If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)
This week’s book:
Discourses and Selected Writings
Disclaimer: I’m not your Supervisor. These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
Epictetus was born a slave around 50 ad. His owner was Epaphroditus, a rich freedman who was once a slave of Nero. Though he was a slave Epictetus was sent to study philosophy under Musonius Rufus.
Epictetus was lame and there are some stories it was caused by his master and others that it was caused by disease.
He was a freedman when all philosophers were banished from Rome in 89 by the Emperor Domitian. He then started his school in Greece, and had many students. He did not leave any writings from his lessons, but one of his students, Flavius Arrian, took notes and wrote the Discourses.
Epictetus did not marry, had no children, and lived to be around 80-85. In retirement, he adopted a child that would have been abandoned and raised him with a woman.
He died sometime around AD 135.
He might be my favorite Stoic teacher. I love his bare bones and very straight forward approach.
Following is a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of one of his lessons. Epictetus’s text appears in bold, my replies are in normal text.
Of Inconsistency Part II
10Have I the consciousness, proper to a man who knows nothing, that I do know nothing? Do I go to my teacher, like one who goes to consult an oracle, prepared to obey? Or do I, too, like a sniffling child, go to school to learn only the history of philosophy and to understand the books which I did not understand before, and, if chance offers, to explain them to others?”
I am still learning from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, and others. I am doing this for my own sanity and hoping to help someone else with living a freer life with Stoicism. I am definitely not doing it to impress others with my knowledge.
Man, at home you have fought a regular prize-fight with your slave, you have driven your household into the street, you have disturbed your neighbors’ peace; and now do you come to me with a solemn air, like a philosopher, and sitting down pass judgement on the explanation I gave of the reading of the text and on the application, forsooth, of the comments I made as I babbled out whatever came into my head?
If my own life is disordered, it makes any advice or opinions on how to live a good life easy to dismiss. I have known people that love to give advice on things that they do not do well at. That doesn’t necessarily make them hypocrites, nor does it automatically make the advice wrong.
You have come in a spirit of envy, in a spirit of humiliation because nothing is being sent you from home,[1] and you sit there while the lecture is going on, thinking, on your part, of nothing in the world but how you stand with your father or your brother! You reflect: “What are my people at home saying about me? At this moment they are thinking that I am making progress in my studies, and they are saying ‘He will know everything when he comes back home!’ I did want, at one time, I suppose, to learn everything before going back home, but that requires a great deal of hard work, and nobody sends me anything, and at Nicopolis they have rotten accommodations at the baths, and my lodgings are bad, and the school here is bad.”
It sounds like the student being addressed was not getting any care packages from home and seemed overly concerned with impressing his family instead of learning how to live without being concerned about other people’s impressions.
15And then people say: “Nobody gets any good from going to school.” Well, who goes to school—who, I repeat—with the expectation of being cured? Who with the expectation of submitting his own judgements for purification? Who with the expectation of coming to a realization of what judgements he needs? Why, then, are you surprised, if you carry back home from your school precisely the judgements you bring to it? For you do not come with the expectation of laying them aside, or of correcting them, or of getting others in exchange for them. Not at all, nor anything like it.
If I study Stoicism and don’t change any of my thoughts or actions, even though I recognize how it can help with my reactions and decision making, I have wasted that time. In order to learn a new and hopefully better way, I have to be willing to stop doing what I did in the past.
Look rather to this at least—whether you are getting what you came for. You want to be able to speak fluently about philosophic principles. Well, are you not becoming more of an idle babbler? Do not these petty philosophic principles supply you with material for making exhibitions? Do you not resolve syllogisms, and arguments with equivocal premises? Do you not examine the assumptions in The Liar[2] syllogism, and in hypothetical syllogisms? Why, then, are you still vexed, if you are getting what you came for?
Epictetus expected more of his students than to be able to repeat quotes and try to sound important to the masses. He also thought hypothetical arguments for the sake of discussion were a waste of time and energy and wanted the students to focus more on how to live properly.
“Yes, but if my child or my brother dies, or if I must die, or be tortured, what good will such things do me?” But was it really for this that you came? Is it really for this that you sit by my side? Did you ever really light your lamp, or work late at night, for this? Or when you went out into the covered walk did you ever set before yourself, instead of a syllogism, some external impression and examine this with your fellow-students? When did you ever do that?
