Grappling with honor.

"Let not reflections such as these afflict you ‘I shall live without honor, and never be of any account' for if lack of honor is an evil, no one but yourself can involve you in evil any more than in shame. Is it your business to get office or to be invited to an entertainment?

 " ‘Certainly not.’

"Where then is the dishonor you talk of? How can you be ‘of no account anywhere’, when you ought to count for something in those matters only which are in your power, where you may achieve the highest worth?

 " ‘But my friends’, you say, ‘will lack assistance.’

"What do you mean by’ lack assistance’? They will not have cash from you and you will not make them Roman citizens. Who told you that to do these things is in our power, and not dependent upon others? Who can give to another what is not his to give?

 " ‘Get them, then,’ says he, ‘that we may have them.’

"If I can get them and keep my self-respect, honor, magnanimity, show the way and I will get them. But if you call on me to lose the good things that are mine, in order that you may win things that are not good, look how unfair and thoughtless you are. And which do you really prefer? Money, or a faithful, modest friend? Therefore help me rather to keep these qualities, and do not expect from me actions which will make me lose them.
 
" 'But my country’, says he, 'will lack assistance, so far as lies in me.’

"Once more I ask, What assistance do you mean? It will not owe colonnades or baths to you. What of that? It does not owe shoes to the blacksmith or arms to the shoemaker ; it is sufficient if each man fulfills his own function. Would you do it good if you secured to it one  faithful and modest citizen?

 " ‘Yes.’

"Well, then, you would not be useless to it.

 " ‘What place then shall I have in the city?’

"Whatever place you can hold while you keep your character for honor and self-respect. But if you are going to lose these qualities in trying to benefit your city, what benefit, I ask, would you have done her when you attain to the perfection of being lost to shame and honor?"

--Epictetus, Enchiridion 24 (tr Matheson)

 The more often I read this passage, the more vividly I imagine it in a sort of comic form. One the one hand, the man who clings frantically to the things of fortune, crying out "But what about . . .?" while on the other hand an increasingly frustrated yet patient Epictetus saying, "Alright, Which part of this isn't making sense? let's take this one again from the top. . ." Something of a Stoic version of "Who's on First?"

How often has each and every one of us fallen into this very trap? I am only somebody, I will only be of some account, if I am in just the right circumstances: secure, revered, influential, productive, powerful, respected, important. It is oddly comforting to see that the Ancients struggled with the exact same problem as the Moderns.

I have long imagined a grotesque figure of a man, like myself in all respects but covered head to toe in little shiny mirrors, like a human disco ball. He is man on the inside, but his image on the outside simply reflects everything around him. As those images of external things flash and shift to and fro, so his very appearance changes to match them. I think of him as a sort of Stoic bogeyman. That is what the love of fame and honor would make of me.

Written on 5/11/2012

Images:
Gustav Troger, Mirrorman performance art (2010)
Justus van Egmont (1602-1674), Fame Crowns a Victorious General