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 XII
You imply, then, that Socrates did not fare badly?—He did not; it was his judges and accusers who fared badly.—Nor Helvidius[30] at Rome?—No, but the man who put him to death.—How so?—Just as you too do not say that the cock which has won a victory, even though he be severely cut up, has fared badly, but rather the one who has been beaten without suffering a blow. Nor do you call a dog happy when he is neither in pursuit nor toiling hard, but when you see him sweating, suffering, bursting from the chase.
Doing wrong and having success in life compared to doing right and being imprisoned or executed can make it appear that life is unfair, but that misses the point of Epictetus’s lesson. Living correctly and understanding that fate is fickle will give more peace of mind than living dishonestly and striving for external results.
125What is there paradoxical in the statement, if we say that everything’s evil is what is contrary to its own nature? Is that paradoxical? Do you not say it yourself in the case of everything else? Why, then, do you take a different course in the case of man alone? But our statement that the nature of man is gentle, and affectionate, and faithful, is this not paradoxical?—No, that is not paradoxical, either.—How, then, does it come about that he suffers no harm, even though he is soundly flogged, or imprisoned, or beheaded? Is it not thus—if he bears it all in a noble spirit, and comes off with increased profit and advantage, while the other man is the one who suffers harm, the man who is subjected to the most pitiful and disgraceful experience, who becomes a wolf, or a snake, or a wasp, instead of a human being?
Trying to understand the Stoic philosophy is easy on a superficial level. Actually believing in it enough to put it into practice in my daily life is a little more difficult. Trying to put myself in the place of being actually persecuted, flogged, or imprisoned and remaining Stoic would be a greater challenge still. I do not believe I am at that level, but I keep studying and practicing with that goal in mind.
Come, now, and let us review the points on which we have reached agreement. The unhampered man, who finds things ready to hand as he wants them, is free. But the man who can be hampered, or subjected to compulsion, or hindered, or thrown into something against his will, is a slave.
These are simple distinctions that are hard to grasp. I am still a slave to anger sometimes. I am also fighting my own body to do things I want to do, but headaches have been keeping me barely functional the last two weeks. I have not let myself get upset, but yesterday I was starting to wonder if this was my life now.
And who is unhampered? The man who fixes his aim on nothing that is not his own. And what are the things which are not our own? All that are not under our control, either to have, or not to have, or to have of a certain quality, or under certain conditions. 130Therefore, the body is not our own, its members are not our own, property is not our own. If, then, you conceive a strong passion for some one of these things, as though it were your immediate possession, you will be punished as he should be who fixes his aim upon what is not his own. This is the road which leads to freedom, this is the only surcease of slavery, to be able to say at any time with your whole heart.
Lead thou me on, O Zeus, and Destiny,
To that goal long ago to me assigned.[31]
Not feeling too attached to any of the external goods in my life would be better for my own inner tranquility. Being attached to the people in my life and my dogs does create a weakness to external forces, but that is a vital part of being human. When the time comes, I doubt I will be as accepting of my wife’s death as I am of the fact I will die someday.
This has been a rough week. On Friday evening I started to get a headache and Saturday I had so much pain and pressure I was stuck on the couch. Laying down made it worse, but I could barely watch TV. It fluctuated throughout the rest of the week, going from normal pain to being unable to open my eyes. Monday, I left work early because of it, and Tuesday and Wednesday were still bad, but bearable. Wednesday evening, it almost felt like a balloon slowly losing air and suddenly the pain was gone! Thursday I had no pain but am exhausted from not being able to sleep much because pain had kept me awake. Ever since my intestinal bleeding I have been unwilling to take Goody’s, and that was the only thing that would work consistently on 80-90% of my bad headaches. I rinse my nose with Dr Neils saline and take Cetirizine and Flonase daily. Does anyone have any other non-medicinal treatments for sinus headaches?
Hot peppers.
😛
That reminds me – I wanted to ask how I can tell when a pepper is ready to harvest and won’t be getting any bigger.
When they ripen and fully change color.
The stem will start thinning too. That works as a double check.
This cultivar changes color when they’re tiny and then just keep growing.
Dunno.
What kind of pepper?
They’re supposed to be Bells, just purple.
I like to eat either Mexican or Thai when my sinuses are bothering me.
Heck yea… Some very spicy Asian noodle soup is my jam when my sinuses are stuffy.
Hot peppers.
My dad was a proponent of medicinal horseradish.
That does work. It’s a brutal rollercoaster ride when you take a dose.
At parties I would occasionally do an Inglehoffer horseradish sauce challenge. Take a big tablespoon and swallow it. Whee!
Pictured.
Sorry about your headaches. I have no advice here other than rest.
I have to notice that we as a sentient species have an entire philosophy devoted to controlling our primal impulses.
