why are you being political? It doesn't make a difference. You're gonna offend some of your audience. I get this all the time, but this is just totally wrong. If your version of stoicism makes you passive in the face of corrupt or injustice, that is not stoicism. That's cowardice. That is self protection with the philosophical label. Stoicism isn't just like posting nonsense on the internet, right? Like I think it's really important that the criticism that Helvidius is doing has real stakes to it. Like he's not tweeting about this. like he's saying it to the emperor's face. He's doing it when it actually costs him He is engaged and active. He's not lobbying this from another country from far away from safety. He is doing it in the arena. he's doing it in the room where these things happen. That really matters too. It's easy to just criticize from the outside, but how are you really putting your ass on the line with these things? That's part of this too. Hevidus isn't just this like gadfly eccentric contrian. He's not just trying to get attention. he's not trying build his brand as like a countercultural figure or something. Again, he is part of the system, he's engaged in the system, he is participating in the system, but it's there that he is speaking and saying these truths. It's so easy to be an outsider. Again, like today, it's easy to be active on social media or say, hey, I don't like what's happened to my country, so I'm going move to another country and maybe from there Then you're criticizing. No no, how Videus is doing this from inside the tent as long as he's able to be inside the tent. I think that's really powerful too. Now here's the part that we have to talk about because sometimes we sanitize these stories when we tell them we round off the edges. I'd love to tell you that Cato one triumphed over Caesar. He did not. He ended up dying on the floor of his house while Caesar T triumph. Thracia is executed by Nero, Agrippinus is exiled. Helvidus does not win over Vespassian, not in the strictest sense of that word. Vespassian doesn't go, you know what? you're right. I was being an asshole. I'm so boulled over by your bravery. I'm gonna change my ways. Helvidus was not executed by Vespassian. He's later exiled by Nero and then ultimately executed byo It pays the ultimate price for this. We'd like virtue to guarantee success. We'd like moral righteousness to triumph. It might be true that over the arc of history it bends towards justice, but that requires a lot of polling and it requires a lot of sacrifice. The Stoics did not think that courage alone would triumph, that you would always win, that just having your heart in the right place was enough. But they did believe that trying to do the right thing and failing was better than preserving your hide or your career or your life at the cost of your honor and your values. They understood betraying yourself, that going along to get along That lying or that cowering in fear was a kind of death. For instance, in the modern political context, to sell out but keep your seat or your office or your job is to lose something even more important, which is the value of that job, the dignity of that job. It's like they say in the Bible, what good is it to gain the whole world if you lose your soul The Stoics know we don't control our leaders necessarily, right? Helvidius does not control Vespasian. He didn't get a vote in whether he was exiled or not. He could not defy death. But he does control whether he allows his fear or his self interest or his greed or his love of having a seat at the table made his decisions for him