Oh, You’re Free, Are You? | Only Fools Rush In

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Oh, you're free, are you? We bristle at the thought. We push back at the first sign of being controlled or coerced. No one gets to tell us what to do.

We have rights, we have protections. It's our life. Americans, especially, but people all over the world are protective of their freedoms. That's a good thing. Citizens should be diligent.

But there is a part of these protests that call to mind a story that Seneca tells us about a condemned criminal begging for their life to be spared. Oh, the Emperor said, you called this being alive? We're prickly about our freedom as we willingly submit to all sorts of addictions. You are enslaved to your phone. You spend every waking second thinking about work.

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