Amazon.com: Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic eBook : Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, HQ, Classics: Kindle Store
Disclaimer: I’m not your Supervisor. These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
Picking up where I left off with Seneca’s letters to his friend and student, Lucilius Junior, an official in Sicily.
I am copying a part of the letter in italics and then responding in normal text.
On the Futility of Learning Maxims
You feel that my present letters should be like my earlier ones and have odd sayings of leading Stoics appended to them. But they never busied themselves with philosophical gems. Their whole system is too virile for that. When things stand out and attract attention in a work you can be sure there is an uneven quality about it. One tree by itself never calls for admiration when the whole forest rises to the same height.Poetry is replete with such things; so is history.
Stoicism is more than isolated quotes. It is more important to understand the philosophy as a whole than it is to quote certain passages. The Daily Stoic is a good introduction to Stoicism, but just reading one quote a day in isolation does not give a deep understanding.
So please don’t think them peculiar to Epicurus; they are general, and ours more than anyone’s, although they receive more notice in him because they occur at widely scattered intervals, because they are unlooked for, and because it is rather a surprise to find spirited sayings in a person who – so most people consider – was an advocate of soft living. In my own view, Epicurus was actually, in spite of his long sleeves, a man of spirit as well. Courage, energy and a warlike spirit are as commonly given to Persians as to people with a style of dress more suited to action.
If you have been paying attention, you would have noticed Seneca delights in quoting Epicurus, even though they were followers of two different philosophies. Seneca believes that Epicurus was a much stronger person than most Stoics did. Although he does praise Epicurus, notice the slight dig at his fashion choices. Maybe that was normal in that time, it was almost 300 years before Seneca’s time.
So there’s no call for you to press for stock excerpts, seeing that the sort of thing which in the case of other thinkers is excerpted is in our case continuous writing. That’s why we don’t go in for that business of window-dressing; we don’t mislead the customer, so that when he enters the shop he finds nothing in stock apart from the things on display in the window. We allow him to pick up samples from wherever he likes.
Quotes by themselves aren’t harmful, but they can give a distorted view without the whole text. For example Seneca has a quote where he says not to indulge in mourning the loss of a loved one. If you only know that quote, it would be easy to assume Stoicism is teaching people to have no attachments or feelings for other people. Once I read the whole thing, I understood he meant to grieve naturally, but not to wallow in it and drag it out, thereby causing people around you pain.
And suppose we did want to separate out individual aphorisms from the mass, whom should we attribute them to? Zeno? Cleanthes? Chrysippus? Panaetius? Posidonius? We Stoics are no monarch’s subjects; each asserts his own freedom. Among Epicureans whatever Hermarchus or Metrodorus says is credited to one man alone; everything ever said by any member of that fraternity was uttered under the authority and auspices of one person. I say again, then, that for us, try as we may, it is impossible to pick out individual items from so vast a stock in which each thing is as good as the next.
He believes Epicureanism to be a very top down type of philosophy and Stoicism is more of an individual one. I agree and the main reason I unsubscribed from The Daily Stoic’s email was because they were trying to tell me that a good Stoic would be against “kids in cages” and would have denounced the racists, unlike Trump. I heard that later they went all in on mask and vaccine mandates. But I digress, his main point is that there are so many good Stoic quotations from so many good Stoics that it is pointless to try to give one credit for a quote that could have been said by many.
The poor man ’tis that counts his flock. Wherever you look your eye will light on things that might stand out if everything around them were not of equal standard.
If you don’t have many good examples to quote like the Epicureans, then like a poor man with 5 sheep count them and learn them, but when there are many examples to choose from, like a rich man with hundreds of sheep, counting is pointless.
So give up this hope of being able to get an idea of the genius of the greatest figures by so cursory an approach. You have to examine and consider it as a whole. There is a sequence about the creative process, and a work of genius is a synthesis of its individual features from which nothing can be subtracted without disaster. I have no objection to your inspecting the components individually provided you do so without detaching them from the personality they actually belong to; a woman is
not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.
