Diogenes for the Day, 8/22/2018

Over his grave they set up a pillar, and a dog in Parian marble upon it. Subsequently his fellow citizens honored him with bronze statues, on which these verses were inscribed: 

Time makes even bronze grow old. But your glory, Diogenes, all eternity will never destroy.

Since you alone did point out to mortals the lesson of self-sufficiency and the easiest path of life.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.43

Does the sun undertake to do the work of the rain, or Asclepius, the bringer of health, the work of the earth, the fruit-bearer?

 And how is it with respect to each of the stars, are they not different and yet they work together to the same end?

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

Each thing will play its own part within the whole. It may seem a small part, but that makes it no less important for the whole. It is a distinct and different piece, with a role only it is meant to perform.

I once had a beautiful vintage Rickenbacker 4005 bass guitar, complete with a stunning fireglo finish. Like any good Rickenbacker bass, it growled back at me whenever I played it. Heck, it growled back at me even when I looked at it. Whatever amplifier or effects I put it through, it would always sound like a beast just barely tamed.

There was only one problem. There was this little annoying buzz on the D and G strings, especially higher up on the frets. No one else seemed to notice it, but I certainly did.

“Can’t you hear that?” I’d cry.

“Nope. Sounds fine to me.”

I did everything I could to that poor instrument in order to find that one little flaw. I adjusted the bridge, changed the gauge of the strings, and I fiddled with the truss rod. I would even put my ear next to the tuning pegs while playing, convinced at one point that the problem must be there.

Then one day I suddenly saw it. I didn’t just hear it, but I saw it. A single screw on the top pickup was vibrating with the higher notes. What did it take? A mere quarter turn with a Phillips head, and the satanic buzz was completely gone.

Now this will tell you quite a bit about my ridiculous sense of obsession, but it also tells me quite a bit about the order of things. One tiny piece, the tiniest screw, made quite a difference in how that fine bass sounded to me. That screw didn’t have to be anything except itself, but it did have to be tightened just right to make the whole thing work just right.

Each kind of thing is different from every other kind of thing for a very good reason, because their individual natures serve within the relationship of all of Nature. The harmony is not from a mere conformity of identity, but from a rich complementarity of identity. This is true of any tool a man has made, however simple or complex, which is itself a mirroring of the pattern of all created things.

We will swing from insisting at one moment that everything needs to be the same, and at another moment that everything needs to be different. Sometimes we are enamored of unity, and sometimes we are drawn to diversity, and we will then foolishly oppose these principles to one another like jealous lovers.

What we might be missing is that things are indeed different, but they are different in order to serve exactly the same greater purpose. The many exist for the one, and exist within the one. 

Written in 6/2007

Diogenes for the Day, 8/21/2018

Being reproached for eating in the marketplace, "Well, it was in the marketplace," he said, "that I felt hungry."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.42

We are all working together to one end, some with knowledge and design, and others without knowing what they do; as men also do when they are asleep, of whom it is Heraclitus, I think, who says that they are laborers and cooperators in the things which take place in the Universe.

But men cooperate after different fashions. And even those cooperate abundantly, who find fault with what happens and those who try to oppose it and to hinder it. For the Universe had need even of such men as these.

It remains then for you to understand among what kind of workmen you place yourself. For he who rules all things will certainly make a right use of you, and he will receive you among some part of the cooperators and of those whose labors conduce to one end.

  

But do not be such a part as the mean and ridiculous verse in the play, which Chrysippus speaks of.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

Some things will act for the sake of the good through their own awareness and choice, while others will do so only from ignorance and necessity. Each sort will play a certain part, and I must decide of which sort I will have myself be.

“We’ll all end up right where we need to be,” my uncle once told me. “The only difference will be if we’re glad and willing, or kicking and screaming.”

Accordingly, I will do my best to always discover the good in whatever situation I find myself. This is hardly easy, because we are so used to thinking that the conditions make the man, instead of the man making something of the conditions. Yet however confusing the specifics may seem at the time, I can know with certainty that every circumstance offers an opportunity to choose to act well. If I renounce my freedom to do so, I will still be of service, but only as an opportunity for someone else to choose to act well.

What a wonderful way to also appreciate everything for its own sake. Even the most thoughtless and vicious man is here, as he is right now, for a reason. He may help me to do what is right for myself through his own wrong, but most importantly for his sake, he may learn to do what is right for himself through his own wrong. Providence will not only permit, but will always encourage, the choice of willing and joyful cooperation.

