What? Your life is not perfect? Your friendships and romantic interests sometimes become strained and they occasionally fall apart completely? Does your aging house need many types of maintenance and repair work? Are you concerned about your finances? Is your body failing in minor and major ways as you age? Do your digital devices often need new trouble-shooting, upgrades and passwords? Are the people you care about the most so worried about these same things that these worries and struggles are the topics that dominate your conversations?
No one ever promised us that our lives would be lived happily ever after. We have no right to believe that we would never be required to work hard to maintain our physical and social environments. These daily unrelenting challenges should actually be seen as opportunities because these "burdens" are not distractions from our lives. These "burdens" are the essence of Life. As Sam Harris notes in his thought experiment below, if you take away all the things that make our lives irritating, exhausting and scary, nothing of value remains.
I have recently become a subscriber to Ryan Holiday's podcast: The Daily Stoic. Listening to his episodes has encouraged me to read more on stoicism. Much has changed over the past 2,000 years, but the best advice by the stoics is as relevant as ever. Here are some examples.
"The Obstacle Is the Way."
Marcus Aurelius
“Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” – Marcus Aurelius
“And a commitment to justice in your own acts. Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good. What you were born to do.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.31
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” – Seneca
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are." Marcus Aurelius
“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.” – Seneca
“All ferocity is born from weakness.”
Seneca
“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.” Marcus Aurelius
“I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.” – Cato
"Learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference." Marcus Aurelius
He has the most who is content with the least. Diogenes
Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have. Epictetus
“He who fears death will never do anything worth of a man who is alive.” – Seneca
“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.” – Seneca
“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.” – Marcus Aurelius
If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” – Marcus Aurelius
“If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone.” – Marcus Aurelius
We should always be asking ourselves: “Is this something that is, or is not, in my control?”
- Epictetus, Enchiridion
Floods will rob us of one thing, fire of another. These are conditions of our existence which we cannot change. What we can do is adopt a noble spirit, such a spirit as befits a good person, so that we may bear up bravely under all that fortune sends us and bring our wills into tune with nature’s.
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled — have you no shame in that?”
— Epictetus
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be One.” – Marcus Aurelius
I have been in the process of writing an article that I will title, "Everything Is Becoming Religion." This morning, while writing, I noticed that Glenn Greenwald has resigned from The Intercept, a news organization he co-founded. Here is an except from Greenwald's announcement:
The pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks involved — simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.
Greenwald's resignation comes on the heels of his riveting three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan earlier this week. During that discussion, Greenwald (and Rogan) aimed Greenwald's criticisms at our most prominent legacy media outlets across the entire political spectrum. And now our social media overlords are actively getting into the game. Three hours is a lot of time, but I would urge you to watch every minute of this. It would be a small investment, given that this discussion offers an accurate diagnosis of America's Dys-information Pandemic and some moral clarity about what needs to happen going forward.
Our prominent legacy news outlets have become sad jokes with regard to many critical national issues. Our "news" is now pre-filtered to protect us from basic facts and it treats thinking as though it is a team sport, much like the dogma people are offered in churches. It treats us like we are babies, as though we aren't able to think for ourselves. Our prominent legacy media outlets have so thoroughly choked off meaningful non-partisan information and discussion that this has ripped open up a dangerous information chasm---many of us now inhabit only one of two mostly non-overlapping factual worlds. This has, in turn, led to two exceedingly disappointing choices for President of this Duopoly. If I needed to hire an employee for any type of job in any business, I would never hire either of these candidates and neither would you. But this is where we are, unable to talk with one another about this sad situation with nuance. In fact, too many of us have been convinced that we should hate each other for having differing opinions, even when we are mostly "on the same side of the aisle."
Somehow, there are many Americans who are still convinced that they can uncritically sit back and "turn on the news." What they will actually be exposed to, for the most part, is reporters who are afraid to ask the same basic questions on the job that they actually and instinctively do ask each other in private. Instead of informing us with a wide range of facts and opinions, they are driven to please their bosses and audience. This is not news. This is Not-News. This parallels the deep dysfunction driven by social media, an issue address in the excellent new documentary, "The Social Dilemma."
We now have a News-Industrial Complex that is driven by money and ideology instead of integrity and courage to engage with inconvenient facts. This system is designed to please you, to give you more of what your intuitive side, your System 1, craves. Once you have this epiphany about what is really going on, you will no longer be able to stop seeing it. If you continue watching the "news," you will increasingly think, "Garbage in, Garbage out." It will increasingly realize that prominent legacy news outlets are fucking with our brains to make money and steer elections. Once you have this epiphany, you will experience a greatly heightened annoyance at what passes for "news" Once a critical mass of people have this epiphany, this will be our first step in a long slow recovery.
About 5 years ago I had the opportunity to assist a UT paleontologist whose team was looking for dinosaur fossils in southwest Texas. I actually found three separate bones on one of the outings and it was awesome. Although they were not scientifically significant fossils, they caused me to contemplate my small place in the universe. I was holding 75M year old fossils of an exotic real-world creature. My human primate hands had uncovered fossils that were being seen by human eyes for the first time. The following thought might seem naive to some, but as I was examining these bones out in the field, I was thinking: "Dinosaurs are real. It's not simply a story."
This inspiring scientifically rigorous TED talk by Paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara brought back my memories and my intense feelings from that week out in the field.
Here's the latest chapter in Woke indoctrination of federal employees, reported by Christopher Rufo. View the actual training documents in the comments:
If you were told to throw away your (workable but imperfect) car and buy an entirely new one, you would demand to know the details about the new car before throwing away the old one.
It is stunning to see that Woke ideology urging professionals at the Department of Education to do the opposite regarding the current social order. This class is urging the audience to simply abolish society and have faith that something new and better will rise in its place. No details, no safeguards, no respect for traditions that have worked reasonably well, no assurances for the safety for people during the transition, no assurance that we won't be plunged into a society dominated by warlords imposing their will capriciously, a society much worse than our current situation. There's no consideration that we might possibly be able to reform the current imperfect society from within the current structure, reform that the U.S. Constitution invites in orderly fashion by the amendment process. This class is rife with vague terms and empty promises that would amount to a revolution that would lead to an unknown and violent place. It is specified to be a society in which people will be categorized by "race" and judged by skin color (and other immutable characteristics), as though it makes sense to judge each other by immutable characteristics. This is what is passing as education for our educators at the Department of Education these days.
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