Glibertarians | Daily Stoic Week 30
If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)
Disclaimer: I’m not your Supervisor. These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
July 30
“Trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think someone can, in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition? Or swing open the door to poverty, keep pleasures in check, or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful. It’s exactly such a joy that I would wish for you to possess, for it will never run dry once you’ve laid claim to its source.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 23.4
Everything here is a worthy goal, and in the abstract, I am doing most of these things. I am not fully in control of myself and this is where most of my stress comes from. I am definitely “truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful”. My wife has been told by her friends that they think I don’t like them, or asked if I am angry all the time. They seem to not believe it when she says that I am happy or trying to explain that I do like them, I just am not much for small talk.
July 31
“How disgraceful is the lawyer whose dying breath passes while at court, at an advanced age, pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators.”
—SENECA, ON THE BREVITY OF LIFE, 20.2
Life is short, and work is important. I need to balance these things. I enjoy my job, but have no desire to be doing it as an old man. I am currently planning on working until I’m 60. We shall see if that is feasible with the economy, but I still have a back up of becoming a mechanic if necessary.
August 1
“That cucumber is bitter, so toss it out! There are thorns on the path, then keep away! Enough said. Why ponder the existence of nuisance? Such thinking would make you a laughing-stock to the true student of Nature, just as a carpenter or cobbler would laugh if you pointed out the sawdust and chips on the floors of their shops. Yet while those shopkeepers have dustbins for disposal, Nature has no need of them.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.50
Don’t seek pain for no gain. I need to remember this as I go on vacation with my mom. She is a true believer in Dr. Truth Science Fauci. I will do my best to avoid talking about the COVID stupidity. My wife is stressing herself out because she is concerned about my ability to do this.
August 2
“Indeed, how could exile be an obstacle to a person’s own cultivation, or to attaining virtue when no one has ever been cut off from learning or practicing what is needed by exile?”
—MUSONIUS RUFUS, LECTURES, 9.37.30–31, 9.39.1
It doesn’t matter what is going on around me, I still have the ability to look inward and improve my mentality about external circumstances. I need to remember this dealing with other people and not allow things outside of my control to ruin my peace of mind.
August 3
“At this moment you aren’t on a journey, but wandering about, being driven from place to place, even though what you seek—to live well—is found in all places. Is there any place more full of confusion than the Forum? Yet even there you can live at peace, if needed.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 28.5b–6a
Did they know I was going on vacation when they wrote this? I am really looking forward to being on the lake and hanging out with my brothers. If my mom doesn’t press me we have no issues. If she says “I follow the science” it will be difficult to ignore, but I will “endeavor to persevere”.
August 4
“You must stop blaming God, and not blame any person. You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret.”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.22.13
This is one of the basic tenets of Stoicism. All of my issues that are worth fighting with are caused by my internal desire to control external things. As a non religious person, it is difficult to blame God for anything. If I slip up and get in an argument, it won’t be my mom’s fault, it will be mine. It is difficult not to feel anger, but I am trying.
August 5
“Silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life.”
—SENECA, THYESTES, 309
I am a usually quiet person(those who have met me can attest), and excessive talking never been something I enjoyed. I don’t try to add commentary to discussions going on around me. Yesterday at a co-worker’s going away lunch, he told me, “You don’t talk much, but you’re a good dude”. I think that is kind of what I am going for. I have met people that love to talk and usually it’s because they love themselves and want you to feel the same way.
— • —
Music this week is some old style country. New country is just pop music with a bit of a southern drawl, and it is horrible.
Ray Scott – My Kind Of Music (Video) – YouTube
I’ve told my wife if she ever leaves me, I could see this happening to me. Then I beg her not to go.
Ray Scott – Ain’t Always Thirsty (Official Music Video) – YouTube
The video captures the mood of this song perfectly.
Ray Scott – Drinkin’ Beer – Official Music Video – YouTube
Still a hobby of mine, just not as much as I used to.
I have to say, I enjoy these. Makes me want to go back and do some reading.
I really enjoy these as well. And then when I go out and drive somewhere I realize I’m totally shit at applying them.
But at least it gives me some principles to work on.
Check out Bill Irvine’s work. His A Guide to the Good Life has some fine stuff, especially on what he calls the trichotomy of control.
is reading a thing in alaska? I thought it was all moose hunting and fishing.
What do you think we do in the winter?
club seals?
lol
Sshh. We don’t talk about that.
These euphemisms are getting positively anthropogenic, which I suppose is appropriate for a guy named Animal.
