Taking Wisdom From The Lives Of The Stoics | Ryan Holiday | Modern Wisdom Podcast 226

Can you explain why Stoicism is having such modern day popularity at the moment? It's not like I'm seeing tons of people turn into Taoism or Confucianism, but Stoicism is like the hot new girl in school at the moment.

Yeah. I don't, I don't know exactly why that is. It's been a- an interesting journey. I mean, I've been writing about Stoicism for almost 15 years. So, I- I ... Even in my own time writing about it, I've seen some sort of peaks and valleys. But, I- I- I think ultimately it comes down to Stoicism is a philosophy designed both around and for dealing with adversity. So, I don't think it should surprise us that- that it- it- it tends to pop back up when, you know, things are difficult. I mean, Marcus Aurelius is writing Meditations during the Antonine Plague. So, the idea that, you know, it- it would have something to teach us during, you know, the COVID-19 pade- pandemic, I don't think should be that surprising.

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Y- you're totally right. It- it does read very modern. Why is it that Stoicism reads like it was written two weeks ago and not two millennia ago?

Well, e- even- even when you think about how Marcus Aurelius is writing, so he's writing during the Antonine Plague, but- but his book, Meditations, it translates ... He was writing in Greek, uh, instead of the less formal Latin, and- and he was writing ... It- it- the title of it translates "To Himself." Right? So, he was writing his book to himself. It wasn't ever intended for publication. And- and even Seneca's writing, who's probably the most accessible of the Stoics, you know, a good chunk of it survives to us in the form of letters he was writing to his friend. Letters of a Stoic, Letters From a Stoic, is really Seneca writing to his friend, Lucilius. And so, i- if- if we can think of the literary implications of that, that instead of trying to sort of get down this brilliant theory or to perfectly craft their words in such a way, that it's accessible and- and I ... That's what I love about the Stoics is that a- again, it's not a collection of theories, it's just, you know, real people talking about real problems. And- and as it happens, the problems of the ancient world, although unique in many ways, were not that different than the problems we have today. Like pe- people are people, we get jealous, we, you know, we have urges, you know, we have ambitions, we make mistakes. You know, people are people.

I understand that, yeah. I did some research. I- in the time that most of the Stoics were alive, the entire global population was somewhere between about 150 and 330 million people. So, at most, it was like the same as today's population of the United States. (laughs) Given that there's-