How Stoicism Became The World's Greatest Scam

stoicism is changing you know I've been reading Marcus aurelius's meditations wow I listened to it in the sauna it's really intense because you're thinking the these are the the writings the direct writings that we have from a guy who lived 2,000 years ago was running Rome stoicism a stoicism as someone who has covered and studied stoicism for years now I've noticed something strange happening if it was just another celebrity Trend then it's whatever but what's happening is much worse than that this ancient philosophy that was once a guide To Living a good and fulfilled life

has been co-opted by the manosphere and turned into snake oil sold as the magic pill of Fame Fortune and everything in between Andrew you need to be more misogynistic this woman just spilled my coffee [ __ ] bring some paper towels we're doing a [ __ ] podcast stoicism is not not feeling emotions it's feeling the emotion and going okay stoicism stoicism stoic my question is why stoicism out of all the other philos philosophies out there why this one in fact why philosophy at all why do a bunch of Macho men who laugh in the

face of intellectualism cling on to the most intellectual ideologies to find out how stoicism became this billion dooll scam we interviewed experts took a stoicism course and watched more AI generated stoicism videos then I'd like to admit what I found out is that the rabbit hole goes far deeper than you could ever imagine for example you see you see a woman getting for example and you are stoic the purpose of broism isn't to educate Inspire or Enlighten but rather to trick and exploit impressionable viewers men are being conditioned to be weak and you know you're

being told yeah it's good to be emotional young men should be emotional they should show that if you want to become successful masculine if you want to make a lot of money if you want to date or sleep with a lot of girls being emotional is not going to help you at all be stoic but the ultimate goal of making some very questionable characters famous and Filthy Rich The Matrix has attacked me while on a voyage at Sea in 300 BC a wealthy Trader called Zeno was Shipwrecked along with all of his cargo instantly this

wealthy man lost all that he had after losing everything Zeno learned that we have very little control over what life throws at us however what we do have control over is how these things affect us he realized that although he couldn't control the weather or the sea he could turn his loss into something positive by using his experience to teach others about how to overcome difficult situations in doing so he created the philosophy of stoicism stoicism grew quickly across all segments of Greek society and Beyond from Zeno who many believe was a foreigner with roots

in modern Lebanon through thinkers like epicus a former slave 4 konis the first female stoic all the way to Marcus relius a Roman Emperor and a skilled and insightful writer whose personal Diaries known as meditations have become an entry point to the philosophy for centuries of stoics up to the present day in the centuries following Marcus aurelius's death stoicism largely disappeared because of Christianity as the Roman Empire made way for the Holy Roman Empire everything in the Holy gospel was treated as well gospel and just about everything else was regarded as primitive Pagan nonsense at

best and at worst the express lane to hell all of that changed in the mid 20th century thanks to largely a handful of unrelated characters a psychiatrist a psychologist and a soldier but before we get to that while working on this video we dispatched four members of the aperture team to explore the endless variety of stoic tools being shared and sold across the internet of course all the classic stoic writting from Zeno through Marcus relias have been in the public domain for thousands of years and are freely available with a quick Google search some of

the other stuff well as you're about to see that will cost you okay so for the next 7 days I'll be learning everything I can about stoicism and trying to apply it into my life using only free resources all right so this just came in I received my stoicism uh game card 5050 prompt cards that you know contains pretty much a lot of insights and sayings from the great stoic all right for my sto Journey I'm going to be talking to a stoic coach but not just any coach he's just some guy that I found

on fivr for like 30 bucks so I don't expect anything crazy I'm not expecting much from this but hey he's selling a service and I'm going to purchase it and immerse myself in some daily stoic practices I chose to go to the number one sto Superstore on the internet Ryan holidays daily stoic.com I went ahead and selected a course called taming your temper the 11-day stoic guide to controlling anger every day beginning with today I get an email I get a video and most importantly I get an activity to do to try to manage and

control anger in in keeping with the stoic tradition my day one activity is something originated by Abraham Lincoln something called burn letters you write down things that you carry around with you that make you angry over and over you write them down you fold it up you set it on fire and in doing so you literally start to unburden yourself of these things that you know we're carrying around for no reason so here we go with day one during the Vietnam war us Admiral James Stockdale survived seven unimaginable years as a prisoner of war and

infamous Hanoi Hilton he was Shackled and tortured his leg injured during his initial Crash Landing in enemy territory was cruy and repeatedly re-broken he was paraded around and humiliated for propaganda purposes after his release many asked him how he was able to survive such a gruesome experience and his answer became what is known today as the Stockdale Paradox it goes something like this in Admiral stockdale's experience prisoners of War who held out hope that a release was always just around the corner eventually grew discouraged gave up and died Stockdale believed he along with his fellow

