The Stoic Emperor
@TheStoicEmperor
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Modern meditations. Wisdom for the world of today. These are new thoughts, not quotes.
The Inner Citadel
Joined April 2017
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Don’t be upset by disrespect from people you don’t respect.
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Most valuable information is widely accessible.
Great books of centuries past are free online.
Thinkers of today argue publicly on Twitter.
YouTube is a lecture hall that seats millions.
Podcasts are private tutors for the masses.
A golden age for the self-motivated learner.
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Don’t underestimate what can be built in a year, or what can be destroyed in an afternoon.
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The work of centuries can be torn down in hours.
The destroyers will live and die in the ruins of something they cannot rebuild or replace.
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Art, glamour, and entertainment are all much diminished in Hollywood. The decaying cult of celebrity is what remains.
The public don’t care what wins Best Picture. They don’t want to see it, and won’t.
It now takes celebrity blood sport to cut through.
Are you not entertained?
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We rarely appreciate all that our enemies do for us.
They test us and make us stronger.
They exploit our flaws, motivating us to correct them.
They show us what we do not wish to become.
So many memorable lessons.
What fine teachers our enemies are.
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Confusion is a feeling that precedes learning something.
It means you should pay closer attention, not disengage.
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You can make a persuasive case that all your troubles are the fault of others.
You will convince some people.
You might even convince yourself.
Are your troubles now solved?
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For a few centuries man has tried to make himself like a machine.
He's learned to arrive on time.
He's learned to repeat after teacher.
He's learned to do repetitious tasks reliably.
Machines are now better at being machines than man is.
Man must now relearn how to be man.
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Anger is good at telling us there is a problem.
Anger is not good at telling us the source of the problem.
Anger is very bad at telling us the solution to the problem.
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Confidence grows with action and shrinks with idleness.
You don’t need to feel confident to start.
You need to start to feel confident.
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Try to accept hard truths a little faster than other people do.
It is a great advantage.
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You “empower” people by telling them the truth.
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Seemingly normal people can display extreme cruelty when given a socially acceptable scapegoat to vent their frustrations upon.
Popular sadism is still sadism.
Beware the dark passions of unthinking crowds.
Guard your own moral standards and meet them.
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Almost all Americans own a smartphone or a computer.
Each device contains the library of Alexandria.
The sum total of all world knowledge.
You can learn anything. Why don't you?
Too busy tracking social status.
Too enthralled by imagery your evolution can't resist.
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Reading is not a chore.
Reading is theft. It is a robbery.
Someone smarter than you has spent 20 years beating their head against the wall trying to solve the problem you're dealing with.
You can steal that hard won knowledge and make it yours.
That is power.
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We must sometimes do things that we are not qualified to do.
Infants are not qualified to walk.
Growing up is a succession of tests we are not qualified to take.
This is what growth demands.
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It is only when a bureaucracy is deeply threatened that you can tell who is actually in charge.
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You will be wrong sometimes.
The key is to not stay wrong.
An unacknowledged error is an error.
An acknowledged error is an education.
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Don’t let people who hate you tell you what to do.
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Man thinks he knows the minds of others when he hardly knows his own.
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Never speaking your mind is a way to avoid all controversy and all genuine friendship.
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If you think less of yourself after doing it... don't do it again.
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When they lose their good sense, keep yours.
When they abandon their morality, keep yours.
Madness in the crowd is not an excuse for personal degeneration.
Be a fortress.
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“Why did they insult me?”
Bad question.
“Why did I feel insulted?”
Good question.
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Many seemingly complex achievements are simply the result of people getting the basics right with relentless consistency.
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The idea of cultural appropriation is not valid.
Culture is appropriation. That is all that culture is.
Appropriation from your neighbor, your mother, that man in the market.
Appropriation from those who came before, the builders, the remembered.
Civilization is open source.
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People who spend all day reading texts and Twitter will tell you “I don’t read. I don’t have time.”
You are reading this. You have time.
People read more than ever. They read plenty of marketing emails and angry YouTube comments.
Read something worthwhile.
Read a good book.
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People fill their homes with excess things and travel to be free of them.
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If you are easily provoked you are easily controlled.
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You can “get a good education” by giving it to yourself.
Education is something you do, not something that passively happens to you.
Elite colleges sell a brand name and a networking opportunity.
The knowledge itself is in the library and in the device you’re reading this on.
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Think long term.
Execute short term.
Appreciate the present.
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A good teacher will arm you with the tools to dispute their conclusions.
