The Death of Marcus Aurelius
Saturday, July 11, 2026
Snippets from the Handbook 1
Of all existing things, some are in our power, and others are not in our power.
In our power are thought, impulse, will to get and will to avoid, and, in a word, everything which is our own doing.
Things not in our power include the body, property, reputation, office, and, in a word, everything which is not our own doing.
—Epictetus, The Handbook 1
_(around_50_-_12513_).jpg)
Friday, July 10, 2026
Dhammapada 421
Him I call indeed a Brahmana who calls nothing his own—whether it be before, behind, or between—who is poor, and free from the love of the world.
IMAGE: James McNeill Whistler, Harmony in Blue and Silver (1865)
Epictetus, Discourses 2.12.4
What follows? The occupation is not a very safe one nowadays, and especially in Rome. For he who pursues it will certainly not have to do it in a corner, but he must go up to a consular or a rich man, if it so chance, and ask him: “You there, can you tell me to whose care you trust your horses?”
“Yes.”
Do you trust them to a chance corner and one unskilled in horse-keeping?
“Certainly not.”
Again, tell me to whom you trust your gold or your silver or your clothes.
“Not to a chance corner either.”
And your body—have you ever thought of trusting that to anybody to look after it?
“Certainly.”
He too, no doubt, is one skilled in the art of training or of medicine, is he not?
“Certainly he is.”
Are these then your best possessions or have you got something besides, better than all?
“What can you mean?”
I mean, of course, that which makes use of all these possessions and tests each one, and thinks about them.
“Do you mean the soul?”
You are right; that is exactly what I do mean.
“Yes, I certainly think that this is a better possession than all the rest.”
Can you tell me, then, in what manner you have taken care of your soul? For it is not likely that one so wise as you. and of such position in the state, should lightly and recklessly allow the best possession you have to be neglected and go to ruin.
“Certainly not.”
Well, have you taken care of it yourself? Did anyone teach you how, or did you find out for yourself?
When you do this, the danger is, you will find, that first he will say: “My good sir, what concern is it of yours? Are you my master?”
Then, if you persist in annoying him, he will lift his hand and give you a drubbing.
That was a pursuit I had a keen taste for once, before I was reduced to my present condition.
—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.12
Once I began to admire Socrates, I felt an itch to imitate his style; I notice how this is fairly common among young spirits who are suddenly on fire with philosophy, but who have not yet moved beyond a need to define themselves by some quirky image. In college, I was often that brooding fellow in the corner, spinning obscure records while smoking foreign cigarettes, so confronting innocent bystanders with odd questions was right up my alley.
It didn’t work out, of course, because I was merely engaged in an absurd caricature, going through the motions for all the wrong reasons. I was interested in looking clever, not in being helpful, and I was trying to drop hints to an answer I already preferred, instead of urging others to understand for themselves.
A good discussion can only take place when our motives are pure. It ceases to be philosophy if it is about putting on a show, for there is neither love nor wisdom in any of it.
And even if I am being sincere and respectful, I should not expect to be thanked for my efforts—very few of us respond well to having our assumptions poked and prodded, especially the ones that lurk deep down on the inside, silently informing our entire worldview.
Do not be surprised by a few harsh words, and perhaps also the threat of a knuckle sandwich. As much as we may desperately need the medicine, it may taste very bitter at first.
Though I am not sure I would approach a complete stranger with such a pesky problem, any meaningful conversation about life must get to the root, with a line of inquiry, however uncomfortable it might be, that shakes the foundation of everything we claim to hold dear.
In the order of nature, the causes precede the effects, but in the order of our discovery, the effects precede the causes. The investigation must push our thinking backwards, to arrive at the why behind the what, to make us revisit our priorities.
There is no profound secret to asking a constructive set of questions—they must simply challenge us to be consistent in our principles, by applying the same rules in one corner of our lives as we do in another.
If I have worked so hard at protecting my property, my health, or my reputation, how much effort have I applied to the excellence of my character? Should it be the same? Or maybe it should be far more, because the goods of the body are subservient to the goods of the soul? If I am brutally honest with myself, haven’t I actually been doing far less than is necessary, hoping I could pull a fast one?
