Stoic Friday XLIV

Last Week

Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic

If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)

This week’s book:

Discourses and Selected Writings

How is it possible to discover a man’s duties from the designations which he bears?

Consider who you are. To begin with, a Man; that is, one who has no quality more sovereign than moral choice, but keeps everything else subordinate to it, and this moral choice itself free from slavery and subjection. Consider, therefore, what those things are from which you are separated by virtue of the faculty of reason. You are separated from wild beasts, you are separated from sheep.

Having the ability to decide what choices I make in reacting to the things out of my control is one of the main things that separate humans from animals. It is up to us how we use this ability or to not use it at all.

In addition to this you are a citizen of the world, and a part of it, not one of the parts destined for service, but one of primary importance;^[1] for you possess the faculty of understanding the divine administration of the world, and of reasoning upon the consequences thereof. What, then, is the profession of a citizen? To treat nothing as a matter of private profit, not to plan about anything as though he were a detached unit, but to act like the foot or the hand, which, if they had the faculty of reason and understood the constitution of nature, would never exercise choice or desire in any other way but by reference to the whole.

I think that living my life to the best of my ability and keeping my honor intact so I do not harm people in general is how to live as a good part in the society. I have known others that choose to put their primal urges above others and this usually doesn’t end well.

⁵Hence the philosophers well say that if the good and excellent man knew what was going to happen, he would help on the processes of disease and death and maiming, because he would realize that this allotment comes from the orderly arrangement of the whole, and the whole is more sovereign than the part, and the state more sovereign than the citizen. But as it is, seeing that we do not know beforehand what is going to happen, it is our duty to cleave to that which is naturally more fit to be chosen, since we are born for this purpose.

Sine we have no idea what fortune has in store for us, all we can do is handle it with aplomb, regardless which way external forces are moving us.

Next bear in mind that you are a Son. What is the profession of this character? To treat everything that is his own as belonging to his father, to be obedient to him in all things, never to speak ill of him to anyone else, nor to say or do anything that will harm him, to give way to him in everything and yield him precedence, helping him as far as is within his power.

I don’t follow this very well. It doesn’t make sense to defer to a low character person, just because he and my mom were married. I also am not impressed with my mom’s character, but she is not as self-destructive.

Next know that you are also a Brother. Upon this character also there is incumbent deference, obedience, kindly speech, never to claim as against your brother any of the things that lie outside the realm of your free moral choice, but cheerfully to give them up, so that in the things that do lie within the realm of your free moral choice you may have the best of it.^[2] For see what it is, at the price of a head of lettuce, if it so chance, or of a seat, for you to acquire his goodwill—how greatly you get the best of it there!

I got lucky with my brothers, we all all similar people in many ways and listening to our wives make fun of the things we do the same is hilarious.

¹⁰Next, if you sit in the town council of some city, remember that you are a councillor; if you are young, remember that you are young; if old, that you are an elder; if a father, that you are a father. For each of these designations, when duly considered, always suggests the acts that are appropriate to it. But if you go off and speak ill of your brother, I say to you, “You have forgotten who you are and what your designation is.” Why, if you were a smith and used your hammer amiss, you would have forgotten the smith you were; but if you forget the brother you are, and become an enemy instead of a brother, will you seem to yourself to have exchanged nothing for nothing? And if, instead of being a man, a gentle and social being, you have become a wild beast, a mischievous, treacherous, biting animal, have you lost nothing? What, must you lose a bit of pelf so as to suffer damage, and does the loss of nothing else damage a man?

I try to play my parts as a father, husband, worker, and whatever else is required of me as well as I can. I will not use my reasoned choice in ways that undermine my performance in these roles.

