Seneca, Moral Letters 70.4

Scribonia, a woman of the stern old type, was an aunt of Drusus Libo. This young man was as stupid as he was well born, with higher ambitions than anyone could have been expected to entertain in that epoch, or a man like himself in any epoch at all. 
 
When Libo had been carried away ill from the senate-house in his litter, though certainly with a very scanty train of followers—for all his kinsfolk undutifully deserted him, when he was no longer a criminal but a corpse—he began to consider whether he should commit suicide, or await death. 
 
Scribonia said to him: "What pleasure do you find in doing another man's work?" 
 
But he did not follow her advice; he laid violent hands upon himself. And he was right, after all; for when a man is doomed to die in two or three days at his enemy's pleasure, he is really "doing another man's work" if he continues to live. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 70 
 
My knowledge of Roman history is sadly not as thorough as I would like it to be, so I had to look up the story of Drusus Libo in the Annals of Tacitus. 
 
At first glance, Seneca may seem to approve of Libo’s decision to take his own life, if for no other reason than he was, at least, redeeming himself of shame and speeding on the inevitable, but when I read the account in Tacitus, I found myself more confused than before. It simply goes to show how our human situation always admits of challenging subtleties, and it is never so easy to unravel a man’s inner motives. 
 
There seems to be a consensus that Libo was neither a thoughtful nor a principled man; he had, after all, permitted himself to be lured by Firmius Catus into flirting with treacherous ambitions against the Emperor, while also falling into a panic when his scheming enemies exposed him. Was it prudence and courage that drove Libo, or was it rather desperation and fear? This makes all the difference, and it is the most important lesson I take away from this letter. 
 
Did the Emperor Tiberius really mean it when he later said that he would have spared Libo’s life, or was he merely putting on another show? Whatever the wretched man’s ultimate fate, it would not have been pleasant, and this is where anyone in a similar situation must take stock of his priorities. Perhaps Scribonia was just being ornery, and perhaps Libo was just being obtuse, and it goes to show why nothing is as simple as it appears. 
 
Instead of speaking either for Libo or for Seneca’s estimation of him, I can only speak for myself. I wish to say that I would have chosen rather differently than Libo did, and yet I am forced to remember all the times I have acted recklessly out of distress. 
 
From the comfort of my rocking chair, I now propose that facing my trial and taking my punishment, without any pathetic pleading or bitter complaint, would give me the opportunity to finally stop being a spoiled brat: a reform at the last moment is no less of a noble deed. But please get back to me if I actually find myself in such circumstances. 
 
I am misdirecting my attention if I am worried about what another man’s work should be, when my true task is taking responsibility for my own work. I only equivocate when I am trying to pass the buck. 

—Reflection written in 8/2013 

Cosmos 9

Nature 57

IMAGE by Nandhu Kumar 

Stockdale on Stoicism 44

An encapsulated history of how this bifurcated prison philosophy fared is this: The propaganda footage and interviews started to backfire. Smart American college men were salting their acts with double-meaninged sentences, gestures read as funny-obscene by Western audiences, and practical jokes. 

One of my best friends, tortured to give names of pilots he knew who had turned in their wings in opposition to the war, said there were only two: Lieutenants Clark Kent and Ben Casey. That went on the front page of the San Diego Union, and somebody sent a copy back to the government in Hanoi. 

As a result of that friendly gesture from a fellow American, Nels Tanner went into three successive days of rope torture, followed by 123 days in leg stocks—all while isolated, of course. 

So after several of these stunts, which cost the Vietnamese much loss of face, North Vietnam resorted to getting its propaganda from only the relatively few Americans they could trust not to act up—real loners who, for different reasons, never joined the prisoner organization, never wanted to get into the tap-code network, well-known sleazeballs we came to call "finks." 

The great mass of the other Americans in Hanoi were, by all standards, "honorable prisoners," but that is not to say that there was anything like a homogeneous prison regime we all shared. People like to think that because we were all in the Hanoi prison system, we had all these common experiences. It's not so. 

