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Ancient Heroes with Alex Petkas (Episode 9)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
What lessons are hidden in ancient biographies?
Alex Petkas is a former Classics professor who now works in the industrial coatings industry. Combining theory and practice. Modernizing Plutarch's Parallel Lives in his Cost of Glory podcast is one of his key projects. Plutarch was an ancient biographer, his most famous work, Parallel Lives, is a set of biographies of great Roman and Greeks that we can learn a lot from today.
In this conversation Caleb Ontiveros and Alex Petkas talk about characters like Marius, Cato, Sulla, and Pyrrhus. They also discuss the importance of role models and what Plutarch can teach us today.
Learn more about Alex Petkas at his website: https://ancientlifecoach.com/alex-petkas/, follow him on Twitter: @alexpetkas, and check out The Cost of Glory
(1:45) About Alex
(5:32) Why Plutarch?
(8:03) Marius
(19:21) Plutarch and Virtue
(22:31) Alexander’s Challenge
(24:28) Personal Virtue vs Political Reality
(31:30) How Alex has Applied Plutarch in His Own Life
(36:30) Caring What Other’s Think
(37:28) The Contemplation of the Sage
(41:13) Concluding Thoughts
***
Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
The Character Crisis in Business
00:00:00
Speaker
People in the business world often aren't like that committed to the long-term character. I think it's fair to speak of a character of a company. And, and, you know, that, that, that has an effect on the long-term value of a product, but we don't, we're not trained to think in these kind of long-term perspectives about things. And I, so that's like how it's affected my personal business philosophy for one. If somebody great makes a mistake that you're in this kind of emulated relationship with, you can learn so much more from the mistakes of people like that.
Stoicism Explored with Experts
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome to Stoic Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week we'll share two conversations, one between the two of us and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert.
From Classics to Coatings: Alex Petkas' Journey
00:00:50
Speaker
In this conversation, I speak with Alex Petkas. Alex is a former Classics professor who now works in the industrial coatings industry, combining theory and practice. One of his key projects is the podcast, The Cost of Glory.
00:01:08
Speaker
In this podcast, Alex modernizes Plutarch's parallel lives. Plutarch was an ancient biographer, his most famous work. The parallel lives is a set of biographies of great Romans and Greeks. Alex's podcast brings these stories to life in an accessible, entertaining, and important way.
Moral Lessons from Historical Figures
00:01:31
Speaker
It's a great project because it focuses on individuals, individuals who can serve as both role models and anti-models. We talk about characters like Marius, Cato, Sulla, Pyrrhus. We also talk about the importance of role models and how ancient lives carry lessons for ordinary life and business. Here is Alex Petkus. Thanks for joining, Alex. Great to be here, Caleb. Thanks for having me.
00:02:00
Speaker
So let's start with a broad question. What's your story?
00:02:05
Speaker
So I got interested in ancient philosophy and the classical world through, I was interested in Christianity first, raised in the Greek Orthodox Church. And that kind of led me to the study of ancient Greek. I was a terrible student in high school. And so I always felt like I was behind that I wanted to be educated, that I was not educated in college. And I was like, oh, I got to catch up. And so I ended up chasing this thread of trying to understand
00:02:33
Speaker
Western culture and trying to get the education that I felt like I should have gotten when I was a kid. I kind of just kept chasing it on into graduate school because I pieced together the leaders of the past, the great kind of like leaders of the West of the past.
00:02:49
Speaker
studied classics. And so I felt like I had just scratched the surface really with my undergrad degree. But the main thing I was interested in was studying the philosophers of antiquity and the history was also really appealing to me. So I never really made it my goal to become an academic.
00:03:07
Speaker
But I fell into that as one does. It was mainly just an idea of having my living expenses subsidized while I just sat around in red, Greek and Latin sounded amazing. So that's, that kind of took me through much of the early part of my career and I ended up becoming an academic almost
Philosophy Meets Practical Life
00:03:23
Speaker
by default. And as I, as I
00:03:26
Speaker
got deeper into my studies, what I ended up focusing on was really the lives of ancient philosophers. How did they arrange their affairs? How did they make money? How did they relate to their city? Were they involved in politics? Were they involved in war? How did they justify that? Or how did they explain what they were doing in these practical
00:03:49
Speaker
pursuits when, for example, Stoics, there's an argument that as a cosmopolitan philosopher who sees the brace of man as their kin and, you know, dedicated to the
00:04:05
Speaker
fulfillment and like full flourishing of human nature, does it really make sense that you would go to war over what are often kind of petty things, border disputes, just thinly veiled, aggressive expansionism? Like how do they think about all these things? And was it a problem for them? Was it a puzzle for them? And so I ended up really being obsessed with that question in a way and like that set of questions, like how do philosophers like deal with ambition? And I ended up
00:04:33
Speaker
working intensively on the letter collections of philosophers from the later Roman Empire.