On top of that our success is spotty at best. I have known many people that were pure stimulus-response machines….the brain of a fish. They. have no rational thought, no calculation, nothing. Fear, hunger, jealousy, envy, anger, lust…they are complete slaves to the worst emotions. Then there is the whole hierarchy, signaling thing.
We are still in the monkey stage.
*sapient
I call those people the low impulse control set.
Or, the usual suspects.
You mean Democrats?
Why do I assume these “conversations” will be the farthest thing from stoicism possible?
“We need to be patient, and sometimes especially young kids need to have these conversations over and over,” says Melissa Brymer, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA-Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. “When we don’t open up the door, we as adults make it like a taboo topic,” she says.
Let’s teach our children to wallow in grief and fear. It’ll be good for them.
Oh yea. Michael Malice had Abigail Shrier (sp?) on his “Your Welcome” podcast at some point last year, and she talked about how modern therapy has just turned into prompts to “talk about” your pain from past events with no impetus to actually come to terms with it and get back to living your life. They just make mental illness part of your identity (and “mental illness” is any kind of negative emotional state).
She wrote a book called “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up”, but I haven’t read it yet.
It’s a good book. Worth reading. As my friend Negroni Please (who recommended it to me) would say, it confirmed all my biases.
A lot of modern therapy isn’t really geared towards making people better. It’s geared towards making people dependent on more therapy.
The therapy they used on our kids was DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy). It’s in part based on Buddhist teachings and you might find it similar to Stoicism. It teaches kids to recognize faulty thoughts and emotions, and to deal with them in a practical manner. I thought of writing an article about it, maybe I still should?
I’d be interested in reading it. Especially if you have any knowledge of CBT* and how it might differ?
I’ve thought for many years that the whole, ‘Your feelings are valid’ concept is an excellent way to both instate mental illnesses, and prevent them from being effectively treated…
* – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, not Cock and Ball Torture. I really don’t need to hear about anyone else’s knowledge of that.
A lot of modern therapy isn’t really geared towards making people better. It’s geared towards making people dependent on more therapy.
That, and get people to take meds indefinitely. Big Pharma really wants people to believe in “magic pill” solutions. And I know some psych meds can be useful for dulling the symptoms while you work some kind of program to cope and manage these problems. But the therapy industry today just wants to push meds on people for all kinds of things that can and should be managed with coping skills and lifestyle changes.
Anecdotally, I believe that a huge amount of mental illness (real or imagined) would go away if people would put the cellphones down and go create something – paint a picture, build a footstool, knit a sweater, or SOMETHING. We all gripe about work and wish we could just relax more, but humans aren’t really geared towards sitting on the couch staring at a screen while robots do everything for us.
@Akira Agreed. I think a lot of depression is caused by a vitamin D deficiency, which happens when people are inside all day looking at their screens. I think a good diet, regular exercise, time outdoors, and as you said putting down the phone would indeed fix most mental health issues.
ES — so chiropractic for mental issues?
Chiropractic actually provides relief for some conditions.
So does therapy. But it’s hard to say which practice is more likely to declare the process of treatment complete.
“young kids need to have these conversations over and over”
Pick that scab. Pick it!
You know these conversations go along the lines of the interviews with the “satanic sex cult victims” of yore. Pounding away at young minds with leading questions, suggestions, etc. until they truly believe they were raped by clowns (or whatever), or are permanently damaged by knowing somebody who was killed.
Take a big tablespoon and swallow it. Whee!
No more stuffy head.
It’s like going through the gas chamber.
Last Friday was Mrs. TOK’s birthday party, and by the end of the night I could tell I was coming down with something. I was sick Saturday and Sunday, and it turned out to be sinus related. Monday I had improved, and Tuesday I was at about 100%. That was the fastest I’d ever shaken a sinus problem. I threw everything I had at it:
Vitamin C 3x/day
Vitamin D 3x/day
Flonase mornings
Zyrtec evenings
Neti pot rinses 3x/day
Lots of rest & fluids
Almost the same thing, only I do the vitamins 2X a day. And I did just get some wretched sore throat/ear/sinus thing that came and went too.
And I add Zinc in there.
It’s the new strain of covid.
If you had taken your ∞+2 boosters instead of just ∞+1 this wouldn’t have happened.
Bloomberg headline.
There is some virus (maybe COVID?) going around that has a fever that comes and goes for about a week. Sounds terrible. Thankfully I didn’t have that.
Vitamin D 3x/day – why? Just take 50000 UI once and you are good for a few weeks
This was a desperate attempt to stop an acute illness, so I tried mega doses for 2-3 days.
“Living correctly and understanding that fate is fickle will give more peace of mind than living dishonestly and striving for external results.”
I have to tell myself this all the time.
