Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, to help you learn from them, to follow in their example and to start your day off, the little dose of courage and discipline and justice in wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com. This is the Revenge.
What they're doing is terrible. It's short-sighted. Much of it is illegal. The news is depressing.
The interactions are disappointing. Welcome to living in a world filled with the kind of people that it has always been filled with jerks, crooks, bullies, overconfident morons. You think Seneca didn't see this in Nero's court? You think Cato didn't experience it every day in Rome?
Of course they did, probably worse. So how did they fight it? How did they get revenge on the bad guys? Well, first off, let's credit the Stoics with fighting.
The Stoics were not passive. The best Stoics did not simply accept the awfulness of their times or participate in the corruption. They were part of the resistance. They were the valiant opposition.
They didn't always succeed, but they tried. But they did always get their revenge and it is a way that we can get revenge today. The Stoics did not let the awfulness and evil of their time make them awful and evil. They took their revenge as Marcus Aurelius said we must, by not being like our enemy.
They took their revenge by being good and decent and kind. They took their revenge by living their lives well, by enjoying the beauty of the world and demonstrating beauty in their own choices. And so, must we.