The Reasoned Life(stoicism in moderntiy)

The Reasoned Life

Prologue: a philosopher’s uncommon experience yields a unique insight.

 

There was a man.

“Who?”

A man.  Named Marcus.

 

            From the beginning, men have indulged seemingly the same delusions, as we will mention Solomon from some 4000 years ago, or the ruler of much of the known world in the form of the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius.  The delusion of wealth and ease has beguiled man, and certainly gold has beguiled man from its first moment before human eyes: as Solomon reminds us, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

            All the while, we tread on a never-ending wheel of expenses and income, levels of ease and deprivation coming at us sometimes faster than we can adjust to, and in the end, we are a lot of times all too happy to spend the weekend on the couch with a television in front of us, instead of adding to our life experiences or gathering with friends.  There are multiple levels of wealth and ease, and we’re told to buy a new phone at one level, or a new car at another level.  But the levels tend to catch people in places where they are unaccustomed to maintaining a lifestyle.  For instance, a friend lives on nine hundred dollars a month, but has a twelve hundred dollar cellular phone.

            As it is, some things never changed and people are still clawing an clamoring for the needful things, they things they believe they want, but are so easily forgotten just after.  Then the person is left in a somewhat depressed state, like a mild kind of emptiness, before the next want item comes along. 

            And rinse and repeat, in a never ending cycle that only completes upon death, but unfortunately, others will carry on, making wars and intrigues to get what they want, or what they believe they need.  It has went on for thousands of years and shows little signs of stopping; whether it is a purple cloak or a new Apple product, time and man continues ever forward on a familiar course.

            Luckily, we have modern scholarship as a resource to minimize our needless distraction and the little humiliations and fallacies of modern consumerism.  Those few old souls suffered many of our same woes, they had to eat to live, find shelter and clothing, and other things.  They knew at times love and hatred, both, just like we do today.  They even had the sports world to occupy their minds.

            Those few individuals clawed over and above the rabble to see things in a new light, a more honest light.  Grant that it took a life of wealth and relative ease for a few of them to wise up to some of the popular lies, the endless toiling for things we want, people we want, and feelings we want.  But they got there nonetheless, and they were all too eager to share their knowledge with us, the story of a uncommon experience that yielded an unique insight.

            There were others who took an arguably easier route, such as living inside a discarded wine barrel, like one of the infamous Cynics.  But the destination was always the same, a kind of comradery of truth, and a kind of knowing wink between them even in the face of various disagreements.  Oh, they disagreed on many matters, and often they championed their own causes at the expense of others, but it was the Stoic Seneca who was always quoting the Epicureans in his writings, taking the best of all thought, and resisting territorialism in his thoughts. 

1.           

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, “Is it good, friend?”

“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

 

“But I like it

“Because it is bitter,

“And because it is my heart.”

 

            -Stephen Crane          

 

            There I was at the end of my rope, thinking I would pray for deliverance, something unique and beneficial for just me.  I could use some help, feeling long on truth and short on providence.  We’ve all hit that low-water mark at some point in our lives, when providence seems far away and no solution seems probably.  I wanted some kind of divine intervention in my life, something of a surprise, and I thought, like some say, that I might use my force of will to precipitate something of a miracle in my life.  But I remembered others who had suffered through unemployment, eviction, car repossessed by the bank, and other maladies.  I thought to myself, “am I any more deserving?”  I could make the case of my unique qualities, but I know too, those other people had their own unique qualities.  They suffered, and there was no justice or judgment visible to the naked eye in their sufferings.  Never mind what they did behind closed doors.  So I abandoned the case of my own unique and deserving qualities.  In that, there was kind of an embracing of despair, but not to the extent that I could not appreciate the sunshine, or enjoy the company of my peers.

            It wasn’t that I deserved it, or didn’t deserve it, as I was not aware of any kind of view of a cosmic balance with my end coming up on the low side, but that it was just a collision of various things at around the same time that all coincided in somewhat of a downturn in my life on many fronts.  And think of it that a downturn or setback in one aspect seems not so significant if everything else is going on fairly well, or if some of the trees bare fruit, we might not turn our backs on the orchard entirely, but set aside time maybe to work with those less productive trees.  However, this time, it was a lot of unproductive trees in my orchard of life, and I was seemingly at their mercy, powerless, without a quick way to providence.  Therefore, without a nearby solution, I could anticipate or wish or hope for a further solution, something to carry the day that was before entirely unanticipated, something like maybe a rich uncle that I had never heard of, or a bank error in my favor, or something of that nature.

