The Terror of Knowing What The World Is About | Try The Other Handle
Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. The terror of knowing what the world is about. There is a burden to the study of history. It not only takes a lot of work, it's it's heavy. Knowing what people have done to each other, knowing what they do to each other, making sense of the contradictions, the failures, the stupidity does not exactly fill one with hope for humanity.
And perhaps this explains some of the weariness in Marx Aurelius's meditations. Marcus was not just a student of history but an aspiring historian, even working on at one point a little book called Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. He knew that history was so often the same thing happening over and over again. He knew it was cruelty and awfulness. It was bloody and pathetic.
There is no escaping the terror of knowing what the world is about, except perhaps not knowing. And ignorance, however soothing, is unfortunately a vice. It is a violation of our responsibility to seek wisdom, and it is also a childish luxury that people involved in public life do not get to indulge. So yes, you will have to face facts, you will have to get uncomfortable, you will have to take up the burden of history, and this will not always be fun. It will strip you of some of your illusions,
We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (7 minutes, 1,300 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.
No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.