Wisdom from the Early Cynics, Diogenes 31

On being asked by a tyrant what bronze is best for a statue, Diogenes replied, "That of which Harmodius and Aristogeiton were moulded." 

Asked how Dionysius treated his friends, "Like purses," he replied; "so long as they are full, he hangs them up, and, when they are empty, he throws them away." 

Some one lately wed had set up on his door the notice: 

The son of Zeus, victorious Heracles,
Dwells here; let nothing evil enter in. 

To which Diogenes added, "After war, alliance." 

The love of money he declared to be the mother-city of all evils. 

Seeing a spendthrift eating olives in a tavern, he said, "If you had breakfasted in this fashion, you would not so be dining." 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.50 

IMAGE: Harmodius and Aristogeiton 

Wisdom from the Early Stoics, Zeno of Citium 71

Now the Stoics say that the wise man is passionless, because he is not prone to fall into such infirmity. 

But they add that in another sense the term apathy is applied to the bad man, when, that is, it means that he is callous and relentless. 

Further, the wise man is said to be free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report. 

However, he is not alone in this, there being another who is also free from vanity, he who is ranged among the rash, and that is the bad man. 

Again, they tell us that all good men are austere or harsh, because they neither have dealings with pleasure themselves nor tolerate those who have. 

The term harsh is applied, however, to others as well, and in much the same sense as a wine is said to be harsh when it is employed medicinally and not for drinking at all. 

—Diogenes Laërtius, 7.117 

IMAGE: Jan van Bijlert, Young Man Drinking a Glass of Wine (c. 1640) 

Songs of Innocence 1

Songs of Innocence: Introduction (1789) 

William Blake (1757-1827) 

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me—

"Pipe a song about a lamb:"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again:"
So I piped; he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe,
Sing thy songs of happy cheer:"
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read—"
So he vanish'd from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear. 

Songs of Innocence and Experience

It took me many years to appreciate William Blake, and now I can barely imagine my life without him. 

Songs of Innocence and Experience has become almost a daily source of reference for the tension between the natural and the fallen, between virtue and vice. The pairing of the text with illustrations is a special joy. 

The images reproduced in this series of posts are from the 1826 copy at the Library of Congress ("Copy Z"), as they are the best resolution I have available. 

—5/2015 

• • • • • 

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (1794) 

Cosmos 11

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.33

M. However, we may allow the poets to trifle, in whose fables we see Jupiter himself engaged in these debaucheries: but let us apply to the masters of virtue—the philosophers who deny love to be anything carnal; and in this they differ from Epicurus, who, I think, is not much mistaken. 
 
For what is that love of friendship? How comes it that no one is in love with a deformed young man, or a handsome old one? I am of opinion that this love of men had its rise from the Gymnastics of the Greeks, where these kinds of loves are admissible and permitted; therefore Ennius spoke well:
 
“The censure of this crime to those is due 
Who naked bodies first exposed to view.”
 
Now, supposing them chaste, which I think is hardly possible, they are uneasy and distressed, and the more so because they contain and refrain themselves. 
 
But, to pass over the love of women, where nature has allowed more liberty, who can misunderstand the poets in their rape of Ganymede, or not apprehend what Laius says, and what he desires, in Euripides? 
 
Lastly, what have the principal poets and the most learned men published of themselves in their poems and songs? What doth Alcaeus, who was distinguished in his own republic for his bravery, write on the love of young men? And as for Anacreon’s poetry, it is wholly on love. But Ibycus of Rhegium appears, from his writings, to have had this love stronger on him than all the rest. 

—From Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.33 
 
I am hesitant to offer any comment at all on this chapter, not because the topic is in itself distasteful, but rather because most anyone reading along will, without giving it a second thought, have the knee-jerk reaction of assuming that Cicero is a hateful homophobe. 
 
What good will come, I wonder, from engaging with an outraged partisan who refuses to do anything but toe the sacred party line? It sadly goes both ways. I remain confused by the way contempt is considered a fitting response to those with whom we disagree; if I am truly to be a champion of tolerance, I can hardly cherry-pick my causes. 
 
So, I simply ask myself to consider, in the privacy of my own thoughts, what the purpose of sexuality might be within the fullness of human nature. In the end, it really makes little difference whether our attractions are for men or for women, and it matters far more that we first reflect on why our desires should be guided by our understanding. 
 