The reference to Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school of Athens, is about passages in a drama that are in and of themselves about immoral or foolish things, but still end up serving the larger purpose of the whole story. I think, for example, of how a vicious character in a narrative may well commit terrible deeds, or a buffoon may stumble about aimlessly, but in a certain way that very vice or buffoonery will become the occasion for moral improvement. It may serve as a contrast, or teach a lesson, or provide the very problem to be resolved.

Now I should never wish to be immoral or foolish, but if I stubbornly insist on following that path, I will still serve a purpose, just like the villain or the comic relief in a play.

As a student of mine once observed, knowing how much I love comic books, “Poor Lex Luthor! He always has some dastardly scheme, and he only ends up giving Superman the chance to put it right!”

Yes, even Lex has his place. Still, don’t choose to be like Lex.

Written in 6/2007

Diogenes for the Day, 8/20/2018

And when Anaximenes was discoursing, Diogenes distracted his audience by producing some salt fish. 

This annoyed the lecturer, and Diogenes said, "An obol's worth of salt fish has broken up Anaximenes' lecture-class."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.41

Whatever the things that are not within your power, those that you assume to be good for you or evil, it must of necessity be that, if such a bad thing befalls you, or the loss of such a good thing, you will blame the gods, and hate men too, those who are the cause of the misfortune or the loss, or those who are suspected of being likely to be the cause.

And indeed we do much injustice, because we make a difference between these things.

But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God, or standing in a hostile attitude to man.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

Many of us will be quite familiar with that moment in life when we truly recognize that people will not always do right by us. We can sadly twist it into an attitude that people will never do any right by us at all, a constant sense of suspicion and distrust. We may come to think of too many of our circumstances as threatening, hoping only to stumble across an opportunity here or there that might offer some benefit. I am all too prone to this weakness.

The danger here is actually far deeper than only being negative. While the optimist may expect things to go well, and the pessimist may expect things to go poorly, the misleading assumption in either case is that things will “go” well or poorly at all. For the Stoic, the good and the bad are not within the events at all. They are morally indifferent to us, becoming only beneficial or harmful through our judgment and choices about them.

Hardship, poverty, disease, or death are not inherently evil. Gratification, affluence, health, or long life are not inherently good. All conditions offers us the opportunity to do something with them, and thereby to define ourselves by the only inherent human good, the exercise of virtue.

As soon as I think of a situation as helpful or harmful in itself, I will swing wildly between dependence and resentment. My sense of happiness will rise when the world treats me in one way, and it will fall when it treats me in another. It is best not to attribute any moral worth to things that happen at all, but to see things that happen as a means to acting for myself with moral worth.

Now how often have I jumped for joy when I have been granted pleasure, and how often have I squirmed in anger when I have been given pain? There is either a wallowing in gratification, and the desire for more consumption that proceeds from it, or there is a simmering rage, and the desire for payback that proceeds from it. I can trace most every wrong I have ever committed to a weakness in the face of these two impostors.

I will save myself from so much of my vice and misery if I do not make any distinction between the good and the bad in external events. I will strengthen myself in virtue and happiness if I concentrate only on the good and bad in my own thoughts and actions.

As soon as I commit myself to my own character, which is within my power, instead of my circumstances, which are outside of my power, I will no longer need to cast blame, or embrace anger, or act with hatred toward either God or my neighbor. Where I do not perceive fault, I will not demand correction. I will seek only to correct myself.

Written in 6/2007

Diogenes for the Day, 8/19/2018

He went up to Anaximenes, the famous rhetorician, who was fat, and said, "Let us beggars have something of your paunch. It will be a relief to you, and we shall get an advantage."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.40

Every instrument, tool, or vessel, if it does that for which it has been made, is good, and yet he who made it is not there.

But in the things that are held together by Nature there is within, and there abides in them, the power which made them.

Wherefore all the more is it fit to reverence this power, and to think, that, if you live and act according to its will, everything in you is in conformity to Intelligence. And thus also in the Universe the things that belong to it are in conformity to Intelligence.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

“I’m a Stoic, but I don’t believe in God. That’s an outdated concept, and it doesn’t fit the facts.”

Now many of my theist friends, especially those who are in love with the ideology of this or that “-ism”, will gnash their teeth at such a claim. I will smile, nod my head, and continue along the way.

If a man sees the effect, but denies the cause, will it help him if I berate him? If a man says he has reverence for Nature, but denies the order and Intelligence in Nature, will it help him if I burn him at the stake?

In life, there is no craft without the craftsman, and there is no tool without the man who made the tool. The man who made the tool may be long gone, no longer anywhere in sight. This does not, however, mean that he never existed to begin with.

Nature is a bit different. The Craftsman is not someone that was then. The Craftsman is someone that is now, because who He is cannot be separated from what He has made, from what He is making.