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The seeds of virtue may be planted by instruction, but they must grow in the soil of life, in the field of action, in the hard rain of circumstance.
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If you are a puppet of your lowest instincts you will be puppeteered by anyone who can provoke them.
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Man can handle more than he thinks and achieve more than he dares.
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How often we condemn others for failings we have already forgiven in ourselves.
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Distrust the impulse to have an opinion about everything.
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It is fruitless to wish you had started years ago.
In the future you will wish you had started now.
Don't wish.
Act.
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Rapid learning requires a high tolerance for looking stupid.
The path to answers begins with the admission that we don’t know them.
Adopting the appearance of knowledge is a way to impress, but not a way to improve.
Ignorant questions are preferable to premature answers.
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Pause and ask yourself:
“Does this really need a response?”
Little annoyances come and go.
The irritation fades quickly if it is not indulged.
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Why did the insult bother you?
If it is false, it has no weight.
If it is true, it is better to know.
Either way, you are unharmed.
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People are interesting if you allow them to be.
A routine social interaction is only a couple good questions away from something deeply involving.
People reveal their complexity when you give them your full attention.
Your interest gives them permission to be interesting.
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YouTube is full of teachers who will happily repeat themselves until you get it.
A rewindable instructor has infinite patience.
One of the great resources of our time.
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Your time has monetary value to advertisers, influencers, and Netflix.
It should have a deeper value to you.
It is your life.
Don’t give it away too cheaply.
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People tend to avoid the important work they fear by doing unimportant work that wears them out.
They suppress anxiety with exhaustion, but they do not address the source of the problem.
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Anthony Bourdain turned what could have been formula TV into an exploration of culture, craft, and conflict.
He wrote like a fusion of Hunter Thompson and Graham Greene. He had an international mind and a singularly American voice.
Here's to the chef with the soul of a poet.
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You don’t have time to “keep up” with all the irrelevant ephemera that marketers and manipulators want you to respond to.
TV can go unwatched.
Articles can remain unread.
Trends can fade away unnoticed.
Don’t react to things that don’t matter.
Make time for your life.
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Free people can speak freely.
If you fear to speak, you aren’t free.
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The real art of communication is not in making yourself impressive, but in making yourself understood.
It is a rarer skill than you might think.
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Beware the headline that claims a false consensus:
"We all love..."
"We're all shocked..."
"What you need..."
"You'll cry when you see..."
You're no longer a reader. You're a conscript, being taught to react.
Taught to look through a clouded lens and see only the narrative.
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The media mostly lie with emphasis and omission, rarely with outright falsehoods.
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Most people are good when they are among the good.
Observe them in the company of scoundrels and you will find out if they are moral or merely conformist.
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Trust is built slowly.
Trust is destroyed quickly.
Trust can make complex things possible.
The absence of trust can make simple things impossible.
Trust powers relationships, businesses, nations.
Trust is as precious as it is fragile.
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It is best to attack the substance of an argument.
It is less good to attack the style of an argument.
It is pathetic to attack the identity of the arguer.
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The value of reading is now as much about the capacity to focus as the content of the book.
Regular reading is a practice that directs our focus towards something specific.
It is a counterpoint to a culture of increasingly fractured attention and compulsive pseudo-multitasking.
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Each day gives us a sunrise and a sunset.
Often, that is enough.
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Free distractions are expensive.
Everything costs time and attention.
Nothing is free.
Time is not a renewable resource.
Spend it on things that matter.
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If you look for something to complain about, you will find it.
If you look for something to be grateful for, you will find it.
Most lives have their share of good and bad luck.
Gratitude is a choice of emphasis.
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Self-control is a tactical strength as well as a moral virtue.
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Charm may attract friends, but it is character that keeps them.
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Many get the advice they need and say:
“I already know that.”
If you aren’t acting on it, you don’t “know it" in any meaningful sense.
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Comedy has declined in recent years, but reality has stepped up to fill the void.
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An exercise for an age of reactivity:
Spend a week writing down everything that bothers you. Outrages in the news, personal slights, daily irritations.
Read it a month later. How many entries feel important now? Probably not many.
Excess reactivity steals happiness and energy.
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Modern technology offers endless opportunities to gawk at the wealth, status, and misbehavior of others.
Be wary of this compulsive, pleasureless voyeurism.
Keep your eyes on your own life.
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The internet provides access to an education that the aristocracy of old couldn't have imagined.
It also provides the perfect attack vector for marketers to exploit cognitive vulnerabilities and dominate your attention.