survivors were able to endure only because they didn't hold out hope for Freedom instead they made peace with the life even in the most brutal and dehumanizing circumstances instead of waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel they embraced the darkness within it and not surprisingly throughout his ordeal he took direct inspiration from history's most famous slave turn sto epicus Stockdale a medal of honor winner and later a vice presidential candidate published a celebrated book entitled courtage Under Fire testing epictetus's doctrines in a laboratory of human behavior and suddenly James Stockdale became the

most famous stoic in over a millennium meanwhile stoicism was also enjoying a Renaissance in the emerging world of psychotherapy and this is masimo pigui philosopher biologist and author of how to be a stoic the history of modern stoicism really started with the invention of cognitive behavioral therapy in the 1950s and early 60s that's because the major people that started that uh that approach to psychotherapy you know like iron Beck and Albert Ellis were directly inspired by the engine sto especially marcosus and and obus so there is a connection there and that connection is important because

since ctive behavioral therapy is arguably the most the best evidence-based uh Psychotherapy available today so in other words it works uh it also indirectly shows that stoic techniques work Ellis went so far as to say that the best way to sum up the spirit of CBT was a quote from Admiral stockdale's favorite philosopher epicus men are Disturbed not by things but by the views which they take of them although Giants in their field neither Albert Ellis nor Aaron Beck were celebrity gurus by any stretch if Instagram had existed back then put together they wouldn't have

been as popular as a single picture of Dan bilzerian's boat but thanks to them seeds had been planted that would bear unexpected fruit 40 years later the other thing that happened was there were already millions of people around the world who read the meditations of Mark cilus and read senica this is Donald Robertson a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist and author of one of the most influential books on stoicism of all time how to think like a Roman Emperor but they didn't hang out together they didn't talk to each other they didn't congregate in little groups this

is Jules Evans a historian and author of another influential book Philosophy for life and that changed in the 1990s with the development of the internet the internet allowed this kind of diaspora of stoics around the world to form online communities and that's how it developed into a movement in a way that it was never able to before it was in this Renaissance that Marcus relius became a character and one of the most iconic movies of the last few ades Gladiator Russell Crow is really into Marcus aurelus and he wanted to feature more of his philosophy

in the movie but Rich haris depicts Marcus willus in the First Act of that movie there's little kind of tantalizing glimmers of stoic philosophy in it referenced actually um and lots of people went out and read the meditations after they they saw that movie as the Spaniard was seeking gladiatorial glory on the big screen the internet age was coming into full bloom Silicon Valley some L sleepy San Francisco suburbs suddenly became one of the epicenters of human civilization Society altering Innovations email e-commerce e everything were emerging regularly vast sums of wealth were seemingly created overnight

people were interested in what made this Brave new tech World tick the Silicon Valley Life philosophy is embodied by a bunch of smart people who look at everything as a system or as a machine including themselves for every problem in life there is a life hack why read a book when you can listen to it double time why get a good night's sleep when you can chuck a coffee pass out for 20 minutes and then get back to work after a refreshing and restorative nap bucino to the Silicon Valley mindset worrying about things like finding

Angel Investors is a bug in the system that needlessly eats up processing power and so to manage that they turn to cognitive behavioral therapy the ultimate brain hack and its unexpected traveling companion stoicism the phenomenon of Silicon Valley CEOs jumping in the bandwagon in some ways is is kind of some sometimes it's sincere but sometimes it's this kind of superficial thing of stoicism is trendy and I want to be a part of that or I like stoicism because I saw this cool quote in the internet which is perhaps completely fabricated and not something that an

ancient stoic ever actually said this stoic Revival might have just been another here today gone tomorrow silicon valy fad like hyper loops and Juice machines that really just squeeze packets of juice for you where it not for one of the major characters in our story Ryan holiday there are entrepreneurs who've done incredibly well just repackaging stoic maxims when I brought out my book in 2012 my publisher said why didn't you bring out a book of stoic maxims and I said that sounds boring what an idiot I could have e I could have made lots of

money doing that and others did holiday found bestseller success with his stoicism self-help book The obstacle is the way the obstacle is the way was published with help from holidays friend Silicon Valley angel investor and celebrity lifestyle influencer Tim Ferris it's hard to imagine a more potent Duo than holiday and Ferris for popularizing stoicism in the mainstream who knows how many thousands even millions of people have been exposed to sism because of these two credit where credit is due the obstacle is the way is a solid starter kit that has launched many readers on a

