Hope

George Frederick Watts, Hope (1886)

Stoic Snippets 80

Soon, very soon, you will be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name or not even a name; but name is sound and echo. 

And the things which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and trifling, and like little dogs biting one another, and little children quarreling, laughing, and then straightaway weeping.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.33

The Wisdom of Solomon 10:1-4

[1] Wisdom protected the first-formed father of the world, 

when he alone had been created;
she delivered him from his transgression,
[2] and gave him strength to rule all things.
[3] But when an unrighteous man departed from her in his anger,
he perished because in rage he slew his brother.
[4] When the earth was flooded because of him,
wisdom again saved it,
steering the righteous man by a paltry piece of wood.

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.6

A. Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such things?

 

M. What, do you not believe them?

 

A. Not in the least.

 

M. I am sorry to hear that.

 

A. Why, I beg?

 

M. Because I could have been very eloquent in speaking against them.

 

A. And who could not on such a subject? Or what trouble is it to refute these monstrous inventions of the poets and painters?

 

M. And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against these.

 

A. A great waste of time, truly! For who is so weak as to be concerned about them?

 

M. If, then, there is no one miserable in the infernal regions, there can be no one there at all.

 

A. I am altogether of that opinion.

 

M. Where, then, are those you call miserable? or what place do they inhabit? For, if they exist at all, they must be somewhere.

 

A. I, indeed, am of opinion that they are nowhere.

 

M. Then they have no existence at all.

 

A. Even so, and yet they are miserable for this very reason, that they have no existence.

 

M. I had rather now have you afraid of Cerberus than speak thus inaccurately.

 

A. In what respect?

 

M. Because you admit him to exist whose existence you deny with the same breath. Where now is your sagacity? When you say anyone is miserable, you say that he who does not exist, does exist.

 

A. I am not so absurd as to say that.

 

M. What is it that you do say, then?

 

A. I say, for instance, that Marcus Crassus is miserable in being deprived of such great riches as his by death; that Cn. Pompey is miserable in being taken from such glory and honor; and, in short, that all are miserable who are deprived of this light of life.

 

M. You have returned to the same point, for to be miserable implies an existence; but you just now denied that the dead had any existence: if, then, they have not, they can be nothing; and if so, they are not even miserable.

 

A. Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very circumstance, not to exist after having existed, to be very miserable.

 

M. What, more so than not to have existed at all? Therefore, those who are not yet born are miserable because they are not; and we ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before we were born: but I do not remember that I was miserable before I was born; and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you recollect of yourself before you were born.

 

If I think it through with a bit more care, I begin to see some inconsistencies in my morbid musings. Cicero is far ahead of me, and he points out that it is quite impossible to say that someone who doesn’t even exist can be miserable; what has no being cannot be anything at all. 

 

Here I am, waffling back and forth between saying that death is a complete destruction of the self, and then saying that there is still something, however nebulous, left over to feel the loss. Well, which is it? 

 

It is currently fashionable, along with the usual skepticism and relativism, for intellectuals to deny God and to deny the possibility of any afterlife. 

 

It seems it was no different back in Cicero’s time, because the Auditor is quick to brush off the stories about the underworld, to dismiss them as childish fantasies not even worth the attention of a learned man. No, he is not afraid of any such mythical punishments, because he is convinced there can be no such place. 

 

If I follow this model, then I can’t continue to say that being dead is a state of suffering, as there will be no awareness to contain any sense of pain or loss. 

 

Of the three possible timeframes referred to earlier as being so miserable, we can now exclude the last, of being dead, because the dead exist no more. We can also exclude the first, of not yet being alive, because the unborn do not yet exist.

 

All that might remain is in the middle, the suffering of the living, and Cicero will turn to that matter in due course. 

 

The Auditor still fights to have it both ways, since he cannot imagine that Crassus could be happy without his money, or that Pompey could be happy without his power. 

 

What Crassus? What Pompey? By his own admission, there is nothing left of them. It isn’t just that something of them has been removed, which may indeed be a cause for sadness, but that everything about them has ceased, where there is no longer anyone to feel sad. 

 

Now perhaps others may feel sad about Crassus and Pompey dying, or about the wealth and the power that were lost in the process, but that remains a question for the living; Crassus and Pompey are hardly affected. 

 

The same will apply just as much to those who are yet to live. Before I came into existence, there was likewise no possibility of my experience. Can I somehow claim to remember something happening to me without the presence of a self? 