These differing regimes became marked when our prison organization stultified the propaganda efforts of this two-headed monster called the "Prison Authority." The North Vietnamese turned to vengeance against the leadership of my organization and to an effort to break down the morale of the others baiting them with an amnesty program in which they would compete for early release by being compliant to North Vietnam 's wishes. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison 

Seneca, Moral Letters 70.3

That is why I regard the words of the well-known Rhodian as most unmanly. This person was thrown into a cage by his tyrant, and fed there like some wild animal. And when a certain man advised him to end his life by fasting, he replied: "A man may hope for anything while he has life."
 
This may be true; but life is not to be purchased at any price. No matter how great or how well-assured certain rewards may be, I shall not strive to attain them at the price of a shameful confession of weakness. Shall I reflect that Fortune has all power over one who lives, rather than reflect that she has no power over one who knows how to die?
 
There are times, nevertheless, when a man, even though certain death impends and he knows that torture is in store for him, will refrain from lending a hand to his own punishment, to himself, however, he would lend a hand. It is folly to die through fear of dying. The executioner is upon you; wait for him. Why anticipate him? Why assume the management of a cruel task that belongs to another? Do you grudge your executioner his privilege, or do you merely relieve him of his task?
 
Socrates might have ended his life by fasting; he might have died by starvation rather than by poison. But instead of this he spent thirty days in prison awaiting death, not with the idea "everything may happen," or "so long an interval has room for many a hope" but in order that he might show himself submissive to the laws and make the last moments of Socrates an edification to his friends. What would have been more foolish than to scorn death, and yet fear poison? 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 70 
 
I suppose every time and place has its own version of the classic saying, “Where there’s life, there’s hope!” There is truth to it, of course, in the sense that there may always be a chance for the state of affairs to become more pleasant, and yet what will I need to surrender of myself in order to play such odds? 
 
If I am asked to take on the role of the liar, or the coward, or the traitor for the sake of my continued comfort, it might be better to gracefully fold my hand. 
 
I find myself frustrated when people insist that “things” will surely get better, because sometimes the circumstances, for so many countless souls, will surely grow markedly worse. I still remember, however, why my inner attitude can always embrace the good, even as I do not expect Fortune to magically obey my preferences. Nature triumphs when I do the right thing, whatever the weight of the outer consequences. 
 
Seneca is not going to provide a color-by-numbers or one-size-fits-all set of instructions for living and dying: each conscience, hopefully well-informed, must follow its own judgments. This letter provides vivid examples both of those who stayed and of those who departed, and in each case they did so by applying principles to practice in their own particular dilemmas. 
 
It is not my place to condemn any of them, just as it is not their place to condemn me; only God knows whether our hearts are truly pure. 
 
The general rule, once again, must be to ask if living any longer will violate my power of living with virtue. We will soon see stories of those who chose to cut their lives short, but I think it interesting how Seneca first proceeds with a consideration of Socrates, who thought it best to patiently await his execution rather than attempt an escape or steal the jailer’s thunder. 
 
While I would refer you directly to Plato’s Crito and Phaedo for a more thorough account, I find myself drawn to the common themes of service and obedience. Socrates decided to respect his friends by sharing his wisdom and fellowship with them in those final days, to respect his children by providing them with an example of courage, and to respect the laws of Athens, for even if his sentence was unjust, he would not merely respond to one injustice by committing another. 
 
Finally, Socrates wished to serve Providence, which always knows the right time or place, and as long as he could still do what is good, without being asked to perform any evil, he had not yet been called home to the Divine. The Master asks us to hold fast at our posts, until that point when to remain would itself be a betrayal of his commands. 
 
If Socrates ever feared the effects of the poison, he certainly feared the prospect of vice all the more. 

