The teachings of Marcus Aurelius rebooted for a chaotic world

ALMOST two millennia after he lived, Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius has a new cult following.

Author Ryan Holiday, with a copy of his earlier book 'Trust me, I'm lying'. Picture: Face

IN a muddy corner of the empire where his army was busy hacking its way through Germanic tribes, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius had this cheerful thought concerning life, the universe and everything: "Short is the time which every man lives," he wrote.

"Short too the posthumous fame, and even this only continued by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know not even themselves, much less him, who died long ago."

Aurelius did better than most. He sought neither agent nor publishing contract, but his Meditations would be received by later generations of poor human beings as a great work of Stoic philosophy. And nearly two millennia after he sat in his camp on the Danube, pondering "vapoury fame", a young marketing executive has composed a sequel.

Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage is a self-help book that packages up the wisdom of Aurelius with inspiring examples of great men and women who embodied the same Stoic principles. "Our generation needs an approach for overcoming obstacles and thriving amid chaos more than ever," he writes in the book.

Holiday has become a leading dispenser of Stoic philosophy to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Hollywood moguls. A monthly email in which he distils the lessons he has learnt from the Stoics and from biographies, histories and works of philosophy now has 10,000 subscribers. It's a virtue that suits our modern age. Barack Obama knows how to take advantage of a crisis; Steve Jobs — without whom no American self-help book is complete — had the Stoic's disregard for naysayers and other weaklings who stood between him and his place in history. And, according to Holiday, what Arnold Schwarzenegger shares with all the figures in the The Obstacle is the Way is that stoic idea of self-direction, self-discipline, self-mastery.

When I meet him in SoHo in New York, Holiday, tall with sweptback hair, looks a little like Superman or a close relative from the same planet. He's one of those young bucks who have come charging out of California in the past decade, intent on world domination. He first encountered Meditations when he was 19. In the seven years since, he has dropped out of college and become the marketing director of the clothing chain American Apparel, the author of three books, and the ruler of a small public relations and branding empire.

Holiday is not the first to plunder ancient philosophy in search of a guide for modern life. Dale Carnegie's manual How to Win Friends and Influence People offered readers "the secret of Socrates" as a key to winning arguments in the boardroom. In the 1980s, the military strategies of Sun Tzu, a Chinese general from the 6th century BC, became required reading for business leaders.

Then there was Robert Greene, the author of The 48 Laws of Power, an international bestseller that drew on Niccolo Machiavelli. After the book was published in 1998, the hard-eyed pragmatism of a Florentine diplomat was the talk of hip-hop studios up and down the West Coast. "He wrote it in a totally unique style and he told it through stories," says Holiday, who worked as a research assistant for Greene on his two most recent books while doing all his other jobs. "That totally influenced me."

It was valuable experience when Holiday came to compose his own manual. People who are not intimately familiar with Aurelius may perhaps recall the elderly gent played by Richard Harris in the opening scenes of the 2000 film Gladiator. "That movie is a weird blend of fact and fiction in the sense that his son actually was one of the worst Roman emperors," says Holiday. Most of those stirring lines growled out by Russell Crowe in the movie are not apparently part of the Stoic canon, although, says Holiday, "there's that one line right where he gets stabbed where he says: 'Death smiles at every man, only some men smile back.' It's very stoic, if not literally Stoic philosophy."

Marcus Aurelius is certainly having a moment. Meditations is said to be Bill Clinton's favourite book (he reads it once a year). The former prime minister of China, Wen Jiabao, claims to have read it more than 100 times, while the supermodel Elle (the Body) Macpherson named her son Aurelius after the Roman emperor.

He's become a byword for resilience. In The Obstacle is the Way we're told to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. We must learn to master our passions, keep our heads when all around us are losing theirs. Holiday first began experimenting with Stoicism while at university in California. A famous sex therapist came to address a conference that Holiday was covering for the college newspaper. "I asked him if he had any books he would recommend. He recommended the collected works of Epictetus and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius."

Holiday began writing a blog about Stoicism. The head of a Hollywood talent agency read one of his posts and offered him an internship over the summer. "The whole Hollywood model was falling apart. There was a writers' strike, YouTube had just sold for a billion dollars; it was very much a state of flux. Being a 20-year-old who knew how the internet worked, I was able to get into meetings I otherwise never would have had access to." He dropped out of college and was hired by Dov Charney to create marketing campaigns for American Apparel. Greene, the self-help guru who was on the board at American Apparel, hired him too. "Successful people all have the same problems and they all pass people around between them," says Holiday.

Greene was collaborating at the time with the rapper 50 Cent on a new self-help book, The Fiftieth Law. "The idea that he was shot nine times including in the face gave him this immense fearlessness towards death," says Holiday. "I also think he doesn't give a s*** about what anyone thinks about him, and I like that about him too."

For Greene, Holiday ploughed through books, seeking stories to illustrate his strategies. Another pile stands beside him today: an aged hardback biography of Napoleon, the collected writings and sayings of Epicurus, and Chain of Thunder, a novel about the American Civil War.

Wouldn't it be easier to take lessons on conquering adversity from someone slightly older, who has overcome adversity? Holiday says he is used to people holding his youthfulness against him; it makes him think: "How have you done so few things and you're 40? That's sort of what I wonder. I wonder what people do all day." And he has experienced adversity, he says. Recently, driving with his fiancee through the New Mexico desert "in the middle of the night", someone leapt in front of their car. "They actually survived, but it was awful." Two days later someone broke into their house and "took everything, destroyed the furniture, thousands of dollars of damage". This was a chance to flex his Stoic muscles, he explains.

"Is the world against you or have you just had a good run up until this point and things are evening out? It's how you explain what happens to yourself. How do you deal with stress and adrenalin and chaos and destruction? Because those are inevitable parts of life."

Only the night before we meet, he and his fiancee had been out in New York and a stranger, passing Holiday, had shoved him into a bush. "If you decide that everything that happens to you is an opportunity to practise one of the Stoic virtues, that means nothing bad can happen to you."

The stranger was probably a drunk, although I start to imagine that he somehow knew of Holiday's feelings about how many people are wasting their lives and was responding, in a futile, incoherent fashion, on behalf of us poor humans who will very soon die and who know not even ourselves, much less that great Roman emperor who died long ago.

The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage by Ryan Holiday is published by Portfolio Books

The Times