Once I began to admire Socrates, I felt an itch to imitate his style; I notice how this is fairly common among young spirits who are suddenly on fire with philosophy, but who have not yet moved beyond a need to define themselves by some quirky image. In college, I was often that brooding fellow in the corner, spinning obscure records while smoking foreign cigarettes, so confronting innocent bystanders with odd questions was right up my alley.
It didn’t work out, of course, because I was merely engaged in an absurd caricature, going through the motions for all the wrong reasons. I was interested in looking clever, not in being helpful, and I was trying to drop hints to an answer I already preferred, instead of urging others to understand for themselves.
A good discussion can only take place when our motives are pure. It ceases to be philosophy if it is about putting on a show, for there is neither love nor wisdom in any of it.
And even if I am being sincere and respectful, I should not expect to be thanked for my efforts—very few of us respond well to having our assumptions poked and prodded, especially the ones that lurk deep down on the inside, silently informing our entire worldview.
Do not be surprised by a few harsh words, and perhaps also the threat of a knuckle sandwich. As much as we may desperately need the medicine, it may taste very bitter at first.
Though I am not sure I would approach a complete stranger with such a pesky problem, any meaningful conversation about life must get to the root, with a line of inquiry, however uncomfortable it might be, that shakes the foundation of everything we claim to hold dear.
In the order of nature, the causes precede the effects, but in the order of our discovery, the effects precede the causes. The investigation must push our thinking backwards, to arrive at the why behind the what, to make us revisit our priorities.
There is no profound secret to asking a constructive set of questions—they must simply challenge us to be consistent in our principles, by applying the same rules in one corner of our lives as we do in another.
If I have worked so hard at protecting my property, my health, or my reputation, how much effort have I applied to the excellence of my character? Should it be the same? Or maybe it should be far more, because the goods of the body are subservient to the goods of the soul? If I am brutally honest with myself, haven’t I actually been doing far less than is necessary, hoping I could pull a fast one?
As much as it hurts to learn that we are trying to live out a contradiction, we have no one to blame but ourselves. The dialogue breaks us down, so we can then get on with the task of rebuilding.
—Reflection written in 8/2001
IMAGE: Marcello Bacciarelli, Alcibiades Being Taught by Socrates (1777)
Thursday, July 9, 2026
Sayings of Publilius Syrus 197
It is easier to get a favor from Fortune than to keep it.
IMAGE: Godfried Schalcken, Fortune (c. 1680)
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Maxims of Goethe 89
IMAGE: Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Thankful Poor (1894)
Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates 46
Socrates: "You have not the athletic appearance of a youth in training, Epigenes."
And he: "That may well be, seeing I am an amateur and not in training."
Socrates: "As little of an amateur, I take it, as anyone who ever entered the lists of Olympia, unless you are prepared to make light of that contest for life and death against the public foe, which the Athenians will institute when the day comes.
"And yet they are not a few who, owing to a bad habit of body, either perish outright in the perils of war, or are ignobly saved. Many are they who for the selfsame cause are taken prisoners, and being taken must, if it so betide, endure the pains of slavery for the rest of their days; or, after falling into dolorous straits, when they have paid to the uttermost farthing of all, or maybe more than the worth of all that they possess, must drag on a miserable existence in want of the barest necessaries until death releases them.
"Many also are they who gain an evil repute through infirmity of body, being thought to play the coward. Can it be that you despise these penalties affixed to an evil habit? Do you think you could lightly endure them? Far lighter, I imagine, nay, pleasant even by comparison, are the toils which he will undergo who duly cultivates a healthy bodily condition.
"Or do you maintain that the evil habit is healthier, and in general more useful than the good? Do you pour contempt upon those blessings which flow from the healthy state?
"And yet the very opposite of that which befalls the ill attends the sound condition. Does not the very soundness imply at once health and strength? Many a man with no other talisman than this has passed safely through the ordeal of war; stepping, not without dignity, through all its horrors unscathed.
"Many with no other support than this have come to the rescue of friends, or stood forth as benefactors of their fatherland; whereby they were thought worthy of gratitude, and obtained a great renown and received as a recompense the highest honors of the state; to whom is also reserved a happier and brighter passage through what is left to them of life, and at their death they leave to their children the legacy of a fairer starting-point in the race of life.
