Stoic Meditations

Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure comes natural to human beings. But, so argue the Stoics, being prosocial is even more fundamental to our nature as social animals. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Just like a catchy tune won't leave your mind easily, once it has gained access, so with thoughts of unvirtuous actions. So don't grant them entrance in the first place. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

How many things are superfluous; we merely used them not because we needed them, but because we had them. How much do we acquire simply because our neighbors have acquired such things, or because most people possess them! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Finding yourself at a party and want to know if someone else is practicing Stoicism? Ask them what they think is the chief good and the chief bad.  --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

To have whatsoever they wish is not in people's power; it is in their power not to wish for what they have not, but cheerfully to employ what comes to them. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

“Bad bread!” you say. But just wait for it; it will become good. Hunger will make even such bread delicate and of the finest flavor. And the same goes for any other external thing, whether a necessity or a luxury. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Nothing need provoke our anger if we do not add to our pile of troubles by getting angry. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

It's relatively easy to stay on the right track by following simple methods, but there are countless ways to go wrong if we don't pay attention. Here are three basic rules from Stoic philosophy to keep your life on the right track. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

How do we strike a good balance between cultivating externals, like wealth, and focusing on the improvement of our own character? Different philosophical schools gave different answers to this question. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Philosophers have debated for millennia the nature of ethics. Is it arbitrary? Or are there universal moral laws that we can apprehend through reason? Neither, say the Stoics. Theirs is a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Desires have to be reined in, fear to be suppressed, proper actions to be arranged, debts to be paid; we therefore include self-restraint, bravery, prudence, and justice among the virtues – assigning to each quality its special function. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

There are, as you know, vices which are next-door to virtues. Carelessness looks like ease, and rashness like bravery. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

No doubt you have seen dogs playing with, and fawning before, each other, and thought, ‘Nothing could be friendlier.’ But just throw some meat in the middle, and then you’ll know what friendship amounts to. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics understood what bodily health is, and from that they deduced the existence of a certain mental health also. They knew about bodily strength, and from that they inferred the existence of mental sturdiness. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

The Stoics regard nothing as good which can be put to wrong use by any person. And we can all see for ourselves to what wrong uses many people put their riches, their high position, or their physical powers. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Externals — such as money, possessions, and the like — are how we exercise our virtue, which cannot be expressed in a vacuum. And one of the four cardinal virtues is temperance. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

He who has much, desires more – a proof that he has not yet acquired enough; but he who has enough has attained that which never fell to the rich man’s lot – a stopping-point. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

In order to live a meaningful life (ethics) we need to reason well about things (logic), and we need to have a good grasp of how the world works (science). How are your logic and science, then? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

We take a lot of things for granted, when life is going well for us. But — fools that we are — we really appreciate what we had only once we’ve lost it. That's why the Stoics devised a series of exercises in mild self-deprivation. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support

Here is a basic Stoic equation: external thing or activity + virtue = good, while its opposite is: external thing or activity + vice = bad. So, is your profession good or bad, according to this approach? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stoicmeditations/support