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Stoicism in the modern world. Chris Fisher · One Universe, Two Books

• speaker-0: Welcome back to another episode of One Universe Two Books. Today we're talking about Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy founded in 300 BC by a philosopher named Zeno of Sitium. Stoicism took hold in the ancient Roman world with its emphasis on the pursuit of virtue and the exercise of self-control. It was so popular that it gained a following from all classes of Hellenistic life. inspiring thinkers like Epictetus, a former slave to Marcus Aurelius, a the emperor of Rome itself. Stoic philosophy went on to influence things like Christianity and later went on to predominate in the great books curriculum in colleges and universities in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, Stoicism even inspired things like cognitive behavioral therapy. And it even went on to inspire leaders in the business world such as today in Silicon Valley. Today we actually have as our guest self proclaimed Stoic Chris Fisher, who began his interest in Stoic principles while serving as a United States Marine and later while working in law enforcement. He is now part of the College of Stoic Philosophers, a consortium of Stoic thinkers and integrates Stoicism into his daily life. We hope you enjoy. speaker-1: Me too. And stoicism I discovered as actually has some interesting things about about science as well. And I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. speaker-0: Well, thanks for joining us. So to kick kick things off, what is stoicism historically and why does this seem to be having a renaissance and contemporary times? Well, that you probably don't realize how loaded a question that is, because the the the interesting the interesting conundrum that you've just presented is what is Stoicism as it was conceived in ancient times and probably all the way up until let's say at least the end of the twentieth century versus what is the modern Stoic Renaissance, which is something entirely different and I would argue debatable whether the ancient Stoics Stoics would even recognize it as their philosophy. So traditionally, Stoicism was a philosophical way of life that insisted on three branches of knowledge and practice, logic, physics, and ethics. You know, that didn't make them in any way unique because most of the Hellenistic schools taught the same three branches. What was unique about Stoicism within the Hellenistic schools? is the that they they tied their philosophical system to the idea of a providentially ordered cosmos, and that the cosmos itself was a today we would call it a conscious entity. They called it a living organism, but the cosmos itself was a a a living organism. And that r that rationality permeated all aspects of the cosmos and that our human rationality is simply a fragment of or a a a derivative piece of that rationality that permeates the cosmos. So that's the the biggest piece where they they differed from the other schools. I mean they agreed that virtue was what we say supreme. they like the cynics, they agreed that virtue was the only good which differentiated themselves as an example from the From the Academy, from Plato's Academy, and from Aristotle, who would say it was the primary good, but they said no, it's the only good. So in in ethics, they weren't that much different from the Academy at the time. In fact, Cicero, who was a member of the Academy, he wrote very fondly of Stoicism. And there were some arguments back in those days that, well, the Stoics really only differ in terminology from us. Which was not true, but it was the way of the academics of trying to say that the the Stoics didn't have anything unique. But the idea of a providential cosmos was very unique, to the to the Stoic conception of philosophy. speaker-1: That's I'm I I Go ahead. I'm curious how someone who started off as a Marine in the Marine Corps and then went into law enforcement, how you become such a deeply involved philosopher. speaker-0: yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I started off out of high school. I went into the Marine Corps, spent six and a half years in the Marine Corps in the Presidential Helicopter Squadron. But between there and law enforcement, I had a what, I guess, 15-year career in high tech. So I was in large scale computing, artificial intelligence back when artificial intelligence was still kind of a a concept that was just barely being deployed back in the in the nineteen nineties. And then at some point, decided to as my wife would say, you know, give up the big bucks, give up the good lifestyle and go back and become a cop, which was a dramatic financial change for my entire family. But it was for me at that point I wanted to go back into some kind of service and that seemed like the the the best way to do it. I was far too old to go back into military. and then interestingly it was my experience as a street deputy that I'd always been, I guess I've always been curious about human nature. That has been just something that has always interested me. And, you know, now I've come from the world of of high tech, and I'm literally I I worked for our sheriff's office and I was put in the worst, worst part of the county. And deal, you know, every night, you know, shootings, stabbings, rapes. It was just it was nonstop. And it really puzzled me. How do I, as a human being, explain? this behavior. How do I explain how the people that I'm dealing with day to day are so different on the street as a cop different than, you know, the other people that I know. And what what make what how how do I deal with those differences with humanity? At the same time, you know, I was very familiar with, you know, Nietzsche's two famous statements. one, when you stare into the abyss, the the abyss is staring back. And two, when you're fighting monsters, you have to be careful not to become one. And that's a struggle that just about anybody in law enforcement faces because every day you're staring into the abyss and every day you're fighting monsters. And it was starting to take a psychological toll on me. So that path led me to, interestingly for you, Scott, to start reading a lot of evolutionary biology. trying to understand some of this. And then from there it turned into consciousness. And interestingly enough, I was a I would have considered myself a not considered I was I was a hardcore atheist, reductionist, materialist reductionist at the time. I wanted nothing to do with anything that even sounded remotely religious. I had picked up Marcus's Meditations in the Nineteen Nineties and made through a few pages and put it back on the shelf because of all of the God talk in it. I just like, Yeah, I don't I'm not interested in this. So, in two thousand and eleven, in the midst of these I guess this adventure of trying to understand things, I read a book by Jonathan Haidt, called The Happiness Hypothesis. And he mentioned stoicism in there just kind of as a, you know, as I don't a side reference. And I thought, hmm, I didn't know much about it. I knew that I had been by my aunt, you know, years ago called me, said I was rather stoic as a child. I had no idea what that meant. I thought, okay, let me look this up. And it seemed interesting. And then I found the College of Stoic Philosophers and took their introductory course and then their year-long advanced course. And then that that started what you would be familiar with if you've listened to the podcast or on seen my blog, which was my struggle to against what you were referring to, Ian, this this modern renaissance of Stoicism, which in fact was a a new atheist version of Stoicism that had been just completely rewritten in the early two thousands and and actually became popularized in twenty fifteen, twenty thirteen to twenty fifteen with the what I would call the the peak of the new atheist movement. You know, those two kind of coincided. And well, a combination of the peak of the new atheist movement and also a time when you had people who were I can't remember his name, wrote the book on you know, was it religion 2.0? In other words, a lot of atheists who are starting to realize we're missing something, and maybe we're missing kind of the practices and the, you know, the the ceremonies of religion w without the the the the concept