"Because our city does not practice military training in public, that is no reason for neglecting it in private, but rather a reason for making it a foremost care. For be you assured that there is no contest of any sort, nor any transaction, in which you will be the worse off for being well prepared in body; and in fact there is nothing which men do for which the body is not a help.
"In every demand, therefore, which can be laid upon the body it is much better that it should be in the best condition; since, even where you might imagine the claims upon the body to be slightest—in the act of reasoning—who does not know the terrible stumbles which are made through being out of health?
"It suffices to say that forgetfulness, and despondency, and moroseness, and madness take occasion often of ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel all knowledge from the brain.
"But he who is in good bodily plight has large security. He runs no risk of incurring any such catastrophe through ill-health at any rate; he has the expectation rather that a good habit must procure consequences the opposite to those of an evil habit; and surely to this end there is nothing a man in his senses would not undergo. . . .
"It is a base thing for a man to wax old in careless self-neglect before he has lifted up his eyes and seen what manner of man he was made to be, in the full perfection of bodily strength and beauty. But these glories are withheld from him who is guilty of self-neglect, for they are not wont to blaze forth unbidden."
—from Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.12
Tuesday, July 7, 2026
The Traveller
Only one fellow, Geoff Downes, is now left from the original quartet, but the sound and the spirit are still mighty strong. What a pleasant and uplifting surprise! And the cover is by Roger Dean!
Asia, "The Traveller (Into the Light)", from Indigo (2026)
The album release date is November 6.
Go ahead, you know you want to return to a simpler time, when you could sing along to Journey, Toto, or Foreigner, without a care in the world.
Dreams turn from diamonds to dust
Empires that crumble and rust
Rivers run dry, smoke fills the sky
Over and over and over and over and
Into the light we carry on
Hold on til daylight when new days dawn
Nations divided and torn
Anger and evil reborn
Chaos, confusion, mindless delusion
Over and over and over and over and
Into the light we carry on
Hold on til daylight when new days dawn
One day you'll find yourself
Under a moonlit sky
Tossing the sovereigns of hope
Into the well of your dreams
Into the light we carry on
Hold on til daylight when new days dawn
Empires that crumble and rust
Rivers run dry, smoke fills the sky
Over and over and over and over and
Into the light we carry on
Hold on til daylight when new days dawn
Nations divided and torn
Anger and evil reborn
Chaos, confusion, mindless delusion
Over and over and over and over and
Into the light we carry on
Hold on til daylight when new days dawn
One day you'll find yourself
Under a moonlit sky
Tossing the sovereigns of hope
Into the well of your dreams
Into the light we carry on
Hold on til daylight when new days dawn
Epictetus, Discourses 2.12.3
Such phrases are technical and therefore tiresome to the lay mind, and hard to follow, yet you and I cannot get away from them. We are quite unable to rouse the ordinary man's attention in a way which will enable him to follow his own impressions and so arrive at admitting or rejecting this or that.
And therefore those of us who are at all cautious naturally give the subject up, when we become aware of this incapacity; while the mass of men, who venture at random into this sort of enterprise, muddle others and get muddled themselves, and end by abusing their opponents and getting abused in return, and so leave the field.
But the first quality of all in Socrates, and the most characteristic, was that he never lost his temper in argument, never uttered anything abusive, never anything insolent, but bore with abuse from others and quieted strife.
If you would get to know what a faculty he had in this matter, read the “Banquet” of Xenophon and you will see how many strifes he has brought to an end. Therefore, the poets too with good reason have praised this gift most highly:
“And straightway with skill he brought to rest a mighty quarrel."
And therefore those of us who are at all cautious naturally give the subject up, when we become aware of this incapacity; while the mass of men, who venture at random into this sort of enterprise, muddle others and get muddled themselves, and end by abusing their opponents and getting abused in return, and so leave the field.
But the first quality of all in Socrates, and the most characteristic, was that he never lost his temper in argument, never uttered anything abusive, never anything insolent, but bore with abuse from others and quieted strife.