—Reflection written in 8/2013 

Delphic Maxims 57

Τέχνῃ χρῶ 

Employ your skill 

IMAGE: John Theodore Heins, Allegory of Trade (1743) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 70.2

Accordingly, the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can. He will mark in what place, with whom, and how he is to conduct his existence, and what he is about to do. 
 
He always reflects concerning the quality, and not the quantity, of his life. As soon as there are many events in his life that give him trouble and disturb his peace of mind, he sets himself free. And this privilege is his, not only when the crisis is upon him, but as soon as Fortune seems to be playing him false; then he looks about carefully and sees whether he ought, or ought not, to end his life on that account. 
 
He holds that it makes no difference to him whether his taking-off be natural or self-inflicted, whether it comes later or earlier. He does not regard it with fear, as if it were a great loss; for no man can lose very much when but a driblet remains. It is not a question of dying earlier or later, but of dying well or ill. And dying well means escape from the danger of living ill. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 70 
 
Whenever I am already starting out from a bad location, my later steps will inevitably veer me even further off course. If, for example, I say I am following Stoicism, and yet I continue to seek out worldly rewards, my efforts will put me in entirely the wrong place. Likewise, if I set out to live a good life, but I still choose survival over sacrifice, I may gain more years at the expense of my conscience. 
 
As with the angry tribalism now so sadly evident in arguments about abortion or guns, I rarely come across someone who isn’t fanatically bound to either saving lives at all costs or permitting people to end their lives at all costs. For the one faction, suicide is always a grave sin, while for the other faction, a life is only worth living if it continues to feel convenient or gratifying. 
 
I will be disappointed if I expect Seneca to root for either team. Stoicism, like any of the Wisdom Traditions, works from the principle that the only absolute good for man is the exercise of the virtues, such that all other circumstances, however attractive they might appear, are relative in value. I should never begin by looking for pleasure over pain, fame over disgrace, wealth over poverty, or health over sickness—and yes, even life over death. 
 
Will living any longer help me to act with greater character? Then I intend to stay put for another day. Will living any longer be a hindrance to retaining my integrity? Then I may have to bid you farewell. A problem will solely arise when I do not cherish the virtues above all else, and so I try to compromise between the superior and the inferior. 
 
In other words, will increasing the quantity of my time violate the quality of my convictions? I am sure that many will be glad to offer their advice on the matter, though the final decision must be mine alone. If I can manage to be honest and humble, I best know my own intentions, I best know my own strengths and weaknesses, and I best know my own position within the circumstances. 
 
No, this does not mean throwing myself from a cliff because I am melancholy, as my sadness can still serve me to become a better man, nor does it ever mean desiring death for its own sake, as death is rightly to be treated with indifference. 
 
Is the man who hurls himself on the grenade, in order to save his fellows in the trench, a cowardly suicide? Is the woman who casts aside her medicine, in the knowledge that no benefit will come to anyone by dragging out the inevitable, a victim of her fear? No, both are about as brave, and as free, as a person could possibly be. 
 
In one way or another, when Fortune threatens to restrict my moral liberty, Nature then offers the option of departing with a righteous dignity. This seems like nonsense to those who cling to life in desperation, which is the true cowardice, or who allow themselves to be ruled by their passions, which is the true slavery. 

—Reflection written in 8/2013 

IMAGE: Anonymous French, The Wheel of Fortune (15th century) 

Henry David Thoreau 3

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls—the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts 

IMAGE: William Powell Frith, Poverty and Wealth (1888) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 8

Nothing can be preserved that is not good. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, In Praise of Books 

Seneca, Moral Letters 70.1

Letter 70: On the proper time to slip the cable  
 
After a long space of time, I have seen your beloved Pompeii. I was thus brought again face to face with the days of my youth. And it seemed to me that I could still do, nay, had only done a short time ago, all the things which I did there when a young man. We have sailed past life, Lucilius, as if we were on a voyage, and just as when at sea, to quote from our poet Vergil, 
 
“Lands and towns are left astern,”
 
even so, on this journey where time flies with the greatest speed, we put below the horizon first our boyhood and then our youth, and then the space which lies between young manhood and middle age and borders on both, and next, the best years of old age itself. Last of all, we begin to sight the general bourne of the race of man.
 