Thanks for this series, Ron.
Always something for me to reflect on.
This is a great series, and nice to end the week, start the weekend on a reflective note.
And with that, I am offline; see some of you tomorrow face to face.
“Silence is a lesson learned from the many suff….”
Imma let you finish, but Protagoras had the best speech of all time, ALL TIME.
“You must stop blaming God, and not blame any person. You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret.”
Boy, do I have some work to do.
Enjoy your vacation, Ron! We are leaving tomorrow for a week, as well. Badly needed!
Does that mean I should stop shaking my fist at the sky?
Don’t forget to yell at clouds when you do. Those damn clouds will learn a thing or two.
Am I the only one who immediately thought of John McCain?
He was much worse than that.
“How disgraceful is the lawyer whose dying breath passes while at court, at an advanced age, pleading for unknown litigants and still seeking the approval of ignorant spectators.”
are there lawyers who are not disgraceful ?
Ozzy and R.C. Dean come to mind. There are other practitioners of the legal arts here as well. Glibs may be deplorable, but with only a few exceptions, we’re not disgraceful.
Some of us have even worked at 3-letter agencies.
Keep washing. Someday it will come off.
Forever unclean!
I make it very clear to people when I explain my chosen career (it chose me)- ” I work WITH the EPA, not for”.
It’s like Seneca watched my life.
“Silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life.”
I blame the patriarchy
“Nashville Pop”. Lots of good country songs denouncing it.
Thanks for the Ray Scott links. Hadn’t heard of him before. Pretty good.
Way overrates new country. The songs aren’t nearly as good as pop.
A couple songs I heard, I listened to for a while thinking they were satire.
You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret.
What about ambition?
Nothing wrong with it. Seneca was a super successful investment banker. Epictetus and Musonius both founded highly prosperous schools. James Stockdale retired as an admiral and ran (unsuccessfully) for president, and there are doG knows how many more that could be named. I think that ambition to do what one enjoys but not becomes obsessive over is vital.
Does that mean I should stop shaking my fist at the sky?
“I been to one World’s Fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones.”
Afternoon, Glibs, I’ve finished the major portion of my drive, hope all is well with the rest of you.
I found the first thing I forgot to bring – the mouse for my laptop. I’ll have to visit the local retail offerings and see what’s available.
or don’t use the laptop. take a break.
I’ve finished the major portion of my drive – I thought it was the same state you live in. How long can the drive be an hour or two. I think I can cross any Romanian subdivision in 90 minutes.
I can drive for 4 hours and still be in Iowa. And Iowa is not a big state.
Is that driving in circles?
I kid, I live in Iowa, too,
I used to have a car like that, too./old joke
I live in the Northeast so it’s “close” – it’d still be a 7 hour drive.
I’ve got a 4+ hr drive (one way) on Monday, and I’m not leaving PA.
We want to drive the Slope Haul Road one of these days, north out of Fairbanks to as far as we can get – if you go to Prudhoe Bay, that’s a 16-hour drive from here.
Probably about 3 hours, depending exactly where he started and exactly where the destination is. You can easily drive 5-6 hours and stay in New York.
Looks like 7.5 hours, if you take the absolute extremes.
Oops, forgot about long island… 9-10 hours. ^_^;
You can drive 5 hours all within Massachusetts, no one’s idea of a large state. Provincetown to Williamstown.
Julesburg, CO (NE corner) to the 4 corners monument (SW corner) is over 10 hours, according to google maps.
Look at the 4 corners monument on google maps, satellite image. The monument doesnt align with the state boundaries. I assume google has it wrong.
NM cheated and moved the survey stakes!
The monument doesn’t align with the intended borders, which were right on meridian and parallel, the old time surveyors missed in a few spots but the courts decided that the surveyor’s markers were the border not the written description, according to wiki anyways. So the borders aren’t actually straight lines.
It is where it is.. a USGS marker is definitive. Is it exactly where congress wrote the boundaries when it created the territories? it is about 1800′ offset. Which wasn’t bad for the 1800’s technology and where one starting point wasn’t well defined.
https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/INFO/fourcorners.shtml
90 minutes wouldn’t even get you from the far west side of greater Cleveland to the far east side.
I mean I am not talking inside big cities because that is traffic. 90 minutes will get you from one end of bucharest to the other but barely maybe. but I was thinking distance not gridlock
I’m assuming clear driving and minimal traffic. It’s about 90 miles from Elyria to Ashtabula.
90 minutes gets me to N. Ky.
4-5 hours to you; same time going to Detroit.
