Kindness

Problem Trolley

 

Delphic Maxims 91

Ὁμίλει πρᾴως 

Live together meekly 

IMAGE: John Everett Millais, Peace Concluded (1856) 

Stockdale on Stoicism 54

So it was on that most chaotic night of those years, August 4th, 1964, when Washington decided to officially go to war. 

Just before midnight, I had been the eyewitness with the best seat in the house to see an action that had been reported as an attack by North Vietnamese PT boats against the American destroyers, Maddox and Joy. 

It was, in fact, a false alarm caused by the destroyers’ phantom radar contacts and faulty sonar operation on a very dark, humid, and stormy night. This was realized during the event by the boss of the destroyers at the scene, and by me, the boss of the airplanes overhead. Corrective messages were sent instantly to Washington: "No PT boats."

A few hours later, I was awakened to organize, brief, and lead the first air strike against North Vietnam, a reprisal for what I knew to be a false alarm. It was true that I had helped repulse an actual attack three days before, and that I thought it likely that another real one would occur in the future. 

But what to do, knowing that hours before, Washington had received the false-alarm messages, and that it would be none other than I who would be launching a war under false pretenses? 

I remember sitting on the side of my shipboard bed, alone in those predawn minutes, conscious of the fact that history was taking a major turn, and that it was I, little Jimmy Stockdale, who happened to be in the Ferris wheel seat that was just coming over the top and starting its descent. 

I remember two thoughts. 

The first was a pledge: that this was a moment to tell my grandchildren about someday, a history lesson important to future generations. 

The second was a reflection: I thought about Rhinelander, his "The Problems of Good and Evil" course, Epictetus, and how prophetic it had been that we had all come together those few years before. Probably nobody had ever tested Rhinelander’s course as I was likely to test it in not only the hours, but the years ahead. I knew we were stepping into a quagmire. 

There was no question of getting the truth of that night out; that truth had been out for hours. I was sure that there was nothing I could do to stop the "reprisal" juggernaut pouring out of Washington. 

My course was clear: to play well the given part. The Author had cast me in a lead role of a Greek Tragedy. Who else to lead my pilots into the heavy flak of the city of Vinh and blow the North Vietnamese oil storage tanks off the map? 

Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as the Author chooses—if short, then in a short one; if long, then in a long one. If it be his pleasure that you should enact a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, see that you act it well. For this is your business—to act well the given part, but to choose it belongs to another. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Epictetus' Enchiridion: Conflict and Character 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 279

There is little chance of a ship running astray, so long as its compass points towards the true North. 

So if the mind of man—the compass needle of the ship of life—is turned always towards the Supreme Brahman, without oscillation, it will steer clear of every danger. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 84.1

Letter 84: On gathering ideas 
 
The journeys to which you refer—journeys that shake the laziness out of my system—I hold to be profitable both for my health and for my studies. You see why they benefit my health: since my passion for literature makes me lazy and careless about my body, I can take exercise by deputy; as for my studies, I shall show you why my journeys help them, for I have not stopped my reading in the slightest degree. 
 
And reading, I hold, is indispensable—primarily, to keep me from being satisfied with myself alone, and besides, after I have learned what others have found out by their studies, to enable me to pass judgment on their discoveries and reflect upon discoveries that remain to be made. 
 
Reading nourishes the mind and refreshes it when it is wearied with study; nevertheless, this refreshment is not obtained without study. We ought not to confine ourselves either to writing or to reading; the one, continuous writing, will cast a gloom over our strength, and exhaust it; the other will make our strength flabby and watery. 
 
It is better to have recourse to them alternately, and to blend one with the other, so that the fruits of one’s reading may be reduced to concrete form by the pen. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 84 
 
I have an intense love both for travel and for reading, though I fear it is not for the usual reasons; I try not to treat a journey or a book as a form of escape, but rather as a challenge to deeper engagement. 
 
