Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.39

Socrates used to say, what do you want, souls of rational men or irrational?

“Souls of rational men.”

Of what rational men, sound or unsound?

“Sound.”

Why then do you not seek for them?

“Because we have them.”

Why then do you fight and quarrel?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 11.39 (tr Long)

If I am being so reasonable, why am I being so petty, so small-minded, and so vindictive? Why am I thinking and acting as if understanding requires conflict? When did I start assuming that I was already born wise, instead of having to put some effort into learning it?

How tragic, how dangerous, when what I call the sensible solution is the one that ends with the most tears.

The ambiguous way we sometime use words hardly helps me here. A “good” argument can be a chain of reasoning that leads me to the truth, or a “good” argument can be an exercise in raising myself up by putting other people down.

I shudder to think of the times I felt proud inside, not because I had expressed something with insight and clarity, but because I had said it in the most clever and dismissive way possible.

This was the reason I was never fond of formal debates, and why I was never cut out for politics. It was taken for granted that being right or wrong required there being winners and losers, and that the winners were distinguished from the losers by a popularity contest.

There will indeed be disagreement in life, but wouldn’t it be better if disagreements were resolved instead of compounded? I never could grasp why opposition was seen as being so much nobler than cooperation.

Perhaps it boils down to the difference between being right as something that is shared with others, and being right as something that gives us power over others. Solidarity appears quite rational to me, because respect proceeds from understanding others for who and what they are. Dominance appears quite thoughtless to me, because control proceeds from making others subject only to my gratification.

Acting out of love seems one of the most reasonable things one can do, acting out of the hate one of the most unreasonable.

Written in 7/2009