of a divine and so all of these, I think, influences kind of came together and new stoicism, the modern version of Stoicism, provided them with an answer. It was a philosophy, it was a philosophical way of life. they yanked the concept of providence and God out of it and presented it as a a purely ethical system, which was ironically not the first time that that had been done, because that was done in the In the first phase of Stoicism with a gentleman by the name of Aristoph Aristotle Kios. He parted ways, he was actually a student of Zeno, and parted ways and started his own school and didn't didn't adhere to the the physics part of of Stoicism. So that's my my path, Scott. I hope that kind of answers your question. speaker-1: That's fascinating. S so did I understand you to say that when you're talking about the new atheists, they were sort of stoic posers, right? They were trying to be stoic in appearance, but weren't really getting the core of it. speaker-0: Well, yeah, they weren't that I I probably I'll I'm hesitant to use that word. I went through the I went through the the battles on the internet, we you know affectionately known as the God debates in Stoicism back in the day in about twenty fifteen, with a couple of the names I won't mention but you would probably be very familiar with in the modern stoic movement. And just about everybody, with the exception of I w possibly Christopher Gill was just adamantly opposed to any conception of God or divine in Stoicism. And so they they to they they essentially practiced a you know isegesis on the on the Stoic text rather than exegesis and found ways, any way that they could to try to argue that, well, we can we can remove this concept of a providentially ordered cosmos and the concept of of divinity from the from Stoicism And just hold on to the ethics. Let's just make it just about ethics and just about practice. And and but what they didn't realize is that well they didn't want to accept is that when people read the Mark the the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as an example, whether it's obvious to them or not, what they're reading is is a a personal diary of a man who is deeply And profoundly influenced by the concept of a providentially ordered cosmos and and turned his life over to that, meaning essentially accepting, one of my favorite passages is Mar Meditations 423, where Marcus essentially says, everything in your good time, universe and and submits himself to that, the realization that he has he doesn't have control over what happens in the cosmos. So when this movement started in 2015. in fact, I was a a mentor at the college and there was a a group of us. one day someone said, Hey, are you aware that there's this big Facebook group about stoicism? and I went, No, I've never heard of it. So the group of us joined this face this big Facebook group. and quickly we realized what are these you know, w this isn't stoicism. What are these guys talking about? They've just they've taken the ethics, you know. And so I I ended up in some rather tense debates with the individuals who were there, one of which was brand new to Stoicism, but set himself up as the figurehead of Stoicism. Again, I'm not gonna call out names, but he was being interviewed everywhere, you can probably figure it out. And only later admitted in an interview that when he came into Stoicism and became kind of the the spokesman, he had really been studying Stoicism about six months. And that was fairly obvious to me because you know when I would Question him. He he didn't really have answers for anything that we were. But anyway, as a result of that, I decided, you know, someone needs to stand up for the the actual version of Stoicism that the Stoics created. And you know, we picked the the the label traditional Stoicism. interestingly, now just in 2019, trying to remember the scholar's name came out and read a wrote one of the wrote a book and he he has labeled modern stoicism minimal stoicism and as compared to large stoicism which was the stoicism of the ancients. So it's it there's clearly a huge difference. And at the time it was we were the ones ironically considered controversial. And now over the years the concept of traditional stoicism took root and there's lots of people out there that are arguing and defending it. because you th the I guess the difficulty with Stoicism is that in twenty fifteen, the average Westerner didn't know much about Stoicism. They thought it was, yeah, it's British stiff upper upper lip, you know. or, you know, in in in my case, you know, in the and you know, Marine Corps version of it, suck it up buttercup. You know, that's that was their concept of of Stoicism. And so it was easy to tell people what Stoicism was when those people didn't have any idea what it was. And now that people are be are becoming very aware, a lot of a lot more people. And and ironically, modern stoicism has it's not died out in any and and and I'm not an I don't argue against modern stoicism. I think it's a viable, good philosophy, useful. A lot of people find benefit from it. I just wish they would say not call it modern stoicism, because it's a it's a mislabeling of a philosophy. And their argument is is that they're moder they're bringing stoicism into the twenty first century. my argument and and of course by doing so, Scott, you won't be surprised that that means that it has to be beholden to reductive materialism. my argument is if you're gonna bring stoicism into the twenty first century, it needs to talk about things like consciousness studies and quantum physics and and twenty first century science, not nineteenth century science, which you guys are still beholden to. it it's the thing that really struck me when I came across your bio was how you kind of trace the origins of your journey to Stoicism with your time in the militar and law enforcement. And I couldn't help but see the parallel between that and Marcus Aurelius, who is actually writing his meditations. when he was basically on military campaign most of his life. And he actually encountered the worst aspects of human nature right in front of him. And that experience, like Xeno S Obsidium, actually started thinking stoically after losing all of his ships. And I can't help but see how your experience in real life led you to that philosophical journey. Yeah, you know, Pierre Haydeau, who's one of my favorite I guess I you know scholars, he in in his book on Hellenistic philosophy, he argues that in Hellenistic times, people did not pick a philosophy because they appreciated its doctrines, but instead they looked at and examined the people who are pat who are practicing particular philosophies and the lifestyle that they were living and said, I want something like that. I want to live that kind of life. I am not a person who says everyone should be a stoic. I I I'm not sure I'd want I'd just be brutally honest, I'm not sure I'd want to live in a world where everyone was a stoic. It's not it's not a philosophy for everybody. It really isn't. but it is a philosophy for hard times. And it's a philosophy for people who are facing big significant challenges, whether those challenges might be personal or whatever. The the primary difference, as an example, between the Stoics and the Epicureans is the Epicureans argued that, well, we really need to remove ourselves from society, from politics, and we create this this compound so that we can have this this sense of tranquility. And the Stoics did the opposite. They said, no. We need to develop a sense of tranquility or or or happiness, eudaimonia, within you so that you can be in the midst of that chaos and serve and still and still survive and serve. And that was what Mark we see in in Marcus's meditations. Yeah, he spent most of his life in in in battle. And you know, one of my favorite passages which I rewrote for my law enforcement practices, the opening of chapter two where he basically I'm I'm paraphrasing, but he says, remind yourself that every day you're going to meet, cantankerous, obnoxious, hypocritical, whatever people. but remind yourself that each one of them has has a fragment of the divine just like you. And so what stoicism did for me was it helped me to understand that and this also comes from just Socratic philosophy in general, the people that I was dealing with. It wasn't