 

Some thoughts that at first sound terribly profound, like saying that the unborn and the deceased are miserable in this way, can easily end up being contradictions dressed up in cleverness. They aren’t really thoughts at all, just words coming from disconnected feelings. 

 

I have, on more than one occasion, heard people speculating that they would be much happier if they had been born as animals; in particularly melancholic moods, I have briefly entertained the possibility myself. 

 

But once I can be a dog or a cat instead of a man, I will only be aware according to the nature of a dog or a cat, whatever that might be. It is nonsensical for me to suggest that my particularly human needs would be best met by not being human to begin with; what I appreciate now won’t be at all the same as what I appreciate as a completely different creature. 

 

Having become a dog or cat, would I now pointlessly speculate on the benefits of being like that tall, hairless thing that forgot to fill my water bowl this morning? 

 

Perhaps I might feel discontent with being alive, for whatever reasons, yet there is no need for me to transfer that discontent onto those who are not alive, who do not grasp it as I do. 

Written in 2/1996

IMAGE: Jan Bruegel the Elder, Aeneas and the Sybil in the Underworld (c. 1600)

 

Death as General

Edgar Bundy, Death as General Rides a Horse on a Battlefield (1911)

The Art of Peace 71

Each day of human life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each moment is etched with nature's grand design—do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things.

Dhammapada 129

All men tremble at punishment, all men fear death; remember that you are like unto them, and do not kill, nor cause slaughter. 

IMAGE by Laurie Lipton

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.5

A. To me death seems to be an evil.

 

M. What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die? 

 

A. To both. 

 

M. It is a misery, then, because an evil?

 

A. Certainly.

 

M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?

 

A. So it appears to me

 

M. Then all are miserable?

 

A. Everyone.

 

M. And, indeed, if you wish to be consistent, all that are already born, or ever shall be, are not only miserable, but always will be so; for should you maintain those only to be miserable, you would not except anyone living, for all must die; but there should be an end of misery in death. But seeing that the dead are miserable, we are born to eternal misery, for they must of consequence be miserable who died a hundred thousand years ago; or rather, all that have ever been born.

 

A. So, indeed, I think.

 

M. Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the water touches his chin; and Sisyphus,

 

Who sweats with arduous toil in vain

The steepy summit of the mount to gain?

 

Perhaps, too, you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus; before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you; and where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be able to employ Demosthenes; but you must plead for yourself before a very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look on death as an eternal evil.

 

We often whisper and tiptoe around death, working on the assumption that there could be nothing more terrible. After all, if survival is our strongest instinct, then facing our end would bring out our deepest fears. 

 

There would not only be the pain that comes from actually being destroyed, but also the pain of worrying about eventually being destroyed, the certainty that it will happen combined with the uncertainty about how and when it will happen. That would indeed feel like a looming evil, a misery that can never be avoided. 

 

And, quite understandably, this is where most of us nervously wish to change the subject, though a few might resign themselves to a constant brooding. Neither one will resolve the tension, however, and so everyone still seems to be under a cloud. 

 

I used to think that this sort of nagging discontent was unique to me, but then I observed that others faced it too, as much as they tried to distract themselves. I wondered if it was something odd about my generation, but then I realized that it was surely bound to the very act of being human, wherever self-awareness could be found. 

 

It is, quite literally, an existential problem, and so it is a profoundly philosophical problem. I have speculated if this is a reason why people so readily cast aside philosophy, not because it is obscure and difficult, but rather because it is obvious and immediate. Laugh at it and say it is irrelevant, while knowing on the inside that it fills you with terror and is really at the heart of everything that matters. 

 

I have no right to throw stones. I know how easily I am tempted to run away from something, instead of finding the honesty and courage to face it. 

 

There seems to be no way out, from whatever side I come at it. To be alive is an evil, for it suffers from the anticipation of death. To not yet be alive is also and evil, for it only offers the possibility of this future anxiety. Could death possibly be a reprieve, an escape from such a burden? No, death too is an evil, for it is the annihilation of self. 

 

There is either a “me” that will be miserable if it comes to exist, a “me” that is miserable when it exists, or a “me” that is miserable when it no longer exists.

 

Is it any accident that many cultures so readily employ images of pain, loss, and torment to describe the prospect of death? The myths of the Greeks and Romans are full of them, as Cicero describes, and which of us has not been given vivid descriptions of the fires of Hell? 