While quotes are a good introduction, I try not to let knowing a good quote distract me from learning the whole passage and trying to understand the total and not just the individual parts.
Still, if you press me I won’t treat you so meanly – openhanded generosity it shall be. There is a mass of such things, an enormous mass of them, lying all over the place, needing only to be picked up as distinct
from gathered up. They come, not in drips and drabs, but in a closely interconnected and continuous stream. I have no doubt, too, they may be very helpful to the uninitiated and those who are still novices, for individual aphorisms in a small compass, rounded off in units rather like lines of verse, become fixed more readily in the mind. It is for this reason that we give children proverbs and what the Greeks call chriae* to learn by heart, a child’s mind being able to take these in at a stage when anything more would be beyond its capacity.
*Short witty saying
There are plenty of good quotes out there to learn from. The Daily Stoic put 366 of them together in one book and they barely scratched the surface. As a beginning student of Stoicism these were easy to understand and remember, just like teaching a proverb to a child.
But in the case of a grown man who has made incontestable progress it is disgraceful to go hunting
after gems of wisdom, and prop himself up with a minute number of the best-known sayings, and be dependent on his memory as well; it is time he was standing on his own feet. He should be delivering himself of such sayings, not memorizing them. It is disgraceful that a man who is old or in sight of old age should have a wisdom deriving solely from his notebook. ‘Zeno said this.’ And what have you said? ‘Cleanthes said that.’ What have you said? How much longer are you going to serve under others’ orders? Assume authority yourself and utter something that may be handed down to posterity. Produce something from your own resources.
As I have started to understand Stoicism better, I do not feel the need to be able to quote others as often. This weekly article is my feeble attempt to create my own thoughts and ideas about Stoicism.Maybe one day I will dig through all the ones I have written and pull out some of my own quotes, if I have any worth stockpiling.
This is why I look on people like this as a spiritless lot – the people who are forever acting as interpreters and never as creators, always lurking in someone else’s shadow. They never venture to do for themselves the things they have spent such a long time learning. They exercise their memories on things that are not their own. It is one thing, however, to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to your memory, whereas to know, by contrast, is actually to make each item your own, and not to be dependent on some original and be constantly looking to see what the master said. ‘Zeno said this, Cleanthes that.’ Let’s have some difference between you and the books!
How much longer are you going to be a pupil? From now on do some teaching as well. Why, after all, should I listen to what I can read for myself? ‘The living voice,’ it may be answered, ‘counts for a great deal.’ Not when it is just acting in a kind of secretarial capacity, making itself an instrument for what others have to say.
This is why I believe Stoicism is a personal philosophy and not a hive mind. Each person should be able to explain the philosophy without mindlessly parroting what they read in a book. I also think its more interesting to not simply memorize what to think, but actually putting it in practice in my own way works for me.
A further point, too, is that these people who never attain independence follow the views of their predecessors, first, in matters in which everyone else without exception has abandoned the older authority concerned, and secondly, in matters in which investigations are still not complete. But no new findings will ever be made if we rest content with the findings of the past. Besides, a man who follows someone else not only does not find anything, he is not even looking. ‘But surely you are going to walk in your predecessors’ footsteps?’ Yes indeed, I shall use the old road, but if I find a shorter and easier one I shall open it up. The men who pioneered the old routes are leaders, not our masters. Truth lies open to everyone. There has yet to be a monopoly of truth. And there is plenty of it left for future generations too.
I try to listen to others about Stoicism, but it is my decisions that shape it for my life. Some of the “modern” Stoics are very authoritarian. I don’t even necessarily agree with Seneca and Marcus Aurelius 100% of the time. I am also not sure how they would have navigated the world I live in. All I can do is live my life according to how I interpret their principles and keep trying to be a better man.
Reminder: I will be in Richmond for lunch on April 1st, there is a meetup post in the forum about it.