path to genuine stoicism I am familiar with you know Ryan's work and I know Ryan and I've read the obstacle is the way and I thought it was quite basic but that's its strength I mean he he pictures it at a certain level as a certain Sweet Spot which really carries and I I don't know what percentage of his his millions of followers go from his work to buying Marcus aurelius's meditations or epic titus's discourses I would think it would be very high I mean like I wish I was as good as at marketing as

him the issue is that the obstacle is the way also launched an empire in which a bunch of Millennia old wisdom was now somehow for sale that and a bunch of shiny and some might say tacky stoicism swag does he sell plastic skulls or I'm not sure one thing I found interesting was that before becoming a full-time promoter of stoicism holiday's previous jobs had all involved helping big corporations sell stuff this previous book was called growth hacker marketing and the one before that trust me I'm lying look our job is to do anything that grows

the business and holiday did indeed grow his business opening up shop through his website daily stoic.com honestly at times it's hard to tell how much of holiday's Drive comes from a sincere desire to share stoicism with the world and how much is just a worldclass Salesman making a book there is a distinction to be made there between you know sort of selling in general and selling and Merchandising I think merchandising is a particular type of selling uh it's selling of things that you don't actually need for the exclusive purpose of making money so to buy

a medallion that says that has a bones and you know a skull that says momento Mory you know remember you have to die that's not useful to anybody that's just a way to make money business at the daily Stoke is definitely booming Ryan holiday's net worth is estimated at between 5 and $10 million and with that growth hacker mentality that numbers only going to keep Rising holiday professes a sincere Devotion to stoicism going back to his college days and we don't doubt that he's telling the truth but scrolling through the store at Daily stoic.com one

can't help but wonder what would Zeno think influencers another online entrepreneurs took notice not only of holiday success but also of how his brand was infiltrating the professional sports World copies of the obstacle is the way became as common in US Pro locker rooms as sneakers and ice packs if you're for instance a member of a competitive sports team sure what people call life hacks are going to be useful yes they are but that's not stoicism those are just the techniques then you get these entrepreneurs who are millionaires and billionaires and that's massive high social

proof saying stoicism is fantastic and so that spreads out people say well if this NFL quarterback is is using it that sounds good to me so so men look to very successful men and say what makes them great is there anything that I could take on board gwenneth palro hired a kind of interior designer or something to ADV are what books to have on her bookshelf not to read but what ones to have in our living room and they they recommended stoicism because it's trending so that's how trendy stoicism has suddenly become even the mainstream

media was getting in on the act more and more people were coming to the same conclusion if stoicism was good enough for pro athletes Bill Gates and even Hollywood actors like Michael Douglas maybe it was the missing cheat code separating regular guys from achieving everything they wanted in life so we have a lot of authors now podcasters and YouTubers and so on and so forth who tell you things like oh you want to succeed at sports Embrace stoicism you want to become rich Embrace stoicism you want to be successful Embrace stoicism the stoics will be

stunned uh by all of this because all of those things I just mentioned success money Fame and so on and so forth are classified by the ancient stoics as indifferent meaning that they do not make a difference literally to the only thing that matters which is your character as awareness of stoicism grew it became even more watered down turned into a bunch of maxims and life hacks to fix whatever life problem you had the so-called life hacks are techniques that are that are useful in order to practice stoicism to incorporate stoicism as as a way

of life okay but that's all they are they are crutches in a sense they are they kind of useful techniques uh that um that allows you to stay on track but the important thing is the track not the technique I mean life hacks an odd phrase isn't it it's not really one that the the stoics would use other stoic life hacks it's very accessible it's very DIY and that makes it kind of attractive in the age of the internet somewhere along the way the true message of this ancient Greek philosophy got drowned in the sea

of life hacks when it washed up on the other side it was a mutant off spring something so far removed from his Origins that if Marcus aelius was alive today he wouldn't even recognize it stoicism became heroism do I remember when the manosphere started to become a thing in all honesty I was kind of Johnny come lately every other people were saying are you concerned about the stoicism being hijacked by people in the manosphere that are distorting it and my initial reaction was what are you talking about I've I have no idea I've never seen

that you know and I was surrounded by people that are interested in stoicism I organized and spoke at many conferences you know I thought I had my finger on the pulse of uh how sism was being appreciated but I didn't know about the red pill movement and the manosphere until um much later really although I guess in retrospect I'd seen traces of it so I'd seen books earlier um and articles by people who portrayed sism in a way that seemed quite odd to me it was around the time that my book Philosophy for life and

