Ryan Holiday, who is an author of several stoicism books and even sells "memento mori" coins that you can keep on your person to remember that you will die, happens to be American Apparel's former marketing director.
Incidentally, I learned more from his earlier, non-stoicism book, "Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator." A prescient book for the current wave of media manipulation.
The Daily Stoic was created by Ryan Holiday. I believe that he really did a lot to encourage current popularity for Stoicism.
But it is interesting to note that he seems to have gotten into Stoic philosophy to make up for the sins that he committed as a digital marketer. Of his books, his expose on social media and digital marketing, https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulato..., is my favorite.
It’s not really. Holiday has always been a “finger to the wind” public intellectual. Stoicism isn’t really a marketable ideology in a time of social and political upheaval, so he’s staking out a more “activist” position to sell himself.
This time, I guess it’s that conspiracies to destroy your opponents might actually be a good thing because they represent action over inaction (he more or less says as much about two thirds of the way through the interview). That seems a weird quasi-fascistic stance (Marinetti and other proto-fascists argued in favor of the same bias towards any action, regardless of its morality), but not one that’s out of fashion in our era.
Stoics had (yet another—IIRC the last one was around the 1950s-60s) popular revival a few years back and now they're everywhere (especially Aurelius) and there's definitely a bit of "well I'll have to stop wearing that band's shirt out and about now that Wal-Mart's selling fake-faded reproductions of their tour shirts and most of the people you see wearing one can't name more than three of their songs" to it.
I think it's very easy to make assumptions and it's good to have heuristics to make life easier. But it's not wise to double down on them.
(You're half wrong again. I dont think stoicism that Ryan Holiday talks about is the greatest philosophy. I have read a couple of his books but dont subscribe to him. Anyways I would love to buy you a copy of his work if you want to read and judge for yourself.)
In terms of modern Stoic writing, I find Ryan Holiday's "The Ego is The Enemy" and "The Obstacle is the Way" (as well as his "Daily Stoic", although that's more of a daily devotional) to be very enjoyable and help to reframe the often hard-to-read writings of Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus into actionable advice.
Is it just me or is stoicism been heavily commercialised over the last few years, along with vipassana meditation.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with getting employees to live healthier and more resilient lives, but the skeptic in me thinks that there may be other motives.
I've been looking for a meaningful challenge-coin like something to keep on my person, and coincidentally been wanting to look into stoicism more. Thanks for the link.
Now that the stoics have become so popular in the self help / psychology niche, it seems people are now covering everything about the stoics, besides they're actual useful philosophy (including Holiday, who was one of the ones that made them mainstream in the first place)
Incidentally, I learned more from his earlier, non-stoicism book, "Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator." A prescient book for the current wave of media manipulation.
reply