It’s a Team Sport

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. It's a team sport. Why do they go along with it? Why don't they stand up? Why are they refusing to use their considerable power or resources?

Well, What's everyone else doing? If everyone else in your class is turning a blind eye to some abuse or malpractice, you're much more likely to do the same. If everyone else is publicly saying one thing, or not saying one thing, but speaking much differently in private, it's likely that you too will be silent. That's why we're in the mess we're in right now.

That's why the headlines about so many of these unspeakable tragedies keep rolling out. Nobody else was speaking up, so nobody else did. Courage, it is increasingly clear, is a team sport. It's harder to be courageous when all you see are examples of cowardice. Well, the Stoics can help us with this, because we come from a long tradition of people who did speak up, who weren't cowards, who were fine to stand alone, who put their reputations and lives on the line to do what was right.

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