What’s On a Hill Cannot Be Hidden | Stop Monkeying Around

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. What's on a hill cannot be hid. It's been one for hundreds of years, a place that people aspire to, dream of, look up to. They want to move there, they want to be a part of it, they want what it offers, they like what it stands for. America, the city on a hill.

That's what John Winthrop first called it in the year 1630. And so for even longer than the 250th anniversary that the United States is celebrating this month, America has been that. And yet, for almost as long, people have totally missed an important part of what that idea, which comes from the Bible, is all about. The full line, which comes from the Sermon on the Mount, is about how a city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Yes, it's a beacon. It is also public, does not have the cover of darkness, even at night. Both its virtues and its flaws are laid bare for all to see. In Meditations, Marx Realis expresses a similar idea about not doing anything that needs to be concealed behind walls or curtains. If you have to hide it, if you need secrecy to protect it, if it depends on no one seeing what you're doing, then maybe it's a sign that you should not be doing it at all.

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