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Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

If everyone is woke, then no one is awake. It's unquestionably a good thing that the world is waking up to the idea of social justice. For too long, marginalized groups have been precisely that, marginalized.

Oppression, racism, unequal access to opportunity have been too common for too long in America and the world.

People have been way too insensitive to the trauma that all sorts of people have experienced in life, and indifferent to how those traumas are exacerbated and triggered by the way we do things.

Of course, we should be aware and awake to this. Kindness and fairness and human dignity are core Stoke virtues.

So there would be no objection for Marcus Aurelius or Senaqa to the idea of social justice. Certainly, epictetus of former slave would have fit right into our modern discussion about privilege and equality.

But it's also true that the Stokes would have looked quite wearily on the increasing radicalization of the so-called woke activists.

Nor would they have been surprised at how quickly itself righteousness has created alarming abuses of power, and in some cases, been guilty of the same injustices they claimed to fight against.

Administrators and activists at Oberlin College in Ohio, egged on a mob that wrongly accused a small town bakery of racism and tried to run them out of business.

The Me Too movement, which has brought all sorts of terrible sexual predators to justice, also it seems prematurely deprived Al Franken of due process and cost themselves an ally in the Senate.

There have been countless other examples from the Covington kids and the Yale Halloween costume controversy to using physical force to deprive people of the right to free speech and a surprising level of tolerance for anti-semitism.

Where jumping to the wrong conclusions and moral certainty have caused embarrassing lapses of judgment.

These movements are supposed to be about truth and justice and fairness, but like any movement when they become a mob or blind to nuance or empathy can do real harm to people when everyone is woke, then no one is awake.

The Stoics believed in virtue, not virtue signaling, they were not naive, they knew the world was full of injustices and evil and believed that it was not just important, but every person's duty to fight against it.

At the same time, Marcus Aurelius reminded himself that most people who did wrong were not doing it on purpose.

He spoke of the importance of mercy, of forgiveness and understanding. Most of all he spoke about practicing what he preached. He couldn't control other people, but he can control whether he did wrong himself.

And this is an important lesson for everyone out there fighting for the important cause of social justice. Radicalization is dangerous, whether it's on the right or the left.

Anger is the problem, not the solution. Righteousness can easily become self-righteousness. We must be careful, we must be kind, we must be fair, and we must always act with the virtues that the Stoics believed balanced out the pursuit of justice, courage, moderation and wisdom.

Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you could leave us a review in iTunes, it helps a great deal. And of course, if you know anyone who had benefit from these messages, please spread the word. Thanks.

Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

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