Far too often, we go on trips because we believe our problems come from where we are, not from who we are. Far too often, we hide away in libraries because we seek a diversion from the world, when what we really need is a readjustment within ourselves. 
 
No, the Eifel Tower will not make me fall in love, and a gripping tale about mystic unicorns will not bring me enlightenment. As much as I embrace sentimentality, it should never be a replacement for sanity. 
 
I know that both traveling and reading have done their proper work when I feel like I have just been knocked about by some arduous yet dignified task, an odd combination of exhaustion and satisfaction. 
 
In my own quirky manner, burying my nose in a book is inevitably followed by a brisk walk, as if the body needs to catch up to the mind, and the further I journey from home, the more books I somehow manage to consume, as if the new surroundings have spurred my curiosity all the more. 
 
While I have heard some people say that they read for the sake of solitude, I have always found the opposite to be true: the text becomes the vehicle for a spirited conversation. From the outside, it may look like I am doing nothing at all, but on the inside, I am in constant motion. 
 
“We read to know we’re not alone.” That I cannot find a page where C.S. Lewis actually said this, but I can trace the quote back to Shadowlands, a brilliant film about Lewis, suggests that I sometimes read a bit too much. 
 
The dull man, concerned with timetables and balance sheets, views reading as a merely passive state, just as he takes leisure to be the act of switching off a machine, so that it might run more efficiently during the next shift. 
 
The thoughtful man, however, understands why reading is far more than the absorption of information, and rightly becomes a means for active interpretation. Our very judgments about the true, the good, and the beautiful are in play, through a constant interaction between minds exploring a shared existence. 
 
To read responsibly is therefore also to engage in critical study, which can often take the form of then writing about the things we have read. Not everyone needs to write professionally, but any discerning and creative soul will write, in the broad sense, as a brilliant amateur, continually chronicling life’s glorious patterns. 

—Reflection written in 12/2013 

Henry David Thoreau 13

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (9 January, 1842) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 18

The Religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (4 March, 1831) 

Owls 14

Stoic Snippets 278

Consider that before long you will be nobody and nowhere, nor will any of the things exist which you now see, nor any of those who are now living. 

For all things are formed by nature to change and be turned and to perish, in order that other things in continuous succession may exist. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.21 

IMAGE: Piero del Pollaiuolo, Apollo and Daphne (c. 1480) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 83.12

Therefore, you should state why the wise man ought not to get drunk. Explain by facts, and not by mere words, the hideousness of the thing, and its haunting evils. 
 
Do that which is easiest of all—namely, demonstrate that what men call pleasures are punishments as soon as they have exceeded due bounds. 
 
For if you try to prove that the wise man can souse himself with much wine and yet keep his course straight, even though he be in his cups, you may go on to infer by syllogisms that he will not die if he swallows poison, that he will not sleep if he takes a sleeping potion, that he will not vomit and reject the matter which clogs his stomach when you give him hellebore. 
 
But, when a man’s feet totter and his tongue is unsteady, what reason have you for believing that he is half sober and half drunk? Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 83 
 
A rousing sermon or a lofty treatise does have its proper place, but a man can only learn to practice sobriety if he can see right before him why intoxication will always make him worse, and this, in turn, is only possible if he can see right before him why virtue is all that can make him better. No amount of censure or study can take the place of making that connection in daily living. 
 
And another man cannot do this for you—you will have to do it for yourself. While Nature is there to point the way, you must commit to taking the necessary steps. 
 
In my own case, I long appreciated the nuances of the theory, yet I was ignoring a critical component: when push comes to shove, do not treat every immediate gratification as if it were a good, because the value of the pleasure is relative to the merit of the action. 
 
When the feelings are divorced from an understanding, we are fumbling about blindly, and we are far more likely to miss wildly than to hit the mark. It is judgment that provides the measure of too much or too little. 
 