            It was hard times, and a softened person might be just right to pass through a tough squeeze between the proverbial rock and hard place, might squeeze to fit just right and get through.  A soft person can fit through, like the proverbial sapling that bends, as opposed to the mighty tree that breaks in the wind.  Tough money, tough love, sickness of family members, and house repairs: seemingly everything its own insurmountable situation, but the rub that none were pressing particularly hard on a given day, not pressing into some undesirable course of action, but pressing to an extent nonetheless.  It was worry enough, in its totality, without one thing coming forward to dominate, and enough that one might be robbed of his peace.

            I felt it was a necessary acceptance of a hard reality.  To be in denial, or even maniacally happy in the face of tough times is unreasonable, but here I could bring my reason with me without feeling too down in the balance.  I could be in the middle of whatever, and all that mattered essentially, in my mind, was my opinion on the matter; I could self-talk my way into a rage or a depression, or I could bend in that breeze, and when the torment has passed, I come back to a straightened, upright form, just like the little sapling.  I had observed the contrary state, where ordinary things are obsessed and made objects of intense worry and doubt.  People could go through their lives perpetually unhappy, yelling in traffic, being rude to strangers, and generally growing the fruits of their own internal worry tree.  We could obsess and drive ourselves around in mad circles over the least of things.  Or we could be more honest and true to reality, true to our own internal state, and true to our long-term well being.  We could retain our reason, and in that, retain our perspective and our mood.  Indeed, if the person cleaning the floor in your house hates that task, then something is out of line.  Maybe someone else in the house might actually not hate the task, might even take pride in the job every time after its finished.  There might be someone who can step in when another is tired, our act when another is unsure.  But if it were you cleaning the floor, and you hated it; conditions would suffer, and if the floor didn’t suffer, then surely the mindset of the cleaning person would suffer as time went by.

            Just wondering, I was, if something from without would improve my situation, with no easy fix readily at hand.  It was mid-morning in a little town with exactly one traffic light.  I was driving along near the entrance to the road that lead to my own house, making my way homewards, and I looked to the sky, but not only then, I felt some of the worry slide somehow within.  In the stark light of the morning, things felt clear, unfettered, that scales had been removed, all the unnecessary trapping and little details had melted away, and my table was not empty, quite, because on it sat only the truth, and no extra baubles or things to distract.  Sometimes and some circumstances, to supposedly as it is said, “to have nothing”, can be a blessing because there is nothing borrowing the attention, and all the of the extraneous is melted away, so that only the truth can be seen.

            One could separate out each thing and take it for something not totally bad, but going bad, getting progressively worse, but not at the fail-safe point yet.  There was cold comfort that the day was nothing and there was also no solutions at hand for things to come; its like being forced to waited for a prolonged failure, knowing it was coming and watching it in slow-elapsing, but being otherwise powerless to stop it.

            So many of us are cursed that way, or making it work one piece at a time, all busy patching this or that as needed; its probably a fairly common way to live, and can only be taken one day at a time.  The thing was, we were either waiting for these failures, or distracted on some errand, there was that and no real in-between unless something quickly went wrong all at once and had to be dealt with immediately.  Surely it was common, that we either fix it or put ourselves at the mercy of someone else, and that too a Stoic way, that to do it oneself caused less worry, no matter how daunting.  Personally speaking, I was always surprised when enlisted help actually came through with a win for me, it was something of inherited Stoic principle of “negative visualization”, anticipating the worst scenario in one’s imagination, making a sort of educated projection of failure at every turn, which could leave one in a pretty good mood when it went the other way.

            Indeed, when predicting failure and then being proven wrong, one can find oneself all too glad to have been proven wrong; such is the way of winning in either circumstance.  The reality of such projections and outcomes are far less skewed either way, and though somewhat even, not a matter such of pure chance.  One can study on things.

            As far as chance goes, one stymies that by doing a little research, collecting information, and we do not explicitly impart this to the whim of the universe.  We also don’t believe the universe entirely indifferent to our plight, necessarily.

            In the Stoic realm, we believe in a higher force, a “guiding principle”, almost as if God were thought itself.  But who knows, we might be God’s thoughts.  Aurelius, as a good Roman of the Imperial era, believed in a cadre of gods with one chief among them, a father figure that had the bulk of power and control.  In modern times, Allah and Yahweh are everywhere, and Yahweh in the English-speaking word has the German name “God”, from the word “Gott”.  There is something with a plan at work, something higher than man, other than man, and as Aurelius believed, that something dictates rules of nature.  And the Stoic believes, without knowing all of it, that nature functions within rules, because the true Stoic learns and has at some point read books and, or listened to lengthy lectures at the Stoa, which was sort of like exclusive Tedtalks of its own day.