Fools that we are, we believe this bourne to be a dangerous reef; but it is the harbor, where we must someday put in, which we may never refuse to enter; and if a man has reached this harbor in his early years, he has no more right to complain than a sailor who has made a quick voyage. For some sailors, as you know, are tricked and held back by sluggish winds, and grow weary and sick of the slow-moving calm; while others are carried quickly home by steady gales. 
 
You may consider that the same thing happens to us: life has carried some men with the greatest rapidity to the harbor, the harbor they were bound to reach even if they tarried on the way, while others it has fretted and harassed. To such a life, as you are aware, one should not always cling. For mere living is not a good, but living well. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 70 

Though I still catch myself reaching for it regularly, I do try to avoid using the analogy of life as a voyage. This is not because it isn’t fitting, which it most certainly can be, but rather because it has become so hackneyed, and we have made it all the more confusing with the addendum of how it is the journey that counts, not the destination. 
 
While happiness is hardly a place, or even a state, we are misguided when we fail to seek progress, or deny that there is any ultimate aim or purpose. There is most certainly an end to the trip, in that it has both a goal and a termination. 
 
Many things will pass away, and many new ones will take their place, and finally there will be a conclusion to all the rushing about. I am often tempted to think with nostalgia about the vitality of my youth, yet then I remember why the departure of what was then is a condition for the awareness that is now. The number of years, and whether I desired more or less time, is quite secondary to my love of living with integrity, not whether I came to it sooner or later. 
 
If it is death I fear, approaching the harbor will fill me with anxiety, but if it is character I seek, I will be glad to have undertaken the passage with excellence. I can recall the parties, or the vacations, or the romantic moments I never wanted to end, and it sadly meant I was fixated on the quantity over the quality: the beauty is in the depth of the experience, where each instance is complete, and so is not increased by stretching out the duration. 
 
Within such a context, this letter turns to an uncomfortable topic, about when it might be the right time to die, and more specifically about whether what we call a suicide, however broadly or narrowly we choose to employ the term, is ever justified. 
 
I will be sorely disappointed, however, if I expect Seneca to provide me with a quick-fix solution, easy to parrot but short on any genuine understanding. Instead, the many examples he offers will point to the necessity of guiding principles on what truly defines a good life, and how the circumstances of life and death relate to that intention. 
 
If I do not begin with a reflection on why I am here, I cannot properly consider how long I should bother to stay. 

—Reflection written in 8/2013 

IMAGE: J.M.W. Turner, Fishing Boats Entering Calais Harbor (c. 1803) 

Death Listens

Hugo Simberg, Death Listens (1897) 

Frost

Hugo Simberg, Frost (1895) 

The Wind Blows

Hugo Simberg, The Wind Blows (1897) 

The Stream of Life

Hugo Simberg, The Stream of Life (1896) 

At the Crossroads

Hugo Simberg, At the Crossroads (1896) 

The Wounded Angel

Hugo Simberg, The Wounded Angel (1903) 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 245

As by rubbing gold and brass on a touchstone, their real worth becomes known; so a sincere Sâdhu and a hypocrite are found out when they are rubbed through the touchstone of persecution and adversity. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 69.3

If you will give ear to my advice, ponder and practice this—how to welcome death, or even, if circumstances commend that course, to invite it. There is no difference whether death comes to us, or whether we go to death. 
 
Make yourself believe that all ignorant men are wrong when they say: "It is a beautiful thing to die one's own death." 
 
But there is no man who does not die his own death. What is more, you may reflect on this thought: no one dies except on his own day. You are throwing away none of your own time; for what you leave behind does not belong to you. Farewell. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 69 
 
Over the years, I have gradually come to appreciate how Seneca can take most any topic and relate it back to the problem of mortality; I now smile instead of squirming uncomfortably. Is not death, after all, the final form of rest, and is not the fear of death the worst sort of restlessness? We desire or dread all the wrong things, and so we fail to find tranquility within our own nature. 
 