I do not study Stoicism so I can learn what good I will get from things happening to me that I wish would not happen, it is to learn how to deal with the “bad” things in life. If this student had a real understanding of Stoicism then he would not ask that question. Epictetus is rebuking him for asking that question and not spending a lot of time working to get deeper clarity about the underlying core of being a Stoic. Not just trying to sound like one.
20And then you say, “The principles are useless.” To whom? To those who do not use them properly. For instance, eye-salves are not useless to those who rub them on when and as they ought, and poultices are not useless, jumping-weights are not useless; but they are useless to some people, and, on the other hand, useful to others.
Many things, like philosophy are only useful if used in the right way, under the correct circumstances. I could use the principle of living in harmony with nature as an excuse to steal, because it “feels natural”, but that would cause harm to those around me and throw my life out of balance when my weak character was revealed.
If you ask me now, “Are our syllogisms useful?” I will tell you that they are, and, if you wish, I will show how they are useful “Have they, then, helped me at all?” Man, you did not ask, did you? whether they are useful to you, but whether they are useful in general? Let the man who is suffering from dysentery ask me whether vinegar is useful; I will tell him that it is useful. “Is it useful, then, to me?” I will say, “No. Seek first to have your discharge stopped, the little ulcers healed.” So do you also, men, first cure your ulcers, stop your discharges, be tranquil in mind, bring it free from distraction into the school; and then you will know what power reason has.
I believe the basic principles of Stoicism are useful for me. I think that they would be useful to many people, but many don’t seem to understand how to get their brains to not focus on things outside of their control. If you cannot get your mind to do this, then all the studying in the world will not help. I am fortunate in this sense, it has always been easy for me to stop myself from worrying about things that I did not control. I was able to do this before I ever studied this philosophy. Stoicism has helped me to control my anger. This was something that I had struggled with for a few years.
Music this week is from Dio, I have had his solo CD’s for many years, but have recently discovered his older stuff with Rainbow.
Their first album was Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow and it feels like some of the song lyrics were definitely not written by Dio. He has an amazing voice, but him singing “If you don’t like rock and roll, then it’s too late now” in his style is a little jarring. The songs that fit his style are really good and are a precursor to progressive metal.
Man on the Silver Mountain. This was the only song from Rainbow I knew about, it still gets played on the Pittsburgh rock station.
Self Portrait I like this one, it’s moody and heavy.
Catch the Rainbow What a voice he had.
Sixteenth Century Greensleeves Story of an uprising against a tyrant who kidnapped a peasant girl.
Where have all the Firsters gone?
This old Firster is right here.
You need a firster?
Self reflection takes some time. Thanks Ron. I need a lot more practice and your articles are a good reminder.
“Epictetus expected more of his students than to be able to repeat quotes and try to sound important to the masses.” This puts him several steps above most of the modern pundits who call themselves philosophers…
We don’t really have modern philosophers. WE have people who have studied philosophy, to be sure. But we live in a hedonistic society that has no time for self reflection, and even less use for actually controlling emotions and behaviors.
What you have are people who pick little aspirational quotes that make them feel good about themselves and the choices they already want to make. They work backwards to produce the justification for the result they desire. Almost no one starts off from principle and works their way forward.
We are an emotion-based society. A very feminine society, if you ask me. The patriarchy is dead here.
So, Aristippus won?
Marx won.
Right, we have a triumphant proletariat! Bwahahahahahaha.
I like Warby’s term for it: the Dialectical Faith.
By that measure, neither China, the Soviet Union, North Korea nor Cuba are/were Marxist.
I guess you’re saying the same thing as the tankies – real communism hasn’t been tried yet?
I’m going to wager that 99% of our top men have read Marx. They’ve internalized it.
Even conservatives in our system are mostly operating under a paradigm where progressivism is the backbone of their own beliefs, and they’re too ignorant to realize it. Echoes back to that whole line about conservatives are just progressives who want to go the speed limit.
Good point, and I bet this could be expanded on to make an interesting article.
