Fighting Modern Corruption With Ancient Stoic Wisdom

We are living [music] in a moment of immense and pervasive corruption. President of the United States is enriching himself to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. A high-ranking member of his administration was seen literally accepting a bag of $50,000 cash. His teleprompter operator [music] was caught using inside information from his speeches to bet and make money in prediction markets. And it's it's not just political corruption. A few years ago, there was a major scandal where actors and actresses and entrepreneurs and investors were bribing and cheating their kids into elite universities. We have college athletes and professional athletes and coaches and executives who are not just [music] betting on games, but perhaps even throwing games. A special forces operator made a bet worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in prediction markets using information on a raid [music] he was participating in. And while all of this is unprecedented and modern [music] in one sense, in another sense it's the oldest story in the world, it is unfortunately a timeless story. Rome was an incredibly corrupt and dark and twisted and depraved place as well. Elections [music] were bought and sold. Human beings were bought and sold. [music] Conflicts of interest were everywhere. People enriched themselves, stole from the public. [music] And the Stoics were there in the ancient world in the thick of it. And I don't mean they were complicit in it. I mean they resisted it. They exposed it. They tried to reform and change it, which is what we're going to talk about in today's episode. How do you resist corruption? How do you stay good and decent [music] when it is common place? How do you maintain your integrity, your honesty, your goodness when very few people around you seem to want to do the same? We should be clear that there are multiple forms of corruption. There is the corruption of bribery of incentives and then there's also the most basic form of corruption expressed in that famous line that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is what makes Marcus Aurelius so [music] fascinating. Here we have someone who is given absolute power and not only is he not corrupted, it seems to make him [music] better. So what can we learn from the exception that proves the rule? Well, Marcus Aurelius was conscious about this very idea. In fact, he speaks about it in his famous meditations. He says, "Be careful that you are not imperialized, that you are not stained purple." He didn't want the position to go to his head. He didn't want it to make him worse the way that it had made some of his predecessors [music] worse. The way that it had made Tiberius had retreated into pleasure and cruelty, the way that Nero had descended into insanity. Marcus Aurelius tried he said to fight to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. Now it's it's easier to do this when you're a regular person when you don't have enormous amounts of stress on you when there's not crisis happening all the time when people aren't trying to kill you and when people aren't trying to get stuff from you. So what we should understand is that the reason Marcus Aurelus isn't corrupted by power at least as much as some of the cautionary tales of history is that he really worked for it. Although other people couldn't hold him to account, he could hold himself to account every day as he sat down and looked at the pages of his philosophy texts and the pages of his journal. He kept going to see his philosophy teachers. He reminded himself that he didn't know everything. He reminded himself that he wasn't a god. That he couldn't take this money with him when he died. That it wasn't about creating this legacy so uh future generations would have to admire all of his accomplishments, right? He tried to remain centered. He tried to remain human. He tried to remain sane. He tried to remain good. He said the whole point of life is to have good character and do acts for the common good. And I think that's ultimately the stoic prescription that helps us battle both kinds of corruption. The corruption of power once you become successful or a CEO or a celebrity and then also the corruption uh when people are trying to tempt you or offer you money to do things that you know are not right and not good for other people. [music] One of the things that psychologists who study dishonesty and corruption have noticed is that corruption begets corruption. When other people are lying, when other people are cheating, when you see it happening all around you, people shrug their shoulders. They they say, "What the hell?" Right? We join in because we see other people doing it. And this is something the Stoics talk a lot about. Crypus, one of the early Stokes, said, "Look, if I wanted to be part of a mob, I wouldn't have become a philosopher." Like, the whole point of philosophy was to think for yourself, to have your own moral compass, to do what you think is right, to do what you think needs to be done, not letting the the zeitgeist or the trends around you lead you astray. And I think we can see that looking around us right now, like we're in the middle of what you would call a moral inversion, where some of the worst people are getting the most attention and getting the furthest ahead. It almost looks like it's a bad strategy to be honest, to try to work hard, to try to do things at the the right pace, right? Everyone's looking for shortcuts. Everyone's seeing scams and sketchiness as as a success strategy, one that you can get away with. And so, I I don't think it's unreasonable that some people would look around and go, "Oh, if