5 Exercises From Stoicism To Improve Your Life | Massimo Piggliuci | Modern Wisdom Podcast 170

Epictetus says, "Some things are up to you and other things are not up to you." And then he lists some... the things that are up to you, and then he lists the things that are not up to you. And then he says, "You should be concerning yourself with the first one and not the second one." Which is pretty sound advice. If something... if there's nothing you can do about something, you might as well ignore it because what are you gonna do about it?

It seems like stoicism is kind of similar to the hot new girl in school. You know, that everyone's interested in. She's just arrived here, and everyone's thinking, "Oh, she's I want a bit of her. Everyone else seems to be interested in her." So, what is it about stoicism that's giving us this resurgence in the modern era? I'm not seeing waves of books being written about a resurgence of Confucianism or Taoism. You know, what is it about stoicism that's, that's made it the po- hot new girl?

Yeah, that's an interesting question. Well, of course, um, as far as hot new girls go, stoicism is about 24 centuries old. Um, so it's pretty hot.

She's, she's aging well.

She's aging definitely very well.

(laughs)

Um, I also want to make a point, a, a, actually a, uh, comment on your observation that, you know, why stoicism and not a lot of other philosophies. I've hav- I've seen since, especially since this COVID, um, brouhaha started, and this, this, this whole mess has started, I have seen a lot of articles, uh, on other philosophies, um, including Buddhism, Taoism, uh, uh, Confucianism, uh, uh... And, and if we go to the Western philosophies, also Epicureanism. But you're, you're right. Those are the exceptions. Um, the, the overwhelming majority of things that I see are, uh, uh, is about Stoicism. I think it's for two reasons, and I, I think there are actually two different reasons, depending on whether we're talking about other, uh, Eastern, uh, sorry, other Western philosophies or Eastern philosophies. Um, Eastern philosophies are just not very Western-friendly. That's one way to put it. Meaning that unless you grew up in... and vice versa, of course. Western, Western philosophies are not Eastern-friendly. But it... meaning that if you grew up with a certain, you know, uh, language, background, culture, et cetera, et cetera, uh, it is less likely that, uh, something that obviously comes from a very different language and background is going to speak to you. Like, for instance, when I... before I got into Stoicism, I was actually exploring a number of, uh, possible philosophies of life, and I, of course, checked out Buddhism, because... which is reasonably well, uh, you know, known and practiced even in the, in the West, although the Western version is significantly different from the original one. And it just didn't speak to me. I mean, I recognized... so intellectually, I recognized the, the, what they're talking about. I, I know what they're talking about. I, I appreciated their ethics, et cetera, et cetera, but the language, the examples, the, the, the way of, uh, you know, the writings is just... eh, it didn't click. And then I read Epictetus, and I said, "Holy cow, how did I never hear about this guy before?" I mean, this guy clicked immediately. And as I said, I sus- I suspect it's the same the other way around if you go West or East. Of course, with plenty of exceptions. I mean, How To Be a Stoic, the first book that I wrote about Stoicism has been published in Japan and Korea and China. So, it's not like e- th- there are no- there's no audience, but it certainly is a fraction compared to Confucianism or Buddhism and so on and so forth. So, I think that's part of the explanation in terms of Western, uh, readings that you might have encountered. Now, the interesting thing is, well, why not Epicureanism or... You know, there's a little bit more about