How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)
This week’s book:
Discourses and Selected Writings
Disclaimer: I’m not your Supervisor. 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 in 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 the 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 is 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. Epictetus’s text appears in bold, my replies are in normal text.
That we ought not to yearn for the things which are not under our control Part IV
For there is no comparison between this General and an ordinary one, either in His power, or in the pre-eminence of His character. You have been given a post in an imperial city, and not in some mean place; not for a short time either, but you are a senator for life. Do you not know that a man in such a post has to give only a little attention to the affairs of his own household, but for most of the time has to be away, in command, or under command, or serving some official, or in the field, or on the judge’s bench? And then you want to be attached to the same spot and rooted in it like a plant?—Yes, it is pleasant.—Why deny it? But soup is pleasant too, and a pretty woman is a pleasant thing. What else do those say who make pleasure their end?
Pleasure is not an end in itself. While I do enjoy things, living for that only would debase me and I would be an embarrassment to myself and my family. I have known people that lived this way and it looks exhausting. I am happy living in such a way that my pleasures do not control me. I still enjoy eating things that taste good but are not good for me more often than I should, but do so in moderation.
Do you not realize the kind of men they are whose language you have just uttered? That they are Epicureans and blackguards? And yet, while doing their deeds and holding their opinions, you recite to us the words of Zeno and Socrates? Will you not cast away from you, as far as you can fling them, these alien trappings with which you adorn yourself, although they do not at all become you? Or what else do these fellows want but to sleep without hindrance or compulsion, and after they have arisen, to yawn at their ease, and wash their faces; then to write and read what they please, then to babble something or other, to the applause of their friends, no matter what they say; then to go out for a stroll, and after a short walk to take a bath; then to eat, then to seek their rest, and sleep in such a bed as you might expect such persons to enjoy—why should I say the word? For you can infer what it is like.
Epictetus was obviously not a fan of the Epicureans. While I don’t know much about them, the way Stoics describe them sounds unappealing. Living with pleasure as a goal can easily lead to selfish choices that end up leaving a person lonely with no self respect. It also means that if a difficult situation arose you would not be trusted to do what is right and instead it would be assumed you would do what is best for you in the moment.
40Come now, do you also tell me your style of life, the one on which you have set your heart, you eager follower of the truth, and of Socrates, and of Diogenes! What do you want to do in Athens? Just what I have described? Nothing at all different? Why, then, do you call yourself a Stoic? Well, but those who falsely claim Roman citizenship are severely punished, and ought those who falsely claim so great and so dignified a calling and title to get off scot-free? Or is that impossible? whereas the divine and mighty and inescapable law is the law which exacts the greatest penalties from those who are guilty of the greatest offenses. Now what are its terms? “Let him who makes pretense to things which in no wise concern him be a braggart, let him be a vainglorious man; let him who disobeys the divine governance be abject, be a slave, suffer grief, envy, pity,[7]—in a word, be miserable, and lament,”
Claiming to be a Stoic while living like an Epicurean would make one a hypocrite back then. It reminds me of when I was a child and my mom would say, “Do as I say, not as I do”. That was infuriating and made it difficult to take her seriously. If it was discovered that I was a rageaholic that cheated on my wife it would be easy to dismiss anything I say about living a life with control and moderation. Remember though, that as bad as hypocrisy is, the raping is always worse. RIP Norm.
It has been my experience that people who live for physical pleasure ultimately end up very unhappy or dead.
Technically, everyone winds up dead.
But they’re not unhappy any more. Quite stoic of them.
It’s “Ackchually, everyone winds up dead.”
Tow the lion, Ted.
Maybe you’re doing it wrong.
So would you abandon your girlfriend for sex with a random stranger?
Not if the random stranger is you. :-p
You’re not my type.
Dammit!
There go my weekend plans.
You should be more stoic about your weekend plans being bollixed.
Are we going to have the from-behind-in-the-doghouse discussion again today?
What pleasure would that give me? At least compared to the pain of my now-ex-girlfriend castrating me with a pair of cable shears?
A. Why would I think that a random stranger would be better than my gf?
B. Why would a random stranger necessitate abandoning my gf?
Just how random and how strange?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHaGrZkkv4
strange
Things you control, and things you don’t
“I don’t care how many people sign that f—ing petition,” Dimon said to scattered chuckles. The remarks were first reported by Reuters.
And Dimon doubled down on his directive by saying people have a choice about whether to work at Chase or not — and if they don’t want to show up at the office every day, they can leave.