Some “philosophers”, those who dwell upon their own anxieties, regard dying as an existential threat, and this is because they would rather suffer alone than be of service to Providence. The cessation of my existence is but a condition for the fulfillment of my essence, and once I focus on living well, I am no longer so fixated on merely living. Excise the moral center from a man, and he is now just the shell of a man. 
 
Seneca is critical of a phrase that at first seems harmless: surely it is good to die on our own terms, just as it is good to live on our own terms? The danger may be subtle, but it is nevertheless grave: we are not the masters of our circumstances, only the masters of our judgments, and therefore it is not up to us to pick and choose the setting for our deaths, even as we will choose the attitude toward our deaths. 
 
In other words, every time to die is the right time to die, and there is never a wrong time, though not every man embraces it with character, and many men demean themselves by bargaining about the provisions. As Epictetus said, the Author chooses the particulars of the role and its duration, while the actor is challenged to play it to the best of his ability; when something has only been lent to us, we have no claim to decide when it will be taken away. 
 
Discontent is a result of a failed expectation, and thus no one who relies on what he knows with certainty to be his own must ever feel troubled or dissatisfied. 

—Reflection written in 8/2013 

IMAGE: Hugo Simberg, The Garden of Death (1896) 

Stoic Snippets 242

How plain does it appear that there is not another condition of life so well suited for philosophizing as this in which you now happen to be. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.7 

Seneca, Moral Letters 69.2

Just as he who tries to be rid of an old love must avoid every reminder of the person once held dear (for nothing grows again so easily as love), similarly, he who would lay aside his desire for all the things which he used to crave so passionately, must turn away both eyes and ears from the objects which he has abandoned. The emotions soon return to the attack; at every turn they will notice before their eyes an object worth their attention. 
 
There is no evil that does not offer inducements. Avarice promises money; luxury, a varied assortment of pleasures; ambition, a purple robe and applause, and the influence which results from applause, and all that influence can do. Vices tempt you by the rewards which they offer; but in the life of which I speak, you must live without being paid. 
 
Scarcely will a whole lifetime suffice to bring our vices into subjection and to make them accept the yoke, swollen as they are by long-continued indulgence; and still less, if we cut into our brief span by any interruptions. Even constant care and attention can scarcely bring anyone undertaking to full completion. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 69 
 
This section of the letter hits very close to home, since I made myself quite the expert on being consumed by unrequited love. To this day, I will still berate myself for avoiding the old neighborhood to keep her out of my thoughts, when I should really be grateful for the chance to avoid further temptation. No good will come from dwelling on past failures. 
 
Passions can be tricky things, for they speak to us so forcefully, even as they cannot do anything to explain themselves. To understand how and why I feel, and to provide any meaning to their movements, is the work of the mind, that defining power of my humanity which I too often leave neglected. In the absence of judgements to rein them in, the desires will run wild, and there is not a vice or a misery in this life that is not a consequence of lazy thinking. 
 
There is no shame to feeling with great intensity, yet there is nothing but slavery in feeling without understanding. Love fulfills, while lust destroys. I must only examine the impression to reveal its false promises, to recognize why the things that first present themselves as good are hardly good at all. 
 
Wealth is only as beneficial as the conscience that guides it. The value of a pleasure is relative to the merit of the action from which it proceeds. Fame is all about the opinions of others, and it says nothing about our own virtues. 
 
If the practice of self-mastery sounds like a work to occupy all of our years, that is precisely the point. There is no greater achievement than leaving this world with the head firmly in charge of the gut, through the medium of the heart. There is no time for being distracted by fake rewards, when the only reward that counts is a soul at peace with itself. 

—Reflection written in 8/2013 

IMAGE: Władysław Podkowiński, Frenzy of Exultations (1893)