Ancient Stoics On Modern Life: Timeless Insights

If the ancient Stoics—Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus—were transported into the modern era, how would they judge us?

In this deep-dive interview, I sit down with renowned Stoic expert Donald Robertson to explore what the ancient philosophers would think about today's world—our media, our politics, our inability to reason properly, and our general ignorance of logic and rhetoric.

Please note: This track may include some explicit/triggering language.

Transcript

The following is a clip from a conversation I recorded with Donald Robertson,

A cognitive behavioral psychotherapist and renowned expert on Stoicism.

Donald specializes in bridging ancient philosophical wisdom with the modern psychology to enhance resilience,

Emotional clarity,

And well-being.

Enjoy.

If Epictetus,

Max Aurelius,

Seneca,

The ancient Stoics were transported into the current era,

If they were just to look at the kind of culture of modern Stoicism,

Not any particular author or work,

But just the kind of the overall landscape of modern Stoicism,

Do you think there would be any things that they would kind of disagree with or think that people are doing well or would want to inject more of something else into it?

How do you think they would interpret it?

I think they'd want that to be more graphic novels.

Yeah,

I agree.

I don't know.

I have no idea.

That would blow their minds,

I think.

They'd be like,

What is this thing?

I'm not sure what they would make of that.

Although,

Weirdly,

As an aside,

One of our main historical sources for Max Aurelius is a thing called the Aurelian Column,

Which is a huge column that has this circular frieze that goes or spirals around it.

And that's sequential art.

It's like a precursor of modern graphics.

So they are actually kind of existing,

Max Aurelius' time.

That's a big question and a really interesting question.

I think that there are a lot of things with modern society they would find kind of weird.

I think they would think that we're very sheltered from our own sense of mortality.

But it's hard to know what to pick on.

There's so many things.

I think one of them is that they would probably say,

You guys don't really live sheltered lives.

You don't really see people die.

You don't look after your dying relatives.

You're not seeing infant mortality like we did.

You're not serving in the military in close quarters like we did.

You guys are really sheltered from anything that reminds you of your own mortality.

And I think that in that respect,

They would think that we were missing something,

That we were naive in that regard.

They thought their contemporaries were naive in terms of burying their head in the sand about their own mortality.

They're going to think we are far worse in that respect,

For the most part,

I believe.

And they would also think that we're stupid.

And they'd be right.

Because for a reason that's,

You know,

This idea of the Dunning-Kruger effect,

Like that in some areas,

People don't know how stupid they are,

Or how little they know,

Because they don't have the technical knowledge to be able to appraise their lack of knowledge.

So someone who doesn't know how to do basic arithmetic is not even going to understand when someone explains to them how they're getting sums wrong.

Because they're like,

I don't even understand the explanation.

I don't know how to do addition.

I'm just guessing the numbers.

And someone tries to explain how they're getting these calculations wrong,

But even the explanation is going over my head.

So they don't even know how little they know.

And it's hard to explain to them sometimes.

So we know in modern society,

Compared to an educated group of Roman,

Where most of us are woefully ignorant about rhetoric and logic,

And they would think we're kind of thick as two short bricks in that regard,

Frankly.

They'd be like,

Do you guys not understand common informal fallacy?

They'd look at us on the internet,

And they'd think,

You guys are making the same childlike errors of reasoning over and over again.

They'd think our political debates are infantile.

I mean,

These things happened in their time,

But educated people were more cognizant of what was going on.

So ad hominem fallacies,

Overgeneralization,

Causal fallacies,

Modal fallacies.

They knew how to reason technically.

In the same way that we know how to do a division and multiplication and stuff,

They knew how to use logic.

And they'd look at what we were doing and think,

You guys don't even understand how to think straight.

It's shocking.

They'd have a field day with podcasts.

I think Marcus Aurelius,

Joe Rogan did a podcast recently about how he loves Marcus Aurelius.

I think if Marcus Aurelius watched Joe Rogan's podcast,

It would make him weep.

The level of stupidity on show and crass ignorance and just absurd illogical reasoning on display and constant headbanging against the wall,

Abuse of the causal fallacy when talking about things like research and COVID vaccines.

I mean,

Marcus Aurelius doesn't even know anything about scientific light,

But he'd understand the shoddy reasoning that's on display immediately,

I think.

Epictetus.

Ancient philosophers studied dialectic.

They trained.

Marcus spent decades training in rhetoric.