that they were evil or bad. They were ignorant. They did not know what what true good is. So they were they were pursuing good. You know, the the young kid that rides down the street and snatches a cell phone out of someone's hands in a in a a a a a you know s in a robbery, a snatcher gap robbery, to that kid, that is the good. He's he's doing something that he His worldview, his way his upbringing is taught him is is good. It's not that he's an evil person. Yeah, he's breaking our laws, but they don't consider themselves evil. They just don't know what to pursue. And that helped me a lot when I as a detective, because I I I spent most of my time in law enforcement as a detective, you know, interviewing people, and it helped me to understand where people were coming from. speaker-1: And so how do you get people to see the real thing? I mean I'm thinking of the of the horrific slice of humanity that you saw all the time as a law enforcement officer. You know, you mentioned that. So how do you get that get the that group of people to absorb that kind of pursuit? speaker-0: Yeah, I'd that's a great question. And, you know, the criminal justice system has not been able to answer that. You know, we we've we the criminal justice system has gone through the phase of, you know, punishment, that didn't work. It went through the phase of trying to re educate and correct, that didn't work. so I I think ultimately it comes down to the individual. Either individuals decide that they want to lead an examined life, live an examined life and examine, look at what they're actually doing, or they don't. you know, I can't I I have several people that in my well, I was a detective for twelve years and, you know, I put one guy during that twelve years in prison three times. In and out, in and out, in and out. Just can't can't learn the lesson. And even when you give them breaks, you know, I had a I had one young man who was sentenced and we had been I had been trying to build a case against this guy. He was a burglar, and we finally got him sentenced to prison. And then I heard some things on a jail phone call with his mother that caused me to think, well, maybe this kid has has a chance of of rehabilitating himself. And I actually went in during his sentencing hearing, stood in front of the judge and asked the judge to rescind the prison sentence. The judge looked at me like, he didn't comprehend there's a detective in my courtroom asking me to rescind the the prison sentence. But I did and I explained to him why. And the judge agreed and put him on probation. Several years later the kid ended up in prison again. And I remember talking to him while he was in the back of the police car saying, you know, I gave you the Willy Wonk a golden ticket and and you just you threw it away. And it's because his he was not he was not ready. His nature you know, the the Stoics argue that our you know, we're we're born with a with a a human nature and that human nature has a a predisposition toward a morality and a predisposition toward the the what is it the expanding circles of inclusiveness, which starts with, you know, as an infant, maybe mom and then family and then city and so forth. And it's a concept called oikiosis. But the that character can get can can get corrupted. And that's what has happened with, the people who are violating laws. And it's corrupted by any number of things. It's corrupted by the social environment that they're raised in. It's corrupted by, quite quite frankly, in modern times, social media. It's corrupted by the the the advertisement that teaches kids, young kids what they should want in life. and and nowhere in our at least in the American system anymore, I don't think we teach any kind of a value system to children. So we're sending them out into adult life without ever asking them to evaluate even what it is that you value. Most of them would say, yeah, I value getting a good job and making a lot of money and, you know, because that's what we we have taught them. So the question of how do you get people to listen, I think the only people that will listen are the people who are struggling and open to the realization that the way they've been doing it is not working and they they'll listen to to something else. And with With traditional stoicism, you have the additional hurdle because we live in a time when, you know, the water of Western society is agnostic or atheist. And r you know, and and they've been raised in an environment where reductive materialism is either overtly or covertly pounded into their head. And so now you approach them with something and you say you you bring up even the word providence and people freak out because they think it's, you know, no, this is some kind of Victorian Christianity when really the stoic concept of providence really has very little in common with monotheism at all. So it is a struggle. And that's where I think modern stoicism I would argue is a a gateway drug. speaker-1: Okay, okay. A good gateway drug or a bad speaker-0: Gateway drug. It inter because I I can't tell you how many people I have had emails from who have said, Yeah, I started I got I I I I picked up Ryan Holliday's book and I read Ryan Holiday's book and and I got interested in stoicism and then I started realizing there's just something missing here. And then I came across your podcast and you know, thank you for the podcast because you're explaining what they are not. So you know, that's that's the yeah, so it is a gateway drug to to quite a number of people. So I got a question. I remember very specifically during it was during the 2020 riots when everything was just sort of burning, burning to the ground, and thinking to myself how these concepts of self-control, accountability, attachments to family, community, country, all of the normal moorings, which sort of stoicism points to. seem to have been completely lost in Western society where it's instant gratification and the sort of drive for not only instant gratification, but the idea that there really is no overarching moral, you know, morality to the universe. And I can't help but wonder, like, what drove you to actually think about starting like, or your involvement in the Marcus Aurelius school? Like why why go there? Why not traditional universities where maybe this thing would have been you know, housed in the past. why did you see the need for such a program? And it's interesting too that you found this through a Facebook group and then went into real life as opposed to people meeting in real life and then going online. It seems to almost be like a reversion to reality that that you did and which is amazing. And I I'm curious to hear like how did you how did you come to get involved in that and and what was your motivation behind it? Yeah, well it it wasn't actually it wasn't a Facebook group. There there weren't it when I in twenty eleven when I founded the College of Stoic Philosophers, it was an online school, but there were no Facebook groups talking about Stoicism in twenty eleven. That that that was yet to yet to happen. And how did I I guess I was I was looking for something and I was curious about stoicism. Now why I didn't go back to university. I di I I went back to university. I studied computer science and but t I I just gotta be brutally honest, the idea of studying philosophy at university, I would rather go back through Marine Corps boot camp again. You know, I I don't of there might be, and I I can't I can't paint everybody with the same brush. There might be a a college out there today that has a good philosophy department, but you know, most of what I'm familiar with is, derivatives of continental philosophy has it if they mentioned, you know, there's a famous book, I have it on my bookshelf, but it's called Socrates Tenured. In his opening statement, he says if Socrates were to walk into any university today, they'd kick him out. And you know, that's that's the point. The philosophy is has a completely different approach today than it did. It's not about changing your life in in modern academia, you know, which is why, you know, when have someone like an actual, you know I would say deeply well, a profoundly good, I would say, a philosopher like someone like a Thomas Nagel. You know, he has to basically wait till he retires before he can actually speak anything that is would