If you would get to know what a faculty he had in this matter, read the “Banquet” of Xenophon and you will see how many strifes he has brought to an end. Therefore, the poets too with good reason have praised this gift most highly:
“And straightway with skill he brought to rest a mighty quarrel."
—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.12
In one sense, philosophy can be very much like politics, because those who should practice it want nothing to do with it, while those who shouldn’t practice it are breaking down the door. When the humble amateur looks to the sophisticated professional, he sees only squabbling and self-promotion, tied up in ridiculously specialized language at the expense of any genuine human meaning.
And even the sophists will eventually grow tired of the spectacle, once they no longer find it gratifying, and then they turn their attention to more profitable endeavors. I think of the professors who were itching to become deans, or the priests who had set their eyes on a promotion to bishop.
I once had a teacher who was forever talking about the hidden motives of Socrates, the real reasons he would have conversations with his fellow Athenians.
“Isn’t he trying to inspire people to know themselves?”
“Well yes, but did this just grant him a psychological power over others, or was he also hoping to attain a more systemic form of political power? How did he intend to implement a radical transformation of social justice?”
It is tragic when the jargon of this or that “-ism” discourages us from a simple love of the true and the good.
For all the times I am frustrated by a Socratic dialogue, sometimes to the point of clenching my fists or tossing the book across the room, I never feel like he is trying to sell me on an ideology. I may not know exactly what he wants out of me, but I do know that he was acting in my best interests. If I am patient, and I don’t let my passions get the better of me, I am certain I will walk away with a sliver of insight, as well as a whole new set of questions.
Furthermore, on the most immediate level, I can’t recall a single moment when the old man got angry, or spouted insults, or allowed the tirades of others to knock him off balance. He did have a knack for the occasional sarcastic comment, though this usually helps me to become more critical of myself, despite the initial irritation and confusion.
Have I ever felt offended? Absolutely, and a part of the grueling process is to recognize how the degree of my outrage is a function of my own estimation, not of what anyone else has said or done. I have learned that there are wrongs, and then there are perceptions of wrongs, and the two will not always coincide.
Once, thanks to folks like Socrates, I have a fuller understanding of what actually constitutes benefit and harm, I am not so easily vexed. Even if Socrates only taught me that, it would still be a precious lesson.
I never had any teachers introduce me to Xenophon, so I had to discover his writing for myself. I am very glad I did, since they allowed me to think of Socrates independently from the perspective of Plato. They merely confirmed what I already suspected, that here was man I would be honored to have a discussion with, however much I might be pulling out my hair.
The best philosophical conversations have knocked me down instead of puffing me up, by leaving me with a sharp reminder that I am accountable for my own judgements, and only for my own judgments.
In one sense, philosophy can be very much like politics, because those who should practice it want nothing to do with it, while those who shouldn’t practice it are breaking down the door. When the humble amateur looks to the sophisticated professional, he sees only squabbling and self-promotion, tied up in ridiculously specialized language at the expense of any genuine human meaning.
And even the sophists will eventually grow tired of the spectacle, once they no longer find it gratifying, and then they turn their attention to more profitable endeavors. I think of the professors who were itching to become deans, or the priests who had set their eyes on a promotion to bishop.
I once had a teacher who was forever talking about the hidden motives of Socrates, the real reasons he would have conversations with his fellow Athenians.
“Isn’t he trying to inspire people to know themselves?”
“Well yes, but did this just grant him a psychological power over others, or was he also hoping to attain a more systemic form of political power? How did he intend to implement a radical transformation of social justice?”
It is tragic when the jargon of this or that “-ism” discourages us from a simple love of the true and the good.
For all the times I am frustrated by a Socratic dialogue, sometimes to the point of clenching my fists or tossing the book across the room, I never feel like he is trying to sell me on an ideology. I may not know exactly what he wants out of me, but I do know that he was acting in my best interests. If I am patient, and I don’t let my passions get the better of me, I am certain I will walk away with a sliver of insight, as well as a whole new set of questions.
Furthermore, on the most immediate level, I can’t recall a single moment when the old man got angry, or spouted insults, or allowed the tirades of others to knock him off balance. He did have a knack for the occasional sarcastic comment, though this usually helps me to become more critical of myself, despite the initial irritation and confusion.
