Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII Part IX Part X Part XI Part XII
How to Think Like a Roman Emperor
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 is 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 italicized in bold, my replies are in normal text.
Of Freedom Part XIII
But what say you, philosopher? The tyrant calls upon you to say something that is unworthy of you. Do you say it, or not say it? Tell me.—Let me think about it.—Think about it now? But what were you thinking about when you were attending lectures? Did you not study the questions, what things are good, and what bad, and what are neither good nor bad?—I did.—What conclusions were approved, then, by you and your fellows?—That things righteous and excellent were good, things unrighteous and disgraceful bad.—Life is not a good thing, is it?—No.—Nor death a bad thing? —No.—Nor imprisonment?—No.—But ignoble speech and faithless, and betrayal of a friend, and flattery of a tyrant, what did you and your fellows think of these?—We thought them evil.—What then? You are not thinking about the question now, nor have you thought about it and considered it hitherto. Why, what kind of inquiry is it, to raise the question whether it is fitting, when it is in my power to get for myself the greatest goods, not to get for myself the greatest evils! A fine and necessary question, forsooth, that requires a great deal of deliberation. Why are you making fun of us, man? Such an inquiry is never made.
If the person Epictetus was speaking about here was a true Stoic then there would be no need to think about a response, it would automatically be answered that he could not say something unworthy of himself. I struggle with this and while I seem unable to lie or not answer a direct question, I can ignore things and not stand up for my beliefs at work.
135Besides, if you had honestly imagined that disgraceful things were bad, and all else indifferent, you would never have approached this inquiry, no, nor anything near it; but you would have been able to settle the question on the spot, by intuition, just as in a case involving sight. Why, when do you stop to “think about it,” if the question is, Are black things white, or, Are heavy things light? Do you not follow the clear evidence of your senses? How comes it, then, that now you say you are thinking it over, whether things indifferent are more to be avoided than things bad? But you do not have these judgements; on the contrary, imprisonment and death do not appear to you to be indifferent, but rather the greatest evils, and dishonorable words and deeds are not bad in your sight, but rather things that do not concern us.
While it is obvious that some things are external and others internal as it relates to what we control, somethings are so unpleasant that it can be hard to accept them with equanimity. If I was truly a Stoic, I wouldn’t care if I lost my job when I had to take the COVID shot. I did stipulate that under no circumstances would I take the MNRA ones and took the J&J. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t even conceded that much, but when you have a wife, kid, pets, and a house that you are the sole provider for, it can make things difficult.
For that is the habit which you developed from the start. “Where am I?” you say. “In school. And who are listening to me? I am talking in the company of philosophers. But now I have left the school; away with those sayings of pedants and fools!” That is how a friend is condemned on the testimony of a philosopher,[32] that is how a philosopher turns parasite, that is how he hires himself out for money, that is how at a meeting of the senate a man does not say what he thinks, while within his breast his judgement shouts loudly,
While it is easy to study Stoicism and think through hypothetical situations, living in the real world can be more difficult. I have used Stoicism to greatly improve my state of mind and in the course of that improved my external life also. I cant remember the last time working on my Saab or Ram that I got actually angry. I do still get frustrated sometimes, but I am able to break the cycle before I get irrationally angry at an inanimate object.
140no cold and miserable remnant suspended from idle argumentation as by a hair, but a strong and serviceable judgement, and familiar with its business by having been trained in action. Watch yourself, and see how you take the word—I do not say the word that your child is dead; how could you possibly bear that?—but the word that your oil is spilled, or your wine drunk up. Well might someone stand over you, when you are in this excited condition, and say simply, “Philosopher, you talk differently in the school; why are you deceiving us? Why, when you are a worm, do you claim that you are a man?”
Epictetus understands that losing a child is not an easy thing to deal with, no matter how Stoic you are. When my dog died, I was a wreck for about a day. When my Mom died it was similar, but not as intense because we all knew it would be happening, though not exactly then, but 6 more months would have been a surprise. In contrast, dealing with normal inconveniences should be easy.
