Reach out and let us know. We want to engage with you as much as you want to engage with us. We want to speak the truth. We want you to listen, but we also want you to speak back so we can listen and take your opinions and then develop that into further content for you guys.

So with that being said, that's kind of our mission. That's kind of where we're coming from. Like I said, we're both high school seniors. We've both gone through some stuff. And we still have much more to go through. Right. And so we want to kind of impart our wisdom through our experiences. And we also want to grow along with you through this podcast. I know we're about to touch on some of the tenets of stoicism, but one of the teachings is to find people that are like you are malleable and to impart what you've learned on them and then grow along with them. So let's get right into the episode. Obviously, Gen Z stoic, our first episode is going to be on stoicism. History, some lessons we've learned, how we've applied it to our lives and how we think that you can apply it to yours. Very good. So I think we should just start off by defining our definition of stoicism and just a well known definition of the word. So ultimately, stoicism is pursuing

self mastery of your emotions, persevering through hardship, seeking ways done, and then you're going to be able to do it. So we have a relationship seeking wisdom, constant evolution of yourself. Stoics in the past have strived to control their emotions. And instead of letting their emotions control them, they have been focused on controlling their mind instead of letting your impulses get to you. Ultimately, the four main virtues of stoicism are wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. All stoics believe that if you act with all of these virtues and everything else is going to follow. Happiness, love, success, honor, etc.

And I think stoicism, both throughout history and now, like if you think of somebody as stoic, right, you think of them as cold hearted, you think of them as not really being emotional. But I think to me, and certainly correct me if you think differently, stoicism isn't so much as being cold and not having emotions as being in control of your emotions. Certainly, we both experience anger. We both experience frustration. We both experience sadness, probably daily. But it's instead of letting that rule you, you kind of have control over it. And so you rule your emotions. Right. And you

know, you know when to show them. There are certain times for when you need to show certain emotions. And there's also times where just emotions don't need to be showed at all. And in today's society, there's so many emotions with all the social media and dopamine that we're consuming at such a fast pace that we're used to seeing constant emotion all the time. And I think that being calm and in a zen state is very, very

important today. Well, there's also something to be said that stoicism preaches a reserved lifestyle and kind of being very introspective, judging yourself based on how you view what your character should be and how you're measuring up to that. We'll definitely go over some more on that. But it's just something to be said in an age of social media and people posting things that they probably shouldn't and should keep to themselves. And want to put every second of their lives out there. It's definitely different to be preaching that you should definitely live reserved. And I think that it doesn't allow you that time

to be introspective. And I think that it's a very important thing to do. And I think that you're not going to be a part of the history. Only show certain parts of yourself to certain people that you trust with it. And I believe we've lost the value of our own privacy. I mean, with you said posting everything everywhere. And I think that it doesn't

allow you that time to be introspective. And that's really valuable. If you set yourself up to, I'm going to talk about Seneca where you have a model. That's very important to have a model in your life. It doesn't have to be apparent. It can be really anybody who you view that has high character and conducts themselves in a way that you would be proud if you conduct themselves the same way. If you get that time to analyze them and then analyze yourself, it's very valuable because those are periods where you grow the most. You're not going to grow when you're posting on social media and you're getting that instant feedback that ends the dopamine. But if you withdraw yourself from the opinion of, let's say, the common man, that's very valuable for you to just look at yourself, look at if you're measuring up to the goals you set for yourself. Well, that's the thing as well. On social media,

you're really only looking at other people's lives. You almost know more about other people and what they're doing than you know about yourself and what you're truly interested in. And if you're truly interested and content with that, then that's fine. But if you really have a sense of developing yourself and becoming deeper understanding of your mind, what you truly value in life and what's really important to you, then you'll take a step back, spend time doing absolutely nothing except thinking with yourself.