I know all too well that not all of my instincts and urges are necessarily good for me, and I have learned the hard way that I become a monster when the reason is taken out of the animal, when I act only on my feelings, without the benefit of thinking. Lust, in any form, is a kind of slavery, and love, in any form, is a kind of liberation. Chastity, a sadly unpopular word, is not the same thing as celibacy—chastity is self-restraint, not self-denial. 
 
Once it is merely the pleasure I crave, I am treating both myself and others as objects of gratification. Once it is the genuine beauty I seek, I am finally treating both myself and others as end in themselves, and never as means. I suspect all of us really sense, deep down inside, when we are being vulgar, and when we are being virtuous. Is the heart being led by the head, or being dragged down by the gut? 
 
Poetry is certainly an art that inflames the passions, though this does not demand that the fervent man become a lecherous man. I will follow my own conscience in this matter, and I am happy for you to follow yours. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490) 

Overthinking

Michael Leunig 63

Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates 34

Again I may cite, as known to myself, the following discussion; the arguments were addressed to Diodorus, one of his companions. Socrates said: 

"Tell me, Diodorus, if one of your slaves runs away, are you at pains to recover him?" 

"More than that," Diodorus answered, "I summon others to my aid and I have a reward cried for his recovery." 

Socrates: "Well, if one of your domestics is sick, do you tend him and call in the doctors to save his life?" 

Diodorus: "Decidedly I do." 

Socrates: "And if an intimate acquaintance, who is far more precious to you than any of your household slaves, is about to perish of want, you would think it incumbent on you to take pains to save his life? 

"Well! Now you know without my telling you that Hermogenes is not made of wood or stone. If you helped him he would be ashamed not to pay you in kind. And yet—the opportunity of possessing a willing, kindly, and trusty assistant well fitted to do your bidding, and not merely that, but capable of originating useful ideas himself, with a certain forecast of mind and judgment—I say such a man is worth dozens of slaves. 

"Good economists tell us that when a precious article may be got at a low price we ought to buy. And nowadays when times are so bad it is possible to get good friends exceedingly cheap." 

Diodorus answered: "You are quite right, Socrates; bid Hermogenes come to me." 

Socrates: "Bid Hermogenes come to you!—not I, indeed! Since for aught I can understand you are no better entitled to summon him than to go to him yourself, nor is the advantage more on his side than your own." 

Thus Diodorus went off in a trice to seek Hermogenes, and at no great outlay won to himself a friend—a friend whose one concern it now was to discover how, by word or deed, he might help and gladden Diodorus. 

—from Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.10 

IMAGE: Peter Paul Rubens, Self-Portrait in a Circle of Friends at Mantua (1602) 

The Continence of Scipio 3

Niccolo dell'Abbate, The Continence of Scipio (c. 1555) 

Man's Search for Meaning 10

I think it was Lessing who once said, "There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose." An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. Even we psychiatrists expect the reactions of a man to an abnormal situation, such as being committed to an asylum, to be abnormal in proportion to the degree of his normality. The reaction of a man to his admission to a concentration camp also represents an abnormal state of mind, but judged objectively it is a normal and, as will be shown later, typical reaction to the given circumstances. These reactions, as I have described them, began to change in a few days. The prisoner passed from the first to the second phase; the phase of relative apathy, in which he achieved a kind of emotional death.

Apart from the already described reactions, the newly arrived prisoner experienced the tortures of other most painful emotions, all of which he tried to deaden. First of all, there was his boundless longing for his home and his family. This often could become so acute that he felt himself consumed by longing. Then there was disgust; disgust with all the ugliness which surrounded him, even in its mere external forms.

Most of the prisoners were given a uniform of rags which would have made a scarecrow elegant by comparison. Between the huts in the camp lay pure filth, and the more one worked to clear it away, the more one had to come in contact with it. It was a favourite practice to detail a new arrival to a work group whose job was to clean the latrines and remove the sewage. If, as usually happened, some of the excrement splashed into his face during its transport over bumpy fields, any sign of disgust by the prisoner or any attempt to wipe off the filth would only be punished with a blow from a Capo. And thus the mortification of normal reactions was hastened.

