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 in bold, my replies are in normal text.
Of Freedom Part VII
Shall I not, then, set my desire on health?—No, not at all, nor on anything else which is not your own. For that which is not in your power to acquire or to keep is none of yours.
While I can strive to get back into shape, the ultimate result is not up to me. I try to keep this in mind as I gasp like a fish out of water from going up the stairs, but frustration is easy to find. I have resisted it for the most part so far and have seen more improvement this week.
Keep far away from it not merely your hands, but above all your desire; otherwise, you have delivered yourself into slavery, you have bowed your neck to the burden, if you admire anything that is not your own, if you conceive a violent passion for anything that is in subjection to another and mortal.—Is not my hand my own?—It is a part of you, but by nature it is clay, subject to hindrance and compulsion, a slave to everything that is stronger than you are. And why do I name you the hand? You ought to treat your whole body like a poor loaded-down donkey, as long as it is possible, as long as it is allowed; and if it be commandeered and a soldier lay hold of it, let it go, do not resist nor grumble. If you do, you will get a beating and lose your little donkey just the same.
Letting go without resistance is difficult. I am resisting as much as I can by walking and can feel myself slowly getting better. As I age there seems to be more and more that I can’t do like I used to. Some of it is from my recovery, and some of it is getting older. Most of it is caused by my ankle injury keeping me out of the gym and on my butt for the last 9 months. That has gotten better and then I get hit with this, but as that improves I make plans to do some real work this weekend and try to go to the gym on Monday. While that is the goal, I will work to not be too disappointed if I am unable to meet my arbitrary goals.
80But when this is the way in which you should act as regards the body, consider what is left for you to do about all the other things that are provided for the sake of the body. Since the body is a little donkey, the other things become little bridles for a little donkey, little pack-saddles, little shoes, and barley, and fodder. Let them go too, get rid of them more quickly and cheerfully than of the little donkey itself.
Not getting hung up on what I used to could do and accepting what I can do is a huge step for me. I remember when I had ankle surgery 11 years ago, I was much more frustrated when I was recovering. I also remember being a little angry that people would hold the door for me from a long way away while I was on crutches. I have improved my mentality by leaps and bounds and it is from following Stoicism that I have learned this. Younger me didn’t see anything wrong with sitting on the couch in a bad mood because of my surgery. My ankle hurt and I was unable to do anything, of course I’m not happy. Life is so much better this way.
Once prepared and trained in this fashion to distinguish what is not your own from what is your own possession, the things which are subject to hindrance from those which are free from it, to regard these latter as your concern, and the former as no concern of yours, diligently to keep your desire fixed on the latter, and your aversion directed toward the former, then have you any longer anyone to fear?
This is Stoicism in it’s most basic form. If I have a problem, all I have to do is ask myself: Do I control it? If the answer is yes, then I know what I need to do. If the answer is no, then worrying or getting angry about it is a waste of time and energy.
—No one.—Of course; what is there to be fearful about? About the things that are your own, wherein is the true nature of good and evil for you? And who has authority over these? Who can take them away, who can hinder them, any more than one can hinder God? But shall you be fearful about your body and your property? About the things that are not your own? About the things that are nothing to you? And what else have you been studying, from the very outset, but how to discriminate between what is your own and what is not your own, what is under your control and what is not under your control, what is subject to hindrance and what is free from it? For what purpose did you go to the philosophers? That you might no less than before be unfortunate and miserable? You will not, then, in that case, be free from fear and perturbation. And what has pain to do with you? For fear of things anticipated becomes pain when these things are present. And what will you any longer passionately seek? For you possess a harmonious and regulated desire for the things that are within the sphere of the moral purpose, as being excellent, and as being within your reach; and you desire nothing outside the sphere of the moral purpose, so as to give place to that other element of un-reason, which pushes you along and is impetuous beyond all measure.
I am not perfect at this and probably never will be. It does give me guidance and makes it obvious to me when I am worrying about things I don’t control. It has helped me immensely with getting angry at inanimate objects, including my own body. I have a much better outlook on things and I hope that me writing this has helped some of you out there even a little bit.
I hope that me writing this has helped some of you out there even a little bit.
It has. Thanks Ron!
Keep far away from it not merely your hands, but above all your desire; otherwise, you have delivered yourself into slavery, you have bowed your neck to the burden, if you admire anything that is not your own, if you conceive a violent passion for anything that is in subjection to another and mortal.
Alternatively, “Know your place.”
It has Ron, thanks a million for these
Fuck this getting old shit. It’s bullshit.