Robin Hanson
@robinhanson
25 prisoners in a yard, vid shows 24 of them attack a guard, 1 stands aside, but can’t tell which. No further evidence is available. Should all 25 be punished, or none as we can’t be sure who didn’t?
https://x.com/robinhanson/status/1961452828804985057
i would say they are all guilty cause the 1 aside is clearly part of the plan and at least aiding and abetting
Punish all the ethicists first.
Shouldn’t the other guards have responded with lethal force when the attack started?
look you get a binary choice and pick one
No, 24 on 1 is definately a risk to life, even if the 24 are just using fists and feet. Shoot to kill.
Ethically, you punish none of them, of course. It’s not even a tough question.
Practically, the prison desperately needs to overhaul its custody management and security protocols, if a.) a single guard is ever in a position to get ganged by two dozen inmates, and b.) you can’t tell the inmates apart if it happens…
they are all guilty. the one standing aside is in on it. 0 chance he is not.
That may well be the case, but you haven’t proven it.
close enough for government work
‘Close enough for government work,’ is rarely close enough for me.
Well, first you interview all 25 (with their lawyers present of course) and ask them who refused to participate. First assumption is that all will originally answer themselves…then, you offer lesser sentences to any who confess guilt and finger the non-participant.
Eventually, you have 25 trials, present the evidence you have, and let the jury decide.
Also, you install better quality cameras.
or you just send them all to el salvador
I notice we’re overlooking what shady shit the guard was getting up to where there was nobody else in there.
All 26 are guilty of something.
The guard got his ass beat because he didn’t come through with the skank.
Great Moments in Unintended Consequences Vol. 19.
The cleanest butcher in Texas tested every step of their supply chain to see where plastics are entering American beef @eatRadius
Whole Foods grass fed ribeye tested off-the-charts for toxic phthalates earlier this year, but no one could figure out where it was coming from..
Initial theories included:
– Plastic wrap on hay bails making it into cow feed
– Plastic cutting boards
– Butcher paper
These all turned out to be false.
Radius’ levels of the main offending phthalate DEHP were 10x less than the Whole Foods average thresholds, and their in-house butcher process did not increase phthalate levels.
But why is their plastic in beef at all?
Radius’ leading theory is the acidic washing and shrink-wrapping process carried out by many large US meat processors.
Meat is sprayed down with an acidic disinfectant to eliminate surface pathogens, then shrink wrapped.
The acidity breaks down the plastic, leeching into meat. Radius meat comes wrapped in loose plastic, leading to far less phthalate exposure.
https://www.eatradius.com/beef-plastic-testing/
Wat?
don’t buy shrink-wrapped beef?
So…
I think they included the .xlsx screenshots because they can’t read them. I mean, they show that their whole carcass had higher levels than pieces cut from it. Which means that their sampling technique is flawed (not surprising).
Pie, you should ALWAYS wrap your meat.
Would irradiation (horrors!) be a solution instead of acidic washing?
Does anyone have any other non-medicinal treatments for sinus headaches?
tell the wife that the one real treatment is an erotic massage from a 22 year old Asian woman. Doctor Pie says so. I can write you a prescription.
There is such a thing as massage for sinus issues. I would not characterize it as “erotic” though.
the rub and tug helps the sinuses. it is essential.
Maybe if you’re into very uncomfortable position bondage…
Maybe you need to be kinkier.
Cut vegetables.
Eat fatty meat.
Cut milk at least.
The old comments about snot nosed kids, milk. They have aged out of being breast fed and no longer process milk proteins.
What am I going to put butter on?
Hey Red Pill Matt: if you’re still around, tell Negroni Please I e-mailed him a couple of times over the summer at an old address I had. If he’s ignoring me, no problem. If not, tell him it’s the one I got from him a few years back.
Word is that Joni Ernst is not going to run for re-election next year.
Saw that.
Ashley Hinson is showing interest. So, she would give up her House seat to run. That leaves a not-totally-secure seat up for grabs.
Honestly, I can’t too worked up about chair-shuffling amongst the current group of self-serving shitheads. Or even about which wing of the Uniparty gets to wave the gavel around.
I haven’t been embarrassed to have Ernst represent Iowa unlike living through the decades of having Harkin as a senator.
This is only marginally less stupid than NJ giving me $300 credit on my electric bill after its green policies have raised my rates well into the future and will quickly use up that $300.
New York’s inflation refund checks will start hitting the mail next month
That’s some bullshit.
Eligibility is based on tax filings from 2023.
Wut?
Tulsi kicking over rocks reveals more scorpions. Well no. But does reveal the partial extent of the biden Administration’s Russiagate 2.0.
https://www.racket.news/p/exclusive-for-some-russiagate-never
Lawsuits emerge.