BONUS: Toxic Masculinity, Cancel Culture & Politics

In a bonus episode of The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday fields a listener question about navigating political and cultural division, touching on toxic masculinity, cancel culture, and how to maintain personal peace when surrounded by opinions you find objectionable. The conversation is anchored in Stoic principles, particularly the idea that you always have the power to have no opinion—and that this power is harder to exercise than it sounds.

The Power of Having No Opinion

Holiday opens with a quote from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: "Remember you always have the power to have no opinion." He points out that this advice comes from a man with life-and-death authority over others, yet he still had to remind himself to let things be. "Things are not asking to be judged by you," Holiday paraphrases. The real challenge, he argues, is not intellectual but practical: how many people do we know who lack the ability to keep an opinion to themselves? He cites Elon Musk as a counterexample—immensely powerful and wealthy, but seemingly incapable of refraining from sharing every thought. Holiday applies this to his own parenting, noting that he tries to avoid "yucking someone else's yum" when his kids enjoy something he doesn't. The Stoic move is to have fewer opinions, not to win more arguments.

Toxic Masculinity and the Failure to Reach Young Men