If I was truly a Stoic, I wouldn’t care if I lost my job when I had to take the COVID shot. I did stipulate that under no circumstances would I take the MNRA ones and took the J&J. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t even conceded that much, but when you have a wife, kid, pets, and a house that you are the sole provider for, it can make things difficult.
I wasn’t in your situation. I wasn’t getting the shot no matter what. I found a new job. Unfortunately, that company went belly up. But, I still haven’t gotten the shot.
When my Mom died it was similar, but not as intense because we all knew it would be happening
Similar with me with my mom.
I was in a similar situation, not for my job, but the hospital that sponsored my hockey team required the vax. I did what ron did, I took the one-time J&J, and I had to hunt that down and drive to the next county. Our A team goalie refused, and hasn’t played since. All things considered, I think I made what was the least bad choice for me. I hate that we were put into that situation, and I won’t forget it.
I took the J&J too, which turned out to matter when Dad broke his hip in May 2022 and I needed the permission slip to visit him in hospital.
Related: https://x.com/JustACineast/status/1887515505000341757
My friend PK took the J&J shot. He had a brain aneurism in his kitchen 6 months later. I only hope someday someone pays for this tragedy.
A customer’s fiance took the J&J shot and he had an aneurism at the age of 27, 4 days after he got the shot.
A lot of people need to be wearing chains and breaking rocks at this point.
I too was essentially forced in J&J.
I waited past the clot window and instead “magically” got tinnitus approximately 4 weeks later which I have to this day. Sometimes barely noticeable and sometimes quite noticeable.
“Tinnitus was listed as a possible side effect of the Janssen/J&J vaccine, but this vaccine is no longer available in the US. It’s not listed as a side effect for the vaccines that are currently being administered, although the WHO does state that there might be a possible link between COVID vaccines and tinnitus.”
https://ada.com/covid/covid-19-tinnitus/
I was waiting to be fired for refusing the shot. I had some lovely e-mail exchanges with our HR folks who rejected every accommodation request.
Thankfully, the mandate fell before the company decided to start firing (or maybe not). On the other hand, that was what started me looking for another job and landed in the shit company I now work for.
I was going to get fired. As was my boss. We are both old guys with few options. We took the shot.
I had made the statement that my line in the sand was that I would sooner give up the job than have experimental slop injected into me.
My resolve was never tested, so I am unsure if I had the conviction to stick to it. The question of “would you really?” keeps nagging me when the topic comes up simply because I hadn’t ended up in that situation. Those of us who didn’t take the clot shot were required to test weekly, but the state paid for the tests. I still have the last one delivered just before the requirement was dropped.
I was pondering a contingency plan for losing my job, but I was fully remote by then, and the company’s policy was that if you are entering the building for some reason, you have to register as “vaccinated” or produce a negative test. I think I really lucked out.
I should, for full disclosure, mention that after the new company went belly up, I went back to the employer that was going to require the shot. They had dropped all talk of requiring the shot around the time the Biden OSHA mandate got torpedoed.
I got Pfizered three times, mostly because otherwise I would have been barred access to my late mother’s apartment. And having been prior exposed to my mother when she got COVID (it ended up killed her January 2020) and not wanting to infect my wife I would have been homeless. My wife also got vaxxed, but only once or twice. No ill effects afterward for either of us, in fact neither of us has ever experienced any real respiratory illness, fever, or aches that might be attributed to COVID. But I blame our ‘immunity’ on our lifestyles (working outdoors a lot, non-antiseptic households). I wish I could convince my sister and her brood the stupidity of CONTINUING to get vaxxed, but that ain’t happening.
I was self-employed, but it was a constant source of argument with customers/vendors. The wife faced a mandate at her job, even though she was WFH. I told her not to take it and that we would find a way financially to get through it, but nit to quit, “make them fire you”. The day was coming where her company was going to start axing the non-compliers and suddenly the mandate just disappeared.
I do still get frustrated sometimes, but I am able to break the cycle before I get irrationally angry at an inanimate object.
I’ve wanted to read more on this but haven’t gotten around to it, but apparently Eskimo culture is very, very light on anger. The word for anger is something like “childish tantrum”. You can see how the environment and hard lifestyle would result in that… If something goes wrong, it’s really important that you fix it and move on rather than waste time with raging out.
