Ryan Holiday on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Source: PowerfulJRE Youtube.
Stoic philosophy is everywhere. Scroll online and soon enough a bro who only eats steak will quickly sell you maxims. Ego is the enemy. Discipline is your only friend. Command and conquer your bedroom.
Founded c. 300 BCE, Stoicism explores the relationship between ethics, physics and logic. The three original Stoics—Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus—thought that eudaimonia (happiness) could only be achieved through virtuous acts in accordance with divine order. These days, we commonly associate the philosophy with Seneca, the advisor of the infamous Roman emperor Nero; slave-turned-banished-philosopher Epictetus; and one of the ‘five good emperors’ of Rome, Marcus Aurelius. In contrast to the original Stoics, the more popular names focus predominantly on a very personal and practical genre of ethics, one that can be used as praxis in everyday life and adapts easily to the secular world.
In Book 5 of Meditations, Marcus Aurelius invokes the perennial morning struggle: how and why should we get out of bed. ‘So you were born to feel nice?’ he asks. ‘To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’ Aurelius hastily reminds us of our cosmic duty:
Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as human being? Why aren’t you running to do what nature demands?
We weren’t made to be comfortable and relax. We were made to work hard and to reflect the order we see outside. It’s probably with this in mind that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, ‘the English adjective “stoical” is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins’.
Scroll online and soon enough a bro who only eats steak will quickly sell you maxims.
The ‘neo-Stoicism’ of the internet age advances this ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ rhetoric more than any other feature of traditional Stoicism. Today’s most famous neo-Stoics—Ryan Holiday, Jordan Peterson, Lex Fridman, David Goggins, Jocko Willink—churn out hacks that give our lives order, structure and purpose. Two things are notable about these figures: they are not academic philosophers and they are very public with their discipline. Ryan Holiday carries a coin inscribed with ‘momento mori’—remember your mortality. Jocko Willink shares a photo of his watch at 4.30am, when he wakes up every morning. David Goggins runs 160km in one go. Lex Fridman runs 4 miles every 4 hours. Jordan Peterson only eats beef.
Jocko Willink’s Instagram feed. Source: @jockowillink.
Ryan Holiday is the most successful contemporary proponent of neo-Stoicism. In the words of Alexandra Alter at the New York Times: ‘If Stoicism is becoming trendy, you can credit, or blame, Mr Holiday.’ A social media star, public-relations strategist and the former marketing director of the disgraced American Apparel—Holiday is the kind of guy who will manipulate you into buying something and then also sell you the book which explains what he just did.
Holiday’s popular books, which principally recapitulate lessons from the Stoic greats, have endorsements from the likes of the former US Secretary of Defence James Mattis. As of December 2021, Holiday’s 2014 self-help title, The Obstacle is the Way, has sold more than 283,000 copies, and COVID precipitated an increase in sales by 37% in 2020 compared to 2019.
Holiday’s 2016 book, The Daily Stoic—also the name of his Stoicism-education business—provides ‘365 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living’. Today’s meditation is from Epictetus: ‘A podium and a prison is each a place, one high and the other low, but in either place your freedom of choice can be maintained if you so wish.’ Pleasure, suffering, joy, misery, clarity, distraction—these are all experiences that we bring upon ourselves. To be told that your problems are your own doing conjures an extremely engaging cognitive quest. The quest is perfection, and neo-Stoicism is the manual.
To be told that your problems are your own doing conjures an extremely engaging cognitive quest.
When asked about the popularity of Stoicism in 2016 at StoiCon, an annual convention that has been running since 2013, Holiday foresaw its increased uptake: ‘We’ve only captured a very small fraction of the potential market… Stoicism is a philosophy designed for the masses, and if it has to be simplified a bit to reach the masses, so be it.’ To be successful neo-Stoics have had to ensnare themselves in a market logic that prioritises simplistic, arousing, extreme and polarising content. Not even Stoicism is impervious to algorithms, which amplifies engagement above all else.