00:04:40
Speaker
one in particular who was a student of the philosopher Hypatia, one of the few successful female philosophers of antiquity, fifth century AD figure. There was a movie made about her, Agora, which I recommend. So I slowly started to realize that most of the practical advice and the text that I enjoyed and the figures that I enjoyed studying that I felt drawn to, they were not just
00:05:05
Speaker
academics. They weren't just living the contemplative life. They were living the practical life. They were out in the world of affairs.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I kind of developed an emulative relationship, you might say, to even a guy like Plato, who is I think unfairly branded as an academic because he invented the whole concept of an academic, but he was actually a risk taker and involved in some really interesting schemes, political schemes. And so that kind of led me out of academia and left the tenure track and ended up in the business world. That's in a nutshell how I ended up where I am today, just wanting to
00:05:42
Speaker
live an examined life, but an examined life that was like that of peers that I felt like philosophy was addressed to.
Plutarch's Insights for Modern Decision-Making
00:05:49
Speaker
So the Cost of Glory podcast focuses on reviving Plutarch's lives for modern audiences. What does Plutarch have to teach us today? Why go back to that classic text? Yeah, great question. Plutarch
00:06:09
Speaker
One of the things that I realized when I was making my way out of academia is like Plutarch is an extremely practical text and I was teaching some Roman history class and reading
00:06:25
Speaker
some of the biographies of Plutarch's Romans and just thinking, wow, suddenly these texts are coming back to life in a new way as I'm thinking about taking risks and like how difficult it is to pick who you trust in business and weighing whether you should pay off a mountain tribe who's blocking your passage through the Pyrenees or whether you should fight them. What is the cost of adding another two weeks to your campaign? And like, how do you like,
00:06:53
Speaker
way these things. There's all these kinds of practical questions that come up and I think Plutarch, he's been a practical text for people involved in statesmanship, law, politics, war, business, for most of history and gotten, he's fallen out of our public consciousness since maybe the mid
00:07:18
Speaker
20th century, but he used to be one of the most popular texts. He's one of the greatest best sellers in history. He was one of the top five. His biography is his parallel lives, which is his masterwork, although he has other works. It's a set of about 48 biographies of
00:07:37
Speaker
Greeks and Romans and all of them statesmen and generals and orators. None of them just philosophers. They were all, some of them were interested in philosophy and studied philosophy, but they were all kind of leaders. And this was an extremely popular text for much of history. And so I was drawn to it. I wanted to revive it for people and who were in the practical
00:07:59
Speaker
world who just like regular people. And so that's what I'm trying to do on my podcast. And I think what Plutarch, one of his great insights was like how important it is for people dedicated to living a virtuous life.
00:08:14
Speaker
to see real examples in action, to see how hard it is to make the right decision and to be prepared for that when the time comes. So many of Plutarch's heroes are not perfect and he criticizes them a lot. He criticizes, for example,
00:08:33
Speaker
Gaius Marius, who's this Roman consul, statesman general, one of the greatest Romans of his day, who ends up in his later years, he's 70, and he's had this just brilliant career, rose from nothing, and won great wars for the Romans. His son is setting, and he just can't accept that reality. And he's painted himself into this corner where
00:09:02
Speaker
doesn't really have good advisors around him like a kind of a great man a typical great man like that often part of what makes them successful their forcefulness of character it can often like when they get old and set in their ways it can drive off good friends who might be willing to offer critical opinions of your decisions
00:09:24
Speaker
And Marius is in this position where he's surrounded by younger men who are his proteges, and he's alienated part of the Senate. And he ends up making this terrible decision to basically orchestrate a vote to deprive his greatest rival, Sulla, of this command to take a war east against this great foe Mithridates. And Marius wants the command for himself. He wants it to be his last hurrah.
