Senecaās Letters from a Stoic
If you have anger issues,Ā this oneĀ is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)
This weekās book:
Discourses and Selected Writings
Disclaimer: Iām not yourĀ Supervisor.Ā These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
Epictetus was born a slave around 50 ad. His owner was Epaphroditus, a rich freedman who was once a slave of Nero. Though he was a slave Epictetus was sent to study philosophy under Musonius Rufus.
Epictetus was lame and there are some stories it was caused by his master and others that it was caused by disease.
He was a freedman when all philosophers were banished from Rome in 89 by the Emperor Domitian. He then started his school inĀ Greece, and had many students. He did not leave any writings from his lessons, but one of his students, Flavius Arrian, took notes and wrote theĀ Discourses.
Epictetus did not marry, had no children, and lived to be around 80-85. In retirement, he adopted a child that would have been abandoned and raised him with a woman.
He died sometime around AD 135.
He might be my favorite Stoic teacher. I love his bare bones and very straight forward approach.
Following is a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of one of his lessons. Epictetusās text appears in bold, my replies are in normal text.
How are magnanimity and carefulness compatible?
MaterialsĀ are indifferent, but the use which we make of them is not a matter of indifference. How, therefore, shall a man maintain steadfastness and peace of mind, and at the same time the careful spirit and that which is neither reckless nor negligent? If he imitates those who play at dice.Ā The counters are indifferent, the dice are indifferent; how am I to know what is going to fall? But to make a careful and skillful use of what has fallen, that is now my task.[1]Ā In like manner, therefore, the principal task in life is this: distinguish matters and weigh them one against another, and say to yourself, “Externals are not under my control; moral choice is under my control.Ā
Nothing outside of my control can be affected by my actions or desires. This is a simple lesson, but it is hard to get it through my thick head sometimes.
5Where am I to look for the good and the evil? Within me, in that which is my own.” But in that which is another’s never employ the words “good” or “evil,” or “benefit” or “injury,” or anything of the sort.
The only true good for me is my choice. Anything outside that is indifferent. There are preferred things and less preferred things, but the actual good or evil of what happens is only in my choices to deal with them.
What then? Are these externals to be used carelessly? Not at all. For this again is to the moral purpose an evil and thus unnatural to it. They must be used carefully, because their use is not a matter of indifference, and at the same time with steadfastness and peace of mind, because the material is indifferent. For in whatever really concerns us, there no man can either hinder or compel me. The attainment of those things in which I can be hindered or compelled is not under my control and is neither good nor bad, but the use which I make of them is either good or bad, and that is under my control. It is, indeed, difficult to unite and combine these two thingsāthe carefulness of the man who is devoted to material things and the steadfastness of the man who disregards them, but it is not impossible. Otherwise, happiness is impossible.
I do enjoy the fruits of my labor. I like my house, all the money I’ve spent on my truck makes it really fun to drive, and my wife and I are still happy to spend time together. None of these things is totally under my control, and I could lose them to unforeseen circumstances tomorrow.
10But we act very much as though we were on a voyage. What is possible for me? To select the helmsman, the sailors, the day, the moment. ThenĀ a storm comes down upon us. Very well, what further concern have I? For my part has been fulfilled. The business belongs to someone else, that is, the helmsman. But, more than that, the ship goes down. What, then, have I to do? What I can; that is the only thing I do; I drown without fear, neither shrieking nor crying out against God, but recognizing that what is born must also perish. For I am not eternal, but a man; a part of the whole, as an hour is part of a day. I must come on as the hour and like an hour pass away. What difference, then, is it to me how I pass away, whether by drowning or by a fever? For by something of the sort I must needs pass away.
Death waits for us all, and our lives are as short or long as fate allows them to be. I will live my life to the best of my ability, and deal with the end as it comes. My one fear is that my wife will die first, I am extremely sure that I will deal with losing my life much better than I will deal with losing her.
15This is what you will see skillful ball players doing also. None of them is concerned about the ball as being something good or bad, but about throwing and catching it. Accordingly, form has to do with that, skill with that, and speed, and grace; where I cannot catch the ball even if I spread out my cloak, the expert catches it if I throw. Yet if we catch or throw the ball in a flurry or in fear, what fun is there left, and how can a man be steady, or see what comes next in the game? But one player will say “Throw!” another, “Don’t throw!” and yet another, “Don’t throw it up!”[2]Ā That, indeed, would be a strife and not a game.
In that sense, then, Socrates knew how to play ball. How so? He knew how to play in the law-court. “Tell me,” says he, “Anytus, what do you mean when you say that I do not believe in God. In your opinion who are theĀ daemones?[3]Ā Are they not either the offspring of the gods or a hybrid race, the offspring of men and gods?” And when Anytus had agreed to that statement Socrates went on, “Who, then, do you think, can believe that mules exist, but not asses?”[4]Ā In so speaking he was like a man playing ball. And at that place and time what was the ball that he was playing with? Imprisonment, exile, drinking poison, being deprived of wife, leaving children orphans.Ā 20These were the things with which he was playing, but none the less he played and handled the ball in good form.
