Musonius Rufus, Lectures 20.5

In still another way the man of luxurious habits would be unjust, for he would hesitate to undertake the necessary burdens for his city without abandoning his extravagant life, and if it seemed necessary to suffer deprivation on behalf of his friends or relatives he would not submit to it, for his love of luxury would not permit it. 

 

Nay more, there are times when duties to the gods must be undertaken by the man who would be just toward them, by performing sacrifices, initiatory rites, or some such other service. 

 

Here, too, the wastrel will be found wanting. Thus, he would in all ways be unjust toward his city, toward his friends, and toward the gods, in failing to do what it is his duty to do. So, then, as being also the cause of injustice, luxury and extravagance must be shunned in every way.

 

Observe the finer folk, as they retain their own luxuries, and care so little for even your mere survival. Yes, as a part of their glorious image, they will speak words of vague universal compassion, for the reason that those clever words are a means for their particular power. 

 

Beg a working man for a dollar, and there’s a good chance he’ll give it to you. Beg a millionaire for a dollar, and there’s a good chance he will have you arrested for panhandling and vagrancy. You know it to be true. 

 

We would like to think that the luxurious people make all of us better by spending their money to employ us. Yet I seem to get poorer every year, working harder and harder, and they seem to get richer every year, doing less and less. What is the actual difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery?

 

For some, this is a call to violent revolution. “Kill the Rich! Take back what is ours!”

 

There is another solution, a totally different kind of revolution. “Make virtue your only currency, and meet hatred with love.”

 

The whole can only suffer when one piece of it arrogantly makes itself the meaning of the whole. This happens every day, wherever you may look, and it is easy to feel resentment. 

 

Yet with no money, and with no influence, and with no status, you may change the whole, working from whoever you are. Love is more powerful than wealth. Virtue will always trump money. 

 

Heal the whole world with your love. You will never lose with love, because you are triumphant if another man embraces it, just as you are triumphant if another man kills you for it. You have loved without condition, as God and Nature had asked you to do. 

 

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Written in 6/2000