Where Does It Get You? | Keeping "The News" In Check

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Where does it get you? People have been doing the same things for as long as there have been people. That's what you realize when you walk the streets of Pompeii, which we were just talking about. We have people buying fancy real estate to impress others.

We have people chasing trends. We have people writing their names on walls. We have people waiting in line at street vendors. We have people trying to get out of the heat. We have people going to the gym.

In short, you have all the things that Marcus Aurelius lists in his haunting passage about the things that happened in the age of Vespasian. He talks about how back then, just as now you had people doing the exact same things marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others will die, complaining, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office. and power. But the haunting part of that passage, which was an observation about the final third of the first century AD, is the last line, and that life they led is nowhere to be found, he writes. The Age of Vespasian ended in june seventy nine AD.

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