When you train in rhetoric,

You learn how to manipulate people.

Rhetoric and logic are two sides of the same coin.

When you learn logic,

You learn how to spot logical fallacies.

When you learn rhetoric,

You learn how to exploit logical fallacies.

It's the two sides of the same thing.

Marcus had trained for decades with the leading thinkers of his era in logic and rhetoric.

These guys are way ahead of us.

It's funny because we normally think of progress in the sciences.

Even if you're a philosophy graduate,

You do a few classes in logic.

You employ Socratic method and philosophical reasoning for a few years in seminars and stuff like that.

Nothing like the level at which ancient Greek and Roman philosophers were doing it on a daily basis for decades of their lives.

They would wipe the floor with us and easily in that regard.

They would watch Joe Rogan and they would watch CNN and Fox and all the other garbage that we consume and think that it was amazing that we've taken such a step backwards and we're now reasoning like idiots.

They think we've regressed compared to them and become imbeciles.

That's my own opinion.

Honestly,

If Marcus Lewis was here today,

He'd look at the internet and think,

How did we end up being so stupid?

How come these people can't spot the use of sophistry?

Has nobody taught them how to spot overgeneralizations and arguments and black and white reasoning and all these kinds of things?

Their internet's full of people using the at homonym argument and politicians do it all the time.

Greeks and Romans would just laugh at that.

We've regressed back into being duped by it.

Logic needs to come to our rescue.

That really is one of the main weaknesses in modern society.

I think everyone's political discourse is like a car crash.

It's a dumpster fire on social media.

I think it's fair to say American political and in Britain,

Most countries,

Maybe not everywhere in the world,

But political debate is farcical.

I think the ancient Greeks and Romans would have a lot to say about that.

They had to deal with these things,

But they understood what was going on around them.

They weren't as gullible.

They think they're gullible by comparison,

I'm sure of that.

Well,

Yeah,

I feel both dumb,

But also very inspired to go and start looking at logic and rhetoric.

The basic thing,

The starting point,

I think it's almost like logic.

I think it's taught a little bit back to front.

We just need to learn about common fallacies.

Most people actually start looking at philosophy,

Learn about things like the autominum fallacy.

You see in debates,

People will go,

Somebody followed an argument and they'll go,

Well,

That guy's a Nazi.

You'll think,

Well,

Hang on a minute.

That doesn't mean to say that the thing that he said,

Whether or not that's true.

Nowadays,

It's like that politician is a pedophilia or something like that or whatever.

Insults are thrown,

Accusations are thrown at people that detract from the content of what they're actually saying.

People will reject an argument based on who said it rather than whether or not the thing that they say is logical or there's evidence for it.

That's the autominum fallacy.

It's all over the internet on a hour by hour basis.

I think just spotting stuff like that is more important.

By the way,

Medical,

Any cognitive therapist,

It's evidence-based practice.

We're trained and we have to read research studies.

The media exploit a fallacy called the causal fallacy every day in reporting medical research.

They confuse correlation and causation.

It's their favorite thing to do over and over and over again.

As an aside,

I'd say to people,

Look up causal fallacies and look at the fallacy of confusing correlation and causation.

It's fairly simple.

Then you'll see a lot of the health reporting,

The reporting of medical research is garbage.

It's just distorting and exploiting information in order to freak people out.

It's a big problem for public health in our society.

I don't think the ancient stories would have understood that because this is a problem more prominent in relation to modern scientific research,

But it's a big problem in our society.

We're being fed not just misinformation,

But these guys are saying one plus one equals three or something.

This thing is just completely nonsensical,

But it happens over and over and over.

Joe Rogan has a career built out of doing this pretty much.

He's not the only one.

He's a picking on heaven because he's the biggest one.

There's loads of other people.

The media is full of it.

Tabloid newspapers have been doing this for decades on a huge scale,

But it's time that people became more educated about basic misinformation and health research.

That's one of them that people should arm themselves with.

The Stoics thought we have to study logic in order to defend ourselves against misinformation.

That was their argument for it.

Cynics didn't study logic.

Then the Stoics' argument is,

No.

The thing is,

If you don't study logic,

Then you're vulnerable to people manipulating you with rhetoric.

You'll fall prey to sophists then.

At the very least,

You need to understand enough to protect yourself.

That's really part of what ancient philosophy was about.

That aspect of it is almost defunct now.

I love that frame.

Logic is psychological self-defense.

That's a really powerful one.