At first the prisoner looked away if he saw the punishment parades of another group; he could not bear to see fellow prisoners march up and down for hours in the mire, their movements directed by blows. Days or weeks later things changed. Early in the morning, when it was still dark, the prisoner stood in front of the gate with his detachment, ready to march. He heard a scream and saw how a comrade was knocked down, pulled to his feet again, and knocked down once more—and why? He was feverish but had reported to sick-bay at an improper time. He was being punished for this irregular attempt to be relieved of his duties.

But the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his psychological reactions did not avert his eyes any more. By then his feelings were blunted, and he watched unmoved. Another example: he found himself waiting at sickbay, hoping to be granted two days of light work inside the camp because of injuries or perhaps oedema or fever. He stood unmoved while a twelve-year-old boy was carried in who had been forced to stand at attention for hours in the snow or to work outside with bare feet because there were no shoes for him in the camp. His toes had become frostbitten, and the doctor on duty picked off the black gangrenous stumps with tweezers, one by one. Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel any more. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him any more. 

—from Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning  

Sayings of Publilius Syrus 162

He who takes counsel of good faith, is just even to an enemy. 

IMAGE: Gaetano Gandolfi, Allegory of Justice (c. 1760) 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.32

M. Anyone who attends the least to the subject will be convinced how unbecoming this joy is. And as they are very shameful who are immoderately delighted with the enjoyment of venereal pleasures, so are they very scandalous who lust vehemently after them. 
 
And all that which is commonly called love (and, believe me, I can find out no other name to call it by) is of such a trivial nature that nothing, I think, is to be compared to it: of which Caecilius says,
 
“I hold the man of every sense bereaved
Who grants not Love to be of Gods the chief:
Whose mighty power whate’er is good effects,
Who gives to each his beauty and defects:
Hence, health and sickness; wit and folly, hence,
The God that love and hatred doth dispense!”
 
An excellent corrector of life this same poetry, which thinks that love, the promoter of debauchery and vanity, should have a place in the council of the Gods! I am speaking of comedy, which could not subsist at all without our approving of these debaucheries. But what said that chief of the Argonauts in tragedy?
 
“My life I owe to honor less than love.” 
 
What, then, are we to say of this love of Medea?—what a train of miseries did it occasion! And yet the same woman has the assurance to say to her father, in another poet, that she had a husband 
 
“Dearer by love than ever fathers were." 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.32 
 
Most of the people I know will find Cicero’s rant here to be stuffy and prudish, though I fear this is because they do not perceive why the greatest joys are always temperate. 
 
I choose to say very little about the sexual morality of the day, because the hot-button topics aren’t really about sex at all, but rather about our more fundamental estimation of the human good. If I know what is true, I will know what to love, and how to love, and I will not need to seek out gratification at the expense of the virtues.
 
While we are made to love, our confusion about the very meaning of the word brings us nothing but trouble. The immediate association is to describe it as a feeling of affection, and then of sexual attraction as its more intense form. Such emotions are certainly a critical part of our human nature, yet they are meant to be subsumed under the intellect and the will, such that love is ultimately more of a choice that it is a feeling. 
 
The old Thomist in me still defines love as willing the good of another, and standing by this model has never steered me wrong. 
 
Love only brings me grief when it is really just lust, an inordinate desire for receiving, instead of a deliberate commitment to giving. I certainly feel the greatest joy from loving, yet the pleasure itself is never my aim. It’s wonderful how we are the most satisfied when we think the least of our own satisfaction. 
 
I always suggest The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis to anyone who wishes to make sense of it all. I won’t even bother to briefly summarize it here, since I’d probably botch it up. If you approach the book with good will and an open mind, I am fairly certain it will improve your life. 
 
Unlike the “common” conception of love, I have loved at my best when I am completely in control of myself, not when I am swept away by longing. Yes, I may feel twitterpated, as I like to call it, but that is a part of the magical initiation, not the beauty of the fulfilling consummation. Those who love, whatever the form or the degree of their bond, are at peace with one another, not in a state of frenzy. 
 
As much as I am also a hopeless romantic, love is there to help me see, not to make me blind. For me, Venus is always a retainer to Athena, and Dionysius is a bondsman of Apollo. Do not assume I am any “less” passionate because I have my hands on the reins—the ecstasy is in service to the understanding, and the heart is in harmony with the mind. 
 