As opposed to here and now, where childish tantrums are celebrated and encouraged…
Not taking the shot did eventually cost me my job (they waited until the next layoff to protect themselves).
If i was all that stoic, I wouldn’t have found myself wrestling with anger for several days this past week despite knowing how useless and stupid anger really is.
Pureblood here, I lost my dream job over refusing the jab. I survived.
Job probably would have been a nightmare.
I remember. I really respect you for that. I could not leave my daughter and wife in a lurch, my chances of gaining fresh employment were nil.
Another NPR thumbsucker
Most of the vehicles we walk past have clearly been totaled in a crash. But Morrow’s salvage yard is also part of a new nationwide program called SHiFT, which encourages car owners to donate their vehicles to be recycled.
Unlike a car that’s sold at auction and heads to a scrapyard, a car donated through the SHiFT program will have its engine recycled — not reused. Taking an old engine out of commission is part of the environmental case for the program. “Typically five to 10 tons of carbon dioxide per year are going to be saved by retiring that motor,” Morrow says.
Writer amazed to discover what happens to old cars. You can almost hear her pining for Cash for Clunkers 2.
😭
So full of shit. Five to ten tons of CO? Fuck you, most cars don’t use 5 to ten tons of fuel in a year.
They rely on that new math to get those numbers.
5 tons ==> 10,000 lbs divided by 6.5 lbs per gallon of gasoline = 1,538 gallons of gasoline per year = 29.5 gallons per week.
that’s if one hundred percent of gasoline converts to CO2.
Most of the time I don’t use 13 gallons a Month.
So it’s possible, but really unlikely for most people.
I use under 20 gallons/week in my Tacoma, and I drive a lot.
Disclaimer: gasoline is a mixture of stuff.
In a straight-chain hydrocarbon, a typical carbon atom will be bonded to 30 AMU of other atoms. IN CO2, it’s 32. Not much, but an increase.
However, 24 of that initial 30 will also get converted to CO2. One molecule of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane weight 114 AMU. When converted to CO2 it results in 352 AMU of CO2. The extra mass comes from the air used to burn it.
There I go, losing my Stoic and cursing during the Stoic post.
Those shift people need to be in the crusher.
Recycling an engine uses how much energy?
Why would you not reuse an engine?
Retards gonna retard I guess.
Y’all are arguing about the details true/false that are the premises for the biggest scam in human history.
There is only one proper response to these people and arguing about their premises is not it.
Didn’t get the shot.
Did recommend to others that is they were going to be “forced” to get one the seek out the J&J shot.
Told most to simply lie about having gotten it.
Had a third party told me to get it I would have told them to get fucked.
Had my customers told
Me to get it i would have told them to get fucked. They need me more than I need them.
My cousin and her husband died from COVID in the summer of 2020. They both basically drowned in their own fluids. This was after the HCQ/Zinc/Z-Pack treatments was known and information was being actively suppressed by the media. I want everyone involved in that to be tried for murder.
My wife and I took the vaccine in spring 2021 shortly after it became available. We were seniors citizens with multiple comorbidities. It was a calculated choice between risks of COVID versus risks of an unproven vaccine.
So, when the mandates came out, it was a moot point for us. There was no follow-on mandate to take boosters, and we did not take any.
I still approve the rush to get a vaccine and let high-risk population choose whether or not to take it. The mandates for everyone to take it were complete bullshit.
Agreed. Biden turned this into something it was never intended to be.
Right to try is important.
The elderly were at less risk of the bad shot simply because their immune systems don’t work as bad and they have fewer years left for the products of the shot to build up and do harm.
That’s what killed my wife, comorbidities and Covid, she drown the same way.
Its called a Cytokene storm I believe.
sp.?
I remember.
Ditto for my mother. They had given her steroids in the first hospital she was in, which suppressed the reaction. But they stopped giving her steroids because they were starting to impact her kidney function. So in effect by trying to save her kidneys they killed her.
Agree with you on the criminals who suppressed those treatments and later ivermectin. The should be tried for those murders.
Not only was the mandate wrong, it actually destroyed the value of the vaccine by rapidly accelerating the mutation of the virus.