            But there I was at the end of my rope…..

            I felt at once a whole being, I was driving along, almost out of gas, almost out of money, a few empty hours ahead of me.  I stared out the truck window at the most beautiful morning sky, and this before rainclouds came.

            Everything was coinciding, the rainy weather, the empty hours, the downcast turn of mind, and the feeling of one-ness with nature, to lead me to a reading of Marcus Aurelius.  He more than some of the others, espoused some unique scientific ideals, where the others talked more on human conduct.  Here I aim to probe some of those things, add to and cast them in a haze of modernity, some 1800 years after the time of the wise old emperor, the man who reminded himself of his own finite nature, mortal, weak and fallible.

            -a child of despair, sitting in a world of poo, a world of soil, a world of water, and maybe yet, I could, through some process, emerge and bloom as a beautiful “son flower”, a man child product of the world that was not depressed or dejected, not especially jubilant over mere existence, but not down at all, not to be said to be down, but in bloom, and for whatever it meant, for good or ill, committed at least to being; but so to do the panhandlers beside the road, for a time, commit to being and they are under that same sky, just as Solomon said, “it rains on the just and the unjust.”

            We are still those kinds of people, despite a lot of what we’re being told, and sometimes we’re encouraged one way or the other, sometimes rightly or maybe even wrongly lead towards things, but we still have that finite nature, the little space of life-years, and all of it, decrepitude: aging, life events, reminding us of our own limitations.  We can be guided or influenced, and in that, we are on a sort of “side quest” of life, with its own emotional arch, its own beginning and end, and that too, vanity?  Nothingness?  Waste of time?  Or is it the substance of life writ large?  Is it what makes life worth any undue pain or unhappiness?

            Something to make memories.  Something to look back on later in fondness.

            So we contend, with our own little wants and needs and internal specifications, capacities, and learning, fruits of various practices and advice from our peer group.  We contend and go at life by just breathing, and to think so many fight so much harder, and for not that much at all, but to prove they can, and like they say, to “exercise the muscles” just as one might climb a mountain simply “because it is there”.

            That doing is its own object of pride, and the job well done is a merit badge, something to be looked back on later.  We’ve built our own little resume as time goes on, with our own experiences, either good or ill, our own victories and failures.  We might come out of it with a perpetually bad knee, or only a few temporary scrapes.

            We need not dejectedly dwell on our limitations, but use them as a guideline for our daily conduct, a sight line or ruler’s edge, a straight edge that shapes our own existence.  I mean, really, look around.  We’ve seen supposed superhuman individuals in all walks, in sports, science, entertainment, and all of it is very human, despite a certain unusual quality, despite rarity.  Perhaps the key is to know how not to make a hard bump against one’s own limitations, but instead anticipate and plan around limitations.  Da Vinci and Van Gogh had their own limitations, but they also harnessed their strengths and focused on the work they wanted to do.  But Van Gogh suffered greatly for his beautiful art, sitting in the sun for hours, in a fevered state of mind, will painting everyday things like haystacks or farmhouses. 

            But the point is, it was beautiful art, and Van Gogh, to an extent, not only believed in his own art, but also suffered to an extent.  In that, maybe he felt called to realize a unique vision, or impelled to show people something different.  In his passion, he was left with not much else, but at least he seemed to hold true to that vision, but then, so did Dr Jack Kevorkian, who killed terminally ill patients.  But then I would hate to think I had only one purpose, to boil myself down to one little task, and everything else, even shaving in the morning or mowing my grass, somehow fed into that one task of purpose that hanged over me.

            On the phenomenal, perhaps it could be said everyone possesses some phenomenal quality, whether it is ever revealed or not, some unique talent or skill, whether it is put to use or not, whether it is developed or not.  And we all have something, every one of us, whether we ever see it, though sometimes at the oddest times, our talents have a way of finding us, while yet others build something out of seemingly nothing and make a nothing almost a talent, our they build a talent on and on over years, like an athlete training continually, or a painter going through phases.

            I could get bogged down in the minutia of self-care and think my purpose was more to keep myself alive than anything else, forgetting some larger purpose, which would be something remotely artistic.  Keeping myself alive trumps all, and then, thinking of Van Gogh’s passion and suffering at painting the countryside, sunburns and maybe some dehydration on warm days.