I take neither Jason nor Medea as ideals in this regard; they were poor creatures of lust and rage. I think rather of Orpheus and Eurydice, or Beren and Luthien, for whom love, whatever their mortal failings, was always something divine. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Fountain of Love (c. 1785) 

Maxims of Goethe 54

It is with you as with the sea: the most varied names are given to what is in the end only salt water. 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.31

M. Proceed we now to what are goods—that is to say, to joy and desire. 
 
To me, indeed, one thing alone seems to embrace the question of all that relates to the perturbations of the mind—the fact, namely, that all perturbations are in our own power; that they are taken up upon opinion, and are voluntary. This error, then, must be got rid of; this opinion must be removed; and, as with regard to imagined evils, we are to make them more supportable, so with respect to goods, we are to lessen the violent effects of those things which are called great and joyous. 
 
But one thing is to be observed, that equally relates both to good and evil: that, should it be difficult to persuade anyone that none of those things which disturb the mind are to be looked on as good or evil, yet a different cure is to be applied to different feelings; and the malevolent person is to be corrected by one way of reasoning, the lover by another, the anxious man by another, and the fearful by another: and it would be easy for anyone who pursues the best approved method of reasoning, with regard to good and evil, to maintain that no fool can be affected with joy, as he never can have anything good. 
 
But, at present, my discourse proceeds upon the common received notions. Let, then, honors, riches, pleasures, and the rest be the very good things which they are imagined to be; yet a too elevated and exulting joy on the possession of them is unbecoming; just as, though it might be allowable to laugh, to giggle would be indecent. 
 
Thus, a mind enlarged by joy is as blamable as a contraction of it by grief; and eager longing is a sign of as much levity in desiring as immoderate joy is in possessing; and, as those who are too dejected are said to be effeminate, so they who are too elated with joy are properly called volatile; and as feeling envy is a part of grief, and the being pleased with another’s misfortune is a kind of joy, both these feelings are usually corrected by showing the wildness and insensibility of them: and as it becomes a man to be cautious, but it is unbecoming in him to be fearful, so to be pleased is proper, but to be joyful improper. 
 
I have, in order that I might be the better understood, distinguished pleasure from joy. I have already said above, that a contraction of the mind can never be right, but that an elation of it may; for the joy of Hector in Naevius is one thing—
 
“’Tis joy indeed to hear my praises sung
By you, who are the theme of honor’s tongue—” 
 
but that of the character in Trabea another: 
 
“The kind procuress, allured by my money, will observe my nod, will watch my desires, and study my will. If I but move the door with my little finger, instantly it flies open; and if Chrysis should unexpectedly discover me, she will run with joy to meet me, and throw herself into my arms.”
 
Now he will tell you how excellent he thinks this: 
 
“Not even fortune herself is so fortunate." 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.31 
 
Once again, I can’t claim to understand the subtleties of why Yonge chooses to translate certain terms in the way he does, but I remind myself to distinguish between a healthy and an unhealthy, an ordered and a disordered, expression of the emotions, such that I take laetitia here to be what I call gratification, or inordinate pleasure, and cupiditas to be what I call lust, or inordinate desire. The one is a twisted form of joy, the other a twisted sort of wish. The context of the chapter makes this clear, yet some will still insist that Cicero, and the Stoics, condemn the passions as a whole, which is clearly not the case. 
 
While it is easier to convince people to conquer their grief and fear, for they are more willing to avoid pain, it is far more difficult to convince them to conquer their gratification and lust, for they are more readily drawn to pleasure. I will usually get a funny look when I suggest that it would be a mistake to open another bottle, or a dismissive wave if I speculate whether the pursuit of one more sexual conquest is really worth it. I rarely even bother anymore when the topic is about acquiring more money. 
 
When I feel inclined to press the point, these folks will also tell me that their urges are only natural, after all. “How am I supposed to stop it? Everyone wants to have fun!” That there is a bodily instinct to pursue pleasure and to avoid pain is hardly in question, but why are we so quick to overlook our capacity for judgment, and therefore the power of free will? It is as if we were looking only to the gut, while ignoring the head. Deliberately modify the estimation, and you then exercise your conscious choice. 
 