There, now I’ll go back to being stoic.
Thanks Ron,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6wZKfWbcCA
There is so much I can’t do. I look at my garden and would shrug my shoulders but I don’t because it would hurt too much.
There is no getting better at a certain age.
Frustration but that doesn’t seem to help much either. Now I have to decide between the really necessary and the feel good stuff.
I’m happy to have the Glibs.
Relevant:
Stoics eat their lentils with twelve coriander seeds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx3_IbW5Cig
I don’t see the point of adding whole seeds to the bowl after haivng used ground coriander seed in the main cook.
I have been reliably informed that even a 55 year old can go from fat fuck to chisel chest in only 30 days. Fifteen minutes a day, you don’t even have to diet, go to the gym, or even get out of your chair.
I believe it. I saw this documentary on martial artists and when this guy Goku wanted to get stronger after his kayo-ken stopped working, all he did was meditate.
Have you tried this pink salt trick?
https://i.redd.it/2orpwgxzbjsd1.jpeg
Well, stepdaughter got super-excited about her package that arrived yesterday – it was some kind of sweat-inducing waistband; basically just a thick band of fabric with some velcro on it. She said it was so she can “sweat the fat away”. I tried explaining that just sweating is not what makes fat go away to no avail.
Sweat doesn’t contain nearly enough carbon to be a meaningful vector of long term weight loss. The primary vector by which fat leaves the body is as carbon dioxide in exhalation. No other excretory process releases enough carbon to remove any significant quantity of fats.
Sweat is associated by weight loss because the extertion which causes stored energies to be converted to carbon dioxide produces heat which triggers the body’s cooling mechanism of sweating.
Though I suppose that was in your explaination.
The “sweat = weight loss” thing is maddening. I’ve seen people jogging on a hot day in sweatshirts. It’s one of the simplest versions of correlation vs. causation. She’s not the first one I’ve tried to explain this to (I’ve become known as kind of “the fitness guy” and get a lot of questions about it).
At best, you’re wasting your money on pointless products. At worst, you’re gambling with a potentially fatal overheating episode during exercise.
It’s just another attempted shortcut; people want to sit on the couch and eat garbage food but have the body of an athlete.
Depends, is she a wrestler trying to make weight? 🙂
Akira:
Probably comes in via “weight loss” that’s just dehydration and water loss. I know when I was in grade school and high school, you’d have some wrestlers doing laps while wearing plastic wrap to get under weight.
You can definitely lose pounds due to dehydration. We have competition lifters in our gym who dehydrate before weigh in, then rehydrate before they lift. Weigh-ins are the day before, so this is what people do. The alternative is to weigh in the same day, but then you have people trying to lift while dehydrated and there are accidents.
I’ve seen it said here countless times, but muscle is built in the gym, fat is lost in the kitchen.
What? You mean I have to move my weight cage into the kitchen? It’ll get in the way!
If it gets in the way enough you might lose weight 🙂 I’d try this except I’d just end up living on delivery food.
The problem is, the bathroom is off the kitchen, and if I put the weight rack in the kitchen, it’d be in the way of more than just ingestion.
I get to untangle my MIL from getting caught up in a social engineering hack she fell for.
It was bad. Talked with them, downloaded things they wanted to. Pretended to be Microsoft and then a buddy called acting as FTC.
What a fucking mess. Thus after I sat her down and explained it a couple weeks ago.
But she ‘just knew it was legitimate’
Well now you are closing accounts and moving monies cause you ‘just knew’
“Send me a certified letter, and I’ll bring it to my laywer’s attention.”
I know that, you know that…she, even today said “if they call me again I am going to….” i stopped her there. You dont answer. You dont answer. YOU DONT ANSWER
100 bucks, she will answer.
My mom fell for one of those. She gave them all her passwords because none were “working”. Fortunately we never set up online banking for her because we feared something like that would happen.
My brother in law fell for the “Large fines for unpaid tolls” scam. He’s my age, and a tinfoil hat kind of guy, so he should have known better.
My Mom’s caregiver fell for the IRS scam. She (the caregiver) ran around buying gift cards to pay her tax “debt”.
🤦♂️
The IRS sends nastygrams by snail mail and doesn’t take gift cards as payment.
Every fedgov agency sends via snail mail first. No cold calls and except for rare cases, knocks on doors.
Yeah, the caregiver said she felt like an idiot afterwards. I guess some people just get caught up in the moment. I also suspect she wasn’t completely honest with her tax returns, so she could believe that the IRS would call her.
