It's so easy to idealize the past. As if people haven't always been deranged. As if things haven't always been falling apart. As if fate hasn't always been indifferent to everyone and everything.
Socrates lived through a 27-year long war—a great power conflict between Athens and Sparta…and then in a country ruled by what was known as the 30 Tyrants. Zeno lived in a world torn apart by the wars of Alexander the Great's successors (and his own personal shipwreck). Cato saw the Republic fall. Seneca lived through Nero and watched Rome literally burn. So unstable were things that, shortly after his death, people enjoyed the spectacle of the "year of the four emperors" Epictetus spent three decades in slavery. Marcus Aurelius, as we've detailed, saw flood and famines and wars. Indeed, this whole period is known as the beginning of the decline and fall.
One could go on and on and on. The point is: It's always been rough. The point is: It always will be rough. The Stoics were tough—they had to be, to get through what they lived through. You will need to be tough if you're going to make it through what the present and the future holds.
None of us control when we were born, only how we live. None of us control what our leaders do—not really anyway—only how we live, how we act, how we lead in our own lives. We don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens. We don't control the awfulness of our times, only whether we rise above them, only whether we do good for and inside them.
What makes smart, principled people work for the worst leaders? In this conversation, author and historian James Romm and Ryan dig into the timeless trap that's snared some of history's greatest minds, from Plato and Seneca to modern politics. They talk about the seduction of access, the slow erosion of integrity, and why walking away from a tyrant's court is so much harder than it looks.
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