other dangerous situations came out which was in 2012 and some I got contacted and invited to be on a podcast to talk about stoicism and um I looked into the podcast and it was a white supremacist Southern secessionist podcast um one of the podcast hosts was actually one of the organizers of the Charlottesville um white supremacy March and I was astounded I was like H how did these people get into stoicism rism in its simplest terms is stoicism that has been hijacked and manipulated to fit The Narrative of the manosphere and red pill Community it's

stoicism for the Bros for the unin iated some quick background on the quote unquote manosphere a term by the way coined by a former porn star known as Ian Ironwood the manosphere is synonymous with the red pill mentality borrowed from the Matrix movies a mentality notably disavowed by the people who actually made the Matrix conceived as backlash against the general perception that feminism had gone out of control and that girls were no longer going wild in the way that real men could get behind the manosphere as the name implies became a catchall term for a

network of male Centric online communities everything from alpha males and pickup artists to involuntary celibates AKA inels to the altright the far right and beyond for reasons we'll do our best to explain soas ISM or rather rism is now running rampant in the manosphere causing a surprisingly contagious philosophical brain flu just listen to Taylor's call with a supposed stoic leader all right so it's been about 4 days uh since I purchased this uh stoic course on fivr but uh so far I'm getting ghosted and I paid like 50 bucks for it so yeah so after

nearly a week my stoic coach decided to finally respond you your F Miss Johanna for example there is no reason to be F why are you telling me this people are calling me f yeah but you are f and I'm going to ask you another thing Miss Johanna do you want to continue to be fat or no no okay can you take control of your diet hey it's hot it's this is yeah but can you actually do it for example you see a woman getting raped and you are a stoic like you can pass through

and Fa if you want because that's your choice and although the rest of our crew didn't experience the same terrible lectures you can tell that you really can't buy stoic teachings this is my day three check-in I'm doing the Ryan holiday daily stoic.com taming your temper Daily Guide to controlling your anger every day I get something to read I get a video to watch and I get a physical activity that I'm supposed to do yesterday day two the instruction was to look in a mirror and make angry faces personally I would say my experience looking

in the mirror mean Muggin felt more silly than anything today on day three the instruction was uh drawing on the life lessons of the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore was to learn to find your happy space I would say I was expecting at this point something a little bit more substantial from from stoic content but it's only day three we got four more days to go it's currently day three and after watching the videos on the first day I started reading the classics I've been reading meditations by Marcos arelos and it's honestly such an eye

opener and the best part about it is that the book is in the public domain you don't have to spend a penny to buy it there are also writings from Epicurious senica and even Zeno so you can learn directly from the fing fathers of stoicism without paying for any C or anything at all all right so it's been 3 days now and uh I made it a little routine for myself so every day I'm picking a card reading the quote uh they're mostly from Marcus aurelus and sakica which I have to say has been a

very interesting way to just um you know take 10 minutes a day doesn't take too much of your time and uh still a good way to change your perspective a little bit so let's continue so if we had to Define broism in its pillars so to speak yeah I would agree that one of them is certainly the acknowledgement that that we only control our intentions and the actions that we initiate not the outcomes and that is in fact consistent with stoicism that's real stoicism that's what says right at the beginning of uh the of his

manual for a for a good life and that actually is a very healthy way of thinking about things that's also the basis of of certain versions of cognitive behavioral therapy rational emotive behavioral therapy for instance studied by Albert Ellis which is a type of CBT uh starts out precisely with that that kind of acknowledgement so that's fine but the second thing that the BRS seem to believe is that they need to suppress emotions that they cannot afford to to be seen as weak that is not stoicism that is a dist that's a fundamental Distortion of

stoicism too many men are being conditioned to accept weakness you know some of my stoic writings are used or misused in the in the manosphere and by by this the Bro the red Bill sto uh and I've seen that and it's like it's you know you cringe and you say oh I guess I should explain myself better the next time unlike genuine oism broism is rarely presented as a process for becoming your best self like a get-rich quick scheme or a workout routine promising instant ABS broism is all about results once Unleashed in the manosphere

broism became a one-sized fits-all answer to all questions of the alpha male variety but like everything it becomes trendy and now what you'll find is more people become interested in stoicism because they've read articles or read podcasts than because they've actually read the stoics so with that there's a risk of dilution is many of the Articles contain a i generated content fake quotes and things like that so you're you're definitely now entering a phase where you get um a lot of people becoming attracted to stoicism but getting a really inaccurate uh representation of what the