JaimeRoberto:
One of the keys of the short con (or the conclusion of a long con) is to create a sense of urgency and make it critical for a quick decision to short circuit most people’s thought processes to just defer to authority. Confusion and fake urgency, the peanut butter and chocolate of a con.
Everything is a scam.
Start there.
If they called you you don’t give them any information, period. If you think it’s legitimate tell them you’ll call back, anyone legitimate will understand (except a debt collector, but even they will accept that you don’t discuss anything with a cold caller). When you call back, DO NOT USE THE NUMBER THEY GAVE YOU! Find it online, on their website, that you know is theirs.
She called me and I told her to immediatly hangup and instead, she hung up on me.
What a shit show.
“She called me and I told her to immediatly hangup and instead, she hung up on me.”
I’m sorry but this made me laugh.
“Mom, no, you have to hang up immediately!”
“OK” *click*
Really sorry to hear it. We just happened to be visiting my parents when I heard Mater Dean on the phone. It was some kind of scam, don’t recall the details. She was falling into it. Fortunately, we were there and cut it off at the knees.
As a student of Mel Brooks, I could only laugh afterwards too.
That’s just going to get worse as the amount of ‘private’ information online, plus better voice and image synthesis meet AI, assuming AI ever gets past the current level.
If you can get AI to scour the Internet for a person’s information, it’s going to get much worse.
My wife did this, but got suspicious half way thru and called me.
Her: “Microsoft told me…”
Bob: “Stop. Turn off the box right now. Microsoft will NEVER EVER call you directly. About anything.”
She had let them install a program to allow access to the box.
Restored everything and had her call all her banking and credit cards to stop any possible actions.
Hell good luck getting a human at Microsoft to answer a phone.
I have had to deal with real Microsoft support while troubleshooting issues. Trying to get them to even call when you have an active service contract is an effort in insanity.
We did manage to get some Microsoft Reps on when there was an issue with O365 and the mail account our application pulled from. (Fax to email).
It took them hours to join, then hours to get them to even look at the configuration on their side after we repeately pointed out how it could not be anything except that. Held their hands through the whole way to overcome the obstinant insistance that the issue was with our application.
And no, never once did they want to remote in or even look at our application. (Not that they’d know what was what in it)
I setup bitlocker and her backup/restore image should be untouched.
Really, it wasnt that sophisticated of an attack. No rootkits, no worms (that I could find) just two pieces of software that automated remote desktop.
Now to go through and clean the registry
I’m sure my coworkers here at the CU who deal with fraud against our members have heard every story in the book. I hope there’s a special place in Hell for scammers who prey on the elderly. 🤬
A special place in Hell would be nice, but I’ll settle for a hole in the desert.
Have I mentioned I already have a spot picked out, for, umm, any emergencies that may arise?
I will admit, one thing that’s very nice about most of the mainstream religions is the thought of justice, punishment, and evil getting what’s due them. On the other hand…
–Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
Concern troll haz concern
A political party must have an identity to succeed. When I became chairman of the Republican Party in 2009, it was in disarray. We had been hammered in the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election. Donors were fleeing, the grassroots were demoralized and the party infrastructure was fraying. I worked hard to rebuild the party, focusing on the values it had championed from Reagan to George W. Bush.
I had the advantage of an existing brand identity that voters could reconnect with as well as local to statewide political infrastructure. Musk will be starting from ground zero. If anything, he might be starting off underground, as his personal reputation is at its lowest point after taking a chainsaw to federal agencies that helped fight disease, feed the hungry and educate our children.
——-
All of these tasks would be a challenge for even the most dedicated political crusader. The ideal person to helm this effort would have a clear and popular political agenda, a sharp analytical mind that’s not easily distracted and loads of charisma, plus billions of dollars to burn. Musk has just one of those qualities.
Just keep writing checks to the Republican P{arty, Elon. Trust them. They know what they’re doing. Write some to the Democrats, too.
Ya…gonna need some evidencece here and not just funding. Those three things the FedGov has failed miserably
Ive heard of the parties he has hosted.
https://www.npr.org/2010/04/02/125500003/shop-talk-republicans-make-it-rain-at-bondage-club
If Steele actually did make it rain at a BDSM club*, I’d have *MORE* respect for him, rather than less…
* – Making it rain would be very unusual behavior for a real BDSM club, as opposed to a strip club with pretensions.
He might be right, Musk might be too quirky to head a party, but, holy shit, Michael Fucking Steele? Don’t make me laugh and talk about a well-established dismal failure. The guy sucks.
More than Winston’s mom.