Socrates in his final trial was unperturbed by the consequences of losing a rigged game and went to the end fighting for truth. When he lost, he drank the hemlock as he was sentenced to do without throwing a fit because the final outcome was decided.
So ought we also to act, exhibiting the ball-player’s carefulness about the game, but the same indifference about the object played with, as being a mere ball. For a man ought by all means to strive to show his skill in regard to some of the external materials, yet without making the material a part of himself, but merely lavishing his skill in regard to it, whatever it may be. So also, the weaver does not make wool, but he lavishes his skill on whatever wool he receives. Another[5]Ā gives you sustenance and property and can likewise take them away, yes, and your paltry body itself. Do you accordingly accept the material and work it up. Then if you come forth without having suffered any harm, theĀ others who meet you will congratulate you on your escape, but the man who knows how to observe such matters, if he sees that you have exhibited good form in this affair, will praise you and rejoice with you; but if he sees that you owe your escape to some dishonorable action, he will do the opposite. For where a man may rejoice with good reason, there others may rejoice with him.
As I go through life, I strive to do the best with what I have been given. I have had a few setbacks, and most of those were caused by my decisions. I have tried to learn from them and be a better person as a result. For the ones that were a result of external forces, all I can do is to make the best choices possible and deal with the results with aplomb.
How, then, can it be said that some externals are natural, and others unnatural? It is just as if we were detached from them.[6]Ā For I will assert of the foot as such that it is natural for it to be clean, but if you take it as a foot, and not as a thing detached,[7]Ā it will be appropriate for it to step into mud and trample on thorns and sometimes to be cut off for the sake of the whole body; otherwise it will no longer be a foot.Ā 25We ought to hold some such view also about ourselves. What are you? A man. Now if you regard yourself as a thing detached, it is natural for you to live to old age, to be rich, to enjoy health. But if you regard yourself as a man and as a part of some whole, on account of that whole it is fitting for you now to be sick, and now to make a voyage and run risks, and now to be in want, and on occasion to die before your time. Why, then, are you vexed? Do you not know that as the foot, if detached, will no longer be a foot, so you too, if detached, will no longer be a man? For what is a man? A part of a state; first of that state which is made up of gods and men, and then of that which is said to be very close to the other, the state that is a small copy of the universal state. “Must I, then, be put on trial now?” Well, would you have someone else be sick of a fever now,Ā someone else go on a voyage, someone else die, someone else be condemned? For it is impossible in such a body as ours, in this universe that envelops us, among these fellow-creatures of ours, that such things should not happen, some to one man and some to another. It is your task, therefore, to step forward and say what you should, to arrange these matters as is fitting. Then the judge says, “I adjudge you guilty.” I reply, “May it be well with you. I have done my part; and it is for you to see whether you have done yours.” For the judge too runs a risk, do not forget that.
Our life does not belong to us. It is difficult to accept that truth. I try to remember that anything that can happen to anyone can happen to me. I will do my part to the best of my ability and let the outcome be what the outcome is going to be.
I am currently on vacation at my mother’s house and have managed to avoid all knowledge of current events. It has been glorious.
Hope you all enjoy; I’ll be around next week.
Music is from Iron Maiden again, afterĀ Seventh Son they released the rather forgettableĀ No Prayer for the Dying.
Then Bruce left and he was replaced by Blaze Bayley. I had high hopes that he would inject some energy into the band after I heard Manhunt,Ā but they were disappointing again, there were some good songs, but his voice wasn’t that good IMO.
In 2000Ā Brave New WorldĀ was released with Bruce and longtime guitarist Adrian Smith returning. It might not be as good as 1988 and prior Maiden, it’s still pretty good.
It starts with a ripper: The Wicker Man
This is the most Iron Maiden song on the album: Ghost of the Navigator
You throw the ball
Sometimes we hit the ball, sometimes into fair territory and sometimes in foul territory. It’s why we run out a bunt.
Thanks Ron. I’m still trying to run out the bunt but it gets more and more difficult.
Nobody will ever play baseball
where is everyone?
I had work stuff. And then I went into a rabbit hole of Layne Norton fitness articles. Happy Friday!
Happy Friday
Sorry. Work is bad. I cannot be around.
It’s a spectator sport, right?
Baseball been berry, berry good to me
Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald – Gordon Lightfoot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI
Off topic – anyone in touch with Tundra?
Just realized I hadn’t seen him comment in a while – Oct 21st is the last time I see.
Hope all is well.
He posted on one of the mailing lists of TOS refugees back on Tuesday.
I noticed that as well. I have his number, I’ll text later to see how he is. He might be just taking an Internet break.
Thanks much
Just heard back, he’s fine and just taking a break.
Grazie mille.
Prego.
I have to practice great stoicism today. I am slowly unpacking boxes that we paid movers to pack (expecting them to wrap, not place glass next to glass, or just thrown in boxes with no packing) and finding half assed packing, things not even wrapped in paper, whole boxes with just strewn about items with no care.