Music this week is Winery Dogs, their new album iii came out last month and it is pretty good.
They will be in Virginia Beach on March 30th and I will be there along with a bunch of other old white guys.
This song is a ripper:
Most of the songs are more mid tempo, but still very good.
I think the singer just learned that if he knocks the mile over and steps on the stand, he can catch it.
Also the bass solo at the end rocks.
Another ripper, I love the drum bass and guitar intro.
This is why firsting is so important.
The double negative got me to thinking that firsting is really unimportatnt
Make of it what you will.
I got tired of no one saying anything in here.
Oh, not from you but from another whose name shall not be uttered. Anyone else gets accolades for being topical.
I know I’m not the most exciting writer we have here.
No, these are good, and you do a good job bringing them to the new reader. But, two things: 1) a person has to start somewhere, and basic readings of something like the Daily Stoic is a good start to begin the journey. 2) Quotes come after, as they provide a nice focus for keeping a lot of jumbled thoughts in order.
So, please, keep the path you have chosen as a teacher, for that way leads to greater truth. At least that has been my best experience in life. Excitement is cheap, but talking through a subject is they way for deep understanding of it.
Thanks
*tumbleweeds.gif*
Quotes by themselves aren’t harmful, but they can give a distorted view without the whole text. For example Seneca has a quote where he says not to indulge in mourning the loss of a loved one. If you only know that quote, it would be easy to assume Stoicism is teaching people to have no attachments or feelings for other people. Once I read the whole thing, I understood he meant to grieve naturally, but not to wallow in it and drag it out, thereby causing people around you pain.
Well said. And so important when reading philosophy.
This is why I look on people like this as a spiritless lot – the people who are forever acting as interpreters and never as creators, always lurking in someone else’s shadow. They never venture to do for themselves the things they have spent such a long time learning. They exercise their memories on things that are not their own.
I see this with a lot of Christians in my world. Great at parroting and quoting scripture, but doing nothing with it.
Thanks for the music, too! I wasn’t familiar with them and you are right, that first one is a banger!
Those who take Romans 13 literally are among the worst.
Yeah, that’s a convenient one for the bootlickers. Except that it only applies if the authorities are acting in accordance with God. If they are pursuing evil, it is imperative to not follow them.
Let’s face it, if you desire a certain result it’s easy enough to find scripture (or stoic quotes) that will seem to support your thesis.
OTOH, people also try the “this government isnt perfect so Romans 13 doesn’t apply at all”. Which is the same error in the other direction.
Very true. My hatred of the state makes it challenging to give 13 a fair read.
Glad you like it.
Their first album is my favorite, but they have good songs on all 3
Mike Portnoy is a beast. The other two are no slouches, either.
I had heard of Billy Sheehan before, but never heard of the singer Richie Kotzen, and I was a long time Dream Theater fan.
As a trio they work really well.
>.>
<.<
*shrug*
People who may need a stoic approach to anger issues.
while the FDIC noted that SVIB had $175BN in deposits as of Dec 31, note that some $151.5BN of these are uninsured, which means they get exactly zero although a sizable number of them likely pulled their deposits in the past few days.
Aren’t all deposits insured by FDIC?
/Heads for the local bank
up to $250k
What he said.
Up to $250k.
Apparently the FDIC is reaching out to those with more than 250K. You know they’ll be bailed out somehow.
Per account owner, and maybe per account. FDIC has a tool at their website to estimate how much coverage your accounts have. Warning: requires plugging in personal financial info.
Per account owner, per insured bank, per account category.
I guess the latter means savings and checking have 250k each. Not sure what other account categories there are.
CDs? Maybe IRAs?
I don’t know about IRAs at a bank, but I have had investment accounts that showed things like insured up to $15MM. I don’t know about my current 401k, but I assume it is similar.
$250k is too low for retirement accounts, so I would expect private insurance.