that's what's okay, then that's what I'm going to do." But this is also what gets us into really big trouble. The Bible talks about this, too, right? Don't follow a mob to do evil. Just cuz other people are doing it, just because it's commonly accepted, doesn't mean that it's okay. And I think the most impressive stoics swam against the stream in this way, even if it didn't always work out for them. There was a stoic named Rutilius Rufus who around 100 BC is sent to administer a province in the far east of the Roman Empire. And this position was considered a particularly lucrative one. Colonialism then and now it's always been a way of extraction and exploitation. So Romans would get this post and they would come home exorbitantly wealthy because they would take bribes, they would skim off the top and this is just how it was done. But Rutilius Rufus is sent there and he decides he's not going to be this way. He's going to be an honest broker, an honest governor. He's actually going to try to do a good job as the administrator of this province. Now, the problem with being an honest person in a dishonest time is that you are not only subtly indicting all the dishonest people, but you're getting in their way. So, by not being corrupt, Rutilius creates a lot of corrupt enemies. [music] And so, what do they do? Irony of ironies, they bring him up on charges of corruption. They railroad these charges through. The proceedings are a complete and an embarrassing farce. And Rutilius Rufus instead of defending himself just lets the absurdity and the brazenness of the proceedings speak for themselves. And ultimately he's convicted and he's [music] sent into exile. And the only mercy that the corrupt forces who drove him out of Rome were willing to offer him was a choice of where he wanted to serve out his exile. So you know where he chose? He chose the very city that he had previously been governor of. He wanted to go back amongst the people he'd allegedly defraed. And you know what? They were happy to have him because they knew he was honest. They actually loved him there because in the brief moment that he had had power, he had treated them well and he'd stopped the abuse. Now, was he broken or bitter by this? No. And he certainly wasn't dishonored by it because he knew he had done the right thing when he had been in power. He hadn't gotten away with what other people thought they could get away with. He did what he thought was right, which is what we have to do. Doesn't matter what's going on in the wider culture. It doesn't matter how other people are behaving. We have to ask ourselves, is this how I was raised? Is this what I think is right? Is this good for the people I am supposedly serving or working with or for? Are my decisions making the world better or worse? That's what we have to decide. I can imagine Rutilius appreciating another irony that Marcus talks about in meditations where Marcus says that one of the paradoxes of being a king is that you often earn a bad reputation by doing good deeds. Rutilius Ruis is a great example of no good deed going unpunished. He was honest. He was good. He followed the rules. And what happened? He got arrested and charged for [music] doing the opposite of what he was actually doing. And so there would have been an immense amount of uh not just temptation for him to operate it differently. But then the attack on him was designed to make him bend, make him compromise, make him go along with what was happening. And he refused to do that. We got to ignore the mob. We got to ignore what's happening around us. We got to think for ourselves. We got to stand alone. We got to do what's right. That's what a stoic would do. [music] You know, the saying is not that money is the root of all evil. It's that the love of money is the root of all evil. If you have insatiable desires, if you have expensive taste, if you think money says something about you as a person, you're now vulnerable because people know that's your weakness. [music] There's a story I tell in Discipline is destiny that I think illustrates this idea and it's about Ko's great greatgrandfather, the famous Ko the Elder. The entire Ko family, although they were wealthy, had always in in [music] the sort of stoic tradition kept their tastes and their needs to a minimum. [music] And this wasn't just about discipline. This was also about independence. And so Ko the Elder, although he had money, lived modestly in a modest [music] home. And actually this was inspired by one of his heroes, Manis Curious. At the height of this Roman politician's powers, some men were sent to bribe him. They they go into [music] Curious's home. And you know what they saw? They saw him boiling turnups. And [music] in this instant, they know that their mission is feudal because somebody satisfied with so little couldn't be tempted. Right? If you have a need, if you have a hunger, if there's something you're chasing, then then people know that's a way to get to you. Meanwhile, if you have enough, you have a level of independence and insulation from what these people are trying to do. And the the problem is how many rich people, as Senica would would say, are actually poor because they have these insatiable desires [music] and needs. They want more and more and more, and then they're willing to do corrupt things to get more and more. Sadly, Senica is an example of this going wrong, right? Although he wrote about living in an austere way and reducing your needs, it was clear that in Nero's service, he got used to a certain lifestyle. We don't know of him taking outright bribes, but he did accept a paycheck from a deranged maniac and became quite rich in Nurero's services. He