As much as I can conceive of this through a formal syllogism, the self-loathing that follows from falling into excess is the best sort of proof. Though it may sound like a cheap parlor trick, there are few more effective methods for resisting a compulsion than carefully visualizing, in gory detail, my situation and state of mind in the next twenty-four hours. Even the most beastly of hedonists is then likely to think twice. 
 
Intellectuals have a knack for rationalizing most anything, because they are inclined to dwell upon the words in isolation from the deeds, with the misguided aim of being notably clever instead of just becoming quietly decent. 
 
I am suspicious, therefore, of any sort of zealot, whether he denounces or embraces all of the pleasures. Prudence, as distinct from prudishness or permissiveness, know why the limit has been reached when we have surrendered a mastery over ourselves. 
 
The answer is neither in running away nor in making excuses. It is in being fully accountable. 

—Reflection written in 12/2013 

IMAGE: Albert Anker, The Drinker (1868) 

Owls 13

 

The Mother Road 11

IMAGES by Jay Farrell 

The Basel Dance of Death 15

Matthäus Merian, The Basel Dance of Death: The Councilman (1616) 

"Have you been a master of the city,
and had your seat at the council board? 
Have you ruled well?  It is good for you.
Still, I must now take your cap." 

"I've made my efforts, day and night,
that the common good was served.
I sought benefit and honor for rich and poor;
what I thought good, I increased." 

Ellis Walker, Epictetus in Poetical Paraphrase 60

LX. 

As the shoe's made to serve and fit the foot,
As the leg gives the measure to the boot;
So our possessions should be measur'd by
The body's use, and its necessity.
If here you stop, content with what you need,
With what will keep you warm, your body feed;
Within the bounds of temperance you live.
But if the reins you to your wishes give;
If nature's limits you but once transgress,
You tumble headlong down a precipice
Into a boundless gulph: this we may see
If we pursue our former simile:
For lets suppose your shoe made tight and fit,
Strong, warm, and easy, as 'tis requisite,
What more can be desired from a shoe?
'Tis all that hide, or thread, and wax can do.
But if you look for more, you're hurry'd on
Beyond your bounds, and then 'tis ten to one,
That it must be more modish, pink'd, and wrought,
Then set with pearls, from farthest Indies brought,
Then with embroidery and purple shine;
No matter if 'tis useless, so 'tis fine.
So there's no farther stay, no farther bound
By those, who exceed just measures, to be found.  

Dhammapada 413

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who is bright like the moon, pure, serene, undisturbed, and in whom all gaiety is extinct. 

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode 4

As indicated by the coronet over the bed and the mirror, our special couple have now inherited the titles of Earl and Countess Squanderfield. Recall that the social status came from the groom's side, though the new money came through the bride, and they hardly seem to have any worldly wants. 

While the high-class practice of the toilette as a social event, an imitation of the royal levee, will appear strange to us, we surely have our own elaborate customs that blur the line between culture and decadence. For my generation, well-to-do people would still show off by hosting dinner parties, which were in themselves painful enough, but the part I could never bear was the extended tour of the house, where the guest was expected to admire every private detail. 

There was the obligatory viewing of each bathroom in the home, and a fellow once proudly displayed a whole closet full of his wife's shoes and lingerie. I much preferred the more homey tradition of looking through old family photo albums. 

Another contemporary instance of flaunting the intimate is our confusion between the clothes we wear at home and the proper dress for going out. My students were already wearing pajamas and slippers to class during the 1990's, and I was barely surprised the other day when an entire family strolled through the grocery store while draped in their comforters. You may say this is only the behavior of the rabble, and yet they drove away in a Range Rover. 

In any case, the accidents of fashion do not make the man—what sort of motives lie behind the exterior? The Countess is ignoring her curious assembly of visitors, which includes an opera singer and a flutist. She only has eyes for the lawyer, Silvertongue, who has now clearly established himself as her lover. Has the Earl bothered to notice another man's portrait hanging in his wife's bedroom? 

The other paintings refer to uncomfortable sexual themes (Lot and his daughters, Jupiter and Io, the rape of Ganymede), reminding me of a creepy colleague whose entire living room wall was covered with artsy nude photographs. 

