Have we leisure enough for this? Do we already know how to live, or die? We should rather proceed with our whole souls towards the point where it is our duty to take heed lest things, as well as words, deceive us.
Why, pray, do you discriminate between similar words, when nobody is ever deceived by them except during the discussion?
It is things that lead us astray: it is between things that you must discriminate. We embrace evil instead of good; we pray for something opposite to that which we have prayed for in the past. Our prayers clash with our prayers, our plans with our plans.
How closely flattery resembles friendship! It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race; with wide-open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart, and it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm.
Show me how I may be able to see through this resemblance!
An enemy comes to me full of compliments, in the guise of a friend. Vices creep into our hearts under the name of virtues, rashness lurks beneath the appellation of bravery, moderation is called sluggishness, and the coward is regarded as prudent; there is great danger if we go astray in these matters.
So stamp them with special labels.
Why, pray, do you discriminate between similar words, when nobody is ever deceived by them except during the discussion?
It is things that lead us astray: it is between things that you must discriminate. We embrace evil instead of good; we pray for something opposite to that which we have prayed for in the past. Our prayers clash with our prayers, our plans with our plans.
How closely flattery resembles friendship! It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race; with wide-open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart, and it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm.
Show me how I may be able to see through this resemblance!
An enemy comes to me full of compliments, in the guise of a friend. Vices creep into our hearts under the name of virtues, rashness lurks beneath the appellation of bravery, moderation is called sluggishness, and the coward is regarded as prudent; there is great danger if we go astray in these matters.
So stamp them with special labels.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 45
As I am slowly learning to take philosophy more seriously, not as a career but as a way of life, I am increasingly aware of how much time I have wasted on frivolous things. The trick is not getting mired in regrets, since the past is no more, and instead making use of the hard lessons right here and now, which is all that is assured to me.
If I start adding up the squandered hours, days, months, and years, I will only bring myself down, so I focus on rearranging my priorities. My particular variation of the traditional memento mori, “remember that you must die”, is to ask myself if I could be satisfied with my character if this were my very last day.
If the answer is “no”, as it invariably has been, then I have good reason to put aside whatever petty diversion is occupying me at the moment, and to get back to the essential calling of doing anything and everything with understanding and love.
The task does not need to be grand, yet it does need to be sincere. These days, a simple courtesy to a stranger or an encouraging word to my children are more than sufficient.
I no longer have the time for showing off, or flattery, or chasing after a fleeting pleasure, or building up some ridiculous house of cards, but most of all, given my bookish dispositions, I no longer have the time for any intellectual pretensions. Wherever and whenever scholarship degrades into pedantry, or a discussion is perverted into a pissing contest, it is time for me to take my leave.
Observe how most of our bickering is limited to matters that are ultimately irrelevant to the state of our souls, and why the obsession with being “right” just results in us getting tangled up in contradictions and illusions.
In real life, it is irrelevant how I say “tomato”, and yet we write whole books and attend conferences about equally senseless distinctions. In real life, friends are made to help one another, and yet in the refined life of the professionals, we lick the boots of our superiors, stab our peers in the back, and walk all over our subordinates.
We may accidentally employ the right names, though they signify the wrong things. I may be tempted to get mad, or perhaps to get even, but the real answer is to get out, to stay clear of the trap, to recover my sanity.
If I can’t build a literal barrier between myself and the world of sophistry, I can at least surround the temptations with a figurative police tape, a mental reminder to avoid getting involved in that dangerous game of putting on an act for the sake of winning baubles.
As I am slowly learning to take philosophy more seriously, not as a career but as a way of life, I am increasingly aware of how much time I have wasted on frivolous things. The trick is not getting mired in regrets, since the past is no more, and instead making use of the hard lessons right here and now, which is all that is assured to me.
If I start adding up the squandered hours, days, months, and years, I will only bring myself down, so I focus on rearranging my priorities. My particular variation of the traditional memento mori, “remember that you must die”, is to ask myself if I could be satisfied with my character if this were my very last day.
If the answer is “no”, as it invariably has been, then I have good reason to put aside whatever petty diversion is occupying me at the moment, and to get back to the essential calling of doing anything and everything with understanding and love.
The task does not need to be grand, yet it does need to be sincere. These days, a simple courtesy to a stranger or an encouraging word to my children are more than sufficient.
I no longer have the time for showing off, or flattery, or chasing after a fleeting pleasure, or building up some ridiculous house of cards, but most of all, given my bookish dispositions, I no longer have the time for any intellectual pretensions. Wherever and whenever scholarship degrades into pedantry, or a discussion is perverted into a pissing contest, it is time for me to take my leave.
Observe how most of our bickering is limited to matters that are ultimately irrelevant to the state of our souls, and why the obsession with being “right” just results in us getting tangled up in contradictions and illusions.
In real life, it is irrelevant how I say “tomato”, and yet we write whole books and attend conferences about equally senseless distinctions. In real life, friends are made to help one another, and yet in the refined life of the professionals, we lick the boots of our superiors, stab our peers in the back, and walk all over our subordinates.
We may accidentally employ the right names, though they signify the wrong things. I may be tempted to get mad, or perhaps to get even, but the real answer is to get out, to stay clear of the trap, to recover my sanity.
If I can’t build a literal barrier between myself and the world of sophistry, I can at least surround the temptations with a figurative police tape, a mental reminder to avoid getting involved in that dangerous game of putting on an act for the sake of winning baubles.
—Reflection written in 2/2013
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