accepted gift after gift. He he had piles and piles of money and he didn't understand that Nero was slowly buying him off, slowly corrupting him, trapping him in a gilded cage and and ultimately when he breaks with Nero, it's too late, right? Nero had too much control over him and his life. [music] Zenica wanted to leave and and Nero said he said you can't give the money back. That's not how this works. >> [music] >> So for a stoke, this form of dependence was ultimately a form of corruption. It's there's a line from a famous photographer named Bill Cunningham who said, "If you don't take the money, they can't tell you what to do." And I think that's the trap that Senica got in with Nero. Senica should be a cautionary tale and ultimately the Kos should be an inspiring tale. There's a similar story we actually hear about Dioynes who was very poor even begged for his food and he's talking with Plato one day in Athens and Plato says to him hey you know if you went and worked for this guy that I've worked for who was actually a corrupt tyrant you wouldn't have to beg for your food and Dioynes looked at him and said I beg for food so I don't have to go work for that guy what Dioynes understood was that his independence his self-sufficiency was ultimately a form of wealth greater than the money, right? Money is cheap. Your freedom is what is expensive. That's what few even rich people have. And so when you begin to make this trade, you are corrupting yourself and ultimately limiting yourself. Many of the Stoics were were quite wealthy. So money isn't itself inherently corruptive. And Senica talks about this. He actually has a great line that I think is is a is a good standard. He says, "It's okay to be rich even as a philosopher provided that your money is not stained in blood." Now, the line is good, but from what we know about Senica's life, he didn't apply it very well. Right? His money was by definition stained in blood. It was this was stained in blood of all the people that Nero killed, all the violence and cruelty and dysfunction that came from Nero's [music] incompetence and ultimately descent into insanity. And I think Senica saw this at some level and then didn't want to see it on another level. It reminds me of something that Upton Sinclair famously said, you know, it's very hard to get someone to see something that their salary depends on them not seeing. So this isn't just the corruption of politics. It's does the paycheck you get from the industry you are in blind you to what that industry is doing in the world? Are you blind to the culture of the company that you're working at and how it's treating people? Even how it's treating yourself, how [music] it's changing you. And so when we talk about corruption, we don't just mean are you accepting bribes or not. We just mean how is the direction of your compass? How is your morality being changed by the scene that you are in, by the industry that you are in, by the commerce and exchange that you are taking a part in? And I think ultimately we should ask ourselves, is the job that I'm doing making me a better person or a worse person. We just did this long road trip recently and trying to prevent my kids' brains rotting in the car. We listened to audiobooks from 11 Reader, including [music] the Odyssey cuz my kids love the Odyssey. The cool thing about 11 reader is it's not just audiobooks, not just like their professionally produced stuff, but you can take any text and get professionalgrade audio read back to you. It turns PDFs, it turns [music] docs, it turns web pages, it turns articles into something you actually want to listen to. It's as far from Siri or Alexa as you can get. You can start for free with 10 hours of content every [music] month or you can go ultra and you get unlimited uploads plus 20 hours of premium audiobooks. [music] No credits to manage. There's no commitment. You can switch titles at any time. You can head over to the link we've got in the description here to sign up. You can [music] use code booklover to get your first month for $1 or you can get 10 bucks off an annual subscription from 11 reader. >> [music] >> It's sad to think that power and money so often make people worse. There's no reason why it can't make you better. Like, shouldn't money make you more generous? Shouldn't power make you more responsible? Shouldn't it make you more aware of how the other half lives and your responsibilities to them? One of the things Markus talks about in meditations and I think it goes to the point he feels so lucky that he's never needed to ask other people for money or favors but that he was always in a financial position to give money and favors to other people when they asked. He his point was that from his success from his plentitude from this abundance he was in a position to be better and more decent. And that this is what we should be striving. This is the opposite of corruption. It's not just, oh, hey, this person is honest and doesn't do all these bad things, but I think we should ask ourselves, hey, is what I'm doing, is the success or responsibility or influence that I'm seeking, how is it changing me? Is it changing me for the better or the worst? And and Marxist has an incredible example of this in Antonyinus, his adopted stepfather. So in instead of having a Nero as his predecessor or a Claudius or Caligula, Marcus Relis had as his predecessor someone who was honest and decent and [music] hardworking and kind and generous. And we can see this simply in the way that Antonyinus treated Marcus Reelis who he had no relation to. Antonyus [music] saw himself as a steward of the empire and of as a temporary occupant on the throne and that his job was to prepare his