stoics said this is the unpredictability of how culture evolves and memes evolve in uh in unpredictable directions um someone wrote a book about using stoic techniques to win a poker Championship you know there was a stoic dating app let's take money so stoicism in that sense with the dollar sign or the the Silicon Valley STM is a distortion because it replaces the actual stoic value which is your character your judgment with things that the sto themselves were very clear in saying they don't matter rism invariably presents overly Simple Solutions to complicated questions one of the

perks of brism is that it can be easily Twisted into just about anything an opportunistic influencer wants it to be it's an example of the Barnum effect a psychological phenomenon in which vagan General audience appears to be tailored to a specific individual when in reality it applies to a wide range of people it's like horoscopes fortune tellers psychics in other words charlatans who make a living praying on people's fears and insecurities by telling them vague nonsense masqueraded as knowledgeable insights what prompted us to make this video in the first place is that we saw a

Resurgence in the popularity of our stoicism video and when I first made the video it did really well don't get me wrong but in the past year or two it's gotten way more popular than I could have thought in fact right now it's the most popular video on the Channel with over 11 million views the problem is that the more popular the video got the more comments you started to see from people who seem to know more about rism than stoicism people who wanted to learn how to get Rich the stoic way how to get

over a breakup the stoic way how to turn off their emotions the stoic way and if you're watching this and you had those questions I want you to know I'm not judging you at all for that I've had these questions myself especially when I was younger the sad reality of today's world is that there's many young men who don't have a steady adult male role model in their lives so when male influencers who have the money the women the power and the luxury these young boys dream of it's easy to see why they get drawn

to them in the message of broism is also very attractive to these young boys the promise that you can Will yourself to become completely self-reliant powerful and wealthy is obviously appealing because young men are are often quite vulnerable uh and insecure about their masculinity um so they tend to look towards things that they think can fill that Gap in their life and if they think being tough and having a stiff upper lip is H symbolic of masculinity that that's something that they can become come quite attached to as a philosophy of life and they associate

it um rightly or wrongly with with stoicism and Marcus with and guys like that men are not into therapy culture but they're very into stoicism and stoicism is basically therapy with gladiator metaphors sism the ethos is quite tough love if you read epicus it's quite tough love and I think that appeals to to men Jules Evans believes the modern world has unwittingly created an opening for broism to move in I think Western culture has moved to a different kind of model which is blame your environment if if you're feeling bad blame your environment blame your

uh economy blame the actions of other people blame uh systemic Injustice of some form or other in other words you are right to be miserable that's kind of that that's a a very caricatured version of a certain type of leftwing argument um if you make an extreme version of that argument um you are going to leave a a real opening for people on the right to just put forward this very basic idea and win followers the very basic idea being stop blaming other people stop behaving like a victim stop complaining all the time that's weakness

in fairness we do live in challenging times people are looking for answers and they don't have much faith in institutions like the church or government to catch them if they fall there's a growing sense that it's every man for himself some have argued that as organized religion has faded people are looking elsewhere for a new rule book to guide them and just like the Bible rism can be whatever you want it to be it's been widely noted that many people who believe in the Divine authority of the Bible have never actually read the Bible in

the same way many devotees of broism are too busy scrolling through their phone to actually go read classic stoic texts that means manosphere influencers can claim whatever they say has roots in genuine stoicism and the odds are none of their followers will call BS although one does have to wonder if stoicism as it's packaged and sold in the manosphere isn't actual stoicism why even bother calling it that I think there has always been an audience for a certain kind of male self-help which is maybe less geared towards healing and relationships and more geared towards like

success and being a man of power being a kind of great man and that kind of genre I I think has has always kind of looked for older traditional sources of advice whether that's you know samurai or whatever there is a widespread problem of of this this this kind not only certain communities Embrace uh anti-intellectualism and embrace uh certain values that are should we say quite questionable at least but they want to use cultural references which is kind of ironic considering that these these communities tend to be anti-intellectual but they they feel the need to

have some kind of pedigree that justifies uh their position once a tradition has established itself as respectable uh for whatever for whatever reasons once it had become has become particular you know sufficiently popular that people recognize it and they say oh yeah Marcus aelius oh yeah these are this guy or that guy then inevitably somebody tries to uh to co-opt it so if it's not the actual genuine content of the philosophy what is it about the brand of stoicism that makes it so sellable in the manosphere for starters I think we can agree that the

word just sounds kind of cool in common parl being stoic means the strong silent type needless to say this image plays well to would be alpha males the problem is that being stoic and stoicism are two very different things there is a difference between what sometimes we call Capital ass stoicism and little ass stoicism so when you when you hear somebody saying oh that person was is being really stoic usually they don't mean he's following the philosophy of stoicism what they mean mean is oh he has a he's poting a stiff upper lip is is