            Think of what we are shown, what stays in the global conversation, in a media constantly digesting and agitating.

            For instance, the running man or woman who crosses the finish line first, is but one of many that will cross that finish line, such as the way with a marathon through a city course, one finishes first, and we put that person on a pedestal, but so many cross that line in the space of an hour or two.

            One of our curses in society is our tendency to put a handful of people above everyone else, and we let everyone else submerge themselves onto a treadmill of a supposedly “dead-end job”, apartment rents and expensive cars that have all of the newest features.  And to think what we are sold as life goals, and so many in modernity turning from that, aiming not for a high-paying job, but aiming for free time to enjoy a life.  Meanwhile, I’m endlessly in my own thoughts which makes in and of itself neither free-time nor high-paying work, and not really a purpose, but a sort of going on about any and everything under the sun, everything in my view, and wondering of some I’ve never seen nor heard of.  But they’ve found free time, perhaps what they call free time, for their own thoughts, but I suspect its something of binge-watching or something, mistrusting the common way, and the work environment being what it is, one can’t blame them for wanting to be home, however.

            They sell us so much on phenomenalism in the popular narrative though, in various circles, of sports, the arts, popular entertainment, and so on, even cooking gaining a certain common glamour and entertainment value, and experiences being sold.  And of experiences, in the first year of the Covid-19 Pandemic, 3 million people took and completed a happiness course offered by Harvard University through the Coursera online learning platform.  One of the happiness truths that came from the course was that experiences such as vacations or social outings were more memorable and satisfying in the long-term than buying things.  It begins to hint that, like a glacier coming over the horizon, that many are disgusted and dissatisfied with commercialism.  The rise of commercial-free pay streaming television services speaks to that, largely, aside from the general nuisance of sitting through endless advertisements, speaking to people tired of commercially-entangled news networks and things like popular politics.

            I was at the end of my rope, that morning, but I wasn’t comparing myself to anyone, per se.  The Stoic Seneca would probably have said that comparing oneself to someone else is like trying to rank failures from least to greatest.  I didn’t declare myself a failure because I was not a millionaire.  I felt something of my true nature, my own little pinpoint on the scale of life, my own little place in the universe, driving along, staring out the windshield at a beautiful mid-morning sky.  Objectively, I was accustomed to being without many things, and not wine or other things would make me re-evaluate my self-worth, but rather might make me mistrust myself if I had enjoyed it.  I have to think, indeed, in each our own way, we deny ourselves a lot of things, while indulging in so many other things: a victory over Dunkin’ Donuts might be a loss to Breyer’s Ice Cream, or the old fake proverb about the Ding Dongs and the Ho-Ho’s.

            So there I was looking at a cloud-strewn sky, rain coming sometime, but not yet, and the pure of the truck engine and the rising heat of a Dog Day morning.  Nature was speaking, itself as real as a hammer-squashed thumb, and at once also as comfortable as a fuzzy blanket; and my mind was kind of casually feeling its way, while maybe even looking for patterns in the clouds and other sundry things of no consequence.  Meanwhile my questions had an answer somewhere in there that was just waiting to reveal itself like the beautiful cumulus and cumulo-nimbus clouds in the sky overhead.

            It was like the old story of the alcoholic that had a clear moment, even in a haze of drink, and the alcoholic could see his life and everything around him clearly, objectively, and without distracting emotion.  One could look from the outside at one’s own life, as it were a butterfly pinned to cork on an examining tray under hard light.  I say “hard light” rather than “harsh light”, because the key is truthfulness, a workable interpretation of functional elements, a clear appraisal of emotional integrity, and not the “harsh light” which might be taking a uniformly negative perspective on things.  One could know the beginning, project the ending, analyze costs and timelines, all at once, if one concentrates.

            The clear moment is a valid and valuable novelty in a world of endless entertainment and advertising pitches, and one is best served to listen to it without scrambling for a viewing screen or headphones, but heed the rational word of the universe.  But who knows, maybe the rational word of the universe pervades even the deluge of entertainment that comes to us all day, every day.  And such is the way, that one can have a clear thought, or clear chain of thought, but also at once be said to be listening to the universe, or heeding the universe, as it were, and I had but to see the sky to feel that compass reset.  So much just melted away, and I was just me, myself, renewed, maybe even with some low level of hope lurking just below the surface, without my conscious awareness of it.

2.  Emotional Perspective

 

“When in disgust with fortune and men’s eyes, I alone beweep my outcast state…”

 

-William Shakespeare

 

“After eating my cookie, I could cry because the cookie is gone.   Instead, I can be happy that I had the cookie at all.”