——-
“I’ve had it with this stuff,” Dimon said of remote work, in remarks reported by Barron’s. “I’ve been working seven days a goddamn week since COVID, and I come in, and—where is everybody else?”
——-
JPMorgan told its more than 300,000 employees in January that it was ending remote work. A little over half the workforce was already working full-time in one of the bank’s offices. In the recently drawn-up petition, more than 500 signatories asked Dimon to change his mind and keep a hybrid model. They say the company’s new mandate to end hybrid work “is a great leap backward: It hurts employees, customers, shareholders, and the firm’s reputation.”
The fleas don’t get to run the circus. Be stoic, or be gone.
Nor is employment slavery. Do shitty employment practices because you’re an insecure little shitweasel and watch your quality folks slip away.
/looks at the non-manager group chat the day it was announced that with record revenues, hitting service goals, and successful product launches there will be no raises this year
At least we’ve always gotten our princely 2% annual raise.
With the non-reported recession we’ve been in (from what it looks like to me at least) for at least two years now… “Not laying people off despite profits now” is sufficiently good news as far as I’m concerned. Yay tech industry — home of low expectations!
I can see how it hurts the employees by making them go to the office.
How would it hurt the customers, shareholders, and the firm’s reputation?
Maintaining and purchasing / renting office space is quite expensive. I will concede that point. The original idea was to hire the best employees possible from across the globe to collaborate using w@h. That is still a viable model.
What happened while implementing that ideal W@H model was equity and woke bullshit. So, you ended up having to hire incompetent boobs to work at home instead of the best possible employees. That destroys the whole concept.
R.J.:
There was a lot that was done poorly in the rush to WFH during the lockdowns. The company I was supporting at the time had an entire department that didn’t even log into their phones for at least 12 months. Instead, they just let all their calls ring through to VM boxes that no one checked. When I left the company, they still had the same manager over them.
Good.
Just yesterday, a coworker was bitching about how he called the health insurance company with a problem, and the rep’s fucking dog was barking loudly in the background. Highly unprofessional. And annoying.
This was my favorite:
“They’re making record profits! They should hire more people!” :rolleyes:
I’m a greedy, jealous shit who thinks you have a big pile of money, so I should get to dictate what you do with that money and you should have fewer rights.
I work at a plant as an analyst and I have to be there every day, which I don’t mind at all. The GM and site manager wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a division between those who work in the office and those who worked on the floor. My home plant which I go to 4 days out of the week is 40 minutes from my house and the other plant that I go to once a week, is 1 hour and 20 minutes away from my house. I’m torn because at the end of the day, all that matters is if the work is done well and timely but also understand that the boss calls the shots.
Last job, for several years, I drove down to the office that was about an hour away four days a week. I didn’t really work with anyone IN that office, and they set me up in the IT area with people who were in completely different roles, and I was the only employee of my company on site, but I did it.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy when I got it down to two days a week, and eventually zero.
If the team I work with wasn’t spread out across several time zones (much less states) and the other teams the team interacts with weren’t on different continents, I’d be more understanding of RTO. But management has spread talent and farmed out functionality to where every time you need to talk to someone it is a Teams / Zoom / Slack huddle — so all the office would add is hordes of sales folks talking loudly at tables nearby because the company also followed the “open office” trend and no one has any actual workspace.
So I’m more than a tad skeptical at the whole effort (and am glad I remain at the moment far enough away to not be hit by the latest mandate and frankly hope that those of us who are still allowed will be few enough to not bother with before this CxO trend winds down again. (i.e. there will be enough folks in the offices trying to figure out where to work because there aren’t enough desks that their micromanaging egos will be sated…)
But yeah — if there were actual people to do actual work with at a site, it makes entirely more sense. No argument here — I just side with the “eliminating the flexibility for where it does make sense” is a stupid power play. (And yes, they sign the checks — and yes, if they absolutely mandate it I’ll have to go in or find another job… but it doesn’t foster good will to the company when they try shit like this on people explicitly hired as remote (I have one coworker that is 2 states from the nearest office and was hired just out of college as such…) or when they say one thing one year then flip-flop the next. Can’t trust a thing they say on policy it what it boils down to.
Anyone advocating the open plan should be stuffed down the nearest toilet.
At my last corporate accounting job, it was obvious that the work we were asked to do could have thrived under a remote or WFH environment. The CFO was like eff that, I want everyone in the office and when he pushed it, a couple of senior accountants left leaving him with a small staff that could get the financials to him in a timely fashion.
If you don’t want anything changed from when we hired you, I guess you’re okay with never getting a pay raise. 😉
Open Plan, Standing desks, and lockers, all of the things that make you feel like a valued employee.
