Seneca: Avoiding Crowds and Group Think
Practical Stoicism
Tanner Campbell
4.7 • 723 Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
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In this episode, I revisit Seneca, a Stoic who often gets dismissed because of his wealth and his close relationship with Nero. I argue that these compromises do not disqualify him as a Stoic, and that he may, in fact, have been one of the most Stoic Roman thinkers precisely because he was aware of his flaws and struggled against them.
I introduce and reflect on Seneca’s letter On Crowds, focusing on his warning that being around the wrong people can quietly undo our moral progress. Seneca admits that he often returns home worse than when he left, more indulgent, more ambitious, and more cruel, simply because he has been among others. I connect this to modern experiences of habit, addiction, and relapse, especially how difficult it is to maintain self-control when surrounded by people who excuse or celebrate the very behaviors we are trying to leave behind.
I discuss how habits are formed through repetition, how crowds can weaken our resolve by offering permission and comfort, and why leaving unhealthy environments often comes at the cost of strained relationships. I also emphasize that anyone who has successfully changed a destructive habit deserves real admiration, because reversing habituated behavior requires extraordinary effort.
Finally, I qualify Seneca’s position. While crowds driven by vice and groupthink are dangerous, not all crowds are. What we should avoid are antisocial and unjust groups, not communities of people sincerely trying to improve. The goal is to surround ourselves with those who want our moral progress and to be that person for others who are earlier on the path.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, Prokaptan, welcome back. |
| 0:02.5 | Seneca gets a bit of a bad rap. |
| 0:04.6 | Most of that has to do with the fact that he was compromised in multiple ways. |
| 0:09.0 | He was wealthy, for one, and he was the personal tutor and then chief advisor for the |
| 0:15.7 | Emperor Nero. |
| 0:17.6 | Wealth can be compromising for obvious reasons, but so can fear of death. However, I think |
| 0:23.5 | Seneca may have been, at least very well could have been, the most Stoic of all the Roman Stoics, |
| 0:31.2 | after all. |
| 0:31.9 | Music Imagine you're the personal tutor to a tyrannical monster of an emperor, a tyrannical child emperor. |
| 0:58.4 | Nero became emperor at 16, and it was an absolute dumpster fire from the get-go. He was, for lack of more eloquent terms, a spoil little shit, |
| 1:06.1 | who came to know the allure of getting his way all the time at far too young an age, and of course was given |
| 1:13.1 | the power to indulge in that alluring temptation all too frequently. From 16 to 30, he ruled. He died at 30. |
| 1:22.8 | He killed himself. All of his guards had abandoned him, and he was declared an enemy of the state by the |
| 1:28.7 | Senate. But for the duration, Nero was the definition of an absolute madman, in the stoic sense, |
| 1:35.9 | and otherwise. He did all that he did out of unrelenting self-indulgence, paranoia, and insecurity. |
| 1:43.9 | So imagine you're this guy's tutor. You're responsible |
| 1:47.3 | for teaching him better and you want to, but you've got to be very careful about how you go about it, |
| 1:53.5 | because this guy is paranoid. In the end, Seneca was, in the end, Seneca was forced by Nero to commit suicide in his own home, a task that took the Roman philosopher and playwright three separate attempts and methods to accomplish. |
| 2:10.5 | First, he tried to slit his wrists, but he didn't bleed out fast enough. |
| 2:14.5 | To hurry things along, he then drank hemlock, and that didn't work either, and so finally |
| 2:19.1 | he suffocated himself in a sauna. He was so sentenced because Nero suspected him of being involved in, |
| 2:26.1 | or perhaps even the mastermind of, a plot to overthrow and kill him, a plot that failed because |
... |
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