The old watchmaker analogy only goes so far. I always say that any analogy is inherently weak, precisely because it is an analogy, a similarity, and not an identity. If I am looking for God somewhere up there, I will not find Him. If I simply look around me, and within myself, why, what a pleasant surprise! Here He is! To employ another weak analogy, it’s like looking for my keys all over town, only to find they were in my pocket the whole time.

The Twelve Steps helped me to save my life. I know, the skeptics and the naysayers laugh, but that is because they do not understand the power of the human mind, and the power of the human mind to move beyond itself. It wasn’t because I was a drunk or a junkie, though I have been both at points in my life. It wasn’t AA, or NA. It was about something very different, something much deeper than that. I would ridicule the sense of tribalism, the sense of conformity, and I would call it all a bunch of voodoo for ignorant folks.

Then, one day, I sat down, with a sense of humility for a change, a humility that came from a desperate need. There I was, embracing the First Step.

And the Second Step immediately tripped me up.

“There is no God,” I said in anger. “He was never there for me. If He even made me, He left me to rot!”

And I only said that because I was looking for God in all the wrong places. He wasn’t up in the sky. He wasn’t a product the fancy priests sold me. He wasn’t some invisible force that decided if I was naughty or nice. He, if you choose that term, was immediately present. To be philosophical about it, certainly transcendent, in the sense that what orders the whole is above the whole, but most importantly, from a personal perspective, completely immanent, in the sense that what orders the whole is within the whole.

In my social service days, we had a client who had been clean and sober for twenty years. One of the priests I worked with, a rather self-important fellow, used to make fun of him, because his “God” was the bottle cap from the last beer he ever drank.

The fellow shrugged off the mockery, with the good will and good humor of a decent man.

“Of course that bottle cap isn’t God. It’s a bottle cap. I’m not the first guy to do it this way, and I won’t be the last. It’s just a thing, but it stands for something, and it helps me to remember what all of the things in my life actually mean.”

If I want to remember what a good man is, I try to remember him. If I want to remember “where” God is, I try to remember what he said to me.

Written in 5/2007

Diogenes for the Day, 8/18/2018

When Craterus, the Macedonian general, wanted Diogenes to come and visit him, "No," he replied, "I would rather live on a few grains of salt at Athens than enjoy sumptuous fare at Craterus's table."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.39

Adapt yourself to the things with which your lot has been cast.

And the men among whom you have received your portion, love them, but do it truly, sincerely.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

We now live in a world where Stoicism is treated as just another commodity, something to be bought and sold. I was recently approached by a fellow, who advised me to take his online courses. There would be a hefty fee, of course, but it would make me completely happy.

I knew it had all gone south when I was asked to buy a Stoic amulet. I didn’t know if I was supposed to wear it on my neck as bling, or display it on my office desk, but I knew it was a set of lies from the get go.

Philosophers of all types will write all sorts of things. Some of us write something, and we sometimes ask to be paid for an article or for a book. We make no real money off of it, of course. In twenty years, I have earned exactly $402.85 for everything I have ever written. Ask The IRS.

No, we now have hipster marketing people telling us that Stoicism is the way to go. Nature is no longer about Providence, apparently, but just about the “facts.” To be fair, if I was handsome, rich, and clever, I might also succumb to the temptation. If I’m a Stoic, they say, I’ll be successful in their world of business.

We also have academics that have realized how they can make a career for themselves by selling Stoicism by the pound. To be fair, if I play my game right, and kiss enough ass, I might also succumb to that temptation. If I’m a Stoic, they say, I might succeed in their world of scholarship.

But if you are truly a Stoic, neither money nor fame would ever move you. Don’t sell me courses. Don’t sell me amulets. Express your character, whether or not anyone else notices.

We are all so used to making the world our own, and now the business folks and the academics tell us that Stoicism is another way to do that.

But that isn’t Stoicism. See the passage above.

Accept, with respect and dignity, what Nature has given. Then show love, absolute love, with all sincerity and integrity.

Will it make me rich or famous? As soon as I ask that question, I am not a Stoic. I am not even a decent person to begin with. 

Written in 3/2017

 IMAGE: Buy this immediately. It will make you happy. You are a consumer, not a human being.

Diogenes for the Day, 8/17/2018

When breakfasting on olives amongst which a cake had been inserted, he flung it away and addressed it thus:

Stranger, betake thee from the princes' path!

And on another occasion thus:

He lashed an olive.

Boethius, The Consolation 2.13

. . . “How many are they, do you think, who would think themselves raised to heaven if the smallest part of the remnants of your good fortune fell to them? This very place, which you call a place of exile, is home to those who live here.