Credit unions have their own Fed insurance – the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF.) However, some CUs have gone strictly to private insurance (with the approval of their members, of course.)
I believe only savings/checking accounts, and only up to a specific amount.
More info here:
https://twitter.com/peruvian_bull/status/1634236055049342978
LOL. Just below:
https://twitter.com/GRDecter/status/1634060787802071040
Uh oh
https://twitter.com/peruvian_bull/status/1634258710825697280
I’d be surprised if JPM went down. As I understand it, they banned EU government bonds and made other adjustments to reduce risk. They seem to have been preparing for a financial war.
But stranger things have happened.
From the comments “like a good neighbor the Fed is there.”
Thanks ron,
Looking at the weather forecast for the weekend got me down. Lots of snow, I have been hoping I could drive through it but I thought that for the last one too. Then I understood, with your help, there’s nothing I can do to change anything, may as well figure on cleaning the driveway again with the snow blower. It really isn’t a big deal but I’m a whiner, lazy with a bad case of cabin fever. I’ve enjoyed enough Ansel Adams beauty for a few months.
I’ve found myself in a job that’s more stressful and less lucrative than what I was doing last year.
While there are things I can do about the situation. The most important one in the short term is stepping back and managing my own thoughts.
Hope you can figure out a better way.
If you can do that, everything might become clearer for you.
I’m sorry your OnlyFans isn’t lucrative.
Michael Burry is calling SVB “Enron”. Which I assume means they were lying about actually being profitable.
Connecting to a comment I made the other day, this is why from a pragmatic reason I like the idea of ending the corporate income tax but requiring companies to pay out at least 20% of profit in dividends the following fiscal year. Missing dividend payments exposes the lie.
https://twitter.com/peruvian_bull/status/1634255020886728704?s=20
Not sure what this means, either.
I would think a “receivership certificate” puts them in line with other creditors for the bankruptcy dispersement.
So they would get some sort of cents on the dollar.
“The short-term debt that is issued by the receiver of a firm in bankruptcy proceedings. Receivers’ certificates are of high quality because they have first claim on the bankrupt firm’s assets.”
Not just in line, but at the front of the line. They are in same group with secured creditors. Unsecured creditors can fuck right off.
/looks at GM and the government
Sure about that?
More hits:
https://twitter.com/peruvian_bull/status/1634256858843328514
Is this gonna be a domino thing? A lot of these firms appear to be heavily connected.
Well, shit. This can’t be good.
Something is clearly fucked up. They snuck in the zero reserve requirement in the midst of the covid freakout. This is an unhealthy looking industry.
Covid was used as THE excuse for all sorts of desired but risky behavior.
What was clearly seen was that it would bite them (FCVOT) in the ass in unseen ways down the road.
Looks like SVB bet on the Fed Put at the wrong time.
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/31635V232
I can’t believe anybody would willingly give their money to an entity called “Silicon Valley Bank”.
Silicon Alley, morelike.
Why? The Fed will bail you out. No depositors lost money in 2008.
Invest in REITs?
SVB?
I’m seeing about taking off on the 30th…
Hope you can make it.
https://babylonbee.com/news/chilis-introduces-new-silent-fajitas-for-introverts
From the same:
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-gives-black-american-of-courage-award-to-robert-downey-jr-for-role-in-tropic-thunder
Structural misogyny
The US labor market is remarkably strong — unemployment is sitting at five-decade lows even as the Federal Reserve does all it can to cool the economy in its fight against inflation. Wage growth is also increasing as demand for labor outpaces supply.
But not all workers have benefited equally from wage gains.
A new Wells Fargo report shows that the number of single women in the labor force has grown three times faster than the broader labor pool over the last decade. At the same time, their salaries have failed to keep up with those of their male counterparts.
——-
In 2022, US women on average earned about 82 cents for every dollar a man earned, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers.
That represents an improvement of just 3 cents since 2002.