re would be considered controversial in academia. Yeah, his book, Mind and Cosmos, you know, they they still lambasted him and you know thought he had lost his mind when he wrote it. But he had to wait till he retired to write a a book like that. Welcome to our world. Yeah, no, I I don't I I don't envy that. I really don't. speaker-1: Yeah, at the same time Thomas Nagel has been quite willing to take on controversial topics, you know. I r I remember my introduction to him was an early book of his called on o on teleology, I think it was, you know. And and of course this was at a time when teleology was considered by biologists and other kinds of scientists as the T word, you know, somet something that that must never be uttered, you know. So So, he's always been a figure of of of great courage and philosophical courage in my thoughts. But but no, i the the the issue that you you bring up with his book Mind and Cosmos, yes, he was savaged by by, you know, the Richard Dawkins of the world and so forth and unfairly maligned. And it was partly because he dared to step in on, of course, the controversy between Steve Meyer and intelligent design theory and the and the classic Darwinian idea. And of course this was at a time when, as you mentioned, a lot of people were beginning to question the Darwinian idea and and at some you know some risk to their own careers, you know, I I faced it myself. And and I think that probably the bad reaction to Thomas Nagel came from the defensiveness of a philosophy that was under siege at that time and still is, I think. speaker-0: Yeah, and if I'm if I'm not mistaken, it he published at right about the peak of what was called the New Atheist Movement, right? Yeah. speaker-1: Yes, yeah. Mm-hmm. speaker-0: So yeah, he was obviously those who were behind that movement were going to, you know, lambast him and and you know, and that's and that's fine. It's fine to disagree with him, but you know, the idea that he's suddenly lost his mind as a philosopher was just you know completely unfair. speaker-1: Yeah. And of course, you know, the the the context of that, which is the controversy between intelligent design theory and the classic well not really not classic, but the modern Darwinian idea, you know, from strictly materialist, strictly determinative, all evolution could be explained by this kind of you know, impersonal sorting mechanism and so forth. And then you have the intelligent design people coming along and saying that, well, no, that doesn't really explain much of anything, But of course, you know, Steve Meyer w was was always very honest and forthright and saying that, well, you know, part of my philosophy towards this is it owes to my my Christian faith, you know, and that's what that's what I want to do. And and you know, I sort of came into this controversy primarily as a I meant I was a biophysicist for most of my my most of my academic career. And I I I was working on a problem where I just could not escape the fact that this living thing had a mind of his own somehow. You know, I had no idea what that mind was, but that there had to be some kind of intentionality, purposefulness, you know, all the things that had been portrayed as i we can talk about them as long as we maintain, you know, the idea that these are not real intentionality, not real purposefulness, but apparent purposefulness, you know, and and and this this this is a roundabout way of me getting to an actual question, you know, you know, what I what I ended up arriving at is I can explain purposefulness and intentionality and all those things, but I have to do so as an Aristotelian, whereas the intelligent design people were approaching this as Platonists, you know, that that when you when you look at the order ordered nature of the universe of life, that that's kind of an argument from design, you know, that's pointing to the existence of of of of the Christian God in in his mind. But there is this other idea that is coming from the Aristotelian idea that there's something internal. I think Aristot Aristotle called it the Bios, something toward which living things strive to become and to be, you know. And this is the other part of this kind of rambling question, you know, you know, we've we've we've Ian and I have spoken to some cosmologists and some physicists in this series. And when you get right down into the you know, things like the dual nature of light, what's energy, what's all those kinds of things, it's hard to see a boundary anymore between the Aristotelian idea and the Platonic idea. You know, it it it all does seem to point, as you have pointed out in some of your podcasts, that there is this kind of cosmic consciousness, if you will. And when you get there I I'm I'm I'm I'm trying to think of a way you study something as broad as cosmic consciousness. How do you do that? How do you approach that as a scholar? speaker-0: well I guess I would first I would say openly I don't consider myself a a scholar. So, you know, I'm I I would classify myself as a practitioner of of stoicism. I'd a scholar I would say somebody who has dedicated their life to understanding something that is far more in detail than than anything I've written. But anyway, conscious cosmos. Well you know, it it's there's some some good material on it. for for one, was it Minus Kafatos has written a book that I I I referenced and it it is a an explanation for the way things are that seems to make good sense, I would say to me. So you know, I I struggled with not with Not with evolution as a concept of the the evolution of organisms, but I struggled with evolution my entire life as a as a concept of or I should say, as a theory that can explain everything, that it can all just be reduced to matter, and that it's all just somehow this whatever word you want to put on it, magical accident. as some people will say, reductive materialists just need one big miracle and then they can explain everything from there. And you know, the so rather than the god of the gaps, you have a theory of one huge gap. You know, how do we get to the state where evolution can even theoretically work? And the the Stoics, again, saw rationality in the cosmos, they saw order, and you know, they inferred that our rationality came from that. obviously there's no way it's it's a metaphysical argument. It's not a a scientific argument. And when you read people like in modern times like Philip Goff, I know if you've had a chance to read any of his work, you know, I think he does a good job of of defending as so many, I would say, modern panpsychists are arguing, and that is that, you know, we've spent now what, arguably a century and a quarter to a century and a half trying to explain human consciousness via reductive materialist concept of reality. And we we are no farther along in explaining human consciousness today than we were when Williams and others first even used the the word. And but panpsychism as the the concept of consciousness being a fundamental property of the cosmos, whether you want to call it Yeah, a field, whether you want to call it a property, but consciousness itself being a fundamental property is provides an explanation. Now, can you prove that? N no. You know, we can't I we there's no way to prove it. But it's for me at least, it's a very satisfactory satisfactory explanation. So when you talk about looking at a living organism, and as you've said, somehow, you know, using the title of your book, there seems to be purpose and desire in this organism. There's a there's a an innate teleology. This this thing is goal-directed. Well, where did that goal direction come from? And I don't think f for and I'm again I'm not a scientist, I'm not supposed, but I have never heard a a a remotely plausible good explanation for how that goal directedness comes purely from Darwinian selection. You know, because i the the same things that are used to argue for that, you have to ask questions about. And I think that's what Goff is talking about. So as an example, if if survival, Dawkins argues, argued that we are nothing but, large lumbering robots with, the primary purpose of passing our seeds on to the next generation. Well then you have to ask, okay, if that is the case, if that really is, and and and frankly, animals in many ways are that, right? But if we as human beings, obviously we are