 

Yes, I have occasionally been told that a Heaven might be a vaguely nice place, yet I can’t help but find it odd that we dwell so much on the pitchforks and the burning lakes of lava. Fear will stick to us more easily than hope. 

 

For myself, I have found such accounts to be terrifying, and yet I find something else to be far more terrifying: a state of emptiness. I still get the shivers from the descriptions of the underworld in the Odyssey and the Aeneid, where the dead are shades, shadows of their former selves who have nothing to hold to but the memories of their previous lives. 

 

The suffering is not in the presence of something evil, but in the absence of everything good. I imagine the moments of boredom I sometimes feel now, only magnified into a dread of infinite nothingness. 

 

No, this is hardly a pleasant topic, though Cicero will soon explain that I am all twisted up about the act of dying because I don’t rightly understand about the act of living. 

Written in 2/1996

IMAGE: Alexander Litovchenko, Charon Carrying Souls Across the River Styx (1861)

Sayings of Ramakrishna 90

The pious man, like a hemp-smoker, finds no pleasure in singing the praises of the Almighty alone. (The hemp-smoker never finds pleasure in smoking alone.)

Sayings of Heraclitus 45

Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.

Seneca, Moral Letters 11.6

Choose therefore a Cato; or, if Cato seems too severe a model, choose some Laelius, a gentler spirit.

 

Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you; picture him always to yourself as your protector or your pattern. 

 

For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler. Farewell. 

 

Heroes can either be people whose character we know personally, or people whose character we know only through reputation. They will both have their distinct places. 

 

I sometimes hear snickering when a fellow says, for example, that his father is his hero, but we should not laugh, as there could be few things more wonderful in this life than being raised in the care of a great soul. 

 

I sometimes see the rolling of eyes when a fellow appeals to the example of a noble figure from the past, but there should be no cynicism, since this is how wisdom and virtue can remain continuous through the ages. 

 

Yes, I know that some people scoff at honoring any sorts of heroes at all, though I suspect this is either because they think they are already perfect, or because they reject the necessity of any moral worth to begin with. 

 

It is also a fine thing that we can all find different sorts of people to inspire us, whose strengths are best suited to our own dispositions and circumstances. 

 

The energy and drive of a Cato might be best suited for someone who is more sanguine or choleric, and the thoughtfulness and diplomacy of a Laelius might be best suited for someone who is more melancholic or phlegmatic. Yes, I do think we can still learn much from the old four humors. 

 

That voice of conscience in my head may well be weak or confused, and so I can find conviction in also hearing the voice of someone I deeply admire. That person doesn’t have to be present for me to listen, and we can share a powerful bond even if we have never met. 

 

My Uncle Alois passed away some years ago, and yet there is not a day where I do not turn to him for advice or encouragement. My memory of him is still so vivid, and his importance to me so immediate, that he might as well be standing right next to me. 

 

I also have an odd set of people who motivate me, like Marcus Aurelius, Franz Jägerstätter, or Flannery O’Connor, who exist for me only as printed images and words. Still, they are like teachers to me, always pointing me in the right direction. When I know I need to put myself on the spot to make a commitment, I ask myself what they would do or say. I have found few practical tools that are more effective.

 

Indeed, there will be no straightening without a ruler, no improvement without a measure. 

Written in 6/2012 

IMAGES: Cato the Younger, Marcus Aurelius, Franz Jägerstätter, Flannery O'Connor

Aqueduct in Ruins

Hubert Robert, Aqueduct in Ruins (c. 1760)

 

Stoic Snippets 79

Consider if you have hitherto behaved to all in such a way that this may be said of you: 

"Never has wronged a man in deed or word."

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.31

Seneca, Moral Letters 11.5

But my letter calls for its closing sentence. Hear and take to heart this useful and wholesome motto: “Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them.” 

 

Such, my dear Lucilius, is the counsel of Epicurus; he has quite properly given us a guardian and an attendant. We can get rid of most sins, if we have a witness who stands near us when we are likely to go wrong. The soul should have someone whom it can respect—one by whose authority it may make even its inner shrine more hallowed. 

 

Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts! 

 

And happy also is he who can so revere a man as to calm and regulate himself by calling him to mind! One who can so revere another, will soon be himself worthy of reverence.