 

-Cookie Monster

 

            One could be sad for any number of reasons.  Every few minutes, somewhere in the world, a newborn baby dies.  A mother weeps.  We too could unfurl our sensitivities and wail constantly for those and any number of harsh aspects of existence, and thousands more injustices that occur all the time.

            There is ample reason to despair.

            However, the fact is that despair is hard on a person, it taxes the body and mind unduly, and many times, needlessly.  The blood pressure is made erratic, the countenance dour, downcast, and the general outlook, bad.  There are rumblings in the scientific distance of bad mindset destroying health in a general sense, nothing specific.  It reeks of the old medicine, of taking rest or scenery or vacation to cure real ailments, rather than taking medicines.  Sometimes, as it were, the situation, hints medicine, is hurting our health.  But this is just vaguely hinted, some mind-body connection in which we might even unconsciously use force of will to inflict disease and sickness on ourselves.  Then go to the contrary, of the truly positive set of circumstances, a rewarding job that doesn’t keep us in a bad mood all the time, a good home life, and see how long we live; indeed, we’ll live if we really have a vim to live, something to enjoy.  And if we are sour about life, it would be amazing how our pains and displeasure multiply on us.

            And not only that, but every person alive is one day going to die.  We would deceive ourselves and ignore that fact, only postponing a usual, and thought-normal reaction to death?  What goes up will come down, the body will fail, and the dog will return to its vomit, but think to of the old saying that perspective dictates reality, or one wills sickness and despair.  Need we lie?  Well, we should of course have some honesty with ourselves, but usually at a young age, its too morbid to focus on such things.  In those days, its infinitely more productive to focus on building a life that you can maneuver in as the years go back, and all under the assumption that there will be years ahead of the younger person.

            What if we dwell on death?  Then death is our reality.  But we delight in the autumn foliage, leaves dying, without significantly taking into account what we’re seeing: we take in only the superficial beauty.  There is something perhaps more deeply beautiful happening, the dying of the leaves, the changing of the season and the life cycle.  There are people that would go to the newborn nurseries in hospitals and stand at the window, as if to welcome the new partakers of life, the youngling infants.  Hate it or not, respect it or not, it is a thing we were born to do, is to die, and we can but go about it being true to ourselves and our familiars, perhaps even remember our ancestors who faced the same conundrum that is human life.

            We know it well happen to all that lives, even the great solar body in the sky will die one day.  There is a time and season for most everything, the old king said, and another said every dog had his day.  It was another that said only death and taxes were certain, though so many say Ben Franklin coined the phrase; he did not.  The downcast person would even celebrate the fact that the dead newborn never owed any taxes, never knew much heartache at all.  But that’s all a matter of casting things a certain way, and again, that person fresh-dead never falling in love or enjoying a good grilled steak, or any number of goods and rites of passage of life.  You could see to never have loved was to have never known heartbreak, if you were of that turn of mind, and it is no less true, but does not resonate among common people.  And why? Too much recognition of death, perhaps, keeps us from acting in life, appreciating life, and somewhere in between, we have to throw our backs into this thing called life, and have some kind of spirit about it, or might we say it has been squandered or ignored, life?

            We are not guaranteed life; it was thrust upon us, but we know there will be a death, and it is as sure and certain, more so than any under promise or obligation under the sun.  We are in turn so at the mercy of clocks and time that we ourselves could be considered flesh-bound clocks, going between feedings and other minutia as if on schedule.

            Indeed, where death is a certainty, life is a gift.

            And of our time, are we much concerned with how such a cosmic gift is spent away?

            But do we suffer unseen or unfelt wrongs?  We do indeed; it was Seneca that said we suffer more in our own imagination than we do in reality.  I would check that in certain circumstances, such as World War II, to say that the modern person does indeed imagine most of his harm, and otherwise he lives on a pillow.  He only breaks his back or sweats for want of money or drugs, and is otherwise a child in a nursery ran by other children, having his ice cream when and however he wants, with no ifs or buts about it.  Toil these days is by choice and not necessity, and again, there are the “time millionaires” or the people that forsake work or take short-hour work to actually gain some enjoyment of life.  Those people have so gotten tired of being pitched the phenomenal in society and have realized that their one life should not be wasted.