different. Why? What is it that makes us different? And the really interesting question that bothers me about that is all of the things that make us different arguably make it harder for us to survive, harder for us to get along, harder for us to to is to find any sense of what we might call happiness as a human being. You know, lions don't need that. No animal needs that. Why do we it that it almost seems contrary to the concept of you know, if you want to call it survival of the species, to but it seems contrary. The idea that we have this the idea of morality, where did that come from? and the you you you can't f even when I've listened, even when I read Evolutionary Biology, it's like, okay, you know, sometimes that sounds really good, and sometimes yeah, it does seem like just a, you know, it's a it's a just so s story. So I would say it's a hypothesis that in my opinion, and I think Goff makes a brilliant case for that in his his most recent book, it's the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. he uses Bayesian logic and argues that it's at least as probable, if not more probable, scientifically, mathematically, than reductive materialism to get us here. Therefore, at a minimum, it deserves Serious consideration and deserves to be considered as a a plausible theory. Now, if you'd ask me, do I do I know that the cosmos is conscious? No, of course I can't say that. Can I prove it? No, I can't I I can't prove it. But so much of what reductive materialism is based upon can't be proven either, you know? not via scientific means, anyway. leaps of logic or leaps of faith, but not by scientific means. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: I have a couple of questions. So the first one leads into the second. And it's interesting that you bring up this problem with, reductive materialism, which has guided so much philosophy in the modern world, or in the modern and contemporary eras. It when you think about the origins of Stoicism, Platonism, Christianity, you know, even the Hebrew Bible, the ancient world was incredibly brutal in ways that modern people can't really fathom. I you'd have to go out of your way to try to get to something equivalent to that today. You'd have to really look, maybe, maybe Afghanistan would get you part of the way there. But even then the technology is such that, the material conditions are just drastically different. and it's interesting how in that incredibly brutal, brutalist world materially, you had this effort to try to see and and grasp the idea of an ordered cosmos with some sort of ethical engine at its center. And today, despite all of our creature conference, we're actively trying to move away from that, which is which is in some sense counterintuitive and I would say darkly hysterical. and at the same time, it, you know, you think about Stoicism then and Stoicism today. And this kind of goes back to, you know, how I came across you and how what what impressed me so much and how You started on this path, arguably in the military and law enforcement, when you were seeing the darkness of human nature up close. what is the daily life of a stoic like in the sense of you're trying to pursue this path in such a materially different environment today than the stoics the original Stoics, I guess you would say? Yeah, well, let me start by saying, you know The idea of morality is basically asking the question, you know, how should we live? How should we live in this world? And arguably you we'd say that's a that's a model for the world. It's a model that allows us to operate in the world. To have any kind of a model for the world, you have to have a model of the world. You know, it doesn't make sense for me to say I should behave in this way if the world is contrary to the way th that would be self-defeating for the human nature. So Stoicism provides a model of the world, and then from that a model for the world. And you know, the date I'd say the the day-to-da the day-to-day practice of Stoicism, the Stoics were not like the Cynics, they were not ascetics. You know, they didn't say, we have to, you know, sell all of your possessions and and and live the life of a of a homeless person on the streets of Athens. they were very much involved in human life on a day-to-day basis. The key is understanding the values that come out of pursuing what is truly good. And what the Stoics teach is that the only good is virtue, which is a good character. So the only thing I have control over is my own character. I don't have control over I I've raised several children. I don't have control over my children. I don't have control over my boss. speaker-1: sure. speaker-0: And you can logically go as far as I don't have control over my own body. Right? I don't get to decide when my body starts to break down or how it's going to break down, whether it's going yeah, I can do I can have a lot of effort toward preserving my body and taking care of it, but ultimately I don't have control over. The only thing that I absolutely have control over is My consciousness, my mental thoughts, the way I choose to perceive things, to categorize things, and to label things. So if I go through my daily life, so as an example, I'm driving down the street, and I've used this example a lot of my podcast. Someone cuts me off and I have to slam on my brakes. Okay, so what is the natural reaction? You know, you slam on your brakes, you may scream, you may Show them the universal sign of, of ingratitude, whatever the case. But the point is, the Stoics would say, well, you didn't harm that person. You know, your your anger that just welled up inside you, all it did was harm you. You know, it's appropriate for you, because it's part of your survival, to put on the brakes and be there might be a moment of panic there because you're it's a survival instinct. But everything that occurs after that occurs because you've put a label on something. a hole, idiot, whatever, moron. You've put a label on this other driver. In reality, not knowing anything about them. there's a a famous story, if you are you both familiar with Stephen Covey. speaker-1: reminders. Reminders. speaker-0: What's that? speaker-1: Reminders. speaker-0: well Stephen Covey was I don't know how he anyway, he he he wrote the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People back in the nineteen nineties. Okay. Okay. So I remember hearing one of his lectures and he said he talked about an actual story. He said I was he was on a a train one day and there were a couple of kids that were just misbehaving, running around, creating chaos, and he was trying to I forget whether he was trying to read a book or do something, and he was really getting disturbed at the behavior of these children. And at one point, finally, the gentleman sitting next to him turned and said, I have to apologize for my children. We just came from the hospital and their mother died. And he said he had a paradigm shift in that moment. And really what stoicism is, is a perpetual paradigm shift. It's a perpetual realization that we create our own angst by the labels that we put on things and the way we choose to see things. If the only good is my character, then whether I lose my wealth or not, yeah, it's a preferred indifferent, or just preferred indifferent. I don't want to lose my wealth. I don't want to lose my I don't want my house to burn down. But none of those things affected who I am as a person, my character. The only way they affect my character is if I allow them to disturb me. Now, the irony, of course, is this has been very contrary to what would be popular psychology all the way up until is it I always get her name wrong, Suzette Barrett Feldman or Suzet Feldman Barrett, but how emotions are made. So she wrote a very controversial book. She's a clinical psychologist, I believe, but she wrote a book, controversial book, but she's making the same argument that basically our emotions come from our thoughts. Emotions are not things that happen to us. Emotions are things that we create internally. And that's what the Stoics saw. They said, you know, all of this emotional angst that people have. Because at the same during the Hellenistic times, every philosophy taught the same thing. Here's your path to happiness, Eudaimonia. That was the that was the Greek word that everybody used. Here's your path to Eudaimonia. And