not reacting to the situation he's he's trying to control his emotions uh he's trying to sort tough it out basically that is a psychological attitude which turns out there is now fairly good empirical evidence is actually damaging it's not a good thing it's it's bad for your mental health if you try to be stoic with a little s stoicism with a capital S on the other hand is the philosophy although the term stoicism is often misused and misinterpreted the basic principles of capital S stoicism are fairly easy to grasp at least compared to other philosophies

ancient stoicism lends itself to easy to remember in highly marketable catchphrases the phrase momento Mori a reminder of man's mortality literally meaning Remember You Must Die appears to be one of Ryan holiday's bestselling medallions but still why has sism succeeded where other formerly trending philosophies like say Buddhism have not it can't just be because people think Roman centurions look awesome in that 300 was a sick movie can it so why are people in the manosphere drawn to Roman stuff like what like it's like that um Trend recently about how often do men think about the

Roman Empire like kind of Trope um is there something about it yeah like gosh I mean Rome was a militaristic society um it permeated Roman culture and symbolism um it was uh autocratic um and I think if you're going to exploit adolescent boys um which is something people have done throughout history um the the go-to way of doing that is to accuse them of being unmanly and drive that message home to them and then offer to solve it for them and then you know you're going to refer to autocratic societies and strong leaders or despots

perhaps brism outshines Eastern philosophies because Buddhism TSM and the like have been tainted by associations with 1960s counterculture and its modern offshoot the touchy feely New Age movement it's further been suggested that the shavinism that taints so much of the red pill altright movements is also at play positioning themselves in opposition to a caricature of woke liberals bowing to the Exotic superiority of Eastern wisdom Western chauvinists insist that the great forces which have civilized and elevated man uniformly originated in the west perhaps that has helped Drive the rise of rism Donald Robertson disagrees in my

own case I amass myself in in Reading uh Asian philosophy when I was a a young guy read like the aanish ads Shu like all that kind of stuff right and I loved it um but then when I found sism I connected with it in a different way I don't think cuz I idealized Western chauvinistic value but because I had a kind of what I would describe as a Deja Vu experience I thought some of this stuff seems kind of familiar to me you know I've heard some of these Concepts in our own culture other

observers are more skeptical you can see that um kind of there's there's also kind of traditionalist uh school or or kind of camp who say like we should go back to you know Western civilization's the best uh we you know we should we should teach like the greats we should teach uh the stoics in high school and in universities uh and so on that kind of um chauvinism and you even see kind of stoicism being taken up by by white supremacists it definitely doesn't hinder broisms appeal that one of the leading names in stoicism is

Marcus celius if you're going to absorb the life lessons of an ancient philosopher might as well think like a Roman Emperor right if I'd written a book about how to think like a Roman slave and it was about epic tius maybe we can test this one day but I don't think anyone would have read it um or you wouldn't I don't think it would have sold many copies I think a lot of people uh picked up how to think like a Roman Emperor because they thought Roman Emperor seem manly and Powerful in reality Marcus aurelus

was a skilled military and political leader but between running an Empire and writing his meditations he probably didn't have as as much time to hit the gym as it sometimes appears in the manosphere in thumbnails for videos touting the virtues of rism Marcus aelius often appears to be on some heavyduty steroids and come to think of it the beard looks suspiciously modern too yeah maybe I'm guilty of a kind of bait and switch strategy here like but [ __ ] unapologetically right so we kind of rule them in because they want to be like a

Roman Emperor's powerful autocratic figure and then when they get there they realize it's different at the top in Marcus Abus wasn't particularly autocratic like and he cuz he'd seen through the illusions of of power you know and actually I think that's a very compelling strategy clearly whoever's in charge of the algorithms on YouTube and social media knows the stuff sells click on a bunch of broism links for a couple days say because you're researching on a documentary on the subject and in our experience your suggestions feed will be dead for weeks and it's not an

accident the cells powers that be at YouTube Instagram and Tik Tok know it and they're all feeding in on it so what exactly does broism get wrong about stoicism forars calling stoicism a Greek philosophy that might get you some funny looks in Greece well there's kind of interesting trivia about the early history of lots of things but probably one of the main one is you sometimes occasionally you'll hear people criticizing stoicism as being a Phil phos opy of dead rich white dudes or something like that and that couldn't be further from the truth certainly Marcus