My decanter busted, commemorative stien I got back in 1998 broken, boxes clearly marked fragile smashed to shit cause they loaded them at the bottom of a stack.
Damn – sorry. Even well-packed stuff sucks to unpack.
That’s a ‘dish pack’ I don’t care what your limited liability says, that’s pure negligence. We even paid you for supposedly packing paper supplies.
https://ibb.co/hmf0RNn
That would enrage me.
I only get the alt-text, a timestamp of the image. š
Saving the children
These victories are significant. School boards matter on their own merits ā their members approve school budgets, curricula, policies and strategic goals for districts. Each of their victories means a major student population will have education policy set by liberal-minded, multicultural representatives instead of people who want to foster a provincial or outright hostile attitude toward marginalized communities and progressive ideas in the school system.
More broadly, school board policies and school board elections have become proxies for broader culture wars over racial inclusivity, trans rights and free speech. Tuesdayās election results donāt mean the right is destined to lose on these issues in the future, but they do indicate that the issue is far from a layup and that, on education issues, the right can be out-organized.
Who votes in school board elections? Teachers. Progressive indoctrination will continue.
Teachers, as many times as it takes.
Funny, isnāt it, how cultural relativists degrade and deprecate other cultures (āpeople who want to foster a provincial or outright hostile attitude toward marginalized communities and progressive ideasā) even though their professed adherence to multiculturalism gives no intellectual basis for doing so.
Progressive ideals have been proven to be bad for marginalized communities over the long term.
Are you kidding? It’s right in the name. Why do you hate progress, kinnath?
Progressive ideals do not produce real progress.
They are not progressives, they are regressives. Coolidge addressed that better than anyone. I thought I posted this quote yesterday?
No matter. It cannot be said enough.
“āIf all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
That’s why teachers need a big pay raise. For the children.
Kind of strange, that many of those that go into teaching claim it’s their calling. A couple years later they’re manning the picket lines, demanding more money and less school time. Then get a Master’s and get a pay bump.
They are oikophobes, plain and simple. Some go further to outright misanthropy. They hate enlightened western culture because they despise the ideas that gave birth to it. They hate themselves and everyone else, it shows.
They praise inferior cultures to spit in the eye of the one culture that allows them to spew their poison. Living in those inferior cultures most proggies would be killed or forced to flee in a few months.
In my personal experience they have suffered some kind of psychological trauma in their youth and blame that on the culture, i.e. whiteness. I suspect no small amount of that abuse was sexual in nature. Second would be some kind of religious crap. Thus all of the purple hair, obesity, black nails, personality disorders etc. Any collection of proggies is going to be a boatload of mental and emotional problems. Spending too much time with the mentally ill for years taught me something I see clearly in the wider world with leftists: raging narcissism. Everything is about them.
This morning I saw some lunatic tranny agitating for a national tranny day. “If the veterans can have a day of celebration, why cant we?”
Mrs. Suthenboy: “Uhhhhh…because vets put their lives on the line for the rest of us. You did what, exactly, to merit a day of celebration?”
Yes, leftism is a mental disorder.
They had a weekend, then a week, then a month, now a fucking season. How many more days do they deserve?
Local Podunkville school board wanted to raise taxes via a referendum, narrowly lost. Had the election been after the snow birds (old people) left for TX/FL it probably would have passed.
In a just world those proponents would have been tarred /feathered/run out of town for even proposing such a thing.
I’m inclined to not read much into this election. Most people don’t vote in off-year elections like this, except for dedicated progs and maybe old people. I haven’t seen any numbers for voter turnout, I bet it’s low compared to last year.
It was pretty high in Loudon.
https://twitter.com/The_Kyle_Mann/status/1723009226878992452
Prices being directly caused by inflation and the deliberate choking off of our fuel supply…
I cannot for the life of me figure out how that could be argued. I am guessing it is somehow OMB’s fault.
Joe Manchin Wants One Thing, and Itās Disgusting
The West Virginia senator, who announced he will not be seeking reelection, is not some political mastermind. Heās a greedy nihilist.
Manchin spent the first half of the Biden administration shaving down the climate spending in the bill that became the Inflation Reduction Act. He axed everything from power plant pollution penalties to a bonus for electric cars made with union labor. At one point he said he would not even vote for the package at all. Then he decided he would. In between all that, he found time to block Sarah Bloom Raskinās nomination to become the Federal Reserveās top banking copālargely, it seemed, because she supported factoring climate risk into banking rules.
At no point does Manchin seem to have been playing 12-dimensional chess. Heās a greedy, attention-seeking nihilist with a few reactionary beliefs, who can also be a little erratic. He spent months stripping anything that might pose a threat to his donors and his own business interests out of what became the IRA, got a little antsy, and then agreed to a deal once heād secured enough sweeteners for polluters. It is better that Joe Manchin ended up voting for the Inflation Reduction Act than not, of course. But you also wouldnāt thank the man who cut off your foot for not taking the whole leg.
I’m beginning to miss Joe already.