If you like open plan offices, let me introduce you to hotdesking…
“The GM and site manager wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a division between those who work in the office and those who worked on the floor.”
The CEO at my hospital said the same thing. There was a brief flirtation with very limited WFH during the worst of the plague, productivity problems were noted in a few departments, and she said (paraphrasing) “I have 800 nurses who have to come here every day. I think the accountants can, too.”
@Gustave – Those managers are to be summarily executed.
Dr. Mossy Lawn:
You forgot the pizza party.
Mr. Ilium, they dropped that as “Not Cost Effective at Maintaining Employee Morale”
Having spent the last five years on the integration and deployment end of I-don’t-know-how-many WFH solutions, I don’t believe the ‘zero productivity loss’ claims at all.
What do you mean my Hughes satellite internet can’t support a VPN, VOIP traffic, and a video stream?!
Literally a conversation I’ve had to have with clients. Like more than once.
Yes, and I cannot run my f’n microwave when the wife is on Tooms or whatever.
Visiting NJ and so glad I don’t live here anymore.
Route 80 – how everyone in North NJ gets to work – is screwed. Now both sides of the highway are closed because of sinkholes.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sinkhole-repairs-lead-additional-route-153126366.html?guccounter=1
The asshole, election rigging Governor bought into the Green New Deal, so electric rates are going up 20%.
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2024/07/25/nj-electricity-bills-soared-june/74511604007/
I’m on vacation in FL for these 2 weeks, I hope they will have it completed before I come back.. My commute goes through that point and the alternates aren’t great.
They really should have blocked off the local streets to have 2 lanes of bypass traffic.
“They’re making record profits! They should hire more people!” :rolleyes:
Just think how much more money they’d make with more people. The sky’s the limit.
More people ‘working’ from home. This return to the office movement is going to really hurt the mouse jiggler industry. If I was less lazy I’d look into who to short.
Buy industrial coffee pot and water cooler futures.
Trump Administration restores the gender ideology pages – with warning and disclaimers all over them.
https://x.com/DerrickEvans4WV/status/1890464089693970879
If the judge has a problem with that, they should make a 15-page version of that web page for every web site, every one of them different, and submit them to the judge to proof read. If he wants to be in charge, let him be in charge.
How exactly did these gender ideology pages come in to being? EO?
These judges are out of control. They are usurping executive power and this must end. If not this will be another ‘me today, you tomorrow’ problem for the left that they will regret.
12 months into WFH. Productivity is up! This is amazing! Megacorp starts to release leased office spacing.
36 months into WFH. Productivity is collapsing! Onboarding new staff is a disaster! This must end! Everyone must return to the office. Where the fuck are we going to put all these people?
I am an engineer. I have stayed an engineer because I want nothing to do with the profit/loss decision making authority.
Maybe megacorp is fucking up by demanding everyone returns to the office. May be not.
But it’s not my problem and not my responsibility.
I do what they tell me to do as long as they paychecks keep coming in.
Work from home works fine with self motivated employees. It doesn’t work with drones who need constant supervision to get any work out of them. Now, ideally you’d just get rid of those drones, but people also move between the two categories. A good environment can motivate a drone; a bad one can demotivate the self motivated. I liked working from home, but I hated having to spend hours trying to get a piece of information from the drones who were always away from their computer when I called or emailed.
The fuck offs manage to fuck off just fine in the office. Wandering around, bullshiting, spending five hours “fixing” their webcam.
It all boils down to supervisory management. Do your people get work done or not? Do you even know what they do?
One of the things my wife has to deal with on a regular basis are academics of all strips having been promoted into management positions who have zero management skills. And this invariably leads to massive cluster fucks, as many of these people were grad students back in the 80’s and 90’s when the work place rules around academia were much more lax, and cannot understand that, for example, the grad students who unionized with support from the professors, are now employee’s and cannot be treated as students, no matter what they are doing, and get all the protections that full profs get at this point. This is hard for petty dictators to understand.
I keep telling her to go into consulting and make the big bucks, but…
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1890441976417264027
lulz
More labor strife
Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth has choice words for Meta employees frustrated with the tech giant’s latest policies: They are free to quit, Business Insider reported.
The report cites an internal chat where an employee criticized Meta for cutting DEI programs and allegedly silencing internal dissent, among other issues.
Bosworth responded that any staffer who thinks it’s OK to leak to the media because of policy disagreements “should consider working elsewhere.”
An employee followed up that blaming leaks was not the answer, and that Meta workers felt disrespected. (Meta began layoffs this week for what it has controversially termed “low performers.”)