Part of the marketability of neo-Stoicism has been its military-style aggression. This should not come as a surprise—Goggins and Willink are ex-Navy SEALs; Fridman is a BJJ fanatic; Holiday calls Stoicism the ‘unofficial philosophy of the military’. You know the vibe: honour your commitments, salute your fears, conquer your anxiety, master your rage, confront your limits and seek dominion over your behaviour. Keep Calm and Carry On, indeed.
Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins (2018); Discipline is Destiny, Ryan Holiday (2022); Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willing and Leif Babin (2015). Source: Booktopia.
In this sense, neo-Stoicism begins to resemble the quotidian use of ‘stoic’. We commonly associate this kind of ‘stoic’ with an unaffected and unemotive man. A Don Draper figure comes to mind. A man who is strong in a traditional way—dominant, stubborn, productive, driven and unfazed. What’s ironic about many of these figures (especially in TV) is that their repressed plight and pain are as obvious as their unalloyed grit.
When Stoicism is articulated along the lines of military-style discipline and the suppression of emotion, it invokes a warped kind of masculine ideal. This archetype is what many understand to be the selling point of traditional patriarchal role models like Jordan Peterson. Among the many myriad claims made by such figures is a call for men to generate discipline and control from within. Since ‘no one cares about the men who fail’, the onus falls on men themselves to combat their angst and prevent their failure.
For believers in the siege on masculinity, Peterson is a gateway into misplaced men’s rights speak. Despite being wrong for implying that men are suffering more angst than anyone else or that we need to reinforce rigid gender roles, his popularity alludes to something important. Think about it: we live in an age of hyper-competition, secular disenchantment and consumerism. We are pitted against our kith and kin from day one, we are judged for our performance in the most brutal ways and the loneliness epidemic is on the rise. Responding to our condition by assuming responsibility seems reasonable, it’s a way of feeling like we have some power in an unpredictable world.
Neo-Stoicism can be aggressive and militaristic…Keep Calm and Carry On, indeed.
Peterson, who trained as a clinical psychologist, takes control to an extreme in his bestselling 12 Rules for Life (a book that has sold more than 5 million copies). In Rule 6, which is titled ‘Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticise the World’, he tells us: ‘Don’t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of your enemies. Don’t reorganise the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?’
There is simply no such thing as "social" justice. Whatever those who rely on this cliched phrase are aiming at has nothing whatsoever to do with justice. Justice is meted out at the level of the suffering individual.
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) November 17, 2021
In 2020 it was revealed that Peterson had been hospitalised for a devastating Benzo addiction. ‘I don’t remember anything. From Dec. 16 of 2019 to Feb. 5, 2020,’ he explained. Overcome by tragedy in his personal life, Peterson had lost control. His daughter Mikhaila commented, ‘Dad started to get super-weird. It manifested as extreme anxiety, and suicidality.’ It is hard to make sense of Peterson’s hasty return to a non-stop international speaking tour. If anything, it is symbolic of the importance of community and support networks, something which is somewhat antithetical to the solitary pilgrimage which he endorses.
Not even Stoicism is impervious to algorithms, which prioritise engagement above all else.
Dr Nancy Sherman, professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, argues that we ought to interpret Stoicism as an ideology that primarily brings people together. She says that it’s not just about the individual and impulse control, it’s also for ‘thinking about how to build a community so that fear and rage don’t rip us apart’. But Dr Sherman admits that her optimism is not marketable: ‘These foundational elements of Stoic ethics don’t always rise to the top of the Stoic daily newsletter or the best-seller list.’ Culture wars rage between the left and the right, and no one even knows what constitutes a ‘key issue’ anymore. Even seemingly universal issues—unrecognisable costs of living, long wait times to see mental health specialists, geopolitical and climate crises—are often so stressfully complex that a retreat into the safety of one’s own mind feels more compelling than looking outward for answers, even if it exacerbates the alienation of living in the modern world.
Peterson’s Rule 7, ‘Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)’, gives us a barometer for assessing his own advice. On the one hand, neo-Stoicism is an accessible panacea for a polarised world that atomises and divides. But its success tells us that people find meaning in change and progress. In On Anger, Seneca asks us to ‘cultivate our humanity’. Instead of narrowing our view of the world, perhaps we need something more humane and more empathetic than simplified guides to mastering a stiff upper lip and suffering in silence.