A world-class education is free for the undistractable.
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We achieve nothing when we try to do everything at once.
Multitaskers make errors that singletaskers don’t.
Stop. Prioritize. Choose. Execute.
Do one thing well, then another.
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You can recognize society’s most intolerant by their impulse to silence writers and comedians.
Aspiring totalitarians are reliably hostile to free pens and free laughter.
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Modern people often feel most content in a hotel room.
They feel liberated by the novel emptiness. No closet of unworn clothes to remind them of past identities. No calendar to create anxiety for the future.
Many of the things we fear losing are things we would not miss.
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Finding information is easier than ever.
Filtering information is harder than ever.
We are bombarded with irrelevant data and unsolicited stimulation.
Choosing what to ignore is as important as choosing what to pay attention to.
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A good idea is a bad idea + a day of rethinking it.
Good writing is bad writing + a day of revision.
Quality is a process.
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Learning is easier if you are honest about your own ignorance.
People want to seem "in the know." They try to signal that they are intelligent and informed. This is often counterproductive.
Insecurity is the enemy of learning.
A master knows how to be a beginner.
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People have original thoughts in the shower because it is one of the only places in modern life that offers refuge from entertainment, compulsive workaholism, and social hyperconnectedness.
The isolation allows you to hear yourself think.
Morning meditation for the masses.
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Truly noticing the present will often replace worry with gratitude.
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A minute of rage can undo a lifetime of diligent effort.
Self-control is self-preservation.
Most of us won't look back on the moments we acted in anger as among our finest.
Do not act when the tide of rage flows in.
Wait for it to go out.
Then act with reason and proportion.
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Self-pity solves nothing.
It is an appealing way to avoid solutions and wallow in an addictive sense of helplessness.
Events will never conform perfectly to our desires.
Life is a teacher.
Bad experiences teach us that we can survive bad experiences.
Move forward.
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Learn the newest skills and the oldest principles.
The timely and the timeless will combine in powerful ways.
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When events disprove your theory, abandon it.
Don't choose consistency over accuracy.
Reality will be recognized, now or later.
Make it now.
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When actions contradict words, believe the actions.
Behavior reveals what speech conceals.
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Free speech is becoming a luxury good.
Most people cannot afford to risk the dangers of mob condemnation.
A few incautious (or misinterpreted) words can leave you jobless and socially isolated.
It is not surprising that people choose employability over honesty.
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You will always find an excuse if you permit yourself to look for one.
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College is the most overpriced dating service in history.
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Some people create constant trouble to distract themselves from the deeper issues they are avoiding.
They make sure there is always a new fire to put out.
They are both fireman and arsonist.
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Lack of effort is a way to hide.
It leads to failure and provides an excuse for it.
It is better to try.
Be prepared to endure failure, but don’t seek it out.
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A miseducation is much more dangerous than no education.
An uneducated person has common sense born of pattern recognition.
A miseducated person has traded good sense for bad theories.
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You forfeit the freshness of the morning if you immediately open Twitter and email.
Doing so allows many voices into your mind. These voices alter your mood, spark anxieties, and compete to set your agenda.
Start your day however you choose, but be sure that YOU are choosing.
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“Everyone does it.”
The last excuse for the otherwise indefensible.
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If the "free world" slides into a censorship state there will be no free world.
America was founded by rebel pamphleteers. Free speech is the indispensable value.
The early tech builders (unlike modern tech bureaucrats) believed that information dreams of being free.
Free it.
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The obedient student seeks the approval of an authority figure.
The ambitious student seeks to become an authority figure.
The genuine student seeks the truth.
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People who loudly advertise their virtues may be trying to draw the eye away from their otherwise obvious vices.
A magician flourishes with one hand as he works his trick with the other.
Quiet goodness is goodness.
Noisy goodness is theater.
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Boredom is rarely boredom. Life is very interesting.
Most of what people describe as boredom is in fact a deep dissatisfaction that emerges when the level of ambient stimulation is low enough to allow for self-awareness.
Awareness is kept at bay with compulsive activity.
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If you show interest in people they will show you that they are interesting.
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The modern impediment to learning is attention, not access.
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There have never been so many opportunities to be told what to think by people who don’t think.
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Old books teach urgent new lessons.
People read more than ever, but mostly low-value material.
Unwanted emails, ragebait articles, insane social media babble... largely worthless ephemera.
Quiet libraries are full of half-forgotten marvels.
The undimmed genius of the ages.
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