A Stoic Christmas Carol

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Nov 26, 2025

The discussion centers on A Muppet Christmas Carol as a lens to explore Stoic principles. It highlights how isolation can dull our moral compass, just as it did for Scrooge. The podcast argues everyone has an inherent pull toward virtue, often obscured by past traumas. Scrooge's transformation illustrates it's never too late to shift toward goodness. Observing kindness in others can challenge cynicism, reminding us that the spirit of the holidays can inspire moral change year-round.

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INSIGHT

How Isolation Warps Character

Isolation erodes our shared social instincts and makes us harsher without our noticing.
Tanner Campbell argues habituated solitude produces miserliness and moral blindness over time.

INSIGHT

Innate Pull Toward Virtue

The Stoics held that humans have an innate pull toward virtue that friction arises when we act against it.
Tanner explains vice often overrides that pull via habit, trauma, or poor role models.

INSIGHT

Goodness As A Natural Force

Tanner compares goodness to a natural force like gravity that pulls on rational agents.
He frames faith in goodness as trusting a real, though unmeasurable, moral tendency in people.

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In this episode I take my favourite holiday film, A Muppet Christmas Carol, and use it to explore the Stoic idea that every human being is pulled toward moral excellence—even when they have spent years rolling downhill in the wrong shape. Scrooge’s story gives us a clear picture of how isolation, habit, early wounds, and neglect warp a person’s disposition, and how a return to goodness is still possible when someone is willing to face their past, see the present clearly, and respond to both with honesty and concern.

Key takeaways from this episode include:

Isolation blinds us to our shared humanity — and when we habituate isolation, we become harder, colder, and more unjust without even knowing it.
The Stoics believed every person has an inborn pull toward Virtue — but that pull is often overridden by poor habits, early trauma, or years of vicious choosing.
Scrooge’s transformation shows it is never too late to change shape — our rational faculty can always realign with the natural inclination toward the good.
Seeing the goodness of others corrects our cynical view of the world — most people are doing the best they can with what they have, even in hard conditions.
Holiday “magic” can be understood Stoically as the felt pull toward Virtue — and we don’t need to limit that awareness to one season.
True change requires facing the past, seeing the present, and choosing better now — just as Scrooge does with each ghost and each revelation.

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