everybody had their own path. So the the prescription for the Stoics was to relieve ourselves of the bad emotions. Stoics aren't Stoics weren't statues. In fact, that is actually argued by Epicaeus. They're not statues. And there are good emotions and there are natural emotions. But as Seneca wrote extensively on anger, he called anger a temporary madness because once it overwhelms a person, they literally become and that's what I saw in law enforcement, they they they lose their control, they lose their rationality, and it's t it's it's a temporary madness. Well, all of those emotions, if I lose my if my house burns down, yeah, I would really rather that my house hadn't burned down. But It didn't hurt me. It didn't hurt my character. That's why, people a lot of people take real offense to Epictetus when Epictetus says, When you kiss your child goodnight, remind yourself that they are a human and that they could die by morning. And people go, How could he say such a thing? Well, it it's a reality. That's the reality. And the and the death of your child is as horrible. And not that a stoic wouldn't feel sadness or some sense of you know, a little bit of I don't know if grief would be probably too far, but sadness if their child died. Again, you have to realize. That's what happens in life. Children die, people die, and it's not something that I have to take on as it's something wrong with me, that something happened to me. It didn't happen to me. It it's just something that happened in the cosmos, which is why, Marcus Aurelius is in the in the midst of all of the the battles and all of the the turmoil going on even within the court. in in Rome at the time, is able to keep his sanity because he accepts that the things that are occurring around him are outside his control and he focuses his life on what is in control. Now that does not mean any kind of quietism where, well, okay, nothing out there matters to me. You know, kind of I don't want to say put that on the Buddhists, but, you know, nothing out there matters to me, so I shouldn't get involved in anything. That was not where the Stoics went. we see Cato, you know, fighting To preserve the Roman Republic because he thought it was the right thing to do from from so there's no quietism in Stoicism. We can act, but we have to realize that when we act, if we don't get what we desired, what we wanted, it's okay. And so as an there's another story, and I tell it in a different way in my podcast, when because people don't understand this concept of desire, because desire in stoicism, Scott, is is a bad thing. it's a but so but desire is when you're reaching for something that is really not within your grasp. That's desire. Okay. So the you know, the the young man who just wants to get rich, okay, it's his desire to get rich or desire to get famous. Now It wouldn't be wrong to try to build wealth and maybe become fame, famous in the process, but fame was not something that the Stoics would ever sa would ever seek. And even wealth would be something that, okay, yeah, you may have a purpose for building your wealth. But the concept of desire is the he tells a story of you're at a dinner party, and when the plate comes around to you, this is a Greek dinner party, when the plate comes around to you, take your portion. Why? Because it's being offered to you. But don't reach out and grab the portion. from the from the platewoods in front of your neighbor. Don't get up and run across the room and grab your portion of it. Wait until it comes to you. So the point of that is, is that trusting that in in life, some things are going to be offered to you and some things aren't. And you know, we live we live in a time where everyone wants to believe that we're all supposed to be equal. All of our circumstances are supposed to be the same. And the Stoics would say, That's one of the biggest things that causes the the angst, because it's just not that way. Epictetus was born into slavery. He was a sl he was actually a slave who showed some promise intellectually and was sent off to study with Musonius Rufus and then became a famous philosopher. But he was born into slavery. Was that fair? Was it good? No. But he never considered it something wrong. In fact, he considered it a valuable lesson in his life. And I would say when when when I came across when I went to the Marcus Aurelius School, I entered that school still as a hardcore atheist. And in the second term, we studied logic in the first term and physics in the second term. And the second term, I came across the co the concept of a providentially ordered cosmos. And I did not want to accept it. I just I there's just no way I can I can I can't get my head around this. I'm not gonna I I I and I read Pierre Hayot and I realized There's no way around this in stoicism. If I'm gonna be a practicing stoic, this is a part of it. And to set it aside, even as a or the start of realized to be honest, to set it aside means I'm doing something different than stoicism. And so I sat back and I studied it for a while and I realized it wasn't what I thought it was. It wasn't some, you know, weird religious concept. But what it did do for me, and you know, I won't go into detail, but you know, my my childhood led me into, you know, Things like the Marine Corps and ultimately into to law enforcement. But when suddenly when the the concept of a providentially ordered cosmos and that things have a reason for happening, I was then able to look back at my life with a completely different perspective than I ever had before. So some people would say, yeah, okay, well, that's just, placebo. Okay, well, it's a pretty damn good one. when you can in re envision your life, you can re envision maybe some of the tragedies that occurred in your life in a different way and say, well, Yeah, those had purpose. Because, how if you go to the average person and you say, would you would you you know it's like Nietzsche said, you know, if you want to go back and change one thing in your past, you're changing everything. You're changing everything from that point on. You're not the same person anymore. You know, or if we could quote you know, Robert Frost, you know, once you've picked the path, you're there's no turning back. So but the concept of a providentially ordered grants a practitioner a sense of of peace of mind that things have a purpose. It's not the peace of mind that comes from, there's a bearded God sitting up in heaven someplace moving the pieces around on a chessboard, and if I pray hard enough, he'll move the pieces in the right direction for me. That's not what it's about. And in fact, arguably there's I would say there's a a disagreement within the stoa about the degree to which providence applies, meaning is it providence Does it come all the way down to the individual person? Is everything in your life determined and care, or is it more the direction of the cosmos? And you know, I tend more toward the direction of the cosmos, which is why I liked one of the things that I liked about your book, Scott, and you have to forgive me, you you emphasize the concept, if I believe, if if I'm thinking of the right book, of homogeneity, right? speaker-1: Homost homeostasis. speaker-0: Homeostasis. Homeostas that's the words are homeostasis. Well, Cleanthes, who was the heir to Zeno in the Stoa, wrote a a poem called The The Hymn to Zeus. And in there, he wrote, there's no evil that occurs in the world except what what men do. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: But he's talking to Zeus, he says, but but you know how to make the crooked way straight, the crooked straight. Yeah. And I've always looked at that. through the eye of cosmic homeostasis, that somehow the the rationality, the consciousness, whatever word we want to put that exists in the cosmos has a a has created a homeostasis that is leading in a way that who just who just wrote the book Better Angels of Our Nature? but anyway, the idea that Arguably humanity has become more and more as as much immorality as we have as a whole, we're more moral today. We we've we've eradicated a lot of evils in our time. And which is why we can also look back and we can say, well, you know, Attila the Hun didn't win. Ultimately Caesar didn't win. Ultimately Hitler didn't win. Somehow we end up the our history is of at least our earth is on a on this path that it seems like humans are With maybe the exception of the last ten or fifteen years evolving in the correct direction. speaker-1: Or when hopes. One certainly hopes, yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: and but when you when you separate ourselves from this, you know, small glitch in time, it you know, I I think most people if you could pull someone out of the dark ages and bring them here, they would say, yeah, humanity has much has has evolved greatly in the twenty first century. speaker-1: Yeah. the the I I I did want to follow up a bit on on the word consciousness, you know. the tendency of humans to think themselves somehow distinctive from the rest of the living world is due in part that that we are consciously aware of what's going on around us, you know, you know, it's the little man in the head metaphor, Right. But that's means it's very difficult to study generally because that's necessarily idiosyncratic. I'm the only one who knows that I'm a conscious being, you know. I'm pretty sure you and Ian are, you know, but I can't be a hundred percent sure, not in the same way that I am about myself. It's a it's a it's a classic dilemma. And I came to a different conclusion about this very concept of homeostasis. the the the idea is that homeostasis is a constancy of state. In fact that's r literally what the word means. But if you look into the origins of it, it's not that at all. It it it it's really very related to this Aristotelian Bios that I was I was talking about a little a little earlier. And you can make rational sense of it if you don't use the word Cognition sorry, consciousness, but you rather focus on cognition, which is involved in information and knowledge and those kinds of things. And those things those things you can actually get a handle on. And w when I look at well, to me that safely insulates biology from you know, the the kind of broader Platonic idea. But when you start getting into The nature of matter, is matter mass or is it energy or is it both at the same time, one s one time one state, one what one time the other. You start seeing that this notion of exchange of information and and use of that information to do work and all those kinds of things, they really kind of blend into each other. And this is one of the insights we got from speaking to physicists and cosmologists. You know. Once you start at that, then the door opens to a whole range of other ways of looking at the universe, you know, and and then you start getting into well, you start making room for the kinds of things, in particular religion and faith and those sorts of things that we've tended to exclude from our public lives. so I think it's a very plausible idea that, you know, maybe we should not be we should not be radically materialist. speaker-0: Yeah, well it's interesting because this the Stoic conception of reality, they they said they posited the idea that there are two principles in the cosmos. one is the call they called it pneuma, the active principle, and the other is the passive principle, which we would call unsubstantiated matter. And the Stoics argued that the only th the only thing that exists, the only things that exist are bodies. And a body is something that can either act or be acted upon. And all bodies that exist are a combination of these two principles. So arguably the pneuma is the life. We could call that some kind of pseudo-consciousness or cognition, whatever you want. It's the thing that makes so the Stoics would argue that a rock, that an atom, anything that exists, has this. f this principle in it. It has this NUMA in it. It has this and and NUMA could also be used logos, this rationality. It knows, as we say, it it knows how to behave as a particle. It knows how to behave as an atom. And and they would have argued the only thing that separated animals from humans was not what we would call cognition, but what what they called a rational faculty. So they said that above and beyond The the animal, if we want to call it consciousness or whatever, there is this rational faculty which allows us to judge things and judge ourselves in the way that animals just simply don't do. speaker-1: in if I know we're approaching the end of our time here, but there is just one more question that I wanted to ask Chris. so you described a kind of an aha moment for yourself when you when you when your eyes or scales fell from your eyes about stoicism and and and what it meant and how that led you into this concept of a providential aspect of the universe. When you were a detective, you were actually acting as kind of a field anthropologist, weren't you? You know, you you you saw people who who were in deep, deep trouble, they sometimes got the message, but there had to have been times when people also had an aha moment. From your observations, w w what led into people having that aha moment? speaker-0: I have to say y sadly, I I ha I I hate to say that it's usually when people hit rock bottom. huh. Yeah, some some kind of tragedy occurs. You know, for some people, prison is the aha moment. You know, for some people the the drug overdose. getting i i for for you know, rock bottom is different for different people. So, the upper middle class child that gets arrested and spends a couple of nights in jail, that might be the aha moment. the the person that's been raised in a completely different kind of an environment, a rough neighborhood their entire life, it might take prison to be the aha moment. But it takes a moment of awakening. It takes a moment where people really have to evaluate what it is that they've been pursuing, what it is that they've been desiring, and is and and are their desires leading them to acquire, say the the whatever word you want to put on it, the the happiness, the peace, whatever that they thought that it would. You know, because we're promised lots of things, you know, to the, you know, wear this cologne and, you know, or these clothes and the, you know, you'll attract all of the women, drive this car, you know, it we we made advertisements make all these promises to us and and people pursue those things. People pursue, you know, wealth thinking that wealth is going to make them happy and In my life story before I became a cop, I was I was living in a well, a little over four thousand square foot custom home in a gated guarded community, driving to Mercedes and wearing custom made suits and custom made shirts and working in Silicon Valley and and making more money than I'd ever dreamed of. But every day I drove through that gate and I drove down those through those homes to mine and I realized this is not who I am. So in a sense, that wasn't my aha moment for stoicism, but it was my aha moment that this is this is not the path that I was sent here to follow. And that and and I you know gave all of that up to go back into law enforcement. But so I I don't know that there's a a good answer for that for everybody, Scott. I think everybody has to to find that, you know, that that aha moment. but be and and and I guess my my anthropology was limited to people who were behaving criminally. So that that's a d that's a separate subset from people who just may be making bad decisions in life. and they end up broke, they end up homeless, whatever the case, but they haven't done anything criminally wrong. So their aha moment would be entirely different. But I I I guess where I have to go with it is once you're once a character gets to the point where someone is willingly engaging in ongoing criminal activity, it's usually something pretty severe. if it ever happens and and and the statistics bear out that it does rarely happen that someone turns things around. And the system as it is, could arguably, rather than helping people, frequently makes it worse. Yeah. You you said you were not a scholar. Well, in fact, you are. And I would argue that higher education specifically would be far better if there were more professors like you in classrooms today. I I I I really mean that. and at the same time, you know, I I think of how this sort of pursuit for wisdom and self control, which stoicism seems to offer a path towards. if you were gonna study that today, how would you systematically going go about doing it? Because with the probably maybe less than five programs off the top of my head, if you were gonna