Those wage gaps are “persistently disappointing,” ADP’s Chief Economist Nela Richardson told CNN on Thursday. She said the gaps are seen across all age groups, job levels and industries.
They’re also bad for the economy as a whole. On average, women employed in the United States lose a combined $1.6 trillion every year due to the wage gap, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. That loss of wages means women have less money to support themselves and retire on, as well as to spend in their communities.
Women. They can’t keep a dollar in their pocket. They just spend, spend spend. That’s what makes them special.
Wow, so many falsehoods in so few sentences.
Here I am, stoically sitting in the tire shop. Stupid flats.
WRT quotes, I find them useful when talking to kids, asking them, ‘What do you think that means’? Seems to get their noggins jogging.
Admittedly, that doesn’t happen all that often. Don’t know many kids, heh.
Flat tires suck. I am driving all day, hoping that doesn’t happen. I am almost through Louisiana now, heading to Mississippi. I played “Real Life Travel Bingo” with my daughter. I would recommend.
You are a good dad.
Here in an hour, I will be going to the tire shop to get chains.
This is mid-March. What hell?
I have to take my wife’s corolla to Safelite to replace the wind shield they replaced in January.
It has a crack that started from the bottom, so I am hoping they warranty it.
Without any obvious rock chips/impacts I don’t see why they would give you a hard time.
No chips, but I don’t know how good they are at honoring their warranty.
Companies with smaller gender pay gaps tend to be rewarded by their shareholders.
That may be because of the popularity of ESG investing — when traders evaluate companies using environmental, social and governance factors. “The gender pay gap is informing investment strategies,” wrote Refinitiv analysts in a recent report. “Our recent analysis shows that [shares of] companies with no gender pay gap outperform companies with pay gaps between male and female employees,” wrote Refinitiv.
Companies with more women in high-paying, executive positions also tend to be more profitable.
It repeats the talking points, or it gets the hose.
Talking point:
https://twitter.com/SVB_Financial/status/1382509285658222603
The irony! It burns!
What rhymes with woke?
Spoke.
Coke!
Joke.
Also croak.
Toke.
Yoke
Yolk!!
Nice, runny yolk you can sop up with your toast! Nom nom! 😋
Bloke
Stoke
Soak
Obligatory.
I am just going to assume you all got the joke.
Joke? I’m just following the badwagon.
My wife would say “bloke” and you wouldn’t know if she did or not.
Baroque?
Is this gonna be a domino thing? A lot of these firms appear to be heavily connected.
What in the blue blazes are you on about? This is the most bestest economy ever!
President Joe Biden released his budget on Thursday which included new proposed taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
The Biden administration proposed a 25% minimum tax on the richest Americans, new taxes on oil and gas companies and a hike in the US corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%.
Biden would cut the deficit “by asking the wealthy and big corporations to begin to pay their fair share and by cutting wasteful spending on Big Pharma, Big Oil and other special interests,” said White House Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young.
That should pay for two or three new wars.
What exactly is the government spending on Big Oil (other than presumably buying a lot of oil products)?
Or is this just the “Any money you have that we can’t tax is spending”?
Replenishing the strategic petroleum reserve?
I’d bet it’s the latter.
“1099s on people making/selling more than $600”
Tax the rich, my ass.
“ Maybe one day I will dig through all the ones I have written and pull out some of my own quotes, if I have any worth stockpiling.”
Excellent idea. If you do that, I will attempt to photoshop the front of your Dodge Ram in with the famous stoics on your cover photo. It will be a fine thing.
Shades of Maximum Overdrive? Kewl.
What exactly is the government spending on Big Oil (other than presumably buying a lot of oil products)?
Or is this just the “Any money you have that we can’t tax is spending”?
“We have been wastefully not confiscating every penny you make, but that is about to come to a screeching halt.”
I am also not sure how they would have navigated the world I live in.
Yeah.
Sometimes I’m not sure how I navigate it, how could I imagine how someone else does it?