I think obviously we take a very negative tone to social media. We're certainly not trying to demonize it. There's aspects of social media that are very good. For example, we're going to be using it to market our podcast. So marketing, social networking, social media is an unparalleled tool in history to do that. It's just it's used commonly by Gen Z and millennials in an unhealthy way to where you compare yourselves to people or you're more invested in other

people. And the way the apps are designed, they're very addictive. Yeah. Spreading information in mass very quickly is not a bad thing. No. And that's that's how things are able to spread. But when it's misconstrued and it's bad information, toxic to the mental health of

Generation Z and young adults, that's when it's bad. It's just realizing it's addictive, realizing that it's been used and is currently used in unhealthy ways. And you don't necessarily have to pull yourself out of social media completely. I know both of us are trying to do that right now.

I think it's a dopamine detox. I think it's important. When I say balance, I don't mean one day you're working hard the next day or off wasting your health, wasting your mental health. But I think that balance is important with healthy habits. Sometimes you work hard and with other times you're relaxing, but you're still taking in what value of information from like reading or something.

And with that being said, that's just kind of a brief definition, how we've played it a little bit. We also like to talk about the history of it because it's important when you're talking about philosophy to look at where it's come from, who it's come from, how it's grown, how it's evolved. So with that being said, Stoicism was a school of philosophy that was founded in ancient Greece around 300 BC by Zeno CDM. It grew itself originally off the school of cynics, which we won't be going very much into cynics, but cynics are very much similar to Stoics. They preach the same values. They just approach it in more of a questioning way. We're not really going to go into controversial topics. We're not going to talk about bad laws or anything like that. But cynics certainly would go into that and they'd question a lot of laws that are currently in place and how to challenge those. Stoics, it's not necessarily challenging things except for yourself. And it's challenging

yourself to grow and evolve constantly and to never settle for one certain thing. Right. And

so it may just be interesting to me, but Stoicism, Stoic comes from the Greek word Stoa pokiwi, I think is how you say it. That's right. It's fluently. But it means painted porch, which is essentially where Stoicism came from. Zeno taught in Athens on a painted stairway. He would frequently just teach there. He had people he mentored. And so they'd hold. You've heard about Socratic seminars. This was essentially a Socratic seminar for Stoicism. And so he basically got it going. He adapted it from cynics. And it found root in a lot of people, namely, Clyathlys and Chrysippus, who took what Zeno was teaching, which was basically just a self-improvement, and is constantly challenging yourself and having that virtue in those four values. And they applied it to faith, they applied it to God, and they applied it to a larger scale of fate and

how life itself was constructed. And then they helped develop the Stoic before Stoic virtues, which then they developed and were considered secondary founders of Stoicism, etc. And then

obviously it had to go from Greece to Rome, who became a large empire. Right. The

massive empire.

And I think it's a really cool story of how it did that. So Rome implemented a fine that was deemed unfair by a large population of Greece. And so what Greece did is they sent three philosophers to the Roman Senate to argue it. And they had a cynic, they had a Stoic, and then they also had another school of philosophy go there. And so they send these philosophers in. The first two go, the Roman Senate is not impressed. We're just going to implement this fine anyway, we don't care. And then the engineers of Babylon, who was a Greek Stoic, he moved from Rome to Greece, studied under those philosophers that we talked about. He came in and he didn't necessarily challenge the fine itself, but he challenged the concept of fine in human nature. And so his calm approach really won over. It was just the sheer calmness of it and the lack of emotion. Like his emotions, right? Which is what Stoicism is about. And so the Roman Senate was really impressed with that. They even rescinded the tax, the fine, which is kind of unheard of of Rome to kind of cave into that. And so the senators then took that to their homes and Stoicism gained traction in

Rome. That reminds me, you said he stayed so calm during it. It's like when you're in an argument with somebody, the person who wins isn't the person who raises their voice a lot. It's going to be the loudest in the room. It's the person who can stay content, stick to their moral, stick to the facts, stick to exactly what they've been arguing the entire time and not letting their emotions get in front of their logic. Right.