00:09:50
Speaker
And because of that, he ends up basically plunging Rome into the civil war that lasts a number of years. And it's just like the bloodiest, most just devastating civil war that Rome faced for probably for all of her history, at least until the later Roman empire.
00:10:08
Speaker
And I think Plutarch, and Plutarch criticizes him pretty harshly about that, even maybe unfairly. He's quite harsh on Marius, but yet he still thinks that there's something to be gained by studying Marius and emulating him.
00:10:23
Speaker
And so I think when Plutarch is a philosopher, he's a Platonist, he's very sympathetic with a lot of Stoic doctrines, but he's, he criticizes them for various things. And, but mainly he's, they're aligned on the importance of virtue, focusing on what you can control and not what you can't. Character is just your greatest asset. It's all kinds of things that he's aligned with the Stoics on. And he felt that I, I take it that he felt, and you can see this in a lot of his offhand comments that he makes in his biographies, that
00:10:49
Speaker
that really biography is a spiritual exercise, a philosophical exercise, studying the character of somebody who has accomplished great things that you want to emulate, even if you find fault with them. There's this kind of philosophical value in really understanding a man's character.
00:11:13
Speaker
especially if he's accomplished things that other people want to accomplish gotten great honors like Gaius Marius did and really did some wonderful patriotic things for Rome. He saved them from the Kimbri and defeated Ugertha and all this stuff. And so I think there's, there's
00:11:31
Speaker
There's a power in emulation that Plutarch really is tapped into.
Role Models vs. Rational Practices
00:11:35
Speaker
That's something that's very instinctive about humans, that we want models that we really, that they really power us to move forward. And a lot of times like you, in your kind of journey to cultivate your character,
00:11:51
Speaker
There's habits that you can instill in the morning, journaling. There's phrases that you can repeat to yourself about not letting yourself get consumed by anger. But a lot of times like the energy behind you implementing those practices
00:12:09
Speaker
is driven by emulation, that there's a kind of a natural force behind wanting to be like somebody else. And maybe it's wanting to be like a composite of people. And it really cultivate this vision of who you want to be like from a composite that you put together of the best qualities of models that you admire. And that has a kind of instinctive force to it that almost is more powerful than the kind of rational
00:12:38
Speaker
practices that we implement in our daily lives are a great compliment. It's not obviously it's not either or it's like you need both ideally and and yeah Plutarch really tapped into that I think that's underlies the whole project of the parallel lives and that's what really interests me that's why I'm trying to bring these alive for people.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, we're very imitative creatures, certainly. There's all sorts of different angles one could take on that, but it's quite common for at least some cultural anthropologists to put our ability to copy others as a fundamental human feature. So it stands to reason, as it were, that we should take advantage of not just copying those that are around us for historically contingent reasons, but seek out other role models.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah. And in a way, the heroes of Plutarch are like, they're time tested. I think the further you go back or the further you reach for models of virtue, it allows you to get a little bit of perspective on your own, on the standards of your own time, which might be a lot lower than you think they are because you're not comparing them with anything. But yeah, definitely. And the Greeks really recognized this about
00:13:47
Speaker
Mimesis too. René Girard, in a lot of ways, who's a famous theoretician of Mimesis, he's riffing off a lot of what you find in, say, Aristotle, who says, Anthropos is the mimeti cotatonzo, the human is the most mimetic of animals. And yeah, there's a lot of value in imitation and also, I think, in reaching a little bit for your models to other cultures.
00:14:12
Speaker
So what are the sort of specific or concrete lessons that you might take away from someone like Marius specifically? What are some of the positive traits that you might want to emulate from his life? Yeah, there's lessons in Marius that you can find from other Plutarch heroes. Marius is, I really like him because he's very patient politically. He doesn't really burst onto the scene of Roman politics.
00:14:39
Speaker
until he's 50 years old. So there is an early... We have some evidence that early on he's a mentee of one of these great men of the time of the former generation, Scipio Emilianis. And he's in the camp with Scipio Emilianis at Numantia, this rebel Spanish city. And there's a story that Scipio, somebody says,
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, they're at a banquet and somebody says, Scipio, you're old. What will Rome do without you? To whom will we turn? And the legend has it that he turns to young Gaius Marius, who's maybe in his late twenties is like, perhaps to this one right here. And clearly Marius is cultivating relationships at a young with people that can advance his career that he can also emulate. Like he's in a relationship of emulation. And you can see this with so many of these figures that.