Bosworth responded that, “You should quit if you feel that way, I mean it.”
That whole employer-employee thing apparently baffles a lot of people.
“Frustrated” and “willing to leak confidential company information” are two very different things — I can’t fault the CEO for wanting to get rid of anyone who thinks it is good to go whining to the press with company internals.
“You fucked up, you trusted us”
After years of corporate koolaid drinking that employee input is valued and desired.
Yeah, show me where in the constitution or its amendments is there is a right to employment, much less employment on your own terms.
Trump Administration restores the gender ideology pages – with warning and disclaimers all over them.
“These claims are not substantiated by scientific evidence.”
I know that I have ragged on Bro2’s life choices before and I still hold that what he did (leaving, but not divorcing, his wife to follow his gay bliss) is dishonorable, BUT. I’ve realized some things in the last month and a half of close contact and working together for our mother’s benefit.
– He had for years been “in the closet” and I use quotes because anybody with a half-working gaydar knew the score.
– But he was the perfect child and he did was he was expected to, got married, had kids. He did tell his wife before they got married that he was gay.
– He had then suffered for years with intractable depression. Ketamine, electric shock, all the extreme ends of treatment. I was extremely worried about him all those years.
– He “came out” to everybody, although the only person he actually came out to was Mom, so…
– I asked him not to leave his wife to follow his bliss without divorcing her first, because that is what every gay Mormon man does. He says, “Oh, no!” he’s going to be faithful and true, but needed to let the world know. “She’s my best friend. At worst, I’d just build a yurt in the back yard and live there, so there’s no point.” Mmm hmm.
– They decide to separate. He follows his bliss. As a woman, my heart is broken. As a family member, I feel like a piece of my family has been chipped off. My mom tells me he doesn’t understand why her family is upset with him.
– He does, indeed, build a yurt in the back yard.
– He seems happy and his intractable depression is now tractable.
– I inform my mother that if his intractable depression was because he was hiding himself and just not living a normal life pursuing his own things like almost everybody else, maybe it’s worth the price, and maybe she should think of it that way. Would she rather he be living in the depths of depression? Not I.
Anyway, so it came to a head when Mom first got sick and he came back home. Mind you, I think he arrived with a chip on his shoulder and I don’t know why. I actually ended up telling him I thought leaving his wife but not divorcing her to follow his bliss was dishonorable. That went about as well as you’d expect.
But later he said something in passing that made me stop and think. He said he was trying to describe to his wife and kids the timeline of what went down and what was said and it was just a mess and he couldn’t parse through it. It hit me. People have arrangements. I’m looking at my SIL with empathy, assuming she is a betrayed woman, and resentment at him that he knocked a chunk of my family off. So all this time, I’ve been mourning something that wasn’t mine to mourn.
ALL THAT TO SAY
I don’t know whether Bro2 is past his hedonistic phase and just settled into a stable, staid life with a boyfriend who seems to be quite chill, but honestly, it is none of my business and he seems happier. I don’t like how it happened, but I can’t really argue with the results.
I worked in family law for a long time and I still can’t follow everything. Nowt against your pro narratrix skills, Moj.
“He does, indeed, build a yurt in the back yard.” 🤣
I doubt it’s to code…
😛
“This is not autheitc animal hide or felt. This is the wrong type of wood for the structure. It does not fold properly for transport.”
“Pleasure is not an end in itself. While I do enjoy things, living for that only would debase me and I would be an embarrassment to myself and my family. I have known people that lived this way and it looks exhausting.”
Pleasure can certainly be an end in itself when things are legitimately dire through the looking glass. It’s largely the mind/body’s attempt to elevate itself out of severe pain, depression and the heavy burden of life. Slightly melodramatic, though I’m not feeling tremendous myself, but when constant pain is the baseline, any fanciful distraction will do. (I’m still punch-drunk from last Friday’s seizure. Still a bruised face and two new scars on my left hand.) It doesn’t necessary 𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒆 the suffering, but it’s just that, a distraction. Hopefully 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 Distraction Dust, but often any will do. It *is* exhausting, but so is all of life. If everything hurts, it’s logical to do one’s best to ameliorate it as best one can. It’s best when that isn’t self-destructive, but the power of ‘forgetting’ is hard to overstate. If pain is all your mind can occupy itself with, all it can find and see, it’s impossible to sleep and, largely, to function. When the only incoming stimuli are profoundly negative and painful, there’s ‘sense’ in replacing them with things that are, superficially at least, pleasurable. Minimizing pain is a chief goal in existence for a reason. It’s easy to get lost in that feedback loop, where the Distraction Dust becomes the goal itself. (Everything else still hurts.)
