Try Not To Be So Slow | Suspend Your Opinions
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the early years, there was an excuse. Nero was just a teenager when Seneca started tutoring him. The boy was timid and coddled. He had experienced tragedy and his childhood had been strange. Besides, for Seneca, the alternative to taking the job was going back to his unfair and lonely exile in the middle of the ocean.
But the viability of Seneca’s excuse fell apart pretty quickly. The famous Barrón González, Eduardo statue captures how disinterested Nero was in learning from Seneca. Nero wanted the perks of being emperor but none of the responsibilities. He was not competent, which was fine as long he was content to let others make the decisions. When Nero started asserting control, bad things started happening. Plus there was the fact that he kept killing people…including his own mother.
-
If you want to do more reading on these topics, we highly recommend Dying Everyday by James Romm (and we have a podcast with him on this topic). Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe is a great modern read on one of the biggest crimes of the 20th/21st centuries. And for more on the life of Seneca and Thrasea and some Stoics who did resist Nero, check out Lives of the Stoics (signed copies here).
In today's Daily Stoic Journal reading, Ryan reminds us thats its easier to leave other peoples mistakes to their makers, that looking inward instead of outward and giving people a chance to make their own mistakes makes for a better way of life.
✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail
🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.
📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, |
| 0:09.8 | illustrated with stories from history, current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. |
| 0:15.0 | And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, |
| 0:22.5 | something to think on, |
| 0:24.1 | something to leave you with, to journal about |
| 0:26.4 | whatever it is you happen to be doing. |
| 0:28.7 | So let's get into it. |
| 0:37.0 | Try not to be so slow. In the early years there was an excuse. |
| 0:39.0 | Niro was just a teenager when Seneca started tutoring him. The boy was timid and |
| 0:43.9 | coddled. He had experienced tragedy in his childhood had been strange. |
| 0:48.1 | Besides for Seneca, the alternative to taking the job was going back to his |
| 0:51.8 | unfair and lonely exile in the middle of the ocean. |
| 0:54.8 | But the viability of Seneca's excuse fell apart pretty quickly. |
| 0:59.6 | The famous Barone Gonzales-Edwardo statue captures how disinterested Niro was in learning from |
| 1:05.2 | Niro wanted the perks of being emperor but none of the responsibilities. He was not competent, |
| 1:10.9 | which was fine as long as he was content to let others make the decisions. |
| 1:15.1 | But when Nero started asserting control, bad things started happening. |
| 1:18.8 | Plus there was the fact that he kept killing people, including his own mother. |
| 1:22.5 | Seneca watched all this happen. |
| 1:24.2 | He watched the gifts and honors from Nero Pile up, |
| 1:27.2 | making Seneca incredibly rich. |
| 1:29.8 | He tried to be a good influence, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.