This is a man known for initiating chaotic firings with little notice at Twitter, selling Cybertrucks with windshield trim panels that fall off and building rockets that explode on the launchpad. He’s been fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for intemperate tweets and turned his much-hyped AI chatbot into a Hitler-praising monster.
Seriously. Everybody knows you’re not supposed to actually BUILD rockets. You get the government to fund studies about building rockets, and then you go into perpetual circle jerk mode theorizing about optimal avenues of research.
As long as there was nobody on the rocket when it went boom and the data is used to improve the next rocket, I’m not seeing the problem.
Yea. NASA had the Challenger and Columbia explode WITH people on board, just off the top of my head.
The difference between SpaceX and the traditional rocket industry.
Musk goes fast and breaks things on non-manned stuff. OTH, traditional rocket guys get paid cost plus to do lots of intellectual work that may or may not be relevant to reducing risk.
This Musk guy sounds like a loser. Nothing he builds works!
I bet that someone fed Grok just the right prompts to get it to get it to praise Hitler, just like when some group created just the right conditions to get Twitter ads to show up on some racist posts after about 1000 tries.
You are correct. And Grok thought MechaHitler was funny.
turned his much-hyped AI chatbot into a Hitler-praising monster.
Didn’t the Google AI model generate pictures of multi-ethnic Nazis? And years ago their search engine used to correct “Jews werent meant for ovens” into “Jews were meant for ovens”?
Technology does some stupid shit sometimes because it is incapable of understanding what is “offensive”; it just runs with the data it is given. Get over it. There’s no evidence or reason to believe that he wanted the AI to do that.
Yes. Gemini (Alphabet’s
AILLM) was tuned to be so inclusive that you couldn’t get it to generate images of white people. No matter what you asked for, you got a diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-faith image. So, asking for a collection of KKK members without their hoods on would be a collection of black, Asian, and Hispanic men and women.After Alphabet turned off the image creation a while later, it started saying that it never generated images, and never could generate images, even though it thinks it may be mistaken after you point out the images it created in the history.
“building rockets that explode on the launchpad”. Written by someone who never saw The Right Stuff.
Every single person who is remotely serious about manned space travel, knows and accepts that advancement in the field will require a certain amount of catastrophic failure. In fact, understanding this is a touchstone for how serious you are about it.
Don’t presume that he gives a damn about even if he knows it to be true. He decided to do a political hit piece and he did one, facts be damned. Then again, he is a dumbass so maybe he really doesn’t know.
I’m not saying this as a die-hard partisan. I actually would like to see a viable third party give the Democrats and Republicans a run for their money. I believe we could even see that in our lifetimes if we move toward ranked-choice voting, a national popular vote or other reforms.
Satan wept.
What we need is improved vote integrety, prosecution of even the appearance of shenanigans with harsh penalties, and a bottom up approach.
You want to build a third party – start with the local races. Town, City, County, State legislative seats, then House seats, follow that push to executive and statewide offices, including senatorial.
Third parties always make that fatal mistake of aiming directly for the presidency, because they’re often formed around the ego of a single individual. If your party line isn’t already recognizable from the smaller offices, you have no staying power to fight for the big offices.
What we need is to decorate lamp posts. We’ll still end up ruled over by corrupt assholes, but at least we’ll have a minute of satisfaction along the way. Our Republic isn’t going back to what was intended (but never was). The procedures of our system prevent that sort of drastic change just as much as they were intended to prevent drastic changes in any direction. I’m not completely black pilled, because I don’t think we’re actually going to end up starving in gulags, but the oligarchs are not going to lose control of the levers of power. At best they will go back to trying to hide their use of those levers a bit better.
The question becomes how does one clean house without degenerating into a Reign of Terror situation?
“Citizen Robespierre, madame Guillotine awaits.”
Funny you should mention guillotines, UnCiv . . . .
Fuck RCV with a red hot poker.
It’s one of those systems that appeals to Theorists, but which fails when applied to real humans.
Ron, your insights are fantastic. I hope you keep it up. I may not comment every week, but I do read it every week.
Elon Musk, Nazi scientist
And now you can eat like a stoic too.
How to Eat Like an Ancient Stoic
I saw this the other day on my food history channel and was waiting for your post.
Not Adahn beat you to it.
So what you are telling me is that the Stoics had to be Stoic about each other’s flatulence?
Don’t be silly, Stoics never lived together.
How to fart like a stoic.
Given the state of hygiene technology at the time of the original Stoics, farts were probably the least of the objectionable smells that one had to deal with on a daily basis.
The Romans liked their baths, but the Stoics probably didn’t.