Well ackshually. There’s 40 some articles that are the precursor of a full book.
Cool, thanks for the link.
Terrortruck
Tesla’s Cybertruck has been widely derided. Its panel gaps are wide and amateurish, it’s prone to rust, and it looks like an ergonomic cheese grater. Its most serious flaw to date, though, has resulted in a recall of nearly 4,000 vehicles.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Association has recalled 3,878 Cybertrucks, which comprises any that were manufactured between November 13 of last year and April 4. At issue is the accelerator pedal: Its pad can become dislodged, resulting in the pedal becoming trapped in the trim above it. This is, needless to say, quite bad.
——-
The saving grace for Cybertruck owners, which the NHTSA notes as well, is that the brake overrides the accelerator. But in the moment when a nearly 7,000-pound electric vehicle unexpectedly starts going full speed, not every driver will necessarily be level-headed enough to take the right corrective action before something goes terribly wrong.
Who would think to hit the brakes to slow themselves down? Nobody, that’s who.
I think the hepcat technophiliacs at Wired have soured on Elon.
They used aircraft assembly techniques!
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2024/RCLRPT-24V276-7026.PDF
Aka unapproved soap to assemble the accelerator cover. It can come off and jam the accelerator. It’s a valid reason for a recall.
Also it’s really their supplier who fucked them and I bet they aren’t the only automotive OEM they deal with. However it’s Tesla so it’s big news. Either fuck you from the coal rollers or saving CA and the planet from the earth worshippers.
Remember this Lexus accelerator/ floor mat issue?
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/local/feds-confirm-stuck-gas-pedal-caused-lexus-crash/1886079/?amp=1
Yup. Brakes will stop normal passenger vehicles even with the accelerator to the floor.
https://www.businessinsider.com/faa-boeing-spirit-aerosystems-dawn-soap-door-seal-737-max-2024-3
And don’t forget 60 minutes and Audi.
It used to be guys would use dish soap to put their motorcycle grips on, because it dried like glue. Must be a different kind of soap.
Also- more examples of snap-together components with no mechanical fastener?
A carryover from the prior comment thread, a short vid on the furries stuff:
https://youtu.be/5d_VQspxw-s?si=5A_JCb8Q87EQvjiY
Damn idiot kids, take off the dog collar and the tail or you’re expelled but of course the admins are going after the kids who don’t like the unusual behavior.
From what I read, the furries were protesting because the other students objected to being assaulted by the furries (who would bite and scratch them).
I think that, in a healthy society, if some twink in a costume bites and scratches you, they get a beatdown. Maybe not on the spot, but soon.
Cop boldly protects us all from this deadly 18 year old high school girl.
She dared not to obey unquestionably.
How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked By the Police
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8
Also, a meme I made:
https://platedlizard.blogspot.com/2014/02/to-protect-and-serve.html
I’ve been in the back of a cop car 3 times in my life, but I was only in handcuffs one of those times. My cousin’s a cop. He was on the LAPD until he shot a maniac with a machete. I like cops and wanted to be one years ago. Some cops are dicks.
Tesla seemed to respond pretty quickly, instead of stonewalling (looking at you, Ford).
Dear TPTB,
Another article has been submitted for review. A recent comment touched a nerve on a subject near and dear to my heart. I tried to be stoic about it but succumbed to the temptation to express myself:
https://xkcd.com/386/
Classic.
I hope cannibalism will be featured in the next Sugar Free offering.
And Beau.
Poor Beau. Captured and eaten by cannibals in Iraq when he stormed the beaches at al Normandiya. Those burn pits were people. No joke!
Nice kitty
Poor thing. It just wanted to chow down on a poodle or two and head back to the forest.
I saw a dead mountain lion on the way to see the eclipse. I had no idea they could get hit by cars.
Had to have been sick. A normal one would run like the dickens and not be hit.
being tranquilized
Years after my wildlife capture and immobilization class and that phrase still bothers me. Good job, prof.
Trump now likely to face arson charges: https://www.whio.com/news/trending/man-lights-himself-fire-outside-courthouse-during-trump-trial-reports/NJC42U7QMNDYLCENTUD7LIFVDU/
o.O
Zealots being willing to set themselves on fire for his cause is yet further proof that Trump is left wing.
