Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.

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 DailyStoke.com.

Justice doesn't have to be angry. When we hear about an athlete who is doubted and kicked around or an entrepreneur who ends up buying the previously dominant company that once spurned them, we assume anger must have been the fuel that powered their comeback.

When we hear about someone who spent years working in secret to write some long forgotten wrong, we think, oh, that person must have been really angry.

Think about the case of Peter Teal, who spent 10 years conspiring to take down the powerful gossip outlet, Gokramedia, after they outed him his gay.

The knee jerk take for most critics then and now is that he should have let it go. That it's not healthy to be that mad about anything.

But what if anger wasn't the only fuel there? In his powerful essay on anger, Seneca pushes back on this idea that getting even requires getting mad.

Does a good man not get angry, he asks, even if he watches his father killed or his mother raped, he won't get angry, but he'll avenge them or he'll protect them.

Why are you afraid that duty alone without anger's help will be too little motivation for him? The good man will carry out his duties without fear or turmoil. He'll act in a manner worthy of a good man, such that he'll avoid doing nothing unworthy of a man.

My father is being killed, Seneca writes, I'll defend him. He has been killed, I'll avenge him because it's right, not because I'm grieved.

This is essentially the argument in conspiracy, a true story of power, sex, and a billionaire secret plot to destroy a media empire out today in paperback, which draws not only on Peter Teal's conspiracy, but many historical and even still driven conspiracies.

Like the plot to kill Julius Caesar and the failed piezo conspiracy, which ultimately cost Seneca his life.

Indeed, there is a rich history of still exploiting to overthrow tyrants and other evil doers. Did they do this out of anger? Or was it, at least in their eyes, the pursuit of one of their most revered virtues?

Seneca said that we must pursue what is right, which might occasionally involve punishment or vengeance, calmly or rationally.

That it was okay to plot and scheme for the right aims, provided it was done, quote, judiciously and with foresight not driven and raging.

This is a controversial argument, of course, and not everyone will agree, but it's worth thinking about and it's worth understanding.

Because life isn't all sunshine and kittens, it's not Plato's republic, as Marcus really reminds us.

People do bad things, organizations do evil, we will be doubted or held back, and that will require a response from us, if it's going to be overcome.

What is not controversial is that anger is not how best to respond, but rather with creativity, cunning, determination, courage, and strategy.

So study the grades, learn their lessons, good and bad.

I do hope you'll check out conspiracy, it's out now, I think it's one of the best books that I've ever written.

...