This is a point that’s lost on all the “believe the science” types.
Agreed on most of your points, but I’m far from convinced that Ivermectin or HCQ are cures for COVID. That said, the hysteria against them was ridiculous, people should have been allowed to try them, and real studies should have been done rather than the ones that were designed to fail.
Anecdotal I know, but the first time I had it I was quite sick and getting sicker. The day I took my first 2 doses of Ivermectin, I started getting better almost immediately.
HCQ was never the treatment. This is a big part of the big lie. I watched a video with the doctor explaining it. Zinc is a known anti-viral (which is why people promote it for the common cold). But zinc does not cross the cell boundary well. HCQ helps the cells take in zinc. He said HCQ is the gun, zinc is the bullet. Also important was the immediate treatment with z-pack to prevent opportunistic bacteria from setting in. Most covid deaths were actually pneumonia deaths.
All the “experiments” with HCQ failed because none of them followed the actual protocol that was being used to treat COVID by the good Russian doctor. Many, perhaps most, of the experiments caused harm because they used very high doses of HCQ which were known to be dangerous.
All the experiments conducted in the US were clearly designed, to me anyway, to result in failure to provide ammunition to suppress the HCQ/Zinc/Z-pack treatment.
Remdesivir was more profitable, so why show a viable alternative.
Correct. No one was going to be making billion-dollar profits from generic drugs.
Ivermectin didn’t do much for me, but at the very least it didn’t make things worse and I suppose I was definitively worm free.
“All the ‘experiments’ with HCQ failed because none of them followed the actual protocol that was being used to treat COVID by the good Russian doctor.”
Yeah, if I recall one of the experiments was HCQ only, which I think is a worthwhile study, but limited. Another study used far higher doses than recommended and was perhaps at a dangerous level. And I think all that studies started the treatment too late.
So while I’m not convinced that the HCQ treatment works, I am not convinced it doesn’t work, and the studies’ design and misuse makes me very suspicious.
Many, perhaps most, of the experiments caused harm because they used very high doses of HCQ which were known to be dangerous.
McCollough and/or Atlas talked about this in their books.
Those shift people need to be in the crusher.
That deal screams nonprofit scam artist grift.
Grifters in the crusher is one of those annoying ASMR videos on you tube.
Or should be.
Didn’t mean to dredge up COVID BS.
It was just the first situation that came to mind with an unpleasant result from not fully controlling my environment and letting external factors rule.
I’d rather it come up every couple of years rather than it being forgotten about as a “simple mistake”.
And anyone who wants “amnesty” for their behavior can fuck themselves.
It was definitely not a simple mistake.
I have a hard time staying Stoic when I hear regime apologists trying to say that everyone was just doing their best with little information.
Doing their best would be to follow established protocol of “Quarantine the Sick, Elderly, and Immunocompromised”. Everyone else carry on.
Speaking of people losing jobs. Two years ago a big battery factory was announced by Hyundai and LG to “bring good paying jobs to Georgia”.
Today 450 illegals were arrested there.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/09/450-illegal-aliens-detained-massive-ice-raid-hyundai/
Didnt Trump say NYC was on his list of places to clean up? That video should play on TV in place of every third ad on every channel.
“Call 911.”
lulz
Typical…
Look for the union label…
Call 911
Call 911
They don’t look like they would be any help in a real situation anyway.
The cameraman was lucky he didn’t get arrested for not respecting their authority.
It isnt about those specific officers. The culture in any organization is a reflection of the leadership.
I’d rather it come up every couple of years rather than it being forgotten about as a “simple mistake”.
They meant well. Something had to be done.
“They meant well”
They should be sent to hell on the road they paved.
Headline of (thankfully) paywalled Atlantic article:
Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children
The state’s elimination of vaccine mandates is a courageous first step toward decluttering itself of any excess kids.
We love children, strictly inasmuch as they can be used as a cudgel to beat those icky Republicans with.
I agree with Florida.
Children are a renewable resource.
I read it. It’s poorly done Swiftian humor with a political cartoon and short paragraph.
Again with the scams and their premises. The stolen base here is that children die from not having the cootie bug shot.
