Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.44

If the gods have determined about me, and about the things that must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought. And as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their Providence?

But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things that happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them.

But if they determine about nothing—which it is wicked to believe, or if we do believe it, let us neither sacrifice nor pray nor swear by them nor do anything else which we do as if the gods were present and lived with us—but if however the gods determine about none of the things that concern us, I am able to determine about myself, and I can inquire about that which is useful. And that is useful to every man that is conformable to his own constitution and nature.

But my nature is rational and social and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world. The things then that are useful to these cities are alone useful to me. Whatever happens to every man, this is for the interest of the universal. This might be sufficient.

But further you will observe this also as a general truth, if you do observe, that whatever is profitable to any man is profitable also to other men. But let the word profitable be taken here in the common sense as said of things of an indifferent kind, neither good nor bad.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

I find time and time again that a great obstacle to moral health is the idea that what is good for me must surely be bad for another, and that what is good for another must surely be bad for me. It is the assumption that conflict, between the parts of the whole, or between the one and the many, is a necessary condition of life.

Yet Providence simply doesn’t operate that way. That which exists to give meaning and order to the whole, will truly be in service to the whole. Thankfully, the Universe isn’t run by the politicians, priests, businessmen, or lawyers who mouth the words, but fail at the task. The Divine Reason within the whole is not subject to selfishness.

Even if I have difficulty accepting that Providence cares about me personally, I can surely accept that Providence cares about the complete good. Am I not even then a part of the complete good, and therefore cared for?

Even if I cannot accept Providence at all, an understandable mistake if I were to consider only a human measure to things, I can surely come to discover that same truth within myself. If I reflect upon what is useful, beneficial or profitable to me, I can discern that anything and everything can be good for me, depending only upon my estimation and actions regarding these things. As a creature of reason, I am made to choose what is good through my own power, and all circumstances can be ordered toward what is good.

Insofar as I am a rational creature, I am also a social creature, made for deliberate cooperation, and as such nothing that is good for me is separate or opposed to what is good for others. My neighbor is not only the man down the street, or the fellow citizen of my nation, but also any fellow citizen of the world. If the exercise of wisdom and virtue is our shared goal, nothing need come between us.

I will only assume opposition between men when I pursue false goods. I may think that there is only so much wealth, or pleasure, or honor to go around, so I mistakenly think I must seize it from another. But if the human good consists in the excellence of only our own nature, demanding the possession of nothing beyond our own thoughts and deeds, then competition and war are an illusion.

In my second year of college, I had one of those moments where I realized how completely out of the loop I had managed to become. I was regularly listening to the new album by ABWH (Anderson/Bruford/Wakeman/Howe), one of the many variations of the classic progressive rock group, Yes. I very much enjoyed a track called “Brother of Mine”, and the lyrics simply fit so well into how I was slowly but surely beginning to see myself and the world:

Just hear your voice

Sing all the songs of the earth

Nothing can come between us

You're a brother of mine

Sing out your sisters

All the dreams of the world

Nothing can come between us

We are the travellers of time

Now admittedly, music of this sort isn’t for everyone, and the words of Jon Anderson could easily cross that line into what I often jokingly called the “twee-flakey-hippie-moonbeam-granola-crunchy” variety. Even so, the sentiment was pleasant and uplifting.

Not to a fellow student who saw me with the CD one day and gave me a good verbal thrashing, which ended with him throwing the jewel case against the wall. This sort of music, he yelled at me, was immoral, unpatriotic, communist, atheist, and all the other terrible things he could think of. He insisted that if he ever ended up ruling the world, he’d line up all the perverts who wrote this stuff and have them shot.

The last I had heard, he married a trophy wife, and was selling real estate in New Jersey.

I had a sort of epiphany right there and then. Some people really seem to feed off of facing people against one another. The fact that the good must be shared by all, not possessed by some at the expense of others, had suddenly never been clearer to me. 

Written in 6/2007