When will it be your lot to attain this joy? Thus far, you have indeed not been sluggish, but you must quicken your pace. Much toil remains; to confront it, you must yourself lavish all your waking hours, and all your efforts, if you wish the result to be accomplished. This matter cannot be delegated to someone else. The other kind of literary activity admits of outside assistance.
Within our own time there was a certain rich man named Calvisius Sabinus; he had the bank account and the brains of a freedman. I never saw a man whose good fortune was a greater offense against propriety. His memory was so faulty that he would sometimes forget the name of Ulysses, or Achilles, or Priam—names which we know as well as we know those of our own attendants.
No majordomo in his dotage, who cannot give men their right names, but is compelled to invent names for them—no such man, I say, calls off the names of his master's tribesmen so atrociously as Sabinus used to call off the Trojan and Achaean heroes.
But none the less did he desire to appear learned. So he devised this short cut to learning: he paid fabulous prices for slaves—one to know Homer by heart and another to know Hesiod; he also delegated a special slave to each of the nine lyric poets.
You need not wonder that he paid high prices for these slaves; if he did not find them ready to hand he had them made to order. After collecting this retinue, he began to make life miserable for his guests; he would keep these fellows at the foot of his couch, and ask them from time to time for verses which he might repeat, and then frequently break down in the middle of a word.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 27
I can turn to someone else when I want help in understanding the complexities or the references in a book, but I cannot count on another to do my own thinking for me.
I imagine I would never have passed my Doctoral comprehensive exams without leaning heavily on Copleston’s History of Philosophy, and yet Copleston could never “make” me a philosopher at all—if that was ever going to happen, I would have to take total charge of my judgments and stop acting as if footnotes have any real authority.
It is good for us to work together, and yet it is so easy to cross that dangerous line into letting the work of life be outsourced. Stop passing the buck.
Wherever possible, and to the greatest degree within my power, let me be my own man. Why expect to be waited on hand and foot when I can do it for myself?
It may be pleasant to pay someone else to feed me, though it is most fulfilling for me to prepare my own meals. It may be convenient to buy a shiny new car, though I show far greater self-reliance by walking on my own two feet. It may be grand to have an entourage, though the true glory is in serving instead of being served.
I do not believe in stomping my feet and waving my fists about sweeping social issues, because I am convinced that all the big problems are really resolved by addressing the small problems, working from the bottom up instead of from the top down.
If I want a more just society, I ought to begin by practicing justice in my everyday affairs, especially in those areas where there is the most filth and grime.
Given the peculiarities of human nature, it’s the only way to go. Improve yourself and resist the temptation to play the lord and master over others. If just a few more of us did this, the effects would be earth-shattering.
The first time I read this letter, I must admit that I glossed over the references to Sabinus. This was a mistake, since I must face men like him most every day, and I always run the serious risk of becoming the same sort of intellectually lazy oaf.
The bigwigs and the wheeler-dealers not only employ others to bring them coffee and do the dirty work, but they also hand down deeply important decisions to their peons. Have you noticed how they take the credit from you when you make them a profit, and they fire you when you take the slightest misstep?
The academic version is the most pitiful, where the Distinguished Professors have the Research Fellows do the legwork, and then they wallow in the praise. It is much like a politician who reads from a teleprompter, having been handed the clever quip by a groveling aide.
As much as you might think I am telling you a tall tale, I was once actually approached by a spoiled brat in college to provide him with a set of profoundly romantic phrases from classical literature. He was trying, in his own words, to get a girl “in the sack” who happened to be a bookworm. He offered me $100 for my efforts.
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