00:15:30
Speaker
where they can't, like Pyrrhus, the great king of Epirus is in this relationship of emulation with Demetrius.
00:15:37
Speaker
and who's the son of just another Greek king of his time, who happens to be his brother-in-law. And Demetrius is like 10 years older. One thing you see in Pyrrhus' relationship with Demetrius, so Pyrrhus wants to be like Demetrius, he's a great king, he commands armies with elephants in them, and Pyrrhus ends up being a conqueror like Demetrius. It's not too long into Pyrrhus' life when he decides that his former mentor, this guy that he emulated,
00:16:06
Speaker
has to be his greatest rival. He ends up, they end up having all these Demetriuses in the next kingdom over, and they end up competing for a lot of the same valleys that they're trying to control, and just silly territorial squabbles, but this pattern of your mentor becoming your rival is something that you also see in the life of Marius from the other direction, where Sulla, this guy that he ends up, his greatest rival that he ends up fighting a civil war with later in his life,
00:16:36
Speaker
Sulla is Marius's mentee in the war with a certain war that Marius is fighting and so like you being aware of these dynamics of emulation so often in practice in structures like eventually leads to rivalry and you have to
00:16:52
Speaker
You might have to reject your mentor. You might have to fight against them to make your own way in the world or to champion the cause that you really think is important. I think you'd see that in a life of Marius a lot. And Marius also, he's just an amazing like bider of time. He waits for the right moment and Sulla and Marius both are men who failed several times in politics. They failed to get elected. These guys ended up both at different times, or in sequentially becoming
00:17:20
Speaker
Roman numero uno, they were both the greatest Roman of their time. And yet they both, some Marius failed in his run for the Pridership, I think Sulla failed in his run for the Pridership. And they have this incredible persistence where they have this faith that it's going to work out for them. And I think so often that is something that I take a lot of comfort from a lot of these figures that you see this time and time again as like,
00:17:46
Speaker
persistence is perhaps the greatest factor in the success of somebody. And I think looking at a life on the scale of an entire lifetime, which Plutarch helps you to do there.
00:17:56
Speaker
There's short biographies that take you two or three hours to read, maybe. That's about how long my podcast series are. You get the whole perspective of an entire biography in a relatively short amount of time. I think that really helps you put your own story into perspective. Maybe at age 38, I haven't achieved what I want to achieve, but what's it going to look like at age 45?
00:18:20
Speaker
50, et cetera. And that can go both ways. Caesar takes a look at the statue of Alexander the Great when he's 33 and he says, ah, he like weeps. He says, ah.
00:18:34
Speaker
What had Alexander accomplished at age 33 when Alexander had already conquered much of the known world? And he says, and yet I'm still like, I haven't even been prior to her yet. I haven't done anything. So I like can give you this, this goad forward also, if you need it. That consideration can go both ways in the sense that.
00:18:54
Speaker
One still has more time to live out one's life, but if one is doing well, you might just be Alexander at 33 and things might not continue to go well for much longer. Yeah. Yeah. Memento Mori. Yeah, that's right.
Solon's Wisdom on Happiness
00:19:08
Speaker
I guess the line from Solon's life, I don't think it's in his, put in his mouth, but that one should count no man happy until the end is known. That's a common and deep theme.
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's, it's might be in Plutarch. It's definitely in Herodotus' story about Solon meeting Croesus. Yeah. Yeah. And I love how, how Stoicism takes a lot of these older wisdom traditions and codifies them.
Merging Stoicism with Meditation: The Stoa App
00:19:40
Speaker
Stoicism with Stoa. Stoa combines the ancient philosophy of stoicism with meditation in a practical meditation app. It includes hundreds of hours of exercises, lessons, and conversations to help you live a happier life. Here's what our users are saying.
00:19:58
Speaker
I'm new to Stoicism and wanted to dive deeper with guidance. This is it. I love the meditations. I've practiced meditations with other apps, but this just seems to be more impactful. So happy I found this. They really took their time and laid out a great plan to work step by step in learning and applying this philosophy to your life. Find it available for a free download in the Play Store and App Store.