A country song about a not-a-country-girl
This is why the internet was invented.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/26/woman-goes-viral-for-attention-seeking-bridesmaid-dress/
Almost an intersection between Q and tres Cool by the looks of it.
Way too skinny for Tres, borderline anorexic even for his tastes.
She’s got FUPA potential. Our initial dates would be at Pizza Hut and Wendy’s.
Then Golden Corral.
I don’t see any problems with that dress. Some just fill out clothing better than others.
‘If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)’
Heard many recommendations to try this book, and just spoke with the wife about trimming back our TV habit, so I finally bought it.
‘Is there any place more full of confusion than the Forum?’
Seneca predicting the Internet.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/wauhv3/japanese_small_pufferfish_creates_mating/
The end result is pretty wild.
Wow. That’s spectacular!
All the recent transplants that moved to Vegas in the past couple of years are freaking out. We are actually having a monsoon this summer which is great. I love quick developing thunderstorms and a deluge of water they bring. However, people think its some effect of climate change. It has been 8 years past since our last decent monsoon and this year we are getting it good and hard.
Also idiots who probably just moved here go out on the lake and don’t wrap up their day around 3pm (about when afternoon storms start developing). Some asshat died on their kayak. This person was on the lake at 7pm and storms were already in the area.
https://www.fox5vegas.com/2022/07/29/las-vegas-fire-crews-responded-330-calls-3-hours-thursday-night-including-7-swift-water-rescues/
You don’t know what your don’t know.
Will everything start flowering?
Go on…
I lived there ’94-95. Didn’t rain often, but when it did… There seems to be little to no drainage on most streets so underpasses end up with 5 feet of water and some idiot always tried to drive through it with the expected result.
Since then they have done a great deal of drain management but 6 in/hr (even if its 15 mintues total) is a hell of a lot of water.
Just how parched things are causes issues too. Extremely dry soil isn’t good at absorbing water, so you actually get MORE runoff for the same rain event as compared to wetter climates.
Yes, however, we’ve had these storms for a couple of weeks now. This one was just the largest. It was a fantastic showing of nature last night as it was non-stop cloud-to-cloud lightning could be seen across the valley before the storm’s bottom fell out.
All the recent transplants that moved to Vegas in the past couple of years are freaking out. We are actually having a monsoon this summer which is great. I love quick developing thunderstorms and a deluge of water they bring. However, people think its some effect of climate change. It has been 8 years past since our last decent monsoon and this year we are getting it good and hard.
When I was going to grad school in Greater Phoenix many many moons ago, I’d drive by houses with an earth berm in the front yard for no apparent reason. Then the monsoons came, and it became clear the berm was a breakwater, designed to keep the front yard a “no wake” zone when the traffic was running through six inches of standing water on the road.
Lots of streets are U shaped specifically so they will channel water down the streets.
“China’s Army Posts “Get Ready For War!” Message On Social Media, State Mouthpiece Says PLA Has “Right” To Intercept Pelosi’s Plane”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pelosi-leading-delegation-asia-taiwan-stop-not-clear
They’re going pretty far to be able to back down and save face. The Chinese aren’t actually this stupid, are they?
They need to distract their subjects from their own covid insanity.
They are like spoiled children when they don’t get there way – and we usually let them do whatever the hell they want. Maybe a dust-up with the Chinese is exactly what our State Department wants to distract from the recession and disaster they have made out of Europe.
Stock up on KI then.
Just one more war and we can have peace at home…
Will the Taiwanese flags replace the Ukrainian ones?
You assume much they would be on the side of Taiwan….
Would it be worth getting into a shooting war with the PLA to rid ourselves of Pelosi?
I mean, we can’t exactly back down in this situation, so…take the good with the bad?
I don’t get it. WTF is she doing a “tour of Asia” for? She is not a foreign diplomat; she is a fucking Unites States senator.
Collecting bribes, duh.
Or you know, the thing.
It’s a junket. Taxpayer-funded vacation. Nancy gonna do some shopping.
She’s going to get some inside information on a few companies, and then totally not share that with her husband.
Representative…
What did Hawaiians use before candles?
Hawaii is receiving its final shipment of coal this week, which Gov. David Ige called a huge step forward in the state’s transition to clean energy.
Coal is the cheapest but dirtiest source of power for Oahu. A law put in place a couple of years ago will finally shut down the island’s last coal burning power plant.
“In its time, coal was an important resource for Hawai‘i and I’d like to thank the workers who have run our last remaining coal plant,” Ige said in a statement. “Renewable energy projects to replace coal are coming online with more on the way.”