study this formally or informally, you know, there's no there's no real path that I know of to cohesively and, you know, systematically do that. So how would you Study Stoicism today. If you're a curious if you're watching this, you're a curious individual, where do you begin? And then how do you grow from that? Well, the College of Stoic Philosophers has a very good program. Their basic program starting, you start you out. They have no expectations of prior philosophical training. Anybody literally can make through that program. You know, the Marcus Aurelius school is a little bit more or program now, it used to be as called a school. is a little bit more intense. That's a year-long program and requires a little bit more of a of a commitment. But beyond that, I am aware I'm not aware of as an example a college program in Stoicism, but I do know that there are one of the I I just recently mentored a woman through the Marcus Aurelius School who's at the University of U Ariz is Arizona State. Anyway, her my prosecate paper was just published in a comp a a book that she published and she teaches stoicism in her classroom. Not and then I'm actually gonna get the opportunity to go over to one of our univers actually it's a a college, not a university but college in Central Florida here in in the end of October and speak to a bunch of students there. But I'm not aware of any programs at the university level like to go get a degree in Stoicism. If they exist, I would imagine that probably would be maybe at a doctorate level where you would pick a specialty or and and and or create your own program, I don't know. It is to a large degree beyond what you would learn at the College of Stoic Philosophers is more than enough for you to be a practitioner of Stoicism, to to put it into practice in your life. And beyond that, you're going to have to decide how much, you know, whether you do like I did, you know, buy everything that Anthony Long has ever written and read his works and read you know, read all of David says because I gotta be honest, you know, reading s some of the scholarly work is is really a challenge until you get you get used to it. You know, it's not it's not easy. And for the average person, they're just that may may be a bridge too far. But I would say, you know, read read Pierre Haydot. He his his his works are written for the the the average person, very readable. And it's about practice. It's about because the difference between, again, I would say philosophy in academia versus philosophy as the Stoics conceive is it's a way of life. And yeah, there's a little bit of technical stuff that you kind of need to understand in order to grasp the concepts when you read them in in the Stoic text. And the College of Stoic philosophers will give that to you. But then it's just a matter of getting into the texts and reading them. you know, you you you get to decide how much of it you're going to you know people want to argue that they can cherry pick and yeah I I agree. Okay, you can cherry pick anything that you want to out of Stoicism. Your mileage will vary, but you know, if y that's that's up to you. you can take just pieces of it. whether you're going to follow the path of the modern Stoics and kind of a minimal stoicism or the large stoicism of traditional stoicism is is a personal choice. And some it might be those might be two different appropriate for two different groups of people. But that's the college is where I would start. speaker-1: Yes, and we wish that the colleges would do more than just do revenue generating things like in the sciences. You know, one of the real tragedies and the way higher education is evolving right now is that it's the humanities and the philosophy courses that are increasingly taking taking it in the neck there. And I don't know what to do about that, but it's a real phenomenon. speaker-0: Yeah, because they're not perceived to provide any materialistic value, speaker-1: Right. Yeah, good point. speaker-0: And and it's and that's unfortunate because it you know, we live in a time when we need that more than than ever in terms of creating good quality people, just creating people that will you know, if nothing else, if you could just get people to to challenge to to think about the value system that they hold, to think about their well, I always say the the first hurdle is getting people to consider their worldview. Think yeah. What is your worldview? People, what's a worldview? They don't realize they have yeah, you of course you have a worldview. You have to have that's your map of the world. you may not realize, you may not be able to articulate articulate articulate, but you have a worldview. Yeah, and and you are operating from that worldview. So if the way you're operating is not making you happy, well, maybe your worldview is wrong. Maybe you need to consider the values that you're pursuing. Maybe you need to consider the things that you are you think are worth your efforts, worth your your time and your energy to pursue. 'Cause that came from your your worldview. speaker-1: Yeah, you've just underscored the motto of the National Association of Scholars right there. speaker-0: really? speaker-1: well, we defend the values of a liberal education. Liberal in the literal sense, you know, the kind of thing that frees you to be a productive citizen, you know, so speaker-0: Yeah. Which goes all the way back to Socrates, right? speaker-1: Yep. Yep. You betcha. speaker-0: And 'cause look what they did to him. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. speaker-1: We were on a high there until you had to bring that up. speaker-0: I'm just keeping it real. speaker-1: Yeah. Okay, I think we're at the end of our time here. Ian, any final thoughts? speaker-0: no, this was great. And I think we'd love to have you back, especially since you have a science background and a tech background. we have a si science podcast, Brains and Bots. hopefully we can get you on that and talk about AI, maybe an ethical AI. I think this was amazing. Yeah, no yeah, I'd love to talk about A. I said that was I was involved in that in the early nineteen nineties and back when it was still in its infancy, so speaker-1: We would love to talk with you about it as well. Believe me, it's a big topic of discussions at our staff meetings. speaker-0: Yeah. And it's one of the areas where if if philosophy is needed anywhere, that's that's where it's needed to in discussions about how we because again, the genie's out of the bottle, just like the the nuclear bomb. We're not gonna be able to put the genie back in the bottle. But how do we control the genie? Yeah. How do we keep this thing from destroying us? Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. When I first heard of your podcast and I saw your name, Scott, and the the name trick, why does that sound familiar? And I went, yeah, I read his book years ago. Loved the book, have recommended it to people. So and the whole concept of your podcast, I agree, is very much in line with what I'm was trying to do in the the Tritial Stoicism blog, which was create an environment where people could could realize that, you know, I real briefly, I argue that there are two entrenched armies or whatever forces in our world, one is religious and one is productive materialist science. And they're very entrenched. And in between there is the no man's land. it's it's like the old battlefields of World War One. If step into the no man's land, ironically you're gonna catch fire from both sides. But the no man's land, I think, is where the the answers are. Yeah, because the the other two are too entrenched that they can't escape their own thinking. And there's a there's a lot of what do you say, a lot of opportunity for people to pursue a life that's filled with goodness and with spirituality. without having to assent to or agree with monotheistic religions and people just don't realize that. And stoicism provides one of those paths. So we hope you've enjoyed it. we certainly have. if you're interested in the content that we do and please do like and subscribe our channels. If you like more of what you see and you like guys like Chris and more of the work that he's doing, please do consider becoming a member of NAS. We are a membership driven organization. Check us out at www.nas.org and we'll see you next time.