If gratification and lust are truly irresistible, how are we to explain those noble souls who do indeed manage to rise above them? I believe they do so by carefully attending to their inner reflections, not merely by the brute force of will. If gratification and lust will bring us genuine happiness, then why are so many of us dragged into complete misery by their pursuits? A grasping man wouldn’t even know what to do with his many pleasures, because he rejects a deeper understanding of the human good. 
 
If I can’t bring myself to accept why luxury and fame have no value in themselves, I can still learn how unfitting it is for any man to be a slave to his desires. It is enough for me to consider why it violates my very dignity, as a creature gifted with reason, to grovel before trinkets and idols. Once I forget how there is something divine within me, an emanation of the God who made me, I have sadly abandoned my soul; whatever the skeptics may claim, I do not need to be bound by every impression that comes my way. 
 
This is as true for the one who chases after sensuality as it is for the one who wallows in heartbreak. We are used to seeing it immediately in the poor and the abandoned, though it is just as common among the rich and the prominent—the self-important crowd just have a better knack for whitewashing their sins. In the end, it has nothing to do with the weight of the circumstances, and everything to do with the content of character. 
 
My current “pastor” likes to scold the drunks who hang out at the dingy bar down the street, while he and his cronies sit in his extravagant parlor, counting their coins. Our virtues are all the same, and our vices are all the same. Let’s please stop pretending, for the measure of a man is within. 
 
I am pleased as Punch when anyone mentions Hector, not because I consider him a saint, since he was, in his own peculiar way, just as flawed as Achilles, but because his experiences reveal all the possible highs and lows of the human condition. I believe both of these quotes are from works now lost to us, and yet I immediately recognize the difference expressed in them between joy and gratification, between love and lust. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Karl Friedrich Deckler, The Farewell of Hector to Andromache and Astyanax (c. 1900) 

Temptation

School of Maerten de Vos, An Alchemist Being Tempted by Luxuria (c. 1580) 

Delphic Maxims 63

Διαβολὴν μίσει 

Despise a slanderer 

IMAGE: Maerten de Vos, The Calumny of Apelles (c. 1580) 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.30

M. But fear borders upon grief, of which I have already said enough; but I must say a little more on that. Now, as grief proceeds from what is present, so does fear from future evil; so that some have said that fear is a certain part of grief: others have called fear the harbinger of trouble, which, as it were, introduces the ensuing evil. 
 
Now, the reasons that make what is present supportable, make what is to come very contemptible; for, with regard to both, we should take care to do nothing low or groveling, soft or effeminate, mean or abject. 
 
But, notwithstanding we should speak of the inconstancy, imbecility, and levity of fear itself, yet it is of very great service to speak contemptuously of those very things of which we are afraid. 
 
So that it fell out very well, whether it was by accident or design, that I disputed the first and second day on death and pain—the two things that are the most dreaded: now, if what I then said was approved of, we are in a great degree freed from fear. And this is sufficient, as far as regards the opinion of evils. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.30 
 
Grief and fear are cut from the same cloth, for they are both disordered aversions to falsely perceived evils, and they differ only in how we are in distress over what is currently present, or over what we believe is yet to come. While it can be of great assistance for me to reconsider if this or that object is actually as oppressive as it may appear, everything finally hinges upon my willingness to take charge of my own character, to decide: 
 
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them? . . . 
 
What is the terror I face? For the Stoic, it has become terrible precisely because I think it so, and when I can find the constancy to alter my judgments, I have then discovered the means to become neither mournful nor timid. It is, indeed, a mighty task, but I believe this is so because it is my primary job to rule myself, not to conquer the world. 
 
The best friends I have ever had, and there have been but a few, told me to be brave, since they loved me enough to see the dignity that was within me, not to scold me with some cold lesson about insensitivity. A good man will cry with you when you feel pain, but he will not permit you to succumb to your suffering. I take that distinction to heart. 
 
Cicero rightly observes how the solutions offered in all the earlier books of these Disputations apply just as readily to any sort of perturbation. When I am afraid, what is it that I usually dread? On the one hand it is the prospect of pain, and on the other hand it is the approach of death, as discussed in the first two sections.
 