successor. Like how how many people actually care about who comes after them? Antonyinus is is is the opposite of the the famous line from King Louis X the 15th after me the deluge right I don't care what happens to me or sometimes they'll say in Wall Street about some deal that has bad terms way down the road I'll be gone you'll be gone right Antonyinus is the opposite of that and we think that one of the reasons that Hrien who has to choose his successor chooses Antonyinus is because in a private [music] moment when Antonyinus didn't know that Hrien was watching he saw Antonyinus [music] help his elderly father-in-law up a flight of stairs. And this is particularly poignant [music] to the Romans. The the founding Roman myth has Anaas carrying his father out of the wreckage of Troy ultimately to found Rome. And so this unguarded moment of [music] kindness and decency convinces Hadrien that Antonyinus has a good core that that perhaps can last through the temptation and disorientation of power. So with Marcus, we see him not only not be Caesarified, not be stained purple by the purple cloak of the emperor, but we see as the French writer Ernest Renan says that the throne was actually an aid to virtue. He says Marcus Aurelius [snorts] could not have been who he was had he not exercised that power. And so one of the things we want to think about is that actually the corruption of our time, the temptation of our position, [music] what everyone else is doing around us, although look, ideally everyone would be doing the right thing. That this is actually the test, right? This is the choice. This is the so-called choice of Hercules. If it was easy, if everyone was doing it, it wouldn't be that impressive. It's actually when it's not necessarily in our financial or career interest to do the right thing that doing the right thing matters so much that it says the most about us. We should be wary of power. We should be suspicious of it. There should be checks and balances. But if we find ourselves in that spotlight, in that position of leadership, this is a gift and it's a challenge. Can we be good despite it? Can we be honest despite the dishonesty around us? Can we hold ourselves to standards that other people aren't holding themselves to? Can this power be an aid to our virtue? Can it reveal what's really in there? And can we rise to that occasion? The famous chronicler of power, Robert Caro, you know, would say that it's actually too simple to say that power corrupts. He says what power truly does is reveal. And I think what we see in an Antonyinus and we see in a Marcus Realis is that there was a goodness there and that was what was revealed in the unique scenario that each found themselves in. Look, these these stands that we take, these morals that we have, these principles that we adhere to, they're going to cost us. They're going to be difficult. They're going to be painful. And so some people might go, "Well, what's the point, right? Wouldn't it be better to be more flexible?" the great James Stockdale who has taught the philosophy of Epictitus at Stanford before he shot down over North Vietnam and he spent seven years in a Vietnamese prison camp. I talk about him in in right thing right now. He has this great line. He would say that that too often people put integrity he says in a drawer labeled too hard. He says but but actually a person's integrity can give them something to rely on when their perspective seems to blur when rules and principles seem to waver. when he's faced with hard choices of right and wrong, it's something to keep him on the right track, something to keep him afloat when he's drowning. So, imagine you're there in that prison camp and and not only are they torturing you, but they're also trying to tempt you and lead you astray. Do you want to go home early? Do you want special treatment? Do you want us to stop? Well, all you have to do is betray your fellow prisoners. All you have to do is say [music] something bad about your country. All you have to do is break the rules, the the the orders that you were given and embarrass your country as a result. But people like James Stockdale and John McCain didn't do that. John McCain on numerous instances was offered a chance to go home early because his father was the theater commander. North Vietnamese wanted to to humiliate him [music] and show that all Americans were were selfish hypocrites. And so they offered him this chance to go home early and he declined it every single time. They asked him at at one point to to sign this confession to admit to these things that he hadn't done. And they said, "Just do it. No one will know." Along the lines of what Stockdale was talking about, he said, "But I would know. I would know." So when Stockdale is faced with this unimaginably difficult situation, when he is getting hit from all sides, when other people are coming to him asking him what they should do, what he resorts back to are these kind of basic principles, [music] this kind of moral clarity, this idea of integrity. What's the right thing? What are my obligations to the people that I'm here with? What is my duty? What is my responsibility? Not what's expedient, not what's easier, not what's going to make my life less bad, but what is [music] right. There was a stoic philosopher in the time of Agriinus who was asked, you know, why aren't you playing ball with Nero? Don't you want to come to this dinner he's inviting us to? And and Agrippinus says, you know, you should go because you're thinking about going. And he says, but for me, it's not even a question. Right? >> [music] >> He had the clarity of his integrity. And so instead of that making his life more difficult in the