00:20:22
Speaker
Who do you think is one of the most virtuous characters that Plutarch profiles? We've been talking about the kind of the naughty ones that he criticizes. I started the cost of glory in a way because I was inspired by two figures in particular that are less known among Plutarch's
00:20:46
Speaker
figures. You've got famous ones like Pericles and Julius Caesar, but then I think two of the most obscure ones are Sertorius and Eumenes of Cardia. And I think these two are some of the more virtuous ones actually. And I thought if these obscure ones are
00:21:05
Speaker
impressive, like how impressive are the more well-known ones going to be. But somebody like Umenis is, I mean, he's a secretary of Alexander the Great and he just ends up after Alexander dies. Well, before Alexander dies, he ends up working himself into a position of influence through just being extremely competent and extremely trustworthy.
Eumenes and Loyalty in Alexander's Empire
00:21:27
Speaker
And Alexander eventually promotes him to be a cavalry commander, even though he starts off being a pencil pusher.
00:21:33
Speaker
And, but Umenes is like, is a really interesting study in, in like the importance of loyalty. And so after Alexander dies, there's this debate of his generals, the Strategoi or the successors, the Diatocoi.
00:21:50
Speaker
as to whether they should try to hold the empire together or whether they should carve it up. And eventually they end up basically carving it up. But Eumenes is one of the people that, that is standing for, let's hold this empire together and let's, let's keep Alexander's legacy intact. Um, and he wants to do that by, by preserving the family of Alexander. So he, Eumenes is basically a loyalist.
00:22:17
Speaker
And he's loyal to Alexander's mother, Olympias, who has a lot of political influence. And he's loyal to Alexander's infant son, who was actually born after Alexander died. And Eumenes is just, he's like,
00:22:32
Speaker
He puts it all on the line to try to defend the honor of his dead friend. And also he sees this as like the only way to keep the empire together and to prevent basically the whole thing, which this empire stretches from Macedonia and Egypt through Iran, Iraq, the Indus River and Afghanistan and Pakistan, this huge empire.
00:22:59
Speaker
The only way to keep it together is to have something that was like above the kind of, something that is like still associated with the kind of almost divine charisma of Alexander. And so he puts it all on the line for that. And he, and there's many points in which he has the option of, uh, of breaking faith with Alexander's family. The other generals try to bribe him.
00:23:23
Speaker
to, or force him to give up on this quest. And, but he ends up, he's trying to prevent it from descending into a kind of all out king of the mountain war. Yeah. Isn't the common story that something like at the end of Alexander's life, people come to him and say, we'll follow in your footsteps. And Alexander says the strongest. Exactly.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So there's some story that says maybe Alexander actually wanted it this way. He wanted to prove themselves because for days he lay in bed and had the option of picking a successor and solving all their problems, but he didn't. And it's possible that Uminis was more loyal to Alexander than Alexander deserved, but I think that's a study in like
00:24:03
Speaker
the virtue of honesty and loyalty. And he came very close. Humanities came very, it all revolved or turned on a couple of key battles. But I think standing for your principles, and even though he didn't win, he was remembered.
00:24:19
Speaker
by posterity as the most honest of all the successors, as the most virtuous. And he was a really clever, wily guy too. So there's some really just great stories of his just iron will and his trickiness. And another person that people really like is Cato the Younger, who resisted Caesar, the famous stoic.
00:24:39
Speaker
So there are some men of virtue, and Brutus is a kind of a debated figure, the friend of Caesar who ended up murdering him with being one of his assassins. He was a dedicated Platonist, and so Plutarch's very inclined to be sympathetic with his kind of co-philosophical school member. That's another example where Plutarch
00:24:57
Speaker
ends up being critical of Brutus for precisely for the opposite of what Eumenes has is faithlessness to his friend. So what is more important? Is it more important to keep your state from falling into tyranny or to be loyal to your friend? And this is one of these instances where, you know, people face really tough choices. And, and if you strive for a position in society,
00:25:21
Speaker
you're going to be facing with face with similar choices, maybe two. So you need to think through those with people to better prepare yourself for when they come up.
