Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday we do double duty not just reading our daily meditation

but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 meditations on wisdom,

perseverance in the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful

collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman.

So today, we'll give you a quick meditation

from the Stoics with some analysis from me,

and then we'll send you out into the world

to turn these words in to works.

Everybody wants to rule the world.

Everybody wants to rule the world.

They fought their whole lives for it. They sacrificed family for it,

they sacrificed happiness, ethics, moral tranquility for it. For as long as there have been groups of

people, people have wanted to be in charge of those people.

For as long as there have been armies, people have tried to use them to conquer, to rule, to accumulate

empires.

Was it worth it?

Did they enjoy it? Did it mean anything? Few, if any of them ever bothered to

honestly answer that question. Which is what makes Marx Surrealis's meditation such a remarkable

and unprecedented text.

Here you have the most powerful man in the world, head of the most powerful army on earth, a

victorious general whose triumphs warranted a 130 foot tall marble column lauding his achievements.

And what did he say this all amounted to?

...