Have I ever felt offended? Absolutely, and a part of the grueling process is to recognize how the degree of my outrage is a function of my own estimation, not of what anyone else has said or done. I have learned that there are wrongs, and then there are perceptions of wrongs, and the two will not always coincide.
Once, thanks to folks like Socrates, I have a fuller understanding of what actually constitutes benefit and harm, I am not so easily vexed. Even if Socrates only taught me that, it would still be a precious lesson.
I never had any teachers introduce me to Xenophon, so I had to discover his writing for myself. I am very glad I did, since they allowed me to think of Socrates independently from the perspective of Plato. They merely confirmed what I already suspected, that here was man I would be honored to have a discussion with, however much I might be pulling out my hair.
The best philosophical conversations have knocked me down instead of puffing me up, by leaving me with a sharp reminder that I am accountable for my own judgements, and only for my own judgments.
—Reflection written in 8/2001
IMAGE: Pietro Testa, Drunken Alcibiades Interrupting the Symposium (1648)
Monday, July 6, 2026
Man's Search for Meaning 22
Earlier, I mentioned art. Is there such a thing in a concentration camp? It rather depends on what one chooses to call art.
A kind of cabaret was improvised from time to time. A hut was cleared temporarily, a few wooden benches were pushed or nailed together and a program was drawn up. In the evening those who had fairly good positions in camp—the Capos and the workers who did not have to leave camp on distant marches—assembled there. They came to have a few laughs or perhaps to cry a little; anyway, to forget.
There were songs, poems, jokes, some with underlying satire regarding the camp. All were meant to help us forget, and they did help. The gatherings were so effective that a few ordinary prisoners went to see the cabaret in spite of their fatigue even though they missed their daily portion of food by going.
During the half-hour lunch interval when soup (which the contractors paid for and for which they did not spend much) was ladled out at our work site, we were allowed to assemble in an unfinished engine room. On entering, everyone got a ladleful of the watery soup. While we sipped it greedily, a prisoner climbed onto a tub and sang Italian arias. We enjoyed the songs, and he was guaranteed a double helping of soup, straight "from the bottom"—that meant with peas!
Rewards were given in camp not only for entertainment, but also for applause. I, for example, could have found protection (how lucky I was never in need of it!) from the camp's most dreaded Capo, who for more than one good reason was known as "The Murderous Capo." This is how it happened.
One evening I had the great honor of being invited again to the room where the spiritualistic séance had taken place. There were gathered the same intimate friends of the chief doctor and, most illegally, the warrant officer from the sanitation squad was again present. The Murderous Capo entered the room by chance, and he was asked to recite one of his poems, which had become famous (or infamous) in camp. He did not need to be asked twice and quickly produced a kind of diary from which he began to read samples of his art.
I bit my lips till they hurt in order to keep from laughing at one of his love poems, and very likely that saved my life. Since I was also generous with my applause, my life might have been saved even had I been detailed to his working party to which I had previously been assigned for one day—a day that was quite enough for me. It was useful, anyway, to be known to The Murderous Capo from a favourable angle. So I applauded as hard as I could.
Generally speaking, of course, any pursuit of art in camp was somewhat grotesque. I would say that the real impression made by anything connected with art arose only from the ghostlike contrast between the performance and the background of desolate camp life.
I shall never forget how I awoke from the deep sleep of exhaustion on my second night in Auschwitz—roused by music. The senior warden of the hut had some kind of celebration in his room, which was near the entrance of the hut. Tipsy voices bawled some hackneyed tunes. Suddenly there was a silence and into the night a violin sang a desperately sad tango, an unusual tune not spoiled by frequent playing.
The violin wept and a part of me wept with it, for on that same day someone had a twenty-fourth birthday.That someone lay in another part of the Auschwitz camp, possibly only a few hundred or a thousand yards away, and yet completely out of reach. That someone was my wife.
—from Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Sunday, July 5, 2026
Bach 8, Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder
Epictetus, Discourses 2.12.2
Now how did Socrates proceed? He compelled the man who was conversing with him to be his witness, and needed no witness besides.
Therefore, he was able to say: “I am satisfied with my opponent as a witness, and let everyone else alone: and I do not take the votes of other people, but only of him who is arguing with me.”