 

Once again, I adore how Seneca appeals to Epicurus, the founder of a competing school of philosophy. It reminds me how I must always find the good in everything, regardless of its source. 

 

Many things will happen to me, and a good number of them will be quite unexpected. Many tendencies will be placed inside me, and it will often be hard to come to terms with them. Many feelings will come over me, the most challenging being the ones I never even chose. 

 

Should I consider it all a tangled mess, a chaos of circumstances, a wave of Fate? This is how I might initially think about the things that are not under my control. Yet they point right to the Stoic solution, to find a measure of meaning and purpose precisely through the things that are under my control. 

 

This is why character is the ultimate measure of human worth, why wisdom and virtue are the final arbiters of a good life. Yes, this is how everything else has unfolded, both for the world around me and for the dispositions within me, and now it is my turn to use my power of judgment, to take those conditions and put them all to good use. 

 

These are the cards that were dealt—now how will I play them? 

 

What should I risk, and what should I cling to? What is absolute, and what is relative? The rules of life aren’t always easy to figure out, and there will be many blunders and losses. As it is with learning to play a game of cards, it helps mightily to have a mentor, a model to emulate. 

 

I have never been terribly good at poker, but what little I do know came from following the example of my old friend, Hayward. Now that he is gone, I try to imagine what he would do with a certain hand; he provides me with a standard to this day, and I still hear him cussing at me when I have pushed my luck. 

 

Life isn’t poker, obviously, and yet in life it also helps so much to have people I look up to, and who in turn looks out for me. None of us need to go it alone. 

 

This is why heroes can assist us with our convictions, which offer a direction to our circumstances. 

 

I don’t mean the fake heroes who tell us how to dress or sound clever, or the shallow heroes who teach us how to get rich and famous, or the lucky heroes who happen to have an enviable knack. No, I mean the real heroes who decide to excel at being human, and who know what it’s about. 

 

Any person of honest understanding and love can be such a hero; he is usually marked by his modesty instead of any showmanship. If I seek out a person like that, I will find a touch of comfort and encouragement; it makes the journey so much easier. 

 

It will also reveal how Nature is not such a tangled mess after all. When someone points me in the right direction, he has done right for me, and when I show him his due respect, I have done right for him. There is the harmony, and there is the complementarity that comes from recognizing that we are all made for one another. 

Written in 6/2012

Tidbits from Montaigne 27

My trade and my art is living.

—Michel de Montaigne, Essays 2.6

Epictetus, Golden Sayings 139

And do you that has received all from another's hands, complain and blame the Giver, if He takes anything from you? 

Why, who are you, and to what end do you come here? Was it not He that made the Light manifest unto you, that gave you fellow workers, and senses, and the power to reason? 

And how did He bring you into the world? Was it not as one born to die; as one bound to live out his earthly life in some small tabernacle of flesh; to behold His administration, and for a little while share with Him in the mighty march of this great Festival Procession?

Now therefore that you have beheld, while it was permitted you, the Solemn Feast and Assembly, will you not cheerfully depart, when He summons you forth, with adoration and thanksgiving for what you have seen and heard?

"No, but I would prefer to have stayed longer at the Festival."

Ah, so would the mystics prefer to have the rites prolonged; so perchance would the crowd at the Great Games prefer to behold more wrestlers still. 

But the Solemn Assembly is over! Come forth, depart with thanksgiving and modesty—give a place to others that must come into being even as yourself.

IMAGE: Frans Floris, Banquet of the Gods (1550)

Dhammapada 128

Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot in the whole world where death could not overcome the mortal.

Seneca, Moral Letters 11.4

As I remarked, Wisdom can never remove this habit; for if she could rub out all our faults, she would be mistress of the Universe. 

 

Whatever is assigned to us by the terms of our birth and the blend in our constitutions, will stick with us, no matter how hard or how long the soul may have tried to master itself. And we cannot forbid these feelings any more than we can summon them.

 

Actors in the theater, who imitate the emotions, who portray fear and nervousness, who depict sorrow, imitate bashfulness by hanging their heads, lowering their voices, and keeping their eyes fixed and rooted upon the ground. 

 

They cannot, however, muster a blush; for the blush cannot be prevented or acquired. Wisdom will not assure us of a remedy, or give us help against it; it comes or goes unbidden, and is a law unto itself.