As KHON2’s Always Investigating reports, replacement power projects are behind schedule due to unexpected global events with supply chain issues, so Oahu residents should prepare to pay even more for electricity this fall.
In the meantime, consumers can either cut back on power, try solar and batteries, or pay more for oil-generated power — which costs as much as five times more than coal.
*points and laughs*
Good. I hope the slippage of Hawaii back into the nineteenth century living standards will serve as an example to the rest of America and finally get them to stop voting for these clow— ugh I almost got it out.
::mutters something about trying to fix stupid::
unexpected global events with supply chain issues
It’s not unexpected that lockdowns would fuck up supply chains to no end.
And, foreseeable consequences are not unintended.
The performance was a smashing success.
Hong Kong officials said Friday they would open an investigation into a concert accident in which a giant video screen fell down onto the stage and injured two dancers.
Video clips from the Cantopop group Mirror concert Thursday night show a massive LED screen suspended above the stage crashing down, directly landing on one dancer before toppling over onto another as audience members scream in horror.
The injured performers were both sent to the hospital, with one of the dancers reported to be in “serious condition.”
This is what happens when it is Made in China.
Civility. Unity. Healing.
Linda “The ‘T’ Doesn’t Stand for Tee Ball” Sanchez gives the Republican bench a finger as she passes by.
Tantrum-throwing children in adult bodies.
Wait, that sounds familiar…
I’ll cut her some slack. If one of her GOP pals gave her some ribbing on her way back, go ahead and flip the bird.
My buddies and I flip each other the bird all the time.
Maybe she is a horrible person and meant it in a horrible way, but it could also be a huge nothingburger being hyped by clickbait nation.
You can’t see me but I just flipped you a bird, Buddy.
╭∩╮(Ο_Ο)╭∩╮
#metoo
Yup. Watching the entire clip, it looks like someone said something to her first and she responded. It was most likely good-natured back and forth.
Yeah, I don’t want to steal Hype’s contrarian deal, but to me the GOP is just as bad about ginning up outrage as the Dems. Just different things.
You anti-maskers are just a bunch of babies.
“You know, I’m particularly struck by kind of the blowback from a number, though not a really significant number, of sort of, you know, snowflake weepies about how oppressive it is to wear a mask,” she said during a meeting streamed July 26, attempting to argue that shoes are “more oppressive” to one’s feet than a mask is to one’s face.
“I don’t hear them send, you know, writing me about shoes, which are actually more oppressive to your feet than wearing a mask on your face. But we do that really for health or the requirement to wear a shirt, you know into a restaurant,” she said.
*looks at picture*
Please God, tell me that she doesn’t go out in public barefoot…
Or a mask.
“which are actually more oppressive to your feet”
Shoes serve a practical purpose you shit for brains.
The fat pig is both retarded and mentally ill.
Ugly, too.
And her shits all fucked up.
Speaking of racists…
Colleges across America have held “white accountability groups” that urge white students to check their privilege and become “anti-racist” allies.
One such university is the University of North Texas, which held a white accountability group through its Division of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access.
The description explained that members of their white accountability group will police the behavior of other white people. It said “Members … will hold fellow white employees accountable for oppressive behaviors and the systems in which those behaviors are tolerated.”
Hostile. Work. Environment.
So bland when “struggle session” is available.
“members of their white accountability group will police the behavior of other white people”
Meanwhile, actual minorities sit by and laugh at the stupid white people.
Just checked into our hotel about 45 minutes west of Party Central. Looks as if there may be a bunch of Little Leaguers here – they were having a weenie roast on the lawn by the parking lot. The good news – I hope – is that we’re on the top floor, with few rooms between our room and the dead end of the hall, so maybe it won’t be noisy. ::embellishes onion on belt, shouts at clouds::
If I could make the trip, I’d wear a disguise and no one would recognize me. Give my regards to all the Glibbers and any other attendees that are there for the food/booze.
I’ll be there in spirit anyway,
I miss SP.
We’ll raise a glass to you! 🙂
I was just able to get a little cup of strawberry Haagen-Dazs in the lobby! This joint gets a good review at Booking.com from me! 😋
I cannot attend the events tomorrow.
Please pass on my regards.
I will be out serving homebrew at some charity event tomorrow. Making the world a less-bad place one beer at a time.
👍🏼👍🏼
I’d be there to help you and I wouldn’t be tempted, well, OK, tempted but I’d stop there. AA Charity event?
Not the ending I expected.