*I am assuming this is about FL getting rid of their vaccine mandates/reccomendations?*
No vaccination mandates for the schools that they are mandated to attend.
It’s the catch 22 that forces you to give your child every “recommended” vaccine.
Ooops. I forgot…they stole two bases.
1. Kids are usually asymptomatic
2. Vaccines dont prevent the cootie bugs or their transmission.
The whole thing is criminally insane.
Also, the same evil fucktarded malthusians that gave us covid are still making novel viruses. They never stopped. How much attention is that getting?
I just love writers who ooze haughty smarmy condescension. You can tell right away how smart they are.
If I had a grown daughter, I would hope it would be Lena:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3TAdKJvMSQ
She embraces the suck, adding sound effects to her misses. And holy fuck those IPSC swinging plates are not easy targets with the hard cover.
I am recognizing way too many range officials in these videos.
COVID shot stories? I never took it; my partner did. It caused fertility issues with her that, thankfully, got resolved and we now have a son. But it was looking like that fucking shot was going to seriously impact our lives. Luckily, I have no cause to be bitter. She will not be getting another and she proactively told me she will refuse to get one for my son.
My wife not getting the shot caused my mom not to see us for a year until her cancer came back and suddenly she dropped her objection to seeing us and hugging my wife like normal.
This was after she had told us we weren’t welcome because she was “following the science”.
Yes, she actually used that phrase.
I was called an idiot by a family member for going to Thanksgiving with my parents in 2020. I don’t always remember to be forgiving of that.
That’s the tragedy of COVID. A lot of friendships and family ties where stained and it was all by design because it’s easier to rule divided people. My Christian ethics dictate that I forgive those who did this, but I’ll never forget.
Five stars for what Ed says.
Yes, it was by design. How many times have we heard those shitbirds ‘instruct’ people to use family gatherings to scold family about not being brainwashed?
Martínez said that Kadgien’s and her husband’s efforts to hide the painting over several days following its sudden appearance in a real estate listing amounted to obstruction of justice.
Not the smartest national socialists. Just say it was my father’s painting and I had no idea.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/friedrich-kadgien-nazi-art-argentina-b2820656.html
On the subject of DICKVID-19 and vaccines, the always reliable BJ Campbell weighs in here:
Holla.
Started from the wrong premise…
Yep. Show me this ‘science’.
Right? Id be open to the writing if they said ai have people on both sides and here are the merits/pitfalls of both
Now you decide.
Why is that so hard for people? Are we just ingrained with must follow some robed man wandering through the desert thought process?
I kmow, still monkeys
If you read the article, BJ gives excellent examples of the science.
Vaccines are useful tool in limited circumstances. Many of the diseases for which the reductions in prevalence and morbidity is ascribed to vaccines were in steep decline prior to the introduction of the vaccines and continued to do so with nary a blip at the introduction. Clean water, hygiene, and much better treatments of the illness associated with the disease (e.g. pneumonia, infections, etc) are by an large responsible for much of the miracles ascribed to vaccines.
A potentially useful tool in some cases that has become a religious hammer to be used in all circumstances with religious like zeal. I don’t understand the propensity to take every interesting and useful-in-some-cases intervention to the be the great savior of humanity and the inability to have some nuanced view to cost and benefit.
The passive-aggressive ‘Ur stoopid’ is much more effective?
“Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as ‘science.’” – Thomas Sowell
Never took the shot. I was ready to face the consequences from Biden forcing it on me.
Then, as fate had it, I was in a position that required me to verify employees that did comply.
Send me whatever, Ill mark it down as completed.
That last action did worry me until SCOTUS shot down the mandate…cause I full well accepted a receipt from WalMart as proof if presented.
And happier that current Admin said destroy all information collected during that time.
Im not naive to think they will, but such an order means even archived data is technically, even if not deleted, is gone and useless.
Antivaxxers are getting people killed, and provaxxers are empowering the antivaxxers by using the same pseudo-religious approach to the topic instead of sticking to the science, because if they did stick to the science they’d have to yield ground in their own culture war virtue signaling.
Needs more neener neener.
That paragraph is what turned me off…