Many/most live with purpose, but a good chunk doesn’t. For them, life is a series of unpleasant to-dos, and when shit gets real bad for them, ‘breathing’ is another such chore. (Thankfully, I’ve never, ever had any suicidal ideation or purposefully hurt myself. I do that well enough accidentally, thankyaverymuch. ) I’m proud that ‘most’ of the time, I’m stubbornly, persistently chipper. However, it’s ‘easy’ to get muddled in depression. I’ve ‘only’ broken 35-40 bones and likely 7-10 concussions + a coma. (Plenty left! Every broken bone is a story, and even the Bad ones are good.) There’s more to this world and life, and I thoroughly intend on exploring much more of it. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life! *whee-whoo/ whee-whoo whoo-whoo, whoo-whoo!*
A ‘perfect’ life isn’t a story worth telling. Too neat and no room to grow character. Boring. Gotta get some scratches.
I wish I had your riz, fam.
“It’s largely the mind/body’s attempt to elevate itself out of severe pain, depression and the heavy burden of life.”
For those people, wouldn’t that be the end that is sought with hedonism?
People have arrangements.
Purely out of idle morbid curiosity, what is your sister in law’s “arrangement”?
An acquaintance on FB was complaining the OMB fired 30 people from her local office of the USDA. There were a couple dozen comments sympathizing and talking about the evil of OMB. The last comment was “welcome to WWIII”.
oh well
It’s time to start purging my friends list.
Think of the money you’ll save on Christmas cards!
Resist! I am trying to keep my contempt and hatred in check, while still enjoying the moment, but man do they make it hard.
WW III.
The war between the State and real people has been going on for a while now, dear.
You just got too comfortable thinking that all the casualties would be on the other side.
P.S. – Learn to weld.
Awesome.
Well done. Evil
Sometimes the nickname fits!
You’re welcome to use that line, but I expect a double of good scotch as a licensing fee…
My wife’s cousin the teacher is flipping out about them eliminating the Dept of Education.
My niece is a music teacher.
The one that’s been operating as a Cabinet-level department for less than 45 years?
45 years that are notable for their stagnation of education in particular, but a lot of other things as well?
The one I found hilarious today are my prog friends declaring that they “warned” the country about what Trump was going to do.
1. I’m not sure it counts as a warning when Trump has been saying this stuff openly for at least a year.
2. They still don’t understand that many Americans WANTED this kind of thing.*
* We’ll see how MAGA responds if/when DOGE goes after the DoD, Soc Security, etc.
Oh, and, apparently Trump lies. I assume this means (i) Biden didn’t lie and (ii) none of the things you call lies could be classified as alternate interpretations.
Our company president quit last year because he was pushing for changes that the 80+ year old owner in another state wouldn’t implement. So for the last 9 months our president has been the 80+ year old owner in another state that has not visited the company since pre-covid.
I can say with certainty that work from home does not work for a company president.
Quest for the true self
An 18-year-old from Mooresville is facing charges for allegedly planning a mass school shooting at Mooresville High School.
The Mooresville Metropolitan Police Department received information around 7 p.m. Feb. 11 from the FBI about someone who was potentially planning a school shooting on Feb. 14, 2025.
During the department’s investigation, officers identified the person of interest as Trinity Shockley, of Mooresville. Court documents say Trinity is transgender, going by the name Jamie.
According to court documents, someone called the FBI’s Sandy Hook Promise’s Say Something Anonymous Reporting System that their friend is planning a shooting in Indiana on Feb. 14. The tipster said the suspect has access to an AR-15 and ordered a bulletproof vest.
Court documents say Shockley sent the following messages to people on the social media platform Discord:
“I’ve been planning this for a YEAR”
Sounds like someone who is stable and comfortable in its newfound identity. Another success story for the gender flip ideologues.
Pumping testosterone or other hormones into the mentally unstable is a recipe for societal utopia, dontchaknow?
I feel sorry for all the kids harmed by this fad and the greed of the medical community that is trying to turn their lives into healthcare-as-a-subscription.
Something about spree killers – they always spend a long time planning their attack, and they always tell someone else beforehand.
Following the interview with the detective, officers arrested Shockley and took Shockley to the Morgan County Jail, where Shockley is being held without bond.
That’s how you dodge the pronoun conundrum.
2. They still don’t understand that many Americans WANTED this kind of thing.*
Trump is imposing his bizarre idiosyncratic vision of society on a population helpless to resist or object.