For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.

I don’t recall which of Seneca’s letters this comes from but it reminds me of the core message in letter II, On Discursiveness In Reading where he tells Lucilius to focus on one author at a time. His main point is that jumping from thinker to thinker does little to settle or focus the self. It also reminds me of the famous Thoreau quote: “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” You need to find a thinker that you aspire to be like and follow their lead. Eventually, you will become more like this person.

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.

A reminder that you are, invariably, your own worst enemy and your own worst critic. If there’s one person who will be on your side no matter what, it’s you. No matter what happens, be a good friend to yourself. That doesn’t mean just being “good” to yourself. Friends can be harsh and tell you things you don’t want to hear. You need to be able to do that to yourself when it’s needed. Treat yourself as a genuine friend.

Seneca is an interesting character. His proponents say he provides a rich, digestible version of realist Stoicism and greatly influenced early Christian thought. His detractors would point to his apparent misalignment between simple philosophy and extravagant lifestyle. I’ll take the middle path: He was a flawed, imperfect man who recognized his misgivings and tried to reconcile what he did with what he thought. Though Letters from a Stoic he manages to provide a realistic application of Stoic teachings.

Over the next weeks, I’ll document my favorite sayings of his.

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

This is going to by my final quote from Marcus Aurelius for now. I realized so many of the quotes I highlighted should have been better curated and pruned. Many of them overlap or just do not contain the best of his work. This final quote, however, contains in it a fantastic distillation of Stoic thought.

Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.

In this quote he answers (for me) the following two questions: What is our purpose?  What’s best in life? According to Aurelius, to help and benefit each other. It’s a clear-eyed recognition that we are not here for ourselves or at least that we are best off helping each other. Modern human society shows us how far human cooperation can take us. Additionally, if we know something that others ought to know, we have a duty to share that knowledge.

Finally, It restates a Stoic constant: Judgement of a thing rather than the actual thing holds the power to illicit a response. Here, it’s delivered in a really useful package. If you’re not going to show someone what they’re doing wrong at least don’t get angry at them.

This might be my favorite quote of his.

Think not so much of what though hast not as of what thou hast.

Be thankful for what you have. Merry Christmas!

Today’s quote is an old jazz standard. It’s a single sentence that sums up the whole of the Stoicism pretty damn well.

It is on our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgements.

(Unrelated)

I know some people don’t feel that The Final Cut is a real Pink Floyd album but I think it’s a genuine, brilliant album. Roger Waters was anti-war and anti-nuclear and this song does an incredible job splaying his thoughts on the matter out for all to hear. My favorite line, when describing the moments right after a nuclear detonation is “could be the human race is run.” Just give it a listen.

Short is life. There is only one fruit of this terrene life, a pious disposition and social acts.

This quote sounds very Christian to me. It seems to frame life on this Earth as just temporary waypoint. It also places an emphasis on doing right by others. Stoic philosophy was influencial on early Christian writers so I shouldn’t be surprised.

I appreciate this snippet because so far, most of the quotes I’ve posted have focused on “how one ought to feel” and not on “what one ought to do.” Though vague, there’s an absolute focus on being virtous and doing things for the benefits of others.

This reveals the main problem I have with Stoicism though. The Philosophy has a strong focus on how to feel but not on what one should do. Obviously that’s more in the vein ethics but I would still appreciate more focus on ethics from Stoic POV. I mention this because I believe that (and the science is pretty clear here) we are driven by emotion first and then apply ration after the fact. Our decisions are based on a ton of unconscious bias and instinctual thinking. On one hand, we manage to get through the day without every little thing becoming a pondering session but on the other hand, we are apt to make bad decisions based on bad information and then “stick to our guns” as it were. I know I do this and I see it in a lot of my family too, especially men and especially as they’ve gotten older.

If you also believe that we’re driven by emotion and that we’re not cursed, wretched, and evil then you’ve got to believe that emotion is not necessarily a bad thing. Even emotions that we generally try to suppress and minimize can, at times, be helpful. Things like angry, sadness, dread, fear are all emotions that people generally try to avoid but these can be saviors even in modern day society. On the other hand, emotions we choose to maximize like happiness can backfire or lead us astray as well. I mention this because Stoicism is, to me, the act of controlling and even pausing your wavering emotional state. If you believe that we’re driven by emotion then what drives you without emotion? What’s moving you towards or away from various things? What is truly wrong and unjust and should be stopped if you don’t feel that it’s wrong? What tells you it IS wrong? Again, these questions are answered (and surely posed better) by ethical philosophers.

Imagine you witness a mugging. You probably feel a flash or anger or frustration. This needs to be stopped. It’s not right, it’s not okay. That anger, to me, is appropriate. Your emotional system is behaving normally and this signals you to jump into action. Even if you do not jump into action you’ve still surmised from your emotions that something is wrong. This is not correct behavior. To this, humans have build complex systems of courts and laws to deal with this behavior. Humans have surely taken a basic instinct and converted it into specific language that defines it’s wrongness and the punishment for committing this act.

I can recognize that our emotional systems can be as wrong as they can be right and they’re not the core basis of how we ought to behave but I still wonder in the wisdom of suppressing your emotional state. Does it mar ones ability to surmise right from wrong? If you choose not to feel a particular way about a particular thing, how can you still determine whether or not something is okay or ought to be done?

As someone who was raised without religion and continues to abstain, I can see why religion is such a compelling package. It provides people with how they ought to feel, how they ought to conduct themselves, and assurance that life beyond death exists which probably dampens the blow of injustice, our finite existence, and just plain bad luck. It provides concrete answers to al ot of things which are otherwise nebulous. It provides absolute dos and don’ts and a mechanism to enforce (though it is fear based). Finally, it provides community, rituals for dealing with major life events, and private social safety net.

I’ve have wanted to write about this topic for awhile. I feel like this area of moral uncertainty should be more concerning to the non-religious and anyone subscribes to Stocism and/or mindfulness. I see the same core issue in both: They teach you how to cope with the troubles that come your way but do nothing to help determine the rightness of factors/thinking that lead to that a clear understanding of right and wrong nor how to improve those issues overall. Coping and reducing the need to have to cope need an intersection that appears missing in these two traditions but is clear in religion.