Philosophy is for the Living
Meeting Ryan Holiday (Daily Stoic) and an airport nightmare
This week in Palm Springs, California, just south of Los Angeles, nestled at the northern edge of Joshua Tree National Park, a conversation was had on the virtues of Stoicism and Objectivism in modern life. This is my idea of a good time. At FreedomFest, I interviewed Ryan Holiday of the Daily Stoic (also author of 14 books, including The Obstacle is the Way) and Daniel Richards of the Prometheus Foundation.
Ryan is a contemporary Stoic. Daniel is an Objectivist.
Objectivism is the young philosophy of Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead), and is something of a sacred cow in the world of staunch libertarians. It’s a system of ideas somewhat liberationist in nature. Objectivism is about empowerment and personal happiness as the primary objectives of life. In this system, you follow your goals through to the end, you chase your North Star, and you embrace being the hero of your own story (rational egoism). Critics call it the philosophy of selfishness.
I’m somewhere in the middle about the whole thing.
Stoicism is more well-known; it’s older. Besides being about focusing on the things in life within your control and enduring suffering with a sense of purpose, Stoicism is also very tied up in the cosmological assumptions of the Greek and Roman world.
In a sense, even though Stoics were at odds with the Christians when they came on the scene, the two belief systems have slightly more ability to speak the same language because they generally accept a higher power at work in the universe. Objectivism tends to be most popular with atheists because it has the human being look inward for purpose, rather than upward, and it would not accept a purpose in life that centers around suffering or bearing an unreasonable burden.
Christians know this idea well. Stoics did as well, for different reasons.
In the conversation between Holiday, Richards, and myself, we did come to a shared conclusion about what we all share, and it immediately factored into my real life as I left Palm Springs.
Philosophy is for the living. It is for breathing human beings with full and beating hearts.
The Stoic called Seneca lashed out at “philosophers” whose entire essence is playing word games and splitting hairs about the meaning of words.
In the time of Rome, he was saying that post-modernist philosophy professors in tweed jackets are not true philosophers. The genuine article gives you something you can take on the road with you. This is in Letters from a Stoic.
As I write to you, I have just awoke from six hours barely asleep on the airport floor in Denver. We’ve all been there before, so I don’t want to throw a pity party here. But boy, is it hard.
I opted to fly out of California a day early to go be with my family.
Instead, my flight stayed on the tarmac in Palm Springs for 2 hours, then deboarded us for 2 more hours, reboarded us all, then delayed again.
Storms and tornadoes near our destination of Denver had their own plans.
After landing in Denver, I prayed for patience and grace.
Five minutes later, a cranky old man tried to fight me over nothing.
The next flight home was booked full.
United Airlines customer service phone line was backlogged by an hour.
The hotel on-site was full.
Restaurants were closing. It was almost 10 PM now.
My only option became a 6 AM flight and the dreaded night in the airport.
But I was okay. I am okay. It is now almost 5 AM.
Maybe it was the few days I spent immersed in philosophical conversation. Maybe it was the prayer. Maybe it was just the result of a few years hard at work changing how I handle frustration, but I managed to navigate all of this with some peace.
Anger would swell up at times, but I’ve gotten better at seeing it and closing the door before it arrives. This has been a deep desire of mine since I was an even younger man. I didn’t want to be the kind of man of throws a fit when the travel plans break down, and I was on the verge of becoming that very person for a period of time.
Stoicism has its critics. Certain people love to scoff at it and deride some of the self-helpy popularization that folks like Ryan Holiday have pulled off in recent years with this old Greco-Roman philosophy. I get it. I can see why it’s a little cringe.
But as a tool in my toolkit for getting through life in a way that feels dignified and ordered, I have valued its presence in my life so very much.
I didn’t have this five years ago. It all started with Lives of the Stoics, which happens to be in my backpack for a reread. Like my recent C.S. Lewis binge, which began in 2023, I feel these things came to me as part of some necessary preparation for events already past and some coming in the near future.
Philosophy is for the living.
It is not for word games and fostering confusion.
It is for clarity.
Thank you for reading Geeky Stoics. We’ll be sharing video and summaries of our sit-down with Ryan Holiday of the Daily Stoic.
The flight is now boarding…..gotta go.