I saw that too, but I’m saving it for my designated weekend “beer and YouTube” time.
I’m a fan of Stoicism, Max Miller, and lentils, so it’s gonna be great!
Years ago, I couldn’t stand his voice. I haven’t pulled an old video to verify, but I’m convinced he’s gone to the trouble of practicing out the annoying bits of his natural manner of speech.
Why do all the things that require Stoicism happen on Fridays? My kid’s mother-in-law is in hospice, so they are flying her husband home via New Jersey. He’s taking all his leave time. At least they’ll see each other for a few weeks. She’s been on the phone with the Navy and Red Cross all night.
Wasn’t he in the middle of the Gulf?
Where did he start from? I’m guessing a European stopover as well.
Yes, he’s in the Gulf, and they’re flying him to New Jersey. So he’ll basically travel around the world. Then they’ll send him back, but we’re not sure which route.
Sorry to hear that, Kevin.
Thanks. They will be together for a while, albeit under bad circumstance. I’m reminded of the Buddhist parable of the farmer and the horse. Who knows what’s good and what’s bad?
https://mindfulness.com/mindful-living/are-these-bad-times-or-good-times-the-story-of-the-zen-farmer
How does one farm Zen? It sounds like a difficult crop.
Sorry
Gemini (Alphabet’s AI LLM) was tuned to be so inclusive that you couldn’t get it to generate images of white people. No matter what you asked for, you got a diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-faith image. So, asking for a collection of KKK members without their hoods on would be a collection of black, Asian, and Hispanic men and women.
They cut-and-pasted the Amazon search function?
Witch hunt
Also Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission hosted an all-day workshop on the “dangers of gender-affirming care.” In his opening remarks, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson suggested that such care is deceptive and requires greater scrutiny by the commission.
The workshop and the Justice Department’s announcement are the latest escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to restrict transgender rights and access to transition-related medical care.
The FTC’s panel Wednesday featured more than a dozen speakers who criticized transgender health care, including people who received such care as minors and now say they regret it; doctors and psychologists who disagree with the current standards for providing such care; and political scientists and lawyers who oppose access to transition care for minors.
Claire Abernathy said she had a double mastectomy by her 15th birthday and detransitioned, or stopped identifying as trans, at 18.
“My doctors didn’t tell me that hormones would cause permanent side effects,” said Abernathy, now 20. “They hid those effects from me. They worked to silence me when I tried to complain about this abuse. We need to make sure no more kids are sold products they can’t return.”
“They turned me into a newt.”
It’s like the Inquisition, only for doctors.
Doctors who mutilated children in such a manner should have mdically unnecessary surgeries performed on them, their licenses revoked on a permanant basis, and be added to the sex offender registry.
The workshop faced backlash from activists and also from some employees within the FTC, Reuters reported. Nearly 150 FTC employees signed a “statement of concern” dated July 2 about Wednesday’s workshop, writing that it “would chart new territory for the Commission by prying into confidential doctor-patient consultations.”
They added, “Simply put, in our judgment, this is not the FTC’s lane.”
There’s the exit. No one expects you you remain in a job which conflicts with your deeply held beliefs.
There’s 150 names to investigate for productivity and compliance with procedures and policies.
What special rights are unique to the transgender that are being restricted? Minors don’t have the same rights as adults.
What special rights are unique to the transgender that are being restricted? Minors don’t have the same rights as adults.
But imminent irreparable harm! Doctors have bills to pay, you know. If we put this procedure off the children might grow out of their delusions, or at least conclude living in a fully functional healthy body is preferable to the vivisectionists’ alternative.
Has there been confirmation that it was a weed farm? Seen pics, dont look like weed but also doesnt look like strawberries either
I have not even seen pictures.
All I have to go on is the current credibility of the participants. Both are poor, but one is far worse than the other.
Having taken a tour around X this morning, I think it’s almost guaranteed it was. They even outed the CEO.
I live not too far from there. It’s definitely weed, but it’s not the kind you can smoke.
Has there been confirmation that it was a weed farm? Seen pics, dont look like weed but also doesnt look like strawberries either
I skimmed through something which seemed to be intentionally written in such a way as to provide the absolute minimum of useful information. It said there was pot along with vegetables like tomatoes. It mentioned greenhouses and field crops. Grow houses, maybe.
Huh…well leave it to our media to continue the race war
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newsom-donors-cannabis-farm-under-federal-investigation-child-labor-violations
CEO talking out both sides of his mouth gonna get him in trouble.
I don’t know. Donating $10K is basically chicken feed.