Stoicism: How To Think Like A Roman Emperor - Donald Robertson | Modern Wisdom Podcast 274

Nobody's perfect, nobody's wise. But to feel the kind of pain, in a way, of lacking wisdom, and to crave it, and to realize it's the most important thing in life, and to dedicate your life to this kind of endless journey is really what life is actually all about. (wind blowing)

You're a cognitive behavioral therapy-trained psychologist. Why are you-

Yeah.

... writing about Marcus Aurelius?

That's a really good question. Because actually, my first love was philosophy. And, uh, I, I think I came to philosophy looking for a philosophy of life, really. You know, something that would help me, uh, feel better about life, cope with adversity. And I didn't find it at university when I was doing my philosophy degree, uh, so then I started training in psychotherapy and stuff like that. Then after that, I realized I'd missed something, which is the one school, one major school of ancient philosophy that you don't normally study in an undergraduate philosophy curriculum. Uh, so it's like the stone that the builders rejected became the cornerstone, kind of thing. And so I discovered Stoicism, and I thought, "This is the thing that I was looking for the whole time I was at university and nobody ever told me about." And, uh, so I got into Stoicism and I realized it was also the philosophical inspiration for cognitive therapy. Not a lot of people know that. So the two things wedded together, and I thought, "Oh, cognitive therapists must all be really into Stoicism, then." It turned out they weren't, so I ended up writing a book about that. And I thought, "Oh, this is a nerdy, obscure subject that no one's ever gonna be interested in. I'm never gonna be talking about this on podcasts or anything like that in the future." And then it's, weirdly, it became trendy, like, a few years after I started writing about it, and I got dragged into this thing that suddenly people were getting tattooed on them and stuff like that. It kind of became a bit, uh, hip, just as I was getting a little bit old. Actually, I feel, uh, you know ...

(laughs)

... I'm get- I'm getting older now.

You've missed the boat.

It's all kind of young, young kids that are into it and stuff. Uh, as I'm reliably told by the publishing industry, there is Millennials that work in the tech industry that are the, the demographic-

Okay.

... that are into Stoicism, mainly.

Why do you think that is?

Well, see, the thing is, you know, I always think I'm in a very lucky position, 'cause I talk to so many people. So sometimes when I'm answering questions about Stoicism, I think, "Oh, that's easy, 'cause I've asked them and they keep telling me why it is." So I'll tell you what they've told me, basically. So they tell me that they feel overwhelmed by social media and the news media bombarding them with alarmist stuff about things that aren't under their direct control. Like, they think the media are trying to fearmonger and instill hatred, but ... Which is accurate, probably. And they, they don't know how to deal with that, and they feel that they need some kind of philosophy of life to cope with it. Um, but ... Like Nietzsche said, you know, "God is dead, um, but we're still kind of living in his shadow," so they want something that's kind of like what Christianity used to do for our, our, our grandparents and so on. Um, but a lot of people today, especially, I think, in the tech industry, are, are quite rationalist, and they, they want a secular philosophy that's based on reason rather than faith, revelation, or tradition. And so they find in Stoicism – and there are historical reasons for this, uh, why they would – a, a secular alternative to, to Christianity and a kind of secular th- They want something like CBT, but that is bigger, that's a wh- Like a Western yoga, they also say.