Seneca, Moral Letters 29.3

As to our friend Marcellinus, I have not yet lost hope. He can still be saved, but the helping hand must be offered soon. There is indeed danger that he may pull his helper down; for there is in him a native character of great vigor, though it is already inclining to wickedness. 

 

Nevertheless I shall brave this danger and be bold enough to show him his faults. He will act in his usual way; he will have recourse to his wit—the wit that can call forth smiles even from mourners. He will turn the jest, first against himself, and then against me. He will forestall every word which I am about to utter. He will quiz our philosophic systems; he will accuse philosophers of accepting doles, keeping mistresses, and indulging their appetites. 

 

He will point out to me one philosopher who has been caught in adultery, another who haunts the cafes, and another who appears at court. He will bring to my notice Aristo, the philosopher of Marcus Lepidus, who used to hold discussions in his carriage; for that was the time which he had taken for editing his researches, so that Scaurus said of him when asked to what school he belonged: "At any rate, he isn't one of the Walking Philosophers."

 

Julius Graecinus, too, a man of distinction, when asked for an opinion on the same point, replied: "I cannot tell you; for I don't know what he does when dismounted," as if the query referred to a chariot-gladiator. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 29 

 

As Seneca describes Marcellinus, I think with both fondness and a touch of sadness about one of my friends from high school. He was brilliant, charming, and sometimes capable of great generosity, even magnanimity, but he tended to already have his mind made up about everything, and he was quick to dismiss and ridicule anything he found uncomfortable or threatening to those assumptions. 

 

It certainly didn’t help that I lacked the courage or the patience to engage with him as I should have, and so I would merely laugh along at his shocking jokes and witty comebacks. We unfortunately bonded over cynical and contemptuous banter, such that we were playing at being hipsters long before it became so fashionable to be so bitter and sarcastic. 

 

When I still catch myself searching for a clever insult to ease my anxiety, I know full well that I am dodging my own insecurity by coming across as cocky. Though I ought to know far better, I might find it easier to rely on personal attacks and fallacious distortions. A red herring or a straw man might get some good snickers, but they don’t bring me any closer to the true and the good. 

 

What can be done with a Marcellinus? What has curbed my own inclinations toward condescension and mockery? I do know that the moment someone chooses to stoop to my level, I will feel certain I have won, while few things will deflate my ego as much as an unruffled refusal to reciprocate my nastiness. Seneca may be on to something when he advises restraint in conversing with buffoons. 

 

An edgy sneering at life may seem to be a harmless eccentricity, perhaps a phase the young person will hopefully outgrow, yet it can so readily become more obnoxious with age. Indeed, that exuberant energy is already being twisted into a form of wickedness. Friends don’t let their friends get away with being wisenheimers. 

—Reflection written in 11/2012