“Thus there is nothing wretched unless you think it to be so.

“And in like manner, he who bears all with a calm mind finds his lot wholly blessed. Who is so happy but would wish to change his estate, if he yields to an impatience of his lot? With how much bitterness is the sweetness of man's life mingled! For even though its enjoyment seems pleasant, yet it may not be surely kept from departing when it will.

“It is plain then how wretched is the happiness of mortal life that neither endures forever with men of calm mind, nor ever wholly delights the care-ridden.

“Why, then, mortal men, do you seek that happiness without, which lies within yourselves? You are confounded by error and ignorance.

“I will show you as shortly as I may, the pole on which turns the highest happiness. Is there anything that you value more highly than your own self? You will answer that there is nothing. If then you are master of yourself, you will be in possession of that which you will never wish to lose, and which Fortune will never be able to take from you.” . . .

—from Book 2, Prose 4

I have read the Consolation more times than I can count, and I find myself naturally reading it in the original Latin, instead of an English translation. I have taught it in many college classes, and I was once even foolishly told to vainly sell myself on the academic market as a “Boethius scholar”, but I have still hardly exhausted everything I can from this text.

What I have always learned from it, and will still continue to learn from it, is not about scholarly analysis. I leave that to people who are gifted as scholars. I am not interested merely in the themes, or the history of the concepts, or a clever publication to draw attention to myself. What I have learned from it is immediately practical, and fundamentally life changing.

I’ve seen various structural maps of the text, about how all the parts are apparently intended to fit together. All I know is that it is this very passage that is the major “turn” for me. Up until now, Boethius has worried about his state of affairs, and Lady Philosophy has offered various comforts about his suffering. Here she begins to do something very different. The time for pain management is now over. Here comes the real cure.

Many years ago, I wrote down my sense of this cure, in three parts, as Lady Philosophy first presents it here. It remains, for my purposes, as good a summation as ever:

1) Life is neither blessed nor miserable in itself. Whether it is good or bad depends entirely upon how I choose to think of it.

2) What will define my happiness never depends on what is outside of me, but depends on what is inside of me.

3) The most valuable thing I possess is myself, and I will lose nothing of true value as long as I maintain a rule over myself.

Now none of this is yet a complete argument, or a thorough account, but it is the beginning of a radical shift of attitude. It moves the center of attention from what passively happens, to what is actively done. It asks me to define myself by who I am, and not by my circumstances. It throws our very conception of happiness for a loop.

It shifts the very poles.

I think of how often I have fretted, agonized, and cried about the way of the world, and then I suddenly get it, that the way of the world wasn’t the problem, but my fretting, agonizing, and crying were the problem. Many have more than me, and they still want even more. Many have less than me, and they would be so happy to have what I have.

Yet as soon as I make it about having, I choose to surrender my life. Maybe the having doesn’t matter at all, as fickle, changeable, and deceptive as it is. Maybe the doing is the solution.

I am often criticized for drawing attention to the fact that this, the central moral argument of the Consolation, is fundamentally Stoic in its character. Yet if you know Stoicism, you will hopefully see that the three principles above could just as well have come from Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius. They are philosophical brothers.

Now it begins, the cure instead of the comfort, the actual remedy instead of the first aid, the solution instead of just considering the problem. There is no turning back from here. 

Written in 7/2015

Diogenes for the Day, 8/16/2018

When someone declared that life is an evil, he corrected him: "Not life itself, but living ill."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.38

Frequently consider the connection of all things in the Universe and their relation to one another. For in a manner all things are implicated with one another, and all in this way are friendly to one another.

 For one thing comes in order after another, and this is by virtue of the active movement and mutual cooperation and the unity of the substance.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

Already as a child, I would be troubled by the sight of suffering, or by instances of death, or by experiencing a loss in others. When I was eight years old, I came across a dead cat by the brook next to our school. Hardly able to commandeer a shovel from my teacher at that tender age, I started gathering rocks from around the park to build something of a little cairn for her. It became my task for the lunch hour, and, if necessary, right after school.

Some of the other children, always eager to mind someone else’s business, saw that I was up to something. A few of the most aggressive ones gathered around me, and they found my plan laughable. They took a branch, picked up the corpse with it, and ran around the playground. A fellow I thought of as my friend, who lived only a few houses away from me, chased after me with their atrocity, waving it in my face.

“Why don’t you kiss it if you love it so much?”

As with so many people of limited character, their sense of attention was also limited. They lost interest in their ridicule. They threw aside their plaything, and went on their ways. I finished my job the next morning, before school started. I hid it well. My little cairn was still there years later, though quite a bit worse for wear, when I would walk past it coming home from college classes.