Don’t tell me it isn’t going to hurt—I know it will. Don’t tell me dying makes no difference—it must, after all, be the end of me. Remind me, rather, how neither of these, however severe they feel, need have no effect on my exercise of the virtues. Then I am strengthened in my resolve, relying on the very core of my humanity. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Gustave Courbet, The Man Made Mad with Fear (c. 1844) 

Moongazer

Steve Adams, Moongazer (2012)

Sayings of Ramakrishna 251

A truly religious man should think that other religions also are paths leading to the truth. 

We should always maintain an attitude of respect towards other religions. 

IMAGE: Nikolai Ge, "What Is Truth?" Christ and Pilate (1890) 

Howard Jones, Dream into Action 13

"Bounce Right Back" was included in the US version of the album, but it was not on the original UK release, and it had first been the b-side for "Like to Get to Know You Well". More on that one next. 

I was originally torn about this track, as I appreciated the usual Howard Jones wisdom, while also being suspicious of what appeared to be an attempt at channeling the "faux rap" that was so popular in the mid 1980's. I fear the tune has not aged very well, much like "Rapture" by Blondie. I now find it to be rather amusing musically, while still packing a good philosophical punch. 

Nevertheless, who else but Jones could get away with a song about minding our words, about thinking carefully before we open our mouths? I once described it as Sesame Street for mopey and angry teenagers. It is a critical life lesson, and I shamefully think of all the horrible things I have said without being conscious of their effects. 

I naturally feel hurt when someone else makes a joke at my expense, or insults me, or gossips about me behind my back, so why would I ever wish such pain upon another? Sometimes it comes from being careless, a sort of nervous reaction, and sometimes it comes from nothing more than malice, a brutal attempt at believing that one offense can somehow cancel out another. 

I suspect we all know that feeling when we have just spoken in passion, and we realize the horrible mistake we have just made. In some cases, the damage is irrevocable. I once angrily told a friend that he was a waste of life, and our relationship never healed. Years later, someone told me to go kill myself, and to this day she can't look me in the eye. 

I am wary of spouting the usual phrases, like "what comes around goes around", or "karma's a bitch", but the simple fact is that the Providence ruling this world has made it so we always get what we deserve. Speech has great power, for it expresses who we are. A day does not pass without me regretting things said in haste or in hatred. I start again the next morning, hoping I can manage to show love instead of spite. 

—5/2007 

A few words of commentary from Howard Jones: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtTBtVF8A9Y&list=OLAK5uy_ksRpFrEL_onEROgkryRFr4rhIUu3vYyZc&index=25

And the song itself: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ey1suVCQY&list=OLAK5uy_ksRpFrEL_onEROgkryRFr4rhIUu3vYyZc&index=26

Howard Jones, "Bounce Right Back" from Dream into Action (1985) 

I was walking down the street

With my old friend Luke
And the strangest thing we saw
There was a flash like dynamite
And we fell down to the floor
And as we looked up this weird dude stood
I guess he was standing about four feet five
With a nonchalance and a joie de vivre
His face was grinning from side to side 

Well he said button up and tighten your lip
Keep a check on what you say
Those crazy words you fling from your mouth
Are gonna bounce back on you some day 

Now several years pass
I thought nothing more
It was down to a nine to five grind
I was shuffling round to my old friend's house
I had party on my mind
While chatting this chick
A gorilla muscled in
A brace of henchmen right behind
My blood boiled hard
I'll give you a piece of my mind
And this guy appeared by our side
Don't you know what he said

Well he said button up and tighten your lip
Keep a check on what you say
Those crazy words you fling from your mouth
Are gonna bounce back on you some day 

I was walking down the street with my old friend Luke
We were getting into a bit of a heavy scene
He say yes and I say no
He says what do you mean
I pulled my piece and he pulled his
We stared each other right in the eye
There was a flash like dynamite
And this guy appeared by our side

Don't you know what he said

Well he said button up and tighten your lip
Keep a check on what you say
Those crazy words you fling from your mouth
Are gonna bounce back on you some day  

Stoic Snippets 248

Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.14 

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.29

M. Wherefore, as I before said, the philosophers have all one method of cure, so that we need say nothing about what sort of thing that is which disturbs the mind, but we must speak only concerning the perturbation itself. 
 
