The Daily Stoic
by Ryan Holiday
Stoic philosophy has never sat well with me—I’m always at odds with the fact that in order to manifest true Stoicism, you have to discard your emotions, and act on rational choice alone. “BUT MUH EMOTIONS,” I lamented, “it’s all I have to feel alive!”
This book (unlike “The Obstacle is the Way” that I have read previously) takes a more holistic approach and quotes a few notable Stoics on various aspects of the “art of living one’s life” (the purpose of philosophy). Reading all the 366 quotes, I’ve got a more coherent picture of Stoicism than ever before.
One thing that particularly stood out to me while reading the book was what I would call “being right by induction.” In mathematics (and sometimes in programming), proof by induction is a common way to prove that something is covering all cases. For example, if we can give a correct answer for 0 (the base case) and the next number (0 + 1 or 1), then “by induction” every next step is an instance of the step “number + 1”, which, in turn, means that we have all the numbers covered.
It is the same for Stoics. Similar to Buddhists, they say that you will only suffer if you try rely on events outside of your immediate control (e. g. the future or other people), hence you must only focus on the choices you make about things under your immediate control. Which is, obviously, what you do here and now. This is the base case—if you do the “right” thing now, you are behaving honestly and correctly, according to the Stoics.
The induction step is the integration of these moments where you are doing the right thing. If you ignore things outside your immediate control and follow your immediate and rational choice from one moment to the next, then by induction you will live as a true philopher, you will have learned the “art of living” by showing that you know how to do it, moment to moment.
Both the Buddhist notion of “groundlessness” (that the future is uncertain, and change is inevitable) and this Stoic notion of “being right by induction” have been powerful and liberating in that they give you a solid (despite their meaning) alternative viewpoint that exposes a completely different view of your situation in the world. I’m constantly struggling with finding meaning in my life, and learning about both has made a difference.
I was skeptical about reading “The Daily Stoic” but the multiangular approach the author takes definitely gives enough food for thought—it’s far from the modern business book density of one idea per hundred pages. Even if you don’t like all of it, you’ll find some of it interesting.