Place your bets! MAGA or Pali?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-apparently-sets-himself-on-fire-outside-courthouse-where-trump-is-on-trial/ar-AA1njU1v
Looks like GT beat ya.
update: Media is saying Trumpalo:
Probably a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes that this is a political show trial or something crazy like that.
He references the Simpsons in his manifesto.
*points to avatar*
https://www.engadget.com/fallout-has-already-scored-a-green-light-for-a-second-season-103013664.html
Nice.
I’m making my way through it very slowly, but I am liking the dark, somewhat absurd humor of it.
“I’m not going to make it.”
“It’s 20 miles through the wasteland, be we can do it. Together.”
“No you don’t understand, I just took a cyanide pill. Banana flavored. I don’t know why they weren’t more popular.”
…
I don’t get it.
I’ve seen this, but not farther. No spoilers please.
Same. I plan on watching a couple more this weekend.
It’s very campy tone but it somehow works.
I’m on episode 3.
“Yeah, well, the Wasteland has its own golden rule: Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every god damned time.”
In case anybody is interested, Capital One is offering 10 month CDs at 5.1% APY.
It’s a trap!
Gold! Gold! Gold!
Just don’t buy it from Costco and expect to turn it around a week.
CITBank and others have regular savings accounts at over 4.5% and you can take out your money at any time.
We’ve got some high rollers around these parts shopping for $1k blankets. I was just passing along the info.
I love how the guy minding his own business is the one breaching the peace, and not the rabid nutters who want to attack him.
He was asking for it by wearing a short skirt, I mean, yarmulke!
Turns out that’s a Polish word and most Jews prefer the term kippah.
“It’s called a droodle, son…”
-Homer Simpson, explaining Chanukah.
The more I think about it, the more it confuses me. I thought the fascists wanted Jews to be easily identifiable, like, you know, with a badge or something. Why are they hassling him for doing what fascists generally want?
They want identifiable *and* subservient. Ottoman Jews wore yellow stars (Hitler got the idea from the Ottoman Turks) and had to step aside whenever a gentile was coming their way.
***
The practice of wearing special clothing or markings to distinguish Jews and other non-Muslims (dhimmis) in Muslim-dominated countries seems to have been introduced in the Umayyad Caliphate by Caliph Umar II in the early 8th century. The practice was revived and reinforced by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (847–861), subsequently remaining in force for centuries.[2] A genizah document from 1121 gives the following description of decrees issued in Baghdad:
Two yellow badges [are to be displayed], one on the headgear and one on the neck. Furthermore, each Jew must hang round his neck a piece of lead weighing [3 grammes] with the word dhimmi on it. He also has to wear a belt round his waist. The women have to wear one red and one black shoe and have a small bell on their necks or shoes.[3]
***
CWABOA
Yup. In order to prevent the victim form being raped, they arrested her.
Orwell weeps.
Taharrash in Arabic means [group] harassment. It’s a euphemism for gang rape. Some poor CNN reporter was a victim of that in Egypt during the Arab Spring.
They don’t do so to stifle free speech or to limit the right to protest…and yet, that is the effect.
Has anyone come up with an end game for the Biden administration’s redefinition of title IX to apply to gender identity instead of biological sex?
I just can’t figure this one out at all. I mean, I get that a small group of passionate activists is for this….. but it pretty much eviscerated title IX and a whole slew of basic freedoms along with it. Someone with better insight than me, please explain this one…
It seems stupid to me but the media won’t talk about it and Biden’s upward move in the polls will continue.
Biden is moving up in the polls?
I think there are a couple of things going on here:
(1) Our Masters are truly locked into a bubble where doing stuff like this is good, and just, and right, and they can’t imagine more than a fringe doesn’t agree with them.
(2) Our Masters know full well that votes don’t matter, only ballots matter, and they have warehouses full of the things if they need them.
I predict a bunch of pissed off parents and more conservative school board election wins.
More for the FBI to do, then. Those MAGAts aren’t going to surveil and arrest themselves, now, are they?
Moving up in every poll I’ve seen.
I’m not sure I believe the “warehouses full of ballots” theory but if we are that far gone I guess this definitely doesn’t matter.