For he drew out so clearly the consequences of a man's conceptions that everyone realized the contradiction and abandoned it.
“Does the man who envies rejoice in his envy?”
“Not at all; he is pained rather than pleased.”
Thus he rouses his neighbor by contradiction.
“Well, does envy seem to you to be a feeling of pain at evil things? Yet how can there be envy of things evil?”
So he makes his opponent say that envy is pain felt at good things.
“Again, can a man envy things which do not concern him?”
“Certainly not.”
In this way he made the conception full and articulate, and so went away. He did not say, “Define me envy”, and then, when the man defined it, “You define it ill, for the terms of the definition do not correspond to the subject defined."
Therefore, he was able to say: “I am satisfied with my opponent as a witness, and let everyone else alone: and I do not take the votes of other people, but only of him who is arguing with me.”
For he drew out so clearly the consequences of a man's conceptions that everyone realized the contradiction and abandoned it.
“Does the man who envies rejoice in his envy?”
“Not at all; he is pained rather than pleased.”
Thus he rouses his neighbor by contradiction.
“Well, does envy seem to you to be a feeling of pain at evil things? Yet how can there be envy of things evil?”
So he makes his opponent say that envy is pain felt at good things.
“Again, can a man envy things which do not concern him?”
“Certainly not.”
In this way he made the conception full and articulate, and so went away. He did not say, “Define me envy”, and then, when the man defined it, “You define it ill, for the terms of the definition do not correspond to the subject defined."
—from Epictetus, Discourses 2.12
When I was first introduced to Socrates, somewhere around the age of fourteen, I disliked the old fellow intensely. It felt as if the blowhard was always calling me out, or making me feel ignorant, or damaging my self-esteem, until I gradually realized how this said far more about me than it ever did about him. I attached a smug tone and a condescending smirk to his words, which was nothing but a product of my unruly imagination.
It can be quite a slap in the face to have one’s assumptions challenged, even if the question is offered in good faith. If I can manage to be humble for a moment, I will be grateful for the chance to finally be responsible for myself, leaving behind a dependence on the lazy platitudes and the herd mentality.
On any given day, how often do I use a word, without quite knowing what it means? A bully, of course, will just try to humiliate me for my error, and yet a friend will offer me the opportunity to work it out for myself, through my own thinking, and in my own time. Where the intention is pure, there is never any need for conflict.
Back in high school, I didn’t know how to pronounce “segue” when I was reading aloud, and our class snob wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. I felt certain I had my revenge, however, when she later mangled “boatswain”, but that just proved how I hadn’t really learned my lesson. Decent people thrive by building up, not by tearing down.
More recently, I was using “jealousy” and “envy” in a sloppy manner, at which point someone casually asked me if they meant the same thing. I thought about it for a moment, corrected myself, and was then swept up in a fascinating diversion about the difference between “guilt” and “shame”. It was only much later that I realized how I had been schooled without even being aware of it, much like the time a doctor gave me a shot when I was wasn’t looking.
It is one thing to be scolded for spouting nonsense, and quite another to be motivated into discovering my mistake through my own personal reflection. I think of it like approaching the problem from the inside instead of from the outside, by addressing the causes over hacking away at the effects, or by doing it for myself rather than having it done for me.
Beyond merely feeling envy, there was a time when I would actually take a certain delight in it, a sort of perverse satisfaction in being grossly dissatisfied. Now if you had yelled at me for trying to live a contradiction, or laughed at me for being so pathetic, I would probably have taken it as another excuse for a pity party. But if you had taken the time to ask me if it was possible to be pained by something good, or to be laid low by something that wasn’t properly my business, I would probably have reconsidered my bad habits.
The Socratic Method was far more than a parlor trick. It was a way to help people to help themselves.
When I was first introduced to Socrates, somewhere around the age of fourteen, I disliked the old fellow intensely. It felt as if the blowhard was always calling me out, or making me feel ignorant, or damaging my self-esteem, until I gradually realized how this said far more about me than it ever did about him. I attached a smug tone and a condescending smirk to his words, which was nothing but a product of my unruly imagination.