And I do speech and debate. I'll just put that out there. I want to shout out our speech and debate team. They know who they are. Thank you guys. But going through speech and debate, you talk to the betters who are going to national level who are some of the smartest people I've ever met, certainly smarter than me. It's not necessarily the content of your argument. Once you nail the content, because everybody's coming in to debate thinking they're qualified, and you may be. But once you reach that level of being qualified, it's about how you control yourself, how you present yourself. Right. And so a system always teaches that you present yourself in a calm, collected manner, which is good when you have a lot of arguments, especially in today's climate. And

that leaves me in spite of one of the things I was learning about was with, I believe he was a stoic, Kato the Younger. He was around the Julius Caesar era, like 40-45 BC around that time. And one thing he always showed was never compromise. That was one of his main teachings was never compromise. So if you stay calm and you don't compromise your beliefs being forced by somebody else and you don't cave in and then change your beliefs because you feel like they're stronger than you, then that's how you're going to hold your gun. Maybe not win, but at least you're not going to lose an argument.

Well, we'll certainly talk about certain stoics. I think that that's another one where you could take that the wrong way. There's definitely room for compromise. Of course. In arguments, I think it's more about your beliefs. And we talked about Kato the Younger. He was, I believe he was a student of Seneca or somewhere related to Seneca, because I know Seneca was around 100 BC and he taught a lot of people. He's the one who really, Seneca the Younger, he's one of, he's probably my main inspiration in terms of stoicism. And he was the one who really took stoicism from something being talked about in the homes of Rome to something being talked about and brought up in the Senate. He was somebody who really carried the torch for stoicism. And I know Rome was very conflicted on it. They had emperors who, you'd have one emperor who would outlaw philosophy completely. And then you'd have, the next emperor would be like Marcus Aurelius, who I know you really like. Marcus Aurelius is definitely one of my biggest who really embraced it and it became a way of life in Rome. And so you kind of had that seesaw where you had, it would be outlawed and then it would be embraced and it would be outlawed. So that kind of continued. And then we can obviously talk about modern applications. I think stoicism, you can tell me what you think. I think it was largely lost from, from when the Roman Empire collapsed to about like the 1800s and 1900s. I think it was lost. I think it just was less popular because like you said the Roman

Empire felt and then without a lot of people, it wasn't able to spread. And then nowadays currently stoicism, definitely the principles of stoicism are still very prevalent and very crucial to living an honorable life. And it's definitely not as prominent now as it used to be because of how again comfortable everything is and how easy everything is to do. But those in my opinion, the principles of stoicism applied to current life would make life so much better for so many people. And I think it's

not just stoicism itself. It's philosophy as a whole, right? Agreed.

Like Greek

and Rome, they were all philosophers first and then they applied mathematic principles or, what have you second. And they were very forward thinking thinking about how the way life works. Whereas nowadays, and certainly it's in the criticism, this is just how we're brought up. Not a lot of people think about how we got here and how life truly works. They think about what they're going to do with their friends. Or which is what they have now. I mean, and I think

not looking into the past is a mistake. Looking into the past too much, your own past is definitely a mistake. But understanding the history and where it grew from and

where it was founded and then how it's developed is crucial. Well, and I think we talked about why we wanted to create this podcast is because we do feel a wave, especially in our generation where people are

starting to think like that again. There's definitely a shift going on. There's many, many people, especially at a younger age, starting to open their eyes and see more.

And so we want to be like the stoics of old who are kind of the torchbearers for stoicism. And there days, we don't think we're going to be that important. But we would certainly like to think we're part of that wave and we're advocating the message of stoicism and philosophy as a whole. We're just speaking about what we genuinely believe in to a generation that like some people are feeling it. Some people aren't. Wherever you may be. Listening to this, maybe you can do your own research and draw your own conclusions. And whether they agree with stoicism or not. Doing your research, I think, and just looking at it is valuable whether you agree with it or not.