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting how there's sometimes this tension between personal ethics and what would be best for the Republic. Of course, there's always a tension in the sense that someone might feel that it's better to act viciously in order to seek some advantage or something like this. There's a conflict between self-interest and virtue, but there's also the deeper conflict where
00:25:52
Speaker
It doesn't seem like one can always extend the lessons that one takes from personal virtue to thinking about these larger scale decisions. The life of Kato seems like a possibly a good example of that's where what works for his personal life may not be what is best in the long run. Yes, yeah, it might have been that really
00:26:13
Speaker
Caesar was the best thing for Rome, even though it went against Cato's principles as a dedicated Republican. Is it better to book a bloody war that you're probably going to lose to stand on the principle of sovereign? The Republic meant to him freedom, liberty, tradition, or to just accept the reality that the system is no longer sustainable as it is, and it can't really be reformed. But even if you wanted to reform it, it would mean
00:26:42
Speaker
fighting a war with this extremely determined man who seems like probably the best leader that such a principate could hope to have. Yeah, it's, I think... Yeah, and there's other ways in which sometimes the Stoics of the Republic end up
00:27:02
Speaker
Not like you can definitely criticize them for some of their political choices Rutilius Rufus is another one who who opposed Marius a really interesting figure that I discuss in a shorter episode, but
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's very hard to translate those personal choices into political choices. One question one always gets when thinking about using ancient Greek or Roman characters as role models is that the world was, of course, quite different, both in the sense that how one spent one's time as a leader was on the battlefield much more often than the lives like ours are today. But also, in a sense, the norms were quite different, right? People were exceptionally more
00:27:43
Speaker
I told the story of Alexander, where there's a sense where it is death, and he says, who's going to take the lead? And Alexander says the strongest. In a sense, that's very inspiring. You're like, oh, yes, that sounds very motivating and absolute meritocracy with high stakes. But on reflection, it seems like that it's actually rather silly. It's a lot of pointless bloodshed. And sometimes one gets that sense while reading, reading these ancient figures. So large question, but I'm curious, curious how you think about that.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, and also they had slaves and there are all kinds of ways in which they ethically diverge from us.
Comparing Values: Greek, Roman, and Christian
00:28:21
Speaker
I think in a way, the Romans and the Greeks are, first of all, they're living in a pre-Christian world. And in a way, Christianity brought some of the principles of
00:28:34
Speaker
ancient philosophy to popularize them in a way. The whole Augustine talks about this a lot. The Roman Empire, the Roman Republic is this be founded on honor. And he wants the Christian polity to be something that's founded on love, Caritas or Agape in Greek. And maybe it's not possible for a human polity to be founded on that instead of honor, but maybe it is and it's worth trying. And I think that's
00:29:04
Speaker
something that you find in European political systems and philosophy in the United States, the founding of the United States, like we're trying to build a society that isn't just about military supremacy and isn't just about the rule of the strong, that a system of justice and equality should
00:29:25
Speaker
reign, not just in our relations within our society, but between other states. In a way, I think the Greeks and the Romans are living in this kind of older world of values that is a lot closer to tribal nature of man that is still there for us, but we have a lot of checks and balances on it.
00:29:49
Speaker
And I'm not sure if this is a good answer coming up with it on the spot, but I mean, in a way you need to reckon with the darker parts of our nature if you want.
00:29:59
Speaker
if you want to be confident of your own philosophy and your own practice in life. There are people out there who have this incredible drive to power and ambition and they might cloak it in nicer language now because that's actually how you get power in our world today rather than bragging and talking about how you're the best.
00:30:21
Speaker
as the Greeks are just a lot more comfortable doing, like Homeric heroes. But I think that there's, so at the same time, so there, you're fighting over indifference at the end of the day in the political game, right? Honor and power and wealth, these should be maybe preferred indifference from a stoic perspective.
00:30:43
Speaker
strongly are you allowed to prefer them. And one of the ways that late antique philosophers think about this is if you want a society that's based on the best values that we get from philosophy, that the best men should rule, that the people, that the rulers should be people who have made an intentional study of character and virtue,
00:31:05
Speaker
and that they can transmit that by their own example down to other parts of, down throughout society, this kind of pyramid model, which is very, this is like very much the way that late antique Platonists think about it. It's also the way that Plato thinks about it. If that's true, then you may or may not be able to change the actual value system of a society based around this indifferent value honor.
00:31:31
Speaker
But what you can do is try to populate the positions of leadership with people who have the right values. And that's what Plato was trying to do with his political scheme in Syracuse, which is another story that Plato tells, that Plutarch tells in The Life of Dion.
