We All Need To Be Constrained

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. We all need to be constrained. We'd like to think that we'd do fine if we were ever put in that position, if we were given real power, real wealth, real fame, wouldn't change us, right? Of course it would. It changes everyone.

It changed Marcus Aurelius too, or he wouldn't have needed to write in meditations about his struggle to resist being caesarified or stained purple. It's just that Marcus Aurelius was so exceptional, he didn't change as much as everyone else who was emperor. He is, as we have said, the exception that proves the rule. The rest of us? No one should be king, and more practically we all need checks and balances in our lives.

We need partners who tell us the truth. We need collaborators who balance out our weaknesses. We need a board of directors who can give us advice and help us resolve conflicts of interests. We need philosophy, as Marcus Aurelius used it, to put ourselves up for review and to challenge our impulses. We should not get to do everything we want.

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