Thus, first, with regard to desire itself, when the business is only to remove that, the inquiry is not to be, whether that thing be good or evil which provokes lust, but the lust itself is to be removed; so that whether whatever is honest is the chief good, or whether it consists in pleasure, or in both these things together, or in the other three kinds of goods, yet should there be in any one too vehement an appetite for even virtue itself, the whole discourse should be directed to the deterring him from that vehemence. 
 
But human nature, when placed in a conspicuous point of view, gives us every argument for appeasing the mind, and, to make this the more distinct, the laws and conditions of life should be explained in our discourse. 
 
Therefore, it was not without reason that Socrates is reported, when Euripides was exhibiting his play called Orestes, to have repeated the first three verses of that tragedy—
 
“What tragic story men can mournful tell,
Whate’er from fate or from the gods befell,
That human nature can support—”
 
But, in order to persuade those to whom any misfortune has happened that they can and ought to bear it, it is very useful to set before them an enumeration of other persons who have borne similar calamities. 
 
Indeed, the method of appeasing grief was explained in my dispute of yesterday, and in my book on Consolation, which I wrote in the midst of my own grief; for I was not myself so wise a man as to be insensible to grief, and I used this, notwithstanding Chrysippus’s advice to the contrary, who is against applying a medicine to the agitations of the mind while they are fresh; but I did it, and committed a violence on nature, that the greatness of my grief might give way to the greatness of the medicine. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.29 
 
As much as I might wish to carefully weigh the objects, my desire or aversion is about my own choices, not about the apparent merits of the circumstances. The classical philosophers, those who embraced the wisdom tradition, understood why we must take full charge of ourselves, instead of being tossed about by whatever seems appealing or abhorrent at the moment. 
 
Even Descartes understood this: change your own thinking, before you rush off to change the world. We avoid this lesson at our own peril; as soon as we measure ourselves by things, we have unwittingly made ourselves slaves to those beguiling conditions. 
 
When I feel a constant craving for this or that gratification, I can argue with myself, until I’m blue in the face, as to whether the prize is truly worthy of my longing. Sometimes it has been an enticing new job, and at other times it has been a bit of notoriety, and at one time it was about the affections of a woman. In my darkest of times, it has been a bottle of whiskey, or anything to make me forget myself completely for the next few days. 
 
Now what did they all share in common? They all felt good to me, in some way, which was already an abandonment of the timeless truth that a man’s genuine good is in his thoughts and deeds, not in what may, or may not, happen to him. None of it was about money, or fame, or women, or booze. It was about the lust for a misguided model of success, and the fear of a misguided model of failure. 
 
To avoid the snares of gratification and grief I did not have to acquire or discard certain accessories, to define myself by the presence or absence of mere accidents. The common thread was wayward desires and aversions, and the common cure was invariably a mastery of my passions. I am made to own them. They are not made to own me. 
 
I am easily tempted to make all sorts of excuses, to offer ridiculous pretexts for my cowardice and intemperance. Yes, I know I should make a stand, but maybe allowing this now will improve my prospects later? Yes, I know I should refuse this luxury, but how can it hurt in the bigger picture? That comes from waffling, from looking to the lay of the land over the content of character. 
 
We ultimately make our own happiness or misery, as every Greek tale should make abundantly clear. Cicero says that, contrary to the advice from Chrysippus, he skipped over the gentle coddling and went straight for the harsh medicine, finding himself a far better man as a result. Observe the many others, those we rightly call heroes, who seized their joy out of the depths of suffering—there is the power within all of us. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1862) 

Dhammapada 386

He who is thoughtful, blameless, settled, dutiful, without passions, and who has attained the highest end, him I call indeed a Brahmana. 

Stobaeus on Stoic Ethics 10

There is nothing between virtue and vice. 

For all human beings have from nature inclinations toward virtue and, according to Cleanthes, are like half lines of iambic verse; hence, if they remain incomplete they are base, but if they are completed they are virtuous. 

The Stoics also say that the wise man does everything in accordance with all the virtues; for his every  action is perfect and so is bereft of none of the virtues. 

IMAGE: Dai Jin, Employing Virtue (c. 1450) 

Proverbs 1:17-19

[17] For in vain is a net spread
in the sight of any bird;
[18] but these men lie in wait for their own blood,
they set an ambush for their own lives.
[19] Such are the ways of all who get gain by violence;
it takes away the life of its possessors. 

IMAGE: Albert Bierstadt, The Ambush (1876)