 

I always feel a bit uncomfortable around people who appeal to sayings like “If you can dream it, you can achieve it!” It isn’t that I wish to deny them any happiness, but rather that I know quite well how many things in our lives are far beyond our power. I am a part of the whole, even as I am not the master of the whole, and there is always a great danger in playing God. 

 

I am given a particular temperament, just as I will also find myself in certain circumstances. What I make of them will be entirely mine, though what I have to work with is in the realm of Providence. I should never feel the need to be in charge of everything, and a graceful willingness to accept the qualities of my own constitution is a necessary part of such a humility. 

 

Perhaps one is by nature disposed to being silent and sensitive, while another is inclined to being outspoken and rugged. This man may have the instinct to lead an army, while that man may have the urge to farm his cabbages. 

 

We are all created with different qualities. Why should I wish to change how I was made, just so I can be more like someone else? Whatever the set of feelings Nature provided, I always have the chance to employ them with wisdom and virtue. 

 

Some people, like tragic actors wearing a mask, will desperately try to simulate the appearance of passions. Sometimes the motive is sincere, and sometimes it is for the sake of manipulation, but in either case the copy will always pale in comparison to the real thing. 

 

All the exaggerated gestures or contorted faces cannot take the place of actually feeling an emotion, and feeling an emotion is not something merely turned off or on by choice. What comes before a choice is only subject to a choice after the fact; freedom works with my existing instincts, not in place of them. 

 

Some people can cry on command; can people ever blush on command? Even if they could, it wouldn’t be the same, since the signs on the outside aren’t caused by a heart on the inside. 

Written in 6/2012

Sayings of Ramakrishna 89

Why does the God-lover find such pleasure in addressing the Deity as Mother? 

Because the child is more free with its mother, and consequently she is dearer to the child than anyone else. 

IMAGE: Hugues Merle, Maternal Love (1880)

The Choice of Hercules 7

Pompeo Batoni, Hercules at the Crossroads (1753)

Seneca, Moral Letters 11.3

Some are most dangerous when they redden, as if they were letting all their sense of shame escape. Sulla, when the blood mantled his cheeks, was in his fiercest mood. Pompey had the most sensitive cast of countenance; he always blushed in the presence of a gathering, and especially at a public assembly. Fabianus also, I remember, reddened when he appeared as a witness before the Senate; and his embarrassment became him to a remarkable degree.

 

Such a habit is not due to mental weakness, but to the novelty of a situation; an inexperienced person is not necessarily confused, but is usually affected, because he slips into this habit by natural tendency of the body. Just as certain men are full-blooded, so others are of a quick and mobile blood, that rushes to the face at once.

 

It is important for me to remember, however, that people will often have very different instinctive responses, and that the same sign does not always point to the same thing. The danger is in making broad assumptions, even as our reactions can be distinctly personal and vary widely. The only way around this is becoming familiar with folks one by one, slowly but surely, and getting acquainted with their idiosyncrasies. 

 

This is a good life lesson for me in any event, since it is so easy to cast judgment without any depth of understanding. 

 

A flushed face can indicate shame or shyness, but it can just as easily indicate anger; not recognizing that difference can cause a world of hurt. I have known some people who immediately avert their eyes when they are hiding something, but I have known other people who avert their eyes as a mark of respect. Tears are usually associated with sadness and pain, and yet they can also reflect intense joy, or any profound release of inner tension. 

 

I have now had to sit on more academic disciplinary committees than I care to count, and the struggle for me is less about anything the students may have done, and more about entrenched faculty who are quick to condemn. 

 

“Well, you saw him, didn’t you? That little weasel! He stayed totally silent, and we all know what that means. He couldn’t give a reasonable account of what happened, and he didn’t show an ounce of regret. I say we suspend him for the semester.”

 

“Maybe he has no idea what happened, since he claims he wasn’t even there? Maybe he isn’t apologizing because he didn’t do anything wrong? Maybe kangaroo courts make him nervous, so he zips his lip?”

 

Silence on account of fear is no sin, and babbling out of nervousness is no sin either. A jaw may be clenched from an arrogant disdain or from a righteous courage. This fellow might be smiling to laugh at us, and that fellow might be smiling to show his good will. 

 

Unless I have come to know someone very well in daily life, and become closely attuned to his personality, I will resist the urge to read too much into his countenance or posture. The body has peculiar habits which are not necessarily conscious at all. I remain convinced that there can be no true justice where we do not recognize the individual in his own unique circumstances. 

Written in 6/2012