00:31:47
Speaker
I said Plato's seventh letter. And the late antique philosophers really have this value of trying to reach out to people in power to communicate what is really good for humankind and what's really good for the individual to people who have a position of influence, who are able to have a loudspeaker for those values. In a way, it's not like a, there's a kind of a practical answer. Maybe our society isn't as different as we think. And in a way, like,
00:32:14
Speaker
Having putting philosophy in that position of honor is like the best you could hope for to say maybe the leaders aren't Really orienting their lives around the ultimate goods But try to convert them and that's the best you can hope for in this imperfect world we live in How have you applied lessons gained from emulating these lives to your own certainly the the Plato example was very influential on me and feeling like I
00:32:44
Speaker
like to promote philosophy and virtue in the world that it was necessary to take risks and to get out of the theoretical bubble.
Business Lessons from Historical Characters
00:32:54
Speaker
And yeah, I think in a lot of ways, finding a mentor one has really been a big influence on me. I've definitely, since getting more into Plutarch's lives, I've definitely gotten way more intentional about my relationship developments and trying to seek out people
00:33:14
Speaker
who have that combination of competence and professional credibility, but also good character that, you know, and I know that I'm not going to, I'm not going to, like when we pick distributors for our, our industrial products, there are, there are a lot of people out there in the industrial sales world that it's like when they entertain their clients, they'll take them to strip clubs and just, I don't know, there's all kinds of nonsense that people get into. And I think like building a brand,
00:33:41
Speaker
You have to think about what kind of people you associate with your product. And to me, building a reputation based on values and being selective, who you associate with, that's like a lesson that I've definitely taken from Plutarch's lives. Your kind of brand as a person so much depends on who you associate with. And it's like that in business too. And it's really, it is about your like duty to
00:34:07
Speaker
to live up to this ideal of virtue and your commitment to a belief that the happiest life is a virtuous life, right?
00:34:19
Speaker
But it's also good business practice, good long-term thinking about your legacy. This is another lesson that you get from Blue Dark's lives. The people that compromise on Sulla had this chance at the end of his life to become this great reformer after he
00:34:39
Speaker
won this extremely bloody civil war. But because he slacked on his, he was never a man of like great personal discipline. He was always just like a party guy and associated with just lowlifes. It's like,
00:34:57
Speaker
a charming part of him, but in his later years, he's partying with actors and he's instituting this program of proscriptions, clearing out the people that were associated with the old regime, confiscating their property.
00:35:11
Speaker
And he ends up giving in to a lot of his minions and his underlings who are basically abusing their positions to go out and manufacture charges against people that they don't like or that they have a nice farm. And Sulla's minion wants to just have it for himself. And so he manufactures some charge and Sulla's like, yeah, whatever. And he's favoritism towards his friends and the fact that he's just not paying attention to the most crucial moment in his career.
00:35:41
Speaker
where it's all about the legacy that he leaves. Is he going to be a justice bringer or is he just going to be another strong man who rules?
00:36:17
Speaker
according to his own favor.
00:36:22
Speaker
get that contract with the top distributor, you get the second place guy, but he's widely viewed as being like more honest. And, and this is one of the problems with our kind of churn and burn fix and flip business practices today is that people they'll hold onto businesses for five or 10 years and then they'll.
00:36:42
Speaker
sell it to a private equity company or you go public and you cash out. People in the business world often aren't that committed to the long-term character. I think it's fair to speak of a character of a company.
00:36:57
Speaker
that, that has an effect on the long-term value of a product, but we don't, we're not trained to think in these kind of long-term perspectives about things. And I, so that's like how it's affected my personal business philosophy for one, and certainly many lessons learned from what not to do. And from a lot of these guys, like I already mentioned Marius and if somebody obscure makes a mistake.
00:37:19
Speaker
It's not noteworthy. This is not like a lesson to be learned, but if somebody great makes a mistake that you're in this kind of emulated relationship with, you can learn so much more from the mistakes of people like that. So that's also something that I take to mind. Yeah, excellent. That's a lot of good stuff there. One thought that brings to mind is there's a general meme or attitude that sometimes goes around that you shouldn't care so much about what other people think about you or what they say about you.