Would you believe tractor trailers full of ballots?
But it could never happen today!
They’ve done it. It’s indisputable presidential elections have been stolen in the past. The system is more prone, not less so, to fuckery today than it was. And the stakes are higher than ever with trillions on the table.
Well, consider that ballots are mass produced well in advance of the election in very large numbers because they will be mailed out in very large numbers, in a completely untraceable way that is well known to result in ballots being unaccounted for. Those ballots are stored somewhere before they are mailed or delivered to the polls, and for that matter after they are used. I suppose somebody being tactically autistic could object that they aren’t technically stored in warehouses, but I think it’s indisputable that there are a large number of ballots that are simply . . . available and essentially unauditable due to junk mail voting.
I would note that not a single audit that was conducted after the 2020 election was actually passed, as in the election was demonstrated to be clean. They all found significant problems, but generally due to shoddy processes and outright obstruction, couldn’t “prove” the result was changed. That’s still a failed audit, because it’s not the auditor’s job to prove something is up, it’s your job to prove that everything is as it should be.
The end game is a boot stomping on your face.
The point is to invoke Title IX to further any policy goal and punish wrong thinking. Need a rape accusation but don’t have evidence? Title IX. Need to break a Christian college or school? Title IX.
It can mean whatever they want whenever and change definitions daily.
“We don’t really have modern philosophers.”
I nominate Dave Chappell as an example philosopher.
Had another drug test, this one by saliva. I had to hold the swab in my mouth for 7 minutes but got the results in 5 minutes. It made me wonder why the Army doesn’t do that. Probably because there is an entrenched bureaucracy for urinalysis.
So what did you score on the test?
https://images.app.goo.gl/fAfxg4iYhNj46Vhh7
Two lines, which either means I’m clean or pregnant.
I thought two lines meant you had covid?
Funny you mention that. Back in the days when many people were sending each other pics of COVID tests, there was a steep increase in pregnancy panic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aISNDBc3E4A
damn, better one here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neaQzdX00eo
Dan Castelleneta’s screams are just [chef’s kiss].
Hopefully zero is not a failure.
Peeing into a cup in front of another dude makes the process more dehumanizing and lets the military show its soldiers just how much they mean to them.
“Right handed guys don’t hold it with their left.”
Ah, the pecker checker. One of the noblest and most esteemed roles in America’s armed forces…
Do they give the lady-soldiers a funnel?
No, just a bigger cup.
Piss funnels are a thing though. Looks like GoGirl is the leading brand.
Give women the right to vote, and eventually they’ll want to pee standing up.
The pee-pee taster. Being the observer was a rotating detail.
After I made sergeant, I got assigned to the UA detail. Unfortunately, my first hurdle was getting a corpulent, unpleasant woman to help me with the forms. As soon as I entered the ASAP office and made eye contact with her, she said “I don’t like the look on your face. Go wait 10 minutes.” In the end, I never got enrolled in the course because I got shoved into the insane asylum.
When I got out, I briefly went AWOL, which is a whole other story. But after that, when I went back to the ASAP office to return a training CD, that fat bitch was nowhere to be seen.
The Army did do this for a time, but the test is less accurate. Also, recruiters were using it to see if they could get a sketchy guy across the line, which caused some issues.
There is a specific nano-particle level that makes the legal defense of incidental contact (Some guy did it in the bar next to me, I ate a poppy seed on a bagel, I tripped and fell face first into a prostitute’s ass) a moot argument. You aren’t supposed to get to the set levels without actually using.
Today for lunch/dinner, I had pizza with mushroom, anchovies, and pineapple. I just thought everyone here should know that.
But was it deep dish??
No, Little Caesar’s. Pizza! Pizza!
Reduplication! Reduplication! is used for plurals and comparative adjectives in some languages.
Little Caesar’s does a Detroit Style pizza that isn’t half bad.
Noted, and thanks.
I didn’t know Little Caesar’s had anchovies. I get their basic pepperoni sometimes because it’s such a great price. $6.99 for pickup here.
Random thought: China’s grudge against Taiwan is kind like the Muslim grudge against Jews. They hate it that there’s a smaller, more successful version of themselves still being free to gambol.