Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

The age of Cato's is gone, or is it?

We're a long way from the old days, when people held themselves to certain

standards, when politicians believed in something, when people believed in something greater than

themselves. As Binks Boling says in the Walker-Persy novel, The Moviegoer, the Age of Cato's is Gone. It felt that way then

when Walker Percy was writing in 1961, and it feels that way now. But the funny thing is it

probably also felt that way even in Cato's time, that the age of his great-great-grandfather,

Cato the Elder, had passed. And in fact, that was

something that Cato the Elder was worried about in his time, too. It always feels like traditional

values are slipping away. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren't. It doesn't really matter, though, because we have a vote. We get to

decide whether we are going to live up to those ideas and ideals. We can decide to be honorable and

operate with integrity. We can decide to believe. We can decide to be good. We can decide to stand up

for what's right. And when we do

this, you know what? We are proving that the victory is not yet final. We are proving that the age

of Cato's is not over. We are proving that someone still cares. We are keeping the flame alive. We are carrying the fire.

As Aunt Emily tells Binks in the moviegoer, a man must live by his lights and do what little he

can and do it as best he can. In this world, she says goodness is destined to be defeated, but a man must go down

fighting. That is victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man. So we must decide to do what we

can and to keep going, even when it feels like goodness is losing.

I can trace everything good in my life.

I can trace me being here right now in this moment all back to a single book.

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