00:37:44
Speaker
Which of course has a grain of truth in it, but one should always, I think, be mindful of the thoughts of people you respect or especially what virtuous people think about you and what they say about you. And use that both as a force for motivation and I think clarifying what you should be. Absolutely. Yeah. And similarly kind of popular wisdom is don't compare yourself to other people.
00:38:10
Speaker
But Plutarch's whole project is all about like methodically comparing yourself to the right people and how powerful a tool this is to compare yourself to the right people. But it's just about being selective. I think similarly with whose opinion you value and whose model you hold yourself up against.
00:38:29
Speaker
Absolutely. So in Stoa, there's a way that we encourage people to practice called the contemplation of the sage that involves visualizing a sage, a role model, a virtuous person in detail and maybe thinking about how they would act in your place or thinking about how you would act if you are being observed by the sage or perhaps simply considering if the sage were to give you advice, what would they say?
00:38:58
Speaker
Do you have any thoughts on how to best practice this sort of exercise? I've listened to a couple of the exercises that you have on stoa for this. I think they're great. And I think that, so the, like we talked about how we're mimetic creatures and in a way, like getting yourself into the mind of somebody that you care about, first of all, you have to like study them well enough to what they would say.
00:39:26
Speaker
And one of the ways that ancient school boys, school children would practice this is through copying the words or trying to deliver a speech in the character of somebody that was a role model, prosopopoeia, they called it, calling a character to mind.
00:39:49
Speaker
Like having that other person imaginatively before your eyes, you can be there trying to think, okay, what should I do? What should I do? And all these arguments come to mind and oh, maybe, maybe it's not that important to spend the money on this. Maybe it is. But then once you conjure up Seneca before you, it's just a lot clearer to imagine what he would say.
00:40:12
Speaker
or humanis or sartorius or somebody else that you admire that there's something like, there's something instinctive about the way that our brain works that we think in terms of imitation and we're able to parrot the thoughts and the actions and the attitudes of people to ask so what would Jesus do, bands. I think it really, Plutarch talks about how
00:40:35
Speaker
the studying the lot like virtuous deeds like unlike some works like artworks that make you admire them but don't make you want to imitate them like seeing a painting doesn't make you necessarily want to go paint a painting
00:40:52
Speaker
But the works of virtue are such that once you see them, you're automatically drawn to emulate them. And in a way, that exercise of contemplating the sage, bringing that example of virtuous deeds to mind, you can read about them. But once you've read about them, you've got them. You should cultivate that. You can keep getting payoff from that study.
00:41:11
Speaker
of the example in a meditative exercise. And it, it works instinctively, I think. And once again, you're tapping into these like instinctive drives, the mirror neurons and the medic desire and even like the dopamine system, which, which is activated strongly, the more confidence you feel of the result that you're going to get. That's a way that you can like almost, I hate this expression, like hack your brain. Um,
00:41:35
Speaker
And I don't like hack because it's like we're using our brain the way it's designed to be used, not like trying to short circuit something. But one of the reasons I think that the exercise works is because if a sage did it, that increases your kind of instinctive confidence that it's going to produce good results for you. And it's going to be easy for easier for you to act accordingly. And so, I mean,
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah, little to add with as far as the exercise itself, but a lot to just say this, there's deep roots to this and why it's effective.
00:42:09
Speaker
Absolutely. Excellent. Well, thanks so much for joining. Is there anything else you'd like to add or any note you'd like to end on? I love the app. I use it in the mornings. I love the kind of creative work that you guys are doing to bring stoicism in line with modern meditative practices and the people's rooms and their routines. Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
Check out The Cost of Glory if it might help you contemplate a few wise people and some not so wise people. I try to make it entertaining for, I hope that if people end up listening to my stuff that they'll, they'll see that it's of a piece in a large part with what you guys are working
The Power of Historical Stories
00:42:45
Speaker
on. That at the end of the day, the kind of entertaining stories of great figures of the past.
00:42:51
Speaker
if approached with the right attitude has a lot of power to shape our characters and as a kind of philosophical exercise. So it's been a real, it's been a real privilege to lay out these ideas. Hopefully it's in an intelligible way, greater length here with you, Caleb. Absolutely. Thanks so much. And yes, be sure to check out the constant glory podcast. I think it's a rich bank of both role models and anti role models, both of which are exceptionally useful.
00:43:19
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Store Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:43:34
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.