            How much do we waste without purpose, without use, when all the world is constantly churning, someone somewhere is dying, for other reasons elsewhere, people rage, people cry?  We would work a job that only pays for expenses for work, such as transportation, and then be eligible for government issued benefits to cover the difference, to make a sustainable marginally enjoyable life, and maybe, just maybe, be able to afford commercial-free television to make our downtime enjoyable.  It was Seneca that said a person desiring to be mislead need only follow the crowd, but Seneca was somewhat of a plainspoken anomaly of Stoics in the sense that he was wealthy.  Nevertheless, he thought to instruct a friend of his in that philosophy through a long series of letters, in which he explains that he is not an expert on life, condescending to give advice, but a fellow sufferer, talking as if from a bed in the same hospital ward with his subject.  So he’s sharing notes and observations, and not proven strategies at success, though he was a success in his life.

            It may seem that I revere the man, but I simply respect some of his sayings; otherwise this is phenomenalism, that anything he said would be thought worthy of quotation.  But hardly so, and his hospital ward quote is simply to be put that one should think for himself, evaluate the situation at hand.  It was Marcus Aurelius than briefly delved into the more scientific aspects of his Stoic discipline.  Aurelius reminded himself of the fleeting quality of life, and the coming end of his advanced age.  He seemed almost to tell himself to make the most of the time, but then his tamping any urge to enjoy it, calling that useless or fleeting in itself, and ultimately forgettable, wasting his time in the long run.  As Solomon might have said in the King James, “vanity; all is vanity.”

            We could be downcast, or we could still think of jokes, and rhymes all day, and put ourselves into an almost manic sense of happiness.  That too is vanity, that too does not serve a use.  Rather put the wits to use, instead, use our God-given onboard rational faculty to run our lives and maintain perspective.  We have the most of anything, our own wits, and too few else to mark, so we should cherish that and keep a watch on our own thoughts.  What else do we have so closely kept?  Then too look at the manipulation practiced by things like the entertainment industry.  We had best to heed the advice of Seneca and head the opposite direction when we see a crowd, and that for the simple sake of maintaining the solidity and sanctity of our own peculiar judgments.  The phenomenal of old such as Jonas Salk or Alexander Graham Bell had unique ideas.  Had they listened to the crowd, would they have pursued those ideas?

            When we achieve perspective, maybe we won’t feel as strongly when dealt an injustice, and maybe we would maintain composure to meet such a thing.  We could not so much be pushed, but be guided, but still under our own power, say as maybe having a car stolen on the street or some other harm, be guided or lead, but not controlled, not made to fear overmuch, nor maybe even made overmuch to be too happy.  But so often today, we are trying to be convinced of a car, or a war, or a song or movie or something, when it is all quite passable, and when we maintain mindset, such distractions become improbable and trivial.

            Sacrificing a manic moment might be yet a reasonable price for letting go of emotional suffering, all in the name of maintaining a more even and controlled emotional state.

            If I lived in an old comic book, imagine a tough muscular man in his underwear knocking the snow cone from my hand, and leading away my lovely nubile girlfriend.  My afternoon would be ruined, you would say.  Is my day ruined?  My week, or more, particularly if I responded by attempting suicide.  But if I were powerfully minded to the extent that it didn’t even cost me an afternoon of inner peace?

            Such as the old saying, at being happy to have loved at all, rather than focusing on the loss.  Or the advice to athletes, to worry more about playing well, than winning.  Perform well, and success will find you, and if it doesn’t, you can still sleep well at night.  Or we look at Phenomenalism again, and look to the world of stock car racing.  Their would be a line of 40 cars, give or take one or two, and only the winner usually gets the recognition, but in a yearly season, lesser placings add-up towards long-term success, and in the case of competitors with the same number of wins, their lesser finishes make the difference.

            To win?  More important?  Imagine to win once and place last twice.  Or place second twice and once tenth.  Which do you think is more preferable?  Are you an attention whore?  I ask partly in jest.

            As per people no longer on the mortal coil, I come to the point where I like the old memories, but I do not dwell on those.  The memories bring a smile to me, and I can enjoy having known those people, but how much of a waste to spend months or years crying?  How much of a tax on a body and mind is despair.

            Even now, pain management researchers are looking at things like laughter and smiles, pictures of smiles and so forth, to expose to chronic pain sufferers, using the facility of the mind to control, perhaps involuntarily, pain, to block it or subvert it into some more positive aspect of mindset, to use nature against itself.  The mind in some yet unknown way seems then to have a control over itself that science has only briefly glimpsed; should we live long enough to understand more and actually live better in more ways.