Aurelius is a dead rich white dude he was the last famous stoic the founder of stoicism was not even Greek he was Phoenician um so the Greeks saw him as a foreign immigrant and uh so STM was seen as an immigrant philosophy I believe for to begin with and as for the whole stiff upper lip strong silent type thing it is not the case that the ancient stoics don't talk about their emotions in fact as as the philosopher Martha nbound said to me no one talks about their emotions more than the stoics in ancient philosophy

the stoics it's all they talk about emotions let's face it no philosophy makes it into the mainstream without getting watered down and distorted in the process and let's not even get started on religion but nowadays some online alpha male influencers have drunk so much Kool-Aid that they've convinced themselves that they're the actual experts I've been told and some of my colleagues have been told several times by Red Bill so-called stoes that we don't know what we're talking about when it comes to the interpretation of the sto text as opposed to people who just read one

translation in English of that book and they think that they understood it it's very interesting phenomenon psychologically sociologically in and of itself the differences between stoicism and broism let's start here to the stoics both ancient and modern like Admiral Stockdale obstacles were just that obstacles life was full of them and to think that you could will reality to change was setting yourself up for failure and unhappiness you needed to accept the inevitable and train yourself accordingly in more modern parlament you needed to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable but to Ryan holiday to quote

the title of his book The obstacle is the way the way to what in the world of broism pretty much anything you think will make you happy this leads us to probably one of the most dangerous elements of rism the BRS have a third pillar that seems to be recurring in their writings or their discussions every time that I spend some time in that in those quarters and that is a profound degree of sexism bordering on misogyny and I don't use the word misogyny lightly so these are frankly weird people who are into hyper masculinity

and tend to be seriously on the sexist SL misogynist side of things and so on and so forth one can make an argument that the ancient stoics talk in a way that we would consider sexist Sena and epicas from from time to time say do say things like you know don't behave like a woman don't be don't be womanly uh that sort of stuff right and you know sure that's those were people who lived 2,000 years ago they were a result of their own society and we cringe today when we read that kind of stuff

how did stoicism ever get so far off the rails on what basis does rism justify rampant sexism or even worse the best explanation the menos here can offer mostly comes down to a bad translation when you ask them where the hell did you get that usually the answer is oh well the the word Virtue remember I said that that stoicism is a virtue at top of virtue ethics virtues are character traits right things like generosity courage and so on and so forth and so these people the the BRS the red pill stoics U say well

the word Virtue in Latin is ver v i r and ver also meant men so you know again manly men and this is baffling because there itself was actually a translation by the Romans of the original Greek AR Arete is genderless it doesn't have anything to do with with genders and it just means Excellence what does broism get right not much really the goal of stoicism and of life in general is emonia there's no direct translation for emonia in English but the closest equivalent might be well-being basically an extended and consistent state of peace and

acceptance with both the ups and downs in life the goal of broism is almost the complete opposite of that it's the idea that you need a steady stream of success and external validation to feel good about where you stack up in the pecking order the big issue isn't just that broism gives stoicism a bad name it's by that misrepresenting what the philosophy actually is the exact people who could really use stoicism are being baited and switched and fed dangerous nonsense instead Donald Robertson says if you squint you can see a sliver of Hope in the

spread of brism one thing I'd say about social media is I think you know the people say dumb things not entirely seriously sometimes makes it seem sometimes I think that these views are more prevalent than they actually are like I get I I I'm optimistic I give people a little bit more credit um than the internet I think of storis in a way as like a trojan horse you know like people are attracted to it because they're looking for something that makes them even more manly than they are already or even tougher than they are

already you know um but inside it what they find is a bunch of tools and Concepts that resemble those found in modern cognitive behavioral therapy once you discover rism and then seek to learn more like all the new visitors in the comment sections of our stoicism videos hi by the way you start on a journey that with any luck can lead you to actual stoicism and if you think this might apply to you then we're happy to have you because you're the reason we made this video if you've only encountered stoicism as practice in the

manosphere the truth may surprise you and speaking of using stoicism in our lives let's check in with our team one last time and see how the rest of their week as practicing stoic Pand out all right I just got out of my call with the uh stoic coach and like I think when we think of broism and what stoicism has become I think this dude is a pretty good like representative of it in a way just the examples he used were bizarre like it was always violence against you violence against women as someone who like

doesn't have a ton of knowledge in it this kind of made me want to stay away cuz I'm like if this is the community potentially if this is the people running courses then why would I want to do this yeah I think overall that call was just not successful and I had to pay like 30 bucks for it so not not that fun all right so this is day seven today we had a check in with the team last week and I was very curious to hear from colleague experience with this online course and I