time of Nero, it actually gave him a true north. I think it's interesting that just as we refer to the cardinal virtues, we also refer to the cardinal [music] points on a compass. And I think that that's what virtue is. That's what integrity is. It is the points on the compass giving us clarity when we are otherwise confused and disoriented. >> [music] >> I said earlier that that Rome was a dark and twisted and corrupt place [music] and it was but when you look closely you see that there are always exceptions to that rule just as basically all kings are corrupted by power we see an exception in Marxelius and Antonyinus so yeah Rome was corrupt and awful but Ko was a person that you could trust he's actually sent to clean up corruption in a notoriously corrupt province called Cypress Rutilius Rufus was that Agriinus was [music] that, right? Marcus Aurelius was that. There are always these exceptions. One of the things I talk about in right thing right now is is Harry Truman. Harry Truman comes from one of the most corrupt political machines in American history out of Kansas City. It's controlled by a political boss. Offices are bought and sold. And yet, from his reading of Marcus Aurelius, he has a moral compass. We actually know because he showed it to a journalist that Truman read Marcus Rules's meditations and we know the passages that he underlined. He loved the passage that said, "If it is not true, do not say it. If it is not right, do not do it." He underlines a line that says, "First do nothing thoughtlessly or without a purpose." And he and and then the next part that he liked is where Marcus [music] says, "See that all your acts are directed to a social end." Truman goes into politics. He says because he'd failed in all these other aspects of his life and he needed to eat. If there was ever an origin story for a corrupt politician, it would be a guy who served his country honorably and life kicked the [ __ ] out of him and then uh went into politics and could have said, "This is where I get my peace." Truman would write to his wife around this time that everyone else in the county got rich in politics except for him. and he didn't get rich because he said he had been taught as a kid that public money is a public trust. And he said, "I never changed my opinion about that." He says, "No one has ever received public money that I was responsible for unless they gave honest service for it." In fact, Truman was so frustratingly honest uh like Rutilius Rufus in in in the dishonesty of his time that one of the reasons he became senator was because the political machine, knowing that Truman was popular, wanted to get him out of Missouri. They sent him to the Senate so they could be more corrupt locally and Truman could be somebody else's problem. And you know what? One of the first things that Truman did as a national politician during World War II was create a committee that investigated war profitering and corruption from defense contractors and they ultimately recover billions of dollars. Generals go to jail. He later says that the money that he gives away in the Marshall Plan was money he clawed back from corrupt interests during his time [music] as a senator. Now, the unfortunate irony for Truman is that despite his honesty and his decency, many people couldn't look past where he came from. They saw him as being a product of a corrupt political machine and assumed therefore that he must be corrupt. He tried to be honest. He tried to be good even though other people around him very much weren't being those things. And he was committed to doing this. And ultimately, it's what makes his reputation and makes him such a bright light in an otherwise [music] dark situation. You know, Truman is famous for that sign on his desk, the buck stops here. But I actually think he had a better sign. I write about it in the book. And this is a quote from Mark Twain that he also had on a plaque on his desk. [music] It said, "Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." So, you want to talk about not being Caesarified? It was Truman's idea to do the Marshall Plan, but he names it after Marshall because he's aware that not putting his name on it, not taking credit for it, makes it more likely to pass. You know, Truman was most proud of his time as a veteran in World War I. And so towards the end of his term, some congressmen tried to think of a roundabout way that they might be able to award him the Medal of Honor because Truman had once said as he was pinning the Medal of Honor on a soldier that, you know, he'd rather be the man receiving the award than the president giving it. And Truman hears of this bending of the rules, this favor that they're trying to give him. And you know what he says? He preemptively turns it down. He says, "Hey, I want all this effort to stop." He says, "I do not consider that I have done anything which should be the reason of any award, congressional or otherwise. This does not mean that I do not appreciate what you and others have done because I do appreciate the kind things that have been said in the proposal to have the award offered to me." But ultimately, the Medal of Honor was for heroism in battle. Full stop. And he didn't want the rules bent [music] for him. And I just think this stands out so much now in this moment where we have people making up awards to give to the president, where he's threatening to go to war with Europe because they didn't award him a Nobel Prize. What Truman is is a great reminder that decency is the best legacy. That it might not always be successful in the moment, but like with Rutilius Rufus and Antonyinus and Agriinus, it ages well. It [music] stands the test of time. >> [music]