            Such is the way, there was an addict that claimed all the time to be depressed, sad, and it seemed they had became bent, almost addicted to sadness, to proving being wronged by someone near and dear, that the life of the sufferer was manifesting more and more darkness, as if contaminating any light.  Think of a child angry, but sitting with an ice cream cone at a birthday party, stubbornly deciding to stay angry, as if to prove something to someone nearby, or prove the solemnity and validity of their own dour feelings.  We do indeed respect the dignity of that initial anger and service it, do homage to it, as if having a shrine somewhere with our minds, devoted to its evil cause and purpose, even while lamenting it, we feed it and keep it alive, to prove a point to the world around us.

            Dr Carl Gustav Jung had the shadow self, Dr Bruce Banner has his big green alter ego, and Hamlet pursued melancholy with a high degree of energy.  In all of these, they manifested their own darkness, like darkness feeding on itself, enjoying its own sadness and ill mood.

            The fact is simple: we don’t get those wasted hours back.  And no, I don’t say something like, “snap out of it”, but remind that this is a waste of spirit, a waste of time, as of the old “self-defeating prophecy”.  One day I myself remarked, “when do I have a good day?”  But the truth was clear that where I never really had an especially good day, I did not have bad days, rarely if ever.  As it happens, I worked at nothing at that time of my life and was almost an invalid or an indigent, suspended at the mercy of my familiars.  I would come to have a more regular life later, medicine and mindset prevailing, and things of regular life eventually taken up again.

            There seemed to be an implied degree of “good” in the question when someone asked was it a good day or not.  And I could agree to a low grade of good, especially considering no day was ever really bad at all, but a low grade of existence, that it was good in the sense of being bad in no way it all, but having no essential feature that one could call particularly “good”.  In all this bad and good talk, we might be reminded of the “glass half empty” and “glass half full” circles of logic and interpretation, and some respects, we are then reminded people can drown in just four ounces of water, or at least waste precious time confusing philosophy with word games.

            Also came a time when I could just look at the sky and think that it was beautiful, that it was good.

            Me in a downcast mood, looking up at a beautiful sky, and knowing it was beautiful, and the storm clouds within were powerless in the balance, not that storm clouds were robbed of power or substance, but robbed of their power over my piece of mind.

            Looking up at that beautiful sky speaks not only to the artist within me, but reminds me that we are all interconnected, and some ways, we are one.  Consider how many people can look up at one time at the same picture of the sky, and how many more can look up and see the opposite of the day across the world.

 

“….all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

 

            -William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  

 

3. Cosmopolitanism

 

            Science is, even today, measuring and trying to make sense of the interconnectedness of things. 

            A reaction here, has a reaction there, but why?  It is measurable, confirmed by science, and only now penetrating the edge of scientific thought.

            Seemingly unconnected, far-flung elements of the universe effect one another, almost like the Butterfly Effect.  The Butterfly Effect states that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings produces unforeseen effects a world away.

            Science has basically observed it, and has measurable proof.

            At work are “dimensions”, strings that hold dimensions of the universe together that we are only now becoming but dimly aware of.

            Another writer on a blog post of all things described the universe, or the emerging concept of the universe as “a two-dimensional hologram”.  But the prismatic qualities of the hologram promise a number of new dimensional aspects of the universe, all previously unknown.

            And in all this talk of death and depression, we can look at staggering numbers, stillborn babies, drug-addicted youths, depressed and suicidal teenagers; behind the numbers we can imply a commonality in the condition, the same way some people ham-handedly postulate that all adults have bipolar disorder, or that all children are autistic.  We may chase the tail of these aspects around the shirttails of everyone, and in that, we either lose faith in humanity, identify something lacking in modern life, or, perhaps, fall into grim, reserved acceptance of seemingly common maladies.

            Our lasting legacy of death might itself appear two-dimensional, for man to be made to disappear beneath the top soil, down, down into the grave, and in that respect, science is just now getting a glimpse of what is real and true, and not just the smaller principles of the universe.

            I had that moment of larger awareness when I realized no other person I could point to seemed deserving of hardship, and so often the more fortunate seem to have it by chance than planning or effort.  If there were a galactic balance of fortune, I am not and was not aware of it; I could only but observe.  I know what I had seen, as there is the old line about “there is no suffering that is not common to man”, and think of even Bible stories like Job, in which poor Job suffered so much within and without, seemingly losing everything: his wealth, home, children, and the respect of his wife.  One could note that it was a punishment for the eternal enemy to keep Job’s wife alive after she had given up respecting him, that her jeers and other manners would be a torment to the man, and that on top and after all of the other.