decided to book it for myself as well I have to say I'm super curious to see whether or not he's going to adapt his talking points um also because I'm a woman so I'm I'm going to be paying attention to that and and see if my experience is any different from my colleague and uh we'll see so I just finished my call with uh the sto course overall very simplistic nothing no deep learning no no no real human connection like going deep into the subject nothing controversial contrary to my colleague like he didn't he didn't

go into anything completely outrageous whatsoever so he definitely I think adapted to his public which was me in that case yeah just uh mix feelings I would not say that was a waste of my time but I don't think it can provide any useful tips or life advices to people and uh there are so many other resources that are actually much more interesting than that but it was worth trying this is day seven my final check-in I've completed the taming your temper course from Ryan holidays daily stoic and overall I would say um I wasn't

expecting a ton from this course but I'm I'm a big believer you can find some words of wisdom just about anywhere but look obviously Ryan holiday knows that if people want to rigorously study real sto ISM there's better places to do that than his website that's not who he's pitching this at and I'm sure he'd be the first to tell you if you have like a real anger issue it's going to take more than a 7-Day email course to fix your problems but all in all this felt like something if you were going to set

up a program for school children to learn some basic stoic life lessons this would be a good course for for little kids more than grown-ups I think I wasn't expecting a ton but all in all I would have to say I was somewhat underwhelmed in general by my experience with the taming your temper daily stoic course especially considering it costs 50 bucks to get all these emails okay so it's the last day of the challenge and I honestly can say I've learned so so much everything you need to know about stoicism is available to learn

for free I've learned so much and there's still so much more that I haven't even touched we'll be leaving links to the best free storym resources in the description Down Below in conclusion the contrast between the original stoics and the manosphere influencers claiming to be stoics is pretty striking really the difference is night and day the goal is to become a better person better person is defined as somebody who actually cares gives a crap about other people and does something about it as opposed to just talking about it and it emphasizes the idea that our

character is more important ultimately in terms of our the meaning of life and our quality of life than external Goods like wealth and reputation you know the founder of stoicism rejected the followers who urged him to give the movement he started his name he wanted to focus on the ideas not himself and he rejected the pursuit of personal Glory as poison for the soul although no doubt flattered to be acknowledged by a powerful man Zeno is said to have declined an imperial invitation to visit antigonous the Greek General who succeeded Alexander the Great it was

said that Zeno avoided large social Gatherings preferring quiet study and that he disliked verbos and elaborate speeches although he had known the pleasures of life as a wealthy Merchant Zeno refused to make money from teaching philosophy and instead Liv des spair and acidic life so what would Zeno think if he could see the world today what would his advice be for people who wanted to follow his virtuous path they might surprise many of the people who invoke the name of the philosophy Zeno founded in their Pursuit Of Fame and profit unlike many in the manosphere

he would reject far-right nationalism after all sto coined the word Cosmopolitan which literally means citizen of the world stoicism is about cosmopolitanism it's about considering every other human being on the planet as literally your sister and your brother we're all part of one Cosmic City the Cosmopolis we're all cosmopolitans therefore we should treat people whatever culture they're in you know fairly and justly as a brother or sister he would fight inequality in all forms the one thing thato Zeno and early stoics in particular thought was toxic was this idea of becoming alienated from our fellow

brothers and sisters in the human race so racism sexism you know all these kind of prejudices and isms you know really fly in the face of the the fundamental goal of of stoicism which is achieving a a sense of Harmony and unity among Mankind and what of the manosphere itself what do you think what is the goal of stoicism a hint is that it probably doesn't have anything to do with girls in bikinis to put it more simply it's to achieve your innate potential as a rational self-aware thinking being Zeno arrived at the principles of

stoicism when a disaster outside of his control forced him to make sense of life in a new and deeper way he was able to do so not by rebuilding his lost wealth in recapturing his former glory but by developing a philosophy that would allow him to be satisfied with nothing in the same Spirit Marcus arelius during his lifetime the wealthiest man on Earth gladly parted with the substantial portion of his fortune to Aid his fellow Roman citizens saying the only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth that you've given away other recent real

life figures provide shining examples of the value of true stoicism admits the worst life could ever throw at us not just ad James Stockdale also fellow prisoner of war turned Senator John McCain and Holocaust Survivor turned author Creo Levy these worthy examples of stoicism didn't seek Glory fame or wealth they simply did the hard work of surviving life at its worst and coming out the other side permanently stronger that is the way of the sto and always remember be wary of anyone who is too eager to tell you the way you should live for in

the words of Zeno himself we have two ears in one mouth so we should listen more than we say