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Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation,

but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoke, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living,

which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman.

And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics from Epititus Markis Relius,

Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

You need to police your own side of the street. There's no question that there are extremists on both sides of any meaningful divide.

That there are liars and frauds on both sides. That there are abuses on both sides.

That both sides are preposterously wrong about things that are glaringly obvious to you, and frustratingly right about things that are not.

This is true wherever you live, whatever issues you're talking about.

It is also true and has been true for thousands of years, that there is only one solution to this, and it's not screaming in yelling at them.

A while back when we had Mike Duncan on the podcast, whose fantastic book, The Storm Before The Storm, is a must read for anyone that's trying to understand what's happening in the world today.

He said that by looking at the events of the 100 years leading up to the rise of Julius Caesar, we can understand not just what went wrong in Rome, but what's going wrong today in so many modern nations.

In ancient Rome, then, there were egregious abuses by many parties, factions, as they became known.

One side would do something wrong, and then in response, justifiably in many cases, the other side would respond.

And the tit for tat that ensued would escalate things into chaos, and ultimately destruction.

When we asked Mike how a country or a culture escapes from this trap, he responded quite clearly.

You police your own side of the street.

Meaning no party or faction is ever going to have much success rooting out extremists or bad policies or bad faith from the opposition.

What they can do, however, is focus on those things within their own group.

Forget someone else's hypocrisy. Just try to minimize your own.

This is also a basic stoic principle as it happens.

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