OT: Babylon Bee on the 9 Upsides to Socialism.
China has brokered a deal for Iran and Saudi Arabia to resume diplomatic relations, in a major diplomatic coup for Beijing.
Remember when American diplomats used to do those things? Instead it means our influence in the Middle East is about to nosedive. No big deal if we actually produce our own oil.
Win for BRICS, Syria, and Russia.
Losers: US, Israel
Expect the Iran warmonger crowd to start ramping it up.
I don’t know. Sounds like they just lost the use of Saudi airspace if they want to get at Iran.
And those American troops in Syria are going to start feeling lonely and out on a limb.
I’m fine with it, good on China. Avoiding a general conflagration in the Middle East is close in my priorities to avoiding toe to toe nuclear combat with the Rooskies.
Wait, the Popular uprising hasn’t toppled the Ayatollah yet?
Surprise! There’s a catch
Scientists have discovered a more efficient way to capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the ocean. A new study details a method of direct carbon capture that takes the atmospheric CO2 and transforms it into baking soda, which could then safely be stored in seawater.
The challenge of carbon capture is the cost, BBC writes. The gas is diluted in the atmosphere, requiring more energy to capture and release. The new research used a hybrid of previous capture methods, creating a system that is three times more efficient. “This simple ability to capture CO2 at a high quantity, in a small volume of material, is a unique aspect of our work,” said the lead author of the study Arup SenGupta. “This material can be produced at very high capacity very rapidly.”
——-
However, experts warn that the carbon capture industry must be expanded significantly to be effective in reversing climate change. “The only way this will ever happen at the scale it needs to happen is if it’s made a licensing condition of continuing to sell fossil fuels,” said Myles Allen from the University of Oxford. “As soon as it is, it will happen on a scale that’s currently unimaginable.”
It’ll pay for itself, as soon s we strongarm those rapacious oil and gas companies into footing the bill.
Maybe we can mix the baking soda with vinegar to power airplanes.
Choke.
Paging Scruffyy…
Video shows train crash into excavator in Ringgold, Georgia
Guy with the cell phone video should have been backing up earlier! But I do understand the expectation of a literal train wreck can cloud your judgement.
Was the truck overweight?
Probably not, or they would have mentioned it.
Not seeing the connection from the accident to this bill.
Something must be done!
This is something.
Therefore it must be done!
Oops…
I dont know how long the train is/was, but Im impressed how quickly it came to a complete stop.
Then again, smashing into a track-hoe likely helped.
Yikes. At least she knew enough to back up. Something tells me most people would have stayed right there for a good close look.
It seems as if the truck driver ought to have known he’d high-center.
Feb 2, a 13yo kid disappeared in an area of town I frequent frequently. I had reason to be in that neighborhood today and it was a fucking nightmare getting to where I needed to get. Cops fucking EVERYWHERE. I got to my destination, said something about it, and they said, “They found a body.”
I don’t know why it just hit me so wrong. It’s like, I allowed my son to go hither and yon when he was 13, thinking his stomping ground were safe, but… Guess not.
True enough, but one event does not make a trend. Totally understandable, however.
It might also be an unfortunate accident.
That is possible. They were looking around a pond. https://fox4kc.com/news/gladstone-police-fbi-investigating-wooded-area/
This and rent control are going to be what drives out the last of the middle class in NYC.
‘I’m Terrified’: NYC Residents Say City’s New Climate Law Could Ruin Their Lives
They just need to prog harder!
For those of you who recommended I sub-out replacing the garage door torsion spring- thanks. Called a place and dude did in 20 minutes what likely would have taken me a day. And since the new spring required adjustment of the door opener, Id likely still be out there*.
GT- if you need garage door work Im happy to recommend someone local.
*I did watch and learned that when tensioning the spring, 1 full turn for each foot of door to be raised.
It’s Broke, you bunch of fee simple fools.
Broke rhymes with woke.