It can be quite a slap in the face to have one’s assumptions challenged, even if the question is offered in good faith. If I can manage to be humble for a moment, I will be grateful for the chance to finally be responsible for myself, leaving behind a dependence on the lazy platitudes and the herd mentality.
On any given day, how often do I use a word, without quite knowing what it means? A bully, of course, will just try to humiliate me for my error, and yet a friend will offer me the opportunity to work it out for myself, through my own thinking, and in my own time. Where the intention is pure, there is never any need for conflict.
Back in high school, I didn’t know how to pronounce “segue” when I was reading aloud, and our class snob wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. I felt certain I had my revenge, however, when she later mangled “boatswain”, but that just proved how I hadn’t really learned my lesson. Decent people thrive by building up, not by tearing down.
More recently, I was using “jealousy” and “envy” in a sloppy manner, at which point someone casually asked me if they meant the same thing. I thought about it for a moment, corrected myself, and was then swept up in a fascinating diversion about the difference between “guilt” and “shame”. It was only much later that I realized how I had been schooled without even being aware of it, much like the time a doctor gave me a shot when I was wasn’t looking.
It is one thing to be scolded for spouting nonsense, and quite another to be motivated into discovering my mistake through my own personal reflection. I think of it like approaching the problem from the inside instead of from the outside, by addressing the causes over hacking away at the effects, or by doing it for myself rather than having it done for me.
Beyond merely feeling envy, there was a time when I would actually take a certain delight in it, a sort of perverse satisfaction in being grossly dissatisfied. Now if you had yelled at me for trying to live a contradiction, or laughed at me for being so pathetic, I would probably have taken it as another excuse for a pity party. But if you had taken the time to ask me if it was possible to be pained by something good, or to be laid low by something that wasn’t properly my business, I would probably have reconsidered my bad habits.
The Socratic Method was far more than a parlor trick. It was a way to help people to help themselves.
—Reflection written in 8/2001
IMAGE: Johann Friedrich Greuter, Socrates and His Students (c. 1650)
Saturday, July 4, 2026
Sayings of Ramakrishna 286
A snake dwelt in a certain place. No one dared to pass by that way. For whoever did so was instantaneously bitten to death.
Once a Mahâtman passed by that road, and the serpent ran after the sage in order to bite him. But when the snake approached the holy man he lost all his ferocity, and was overpowered by the gentleness of the Yogin.
Seeing the snake, the sage said, "Well, friend, do you think to bite me?"
The snake was abashed and made no reply. At this the sage said, "Hearken, friend, do not injure anybody in future." The snake bowed and nodded assent.
The sage went his own way and the snake entered his hole, and thenceforward began to live a life of innocence and purity without even attempting to harm anyone.
In a few days, all the neighborhood began to think that the snake had lost all his venom, and was no more dangerous, and so everyone began to tease him. Some pelted him, others dragged him mercilessly by the tail, and in this way there was no end to his troubles.
Fortunately, the sage again passed by that way, and seeing the bruised and battered condition of the good snake, was very much moved, and inquired the cause of his distress.
At this the snake replied, "Holy sir, this is because I do not injure anyone, after your advice. But alas! they are so merciless!"
The sage smilingly said, "My dear friend, I simply advised you not to bite anyone, but I did not tell you not to frighten others. Although you should not bite any creature, still you should keep every one at a considerable distance by hissing at him."
Similarly, if you live in the world, make yourself feared and respected. Do not injure anyone, but be not, at the same time, injured by others.
Friday, July 3, 2026
Stobaeus on Stoic Ethics 22
For such things as joy, good spirits, and temperate conversation consist in motion, whereas such things as a well-ordered quietude, undisturbed rest, and a manly attention consist in a state.
Of things which consist in a state, some also consist in a condition, such as the virtues; others are only in a state, such as the above mentioned.
Not only the virtues consist in a condition, but also the crafts which are transformed in the virtuous man by his virtue and so become unchangeable; for they become quasi-virtues.
And they say that the so-called practices are also among the goods which consist in a condition, such as love of music, love of letters, love of geometry, and the like.
For there is a method which selects those elements in such crafts which have an affinity to virtue, by referring them to the goal of life.
IMAGE: Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome in His Study (1514)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)