My first thought as a child was why that animal had to die. Had she done something wrong? Did she deserve it for some reason? It all seemed quite unfair.

My second thought as a child, after I was laughed at, was why I had to be mistreated. Had I done something wrong? Did I deserve it for some reason? It also seemed quite unfair.

Yet the animal had died, perhaps from old age, or from disease, or from a predator. I later learned to understand that this was quite right, because the passing of one thing for the continuation of another is not a moral wrong. It is the way of Nature. It’s part of the cycle and the pattern of the whole. One thing will make way for something else, the old transformed into the new.

It took me longer to put myself in the same place. I have come, and I will go. There is no evil in it.

Is there evil in the intentions of others? Quite possibly, but that is not for me to decide. What will come my way, will come my way. What will come to another, will come to another. My judgment and my choice are to live with Nature. The judgment and choice of another may well be to live contrary to Nature.

In a beautiful irony, we will both end up playing our own parts. I, however, will have tried to cooperate with Nature, and another will have resisted Nature. I’d like to believe I got the better half of the deal.

Those of us given the power of judgment and choice are granted a great gift. We can struggle against who we are, and against the whole, and we will find only resentment and conflict.

Or we can embrace who we are, within the whole, and we will find satisfaction and peace. That choice, of whether to love or to hate, will make all of the difference.

Written in 5/2007

IMAGE: No, my pathetic pile of rocks didn't look anywhere near this good. But it's the thought that counts.

Diogenes for the Day, 8/15/2018

The stomach he called livelihood's Charybdis.

Kieslowski, Dekalog trailer

Official Trailer for the Remastered Version:

https://vimeo.com/178495846

A Fan Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYg5zswGG8Y

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6.37

He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything that has taken place from all eternity and everything that will be for time without end.

For all things are of one kin and of one form.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6 (tr Long)

I have become so familiar with the Stoic insistence that everything changes, how the continual process of generation, modification, and destruction is always present in life, that I can easily overlook the constant patterns of such change. Particular things will come and they will go, but the shared form by which they come and go remains universal. The players are different, so to speak, but the stories remain the same. Even as everything seems new, there is still really nothing new under the sun, because what is now has once been before, and will soon be again.

When I was very young, everything seemed quite static and stable, and it took the passage of time to recognize that what I thought would always be there would actually pass away, sometimes quite unexpectedly.

Then I noticed that things started to come around again, that the very same circumstances and hardships, the very same pleasures and pains that I had experienced before, were now being experienced by others.

I would smile when I saw people falling in love, because I had known that once. I would cry when I saw their hearts broken, because I had been there, too. I saw the same hope and despair, the same dreams and disappointments, the same commitments and betrayals. Different people were involved, of course, and the settings were different, but the situations were replaying themselves, and the choices people made, for good or bad, were on a sort of loop.

The same sun rises and sets over the world day after day, it shines brightly or is darkened through clouds, over all sorts of varied landscapes and new generations, but it is still the same sun. Yes, one day, I imagine, that sun will burn out, and then a different sun, but still very much like it, will rise and set on a different world, but still very much like it.

If I had the necessary gifts, I would write a piece of music chronicling the lives of varied people in three sequential decades, say the ‘70’s, ‘80’s, and ‘90’s, and make a film to go with it, sometimes zipping ahead in fast forward, sometimes slowing down to zoom in on this or that situation.

It could even, perhaps, have a single, unnoticed observer throughout the whole affair, who alone sees how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Someone like the nameless figure in Kieslowksi’s Dekalog, a set of short films where people struggle with the same old Ten Commandments now as they always have, and as long as there have ever been rational animals.

The longer I’ve walked through this world, the more I stumble across the same old problems, with the same old solutions, and people having to relearn it all over again. This is hardly mysterious, because it remains the same Nature, ordered by the same Providence, populated by human beings who may speak differently, have wildly diverging customs, and look quite distinct, but who ultimately all have the same needs. They seek to understand, and they seek to love, because they are all creatures of mind and will, even when they don’t recognize it at the time.

People have often told me that there are really only a certain number of plots possible in drama, whether they insist there are three, six, seven, or a few dozen. We may divide them in any number of ways, just like we can with any set of principles or rules, but it seems quite fitting that each story mirrors every other that preceded it, and predicts every other that will follow it.

Written in 5/2007

IMAGE: If you have never seen this set of films, stop now, and go watch them. If you still have an open mind and a caring heart, both will be deeply changed. Then, after you are done laughing, crying, and banging your fists on the table, watch them again.