¹⁵Yet, if you lost your skill in the use of language or in music, you would regard the loss of it as damage; but if you are going to lose self-respect and dignity and gentleness, do you think that does not matter? And yet those former qualities are lost from some external cause that is beyond the power of our will, but these latter are lost through our own fault; and it is neither noble to have nor disgraceful to lose these former qualities, but not to have these latter, or having had them to lose them, is a disgrace and a reproach and a calamity. What is lost by the victim of unnatural lust? His manhood. And by the agent? Beside a good many other things he also loses his manhood no less than the other. What does the adulterer lose? He loses the man of self-respect that was, the man of self-control, the gentleman, the citizen, the neighbor.

I have always been very adamant that I did not want to get divorced, especially after I had kids. I have made many choices in life in order to keep this under my control, from who I married to how I behaved. I have not been a perfect husband, but I have been a good one.  Cheating on my wife would have destroyed this and I would have lost a lot of respect for myself. None of the potential for “fun” can ever come close to the value I get from being married for 29 years now.

What does the man lose who is given to anger? Something else. Who is given to fear? Something else. No one is evil without loss and damage. Furthermore, if you look for your loss in pelf*, all those whom I have just mentioned suffer neither injury nor loss; nay, if it so chance, they even get gain and profit, when, through some of their deeds just mentioned, they also acquire pelf. ²⁰But observe that if you make paltry pelf your standard for everything, not even the man who loses his nose will in your eyes have suffered an injury.—”Oh yes, he has,” someone says, “for his body is mutilated.”—Come now, and does the man who has lost his entire sense of smell lose nothing? Is there, then, no such thing as a faculty of the mind, the possession of which means gain to a man, and the loss, injury?—What faculty do you mean? Have we not a natural sense of self-respect?—We have.—Does not the man who destroys this suffer a loss, is he not deprived of something, does he not lose something that belonged to him? Do we not have a natural sense of fidelity, a natural sense of affection, a natural sense of helpfulness, a natural sense of keeping our hands off one another? Shall, therefore, the man who allows himself to suffer loss in such matters, be regarded as having suffered neither injury nor loss?

*Wealth or riches, especially when dishonestly acquired.

We all lose things that we value as life goes on. The things under my control are the only true wealth I own, all else is on loan. One day either I will lose my wife or she will lose me. I hope we don’t lose our kids, but that means they will lose us. I try to deal with all of this as a part of life, but losing y dog showed me that all of this is easier said than done.

Well, what then? Am I not to injure the man who has injured me?—First consider what injury is, and call to mind what you have heard the philosophers say. ²⁵For if the good lies in moral purpose, and the evil likewise in moral purpose, see if what you are saying does not come to something like this, “Well, what then? Since so-and-so has injured himself by doing me some wrong, shall I not injure myself by doing him some wrong?” Why, then, do we not represent the case to ourselves in some such light as that? Instead of that, where there is some loss affecting our body or our property, there we count it injury; but is there no injury where the loss affects our moral purpose? For the man who has been deceived or who has done some wrong has no pain in his head, or his eye, or his hip, neither does he lose his land. But these are the things we care for and nothing else; yet the question whether we are going to have a moral purpose characterized by self-respect and good faith, or by shamelessness and bad faith, does not so much as begin to disturb us, except only in so far as we make it a topic of trivial discussion in the classroom. ³⁰Therefore, so far as our trivial discussions go, we do make some progress, but, apart from them, not even the very least.

It is up to us how we respond to injuries caused by others. Getting angry and holding it does them no harm, but it can ruin our life. I still struggle with anger at my parents for choices they made when I was in high school. I don’t think of it often, but I realized when I was telling my son about some of my younger life that I still hold a grudge.

Music this week is Iron Maiden. After Bruce came back, they went on tour and released Rock in Rio. I saw them on this tour with Motorhead and Dio as the opening act. Never was a huge Motorhead fan, but Dio and Maiden were both very good.

The Clansman: This was a decent song with Blaze singing, but listening to the 2 versions, Bruce has so much more power and range.

Sign of the Cross: Ditto what I said about The Clansman.

Fear of the Dark: Excellent live version and the crowd is awesome.