Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world. This is why we have limits. He was a good man. He was given incredibly, nearly unlimited power, and somehow proves himself worthy of it. Marcus Aurelius was incredible. And that's sort of the point, right? He was incredible. He somehow proved himself worthy of all that fame and wealth and responsibility. But he's the exception that proves the rule. The rule being, of course, that kings are bad, that power is corrupted, that no one does well when surrounded by sycophants or having every whim catered to.
Marcus Aurelius ultimately was checked by philosophy, but if he hadn't been, it could have easily been a Nero or a Calicula. And the American founders knew this well. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could, Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband. And that's why they set up explicit checks and balances. It's why they divided power. It's why they created mechanisms for accountability, for removal, for restraint. They knew that virtue mattered, but they knew better than to depend on virtue alone. Because most people aren't Marcus Aurelius, and neither are we. And that's why we have to set up similar checks and balances in our own lives, in our own businesses and pursuits. It's why we need people who tell us the truth to keep us accountable.
Because we are not incredible. We are susceptible to being dyed purple. As Mark Shrelia said, we need limits. We need constraints. We need philosophy and accountability to keep us decent. Not because we're bad, but because we're human.