The African page boy laughs as he point to the horns on a figurine. It had to be pointed out to me that the Countess now has a child, as shown by the coral teether hanging over the back of her chair. The infant's absence speaks volumes about her priorities. 

Silvertongue proposes attending a masquerade ball, where the anonymity allows them to appear together in public, without the risk of scandal. I think of a cheating girlfriend who thought she was being clever by meeting her boys-on-the-side at a bar she assumed I would never frequent; my only excuse for being pathetic was that I somehow hoped she would change. 

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode IV: The Toilette (painting, 1743) 

William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode IV: The Toilette (engraving, 1743) 

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 189

Fortune is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity. 

James Vila Blake, Sonnets from Marcus Aurelius 26

26. 

Τῇ πάντα διδούσῃ καὶ ἀπολαμβανούσῃ φύσει ὁ πεπαιδευμένος καὶ αἰδήμων λέγει: δὸς ὃ θέλεις: ἀπόλαβε ὃ θέλεις. λέγει δὲ τοῦτο οὐ καταθρασυνόμενος, ἀλλὰ πειθαρχῶν μόνον καὶ εὐνοῶν αὐτῇ. 

To Nature that gives all things we possess, and again takes them away and back to herself—to this Nature he who is schooled well and disciplined and reverential, speaks, and says: Give what you will, take back what you will. But this he says not in any boastful or emboldened way, but only in obedient spirit and good will to Nature. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.14 

26. 

Have thy soul reverent; then to Nature say: 

Out of thine ampleness give me what thou wilt. 

Certes ’tis large, replenishes the day, 

And wakes my soul to an unenvious lilt. 

Of all the pomps of stars, meteors and lights, 

Suns, moons and followers in th’ eternal span, 

Or here plains, meads, great waters, mountain heights, 

Partake I as all do—own them none can; 

And having given, take what thou wilt away, 

Be ’t health, or power, place, gold, or other pelf. 

Thy gifts’ be such the largest meeds must stay, 

Nor canst thou e’er withdraw from me thyself. 

I say not this, our Lord, defiantly, 

But with a glad content, obediently. 

IMAGE: El Greco, View of Toledo (c. 1600) 

Plutarch, The Life of Cato the Younger 27

When the people were about to vote on the law, in favor of Metellus there were armed strangers and gladiators and servants drawn up in the forum, and that part of the people which longed for Pompey in their hope of a change was present in large numbers, and there was strong support also from Caesar, who was at that time praetor. 

In the case of Cato, however, the foremost citizens shared in his displeasure and sense of wrong more than they did in his struggle to resist, and great dejection and fear reigned in his household, so that some of his friends took no food and watched all night with one another in futile discussions on his behalf, while his wife and sisters wailed and wept. 

He himself, however, conversed fearlessly and confidently with all and comforted them, and after taking supper as usual and passing the night, was roused from a deep sleep by one of his colleagues, Minucius Thermus; and they went down into the forum, only few persons accompanying them, but many meeting them and exhorting them to be on their guard. 

Accordingly, when Cato paused in the forum and saw the temple of Castor and Pollux surrounded by armed men and its steps guarded by gladiators, and Metellus himself sitting at the top with Caesar, he turned to his friends and said: "What a bold man, and what a coward, to levy such an army against a single unarmed and defenseless person!" 

At the same time he walked straight on with Thermus. Those who were occupying the steps made way for them, but would allow no one else to pass, except that Cato with difficulty drew Munatius along by the hand and brought him up; and walking straight onwards he threw himself just as he was into a seat between Metellus and Caesar, thus cutting off their communication. 

Caesar and Metellus were disconcerted, but the better citizens, seeing and admiring the countenance, lofty bearing, and courage of Cato, came nearer, and with shouts urged one another to stay and band themselves together and not betray their liberty and the man who was striving to defend it.