This is How You Die Before Your Time

Ryan Holiday (0:00)

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 how you die before your time. It might help you stay in the game, it might make you successful, it might even keep you alive. Worked for Seneca, right? He did what he had to do. He never criticized Nero, made some money, had some influence, got some things done. But ultimately it came at the cost of his soul. Seneca who wrote about how we are dying every day also died before his time in the way he collaborated and capitulated to Nero's insanity and tyranny. He was not unlike certain politicians today who in exchange for power, give up their power to be on the right side of the regime. He was not unlike certain people today who turn off their consciences to stay on top. And the saddest thing was that Seneca must have known this. His writings are replete with criticisms of old lawyers begging for another case, rich people living in slavery beneath marble and gold. These were trades he was saying that come at the expense of life. These were people who died before their time.

It's a bad deal, okay? It's a pathetic deal. It is not worth it. And besides, in the end, you know what it got Seneca? It got him a death sentence from Nero anyway.

Seneca spent his life writing about virtue and courage and what it means to truly live. And yet, when confronted with Nero's power, he compromised, he rationalized and ultimately paid for it with his life.

In Dying Every Day, Seneca at the court of Nero, the historian James Romm tells the fascinating story about this happened, how one of Rome's greatest philosophers became entangled with its worst emperor. And it's a powerful reminder that there are ways to die before our time, long before that time actually comes. You can listen to James on the podcast. I thought I'd bring you a little chunk of that. Go listen to the whole episode, I'll link to that. And do pick up Dying Every Day, The Pending Ports, one of my favorite books. You'll really like it. It changed my life, changed the course of my life. And I wish everyone in Washington or whatever country you live in, wherever your leadership is, I wish they would read it too.

James Romm (2:43)

With public political figures, one can never draw a fine line between what's their authentic philosophy or their authentic point of view and what is crafted for public consumption.

Ryan Holiday (2:57)

So is that a type you think that gets like, does politics turn you into that person or is it that those people are attracted to politics?

James Romm (3:06)

You know, that's a great question, especially a pressing question in Plato's case, because he had never thought of himself as a political player and he'd never been involved in politics until he went to Syracuse. And he's at great pains to explain his motives for going there as non-political, that he didn't want to meddle in the rulership of Syracuse. He wanted to, A, protect his protege, Dion, and B, convince people that he was not all talk and no action, that he had enough conviction in his beliefs to try to act on them.

But he went reluctantly, he says, and he got out as soon as he could. So I think in Plato's case, it's especially that he was not naturally interested or certainly adept at politics, and his participation there bears that out because it became a disaster very quickly.

Ryan Holiday (4:11)

Yeah, there's like a sort of, you would think that they would be really good at reading people, but there's kind of a lack of savviness, like an inability to see what is so obviously a flaw in someone's character or approach. Or maybe it's an ability to be persuaded in the room. There's a line in Meditations, where Marcus Aurelius thanks his philosophy teacher for teaching him not to fall for every smooth talker.

And then you think Aristotle falls for Alexander, Plato falls, Seneca certainly falls. There is this seduction that happens. And it's almost not, it's not the seduction in the way that those tyrants seduced everyone else, which is I'll make you rich and famous and powerful. But it's almost another level of it where it's like, this person's flawed, I can see that.

And I'm not going to be one of the enablers. I'm not going to be one of the, I'm going to be above them using them for my purposes. Or that I can reform them, or I can control and contain them in a way that other people can't.