Among Us a Sage - Ryan Holiday

Introduction

When have our families needed wisdom more?

When have our schools, our communities, our leaders, needed wisdom more?

When has our country needed wisdom more?

When has the world needed wisdom more?

Yet, wisdom speaks in whispers next to noisy freeways, in small, simple phrases buried among hundreds of thousands of unnecessary, if not untrue, words on Facebook, Twitter, and Fox News.

A loud, inflammatory sage blasting belligerence through a bullhorn is an oxymoron. By definition, sages are humble and quiet. They don’t shout their messages. You have to listen for them.

Socrates was not known to wear expensive suits, sport a fake tan, or own his own golf course. Diogenes, the cynic philosopher who famously went around with a lantern searching the faces of the people of Athens in search of one honest man, lived contentedly in a barrel.

Sages still walk quietly among us and spread wisdom. They are humble, even though none is known to live in barrels these days. Because they never make the cover of Rolling Stone, or have hotels named after them, you have to hunt for them. A few, like Gandhi, become famous, but not because they seek fame; fame is thrust upon them.

For the most part, if we want wisdom from the sages of our generation, we have to seek it out, listen carefully, and tune our attention to the wisdom channel.

That’s my quest: to seek out the little-known sages who walk among us, people you may run into in a restaurant and never know that dining next to you is a truly wise person.

Ryan Holiday is such a sage.

Ryan is among a small group of individuals, along with Donald Robertson, Massimo Pigliucci, and Professor Ward Farnsworth, who have breathed new life into the ancient philosophy, Stoicism.

As a humble sage, Ryan lives outside Austin with his wife, two boys, and a small herd of cows, donkeys, and goats. He has a bookstore in Bastrop: The Painted Porch [1] (a subtle reference to the Stoas of Ancient Athens, no doubt).

In the last decade, he has written 12 books back-to-back, numerous articles, and daily emails to his followers, totaling roughly 2.5 million words.

Master philosopher, master historian, conversant in Greek and Latin, Ryan can also talk baseball with you over a longneck, as well as Mickey Mantle or Dizzy Dean (for those of you old folks like me who remember them).

If I could write like anyone else, I would write like Ryan Holiday. He is one of the few writers who truly understands the concept of “cognitive ease,” a phrase coined by Daniel Kahneman, and one to which I will return again and again.

His writing is clear and understandable; he knows the value of short sentences, short paragraphs, and short chapters. In every chapter of his books, he calls upon some historical figure to make a point about wisdom.

Wisdom is neither verbose nor ambiguous.

Ryan’s latest project is to write four books, one on each of the Stoic virtues: wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. He published the first in this series, Courage is Calling, in 2021. Most recently, he published his work on temperance: Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control.

This post is just a teaser to introduce you to Ryan and to give you a taste of temperance. Here are some excerpts from Discipline is Destiny:

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Ruling Over the Body

Referring to Lou Gehrig: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

Attack the Dawn

Referring to the work ethic of a young unknown writer named Toni Morrison who would one day win a Nobel Prize:

·     Wake up

·     Show up

·     Be present

·     Give it everything you’ve got.

Avoid the Superfluous 

“The more a man is, the less he wants.”

“The less you desire, the richer you are, the more powerful you are. It’s that simple.”

Clean Your Desk

Quoting Gretchen Rubin: “outer order, inner calm.”

“If we want to think well and work well, it doesn’t start with the mind. It starts with walking around and cleaning up.”

Just Show Up

Using Thomas Edison as his example, Ryan shows us the power of grit.

“Consistency is a superpower.”

“One thing a day adds up. Each day adds up.”

Sweat the Small Stuff

We have all heard the saying, “the devil is in the details,” but that is only part of the quote from Admiral Hyman Rickover. The remainder is: “but so is salvation.”

One of my favorite characters from the jazz age, Zelda Fitzgerald, said, “It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.”

“By ignoring the little things, we make ourselves vulnerable. Is anything made better by inattention? the philosopher Epictetus would ask. Of course not!

Practice … Then Practice More

Ryan tells the story of the great samurai, Musashi, whose personal mantra was “Training from morning to night.”

“Practice over a long time turns into second nature.”

“We don’t rise to the occasion; we fall to the level of our training.”

“There is no greatness without practice.”

Just Work

“The sled dog gets anxious if it doesn’t get to wear its harness. The horse wants to go out and trot. The bee dies off if cut off from the hive. When you find out what you are meant to do, you do it.”

What Can You Endure? 

Fortitudine vincimus: By endurance, we conquer.

Ruling Over Yourself 

Referring to Queen Elizabeth: “When she is brilliant is in her quietness.”

Look at Everything Like This 

“The pause is everything.

The one before …

… jumping to conclusions

… prejudging

… assuming the worst

… rushing to solve your children’s problems for them (or put them back to sleep)

… forcing a problem into some kind of a box

… assigning blame

… taking offense

… turning away in fear

Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

 “The number of people who stand ready to consume one’s time to no purpose is almost countless.” Booker T. Washington

“Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly.” Montaigne

“If you don’t know where you are sailing, the Stoics said, no wind is favorable.”

“The secret to success in almost all fields is large, uninterrupted blocks of focused time.”

“No one can achieve their main thing without the discipline to make it the main thing.”

The Battle Against Pleasure 

“As Musonius Rufus reminds us, ‘by the standard of pleasure, nothing is more pleasant than self-control and … nothing is ever more painful than lack of self-control.’”

Beware This Madness 

“The philosopher Democritus wasn’t wrong when he described sex a ‘mild madness.’ It makes us crazy. It makes us do shameful things.” [2]

“Anger is just a slightly less mild form of madness. Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad …”

“That’s the irony of our obsession with talking so positively about ‘passion’ these days. The ancients had precisely the opposite view of the word. The passions were considered very dangerous. Something to be aware of. Because even when they were positive – which they often were not – they tended to lead us astray. To hijack our minds or our bodies, and sometimes both. We codify this even into our legal system, referring to crimes of passion.”

“Of all the bad habits to quit, passion is the hardest one.”

“The key is to slow things down.”

Endure the Unendurable 

“Sometimes,” as Seneca would write from the perspective of his own crippling illnesses and then exile, “even to live is an act of courage.”

“Life is not fair. It is not kind. It demands from us not just a strength of body and mind but also of soul – what the ancients called karteria, or perseverance.”

Digging Deeper

If you want to experience more of Ryan Holiday, I recommend the following:

·     The Daily Stoic

·     The Ego is the Enemy

·     The Obstacle is the Way

·     Stillness is the Key

·     Courage is Calling

Sages are among us.

Seek them out, listen carefully, and you will hear them.

[1] https://www.thepaintedporch.com/

[2] I am not sure that this is always true, but looking back at my life, if I am honest, many a time has lust dominated my prefrontal cortex and led to unwise decisions.