            In the midst of his trials, he was asked to forsake his principles, his faith in God, and contrastingly, he was also told he had sinned against God, though he had not.  He went to neither concepts and retained his faith through it all, despite his suffering and the disputing of his so-called friends.  One could see his faith was not based on his wealth or anything material, but in something above all of that, and no amount of earthbound trickery or tragedy could shake him.  Of course, if your faith is built on good fortune, then you surely think less on it when times are worse.  As was my sight lines on that sunny morning, that my faith was not in good fortune, but in a guiding principle, which is in my case the Hebrew Lord of Hosts, Yahweh.

            One could take the Coronavirus Pandemic as an ultimate reminder of our commonality, with the mass infections, mass-shutdowns and the huge vaccination campaign.  Why, simply the tonnage of resources devoted to developing the vaccines among the several companies amounts to enough of a commonality, without pointing to more than a million dead, or untold millions having been infected at least once.  There were trucks filled with bodies in hospital parking lots: mass-infection, widespread sickness, the threat of death made more prominent, and a large more pervasive fear of infection.  We had but to witness the lobby areas of buildings where people with paper masks went to and fro, or glimpse empty parking lots.  And as a psychological curiosity, we have something of a lost generation that missed an entire year of schooling, and then after, sat behind plexi-glass and paper masks to be instructed.

            We look at separate stars in one sky: maybe that’s more us, separate people united by conditions, swimming along in the same stream or in the same fishbowl, figures on a common field contending life among various other forces.  Aurelius uses the stone in the stream analogy quite a bit, noting a single person, himself, as a stone in the stream, and he is but to sit in the stream.  But think too that the stone is worn smooth, shaped by its experience, as it sits somewhat obstinate.  Aurelius tells us that the eroding and shaping of each of us is part of us being made more and more with time, to conform and co-exist with nature.

            Look at the conduct of the stone in the stream.  It is still, not moving, which I mention as being obstinate.  But it is there and in the stream, so it is not wholly separate, and there in lies so much of the science of Aurelius.  He proposes a guiding principle in charge, and various forces acting on the world proper, and he proposes that this is common to all people.  Remember, we’re there, in the stream, being acting upon, and we erode worse when we flail, just like the story of the sapling and the mighty large tree, we can bend or break.  The stone can seem to have something almost approaching Eastern wisdom in its inactivity, its passivity, which, passivity, Aurelius reminds us can be good or bad.

            The finer point would be too somewhat passively take action, or not figuratively cloudy the waters when doing something in life.  There are so many of us now in this ecosystem, so many to sit in the cloudy water wondering which person messed it up this time.  Consider too, that so much of the world was yet unknown in the good emperor’s day, and his empire owned or controlled much of what was known of the world at the time.

            However, in our own day the Coronavirus might be the stream, and ourselves the stone, when fear, death and disease run rampant and our common mortality is laid bare.  To be too passive in such an instance seems to forsake precautions, but truly to be acted upon by the stream is to indeed take precautions.  One could run oneself mad with circular logic in such an instance, and that among the concerns against infection and possible early demise; we were shown so much of the changes of the world, and that simply to burn television air time.  Nevertheless, the stone is indeed acted upon by the stream so there is a low-level of response to the outer world dictated by the stone analogy, and we simply react, not totally unlike anyone else, but with marked passivity.

            And in that, we’re not saying that death is an unnecessary evil or anything of the kind, for all that lives eventually dies, but we’re not bidden to bring about our own end without some kind of necessity bearing.  The Stoic is not suicidal or hopeful of death, per se, but rather acknowledging the inevitably of death.

            There is a genre of art, things called “vanitas” and “memento mori”, reminders of death that we are to bare before our eyes to keep reminding us of death, so that at some point, hopefully we’re desensitized enough not to dread it, but realize it is an expected and thusly necessary function of life.  This is as if to say, “to all things: a beginning and an ending”.

            Death of course, in the modern financed and legally-entangled world requires planning, and there are estate specialist attorneys and probate judges to deal with, always seemingly a family member coming forth with questions of inheritance or final wishes.  Probably the most Stoic thing I’ve encountered regarding death is the “pre-paid funeral” and the impetus to reserve cemetery plots before one’s passing.  Even in that, modern man lives financed and finances his own death early, and industries are built around that, as part of the endless pursuit of funding from the world at large.  Indeed, an odd moment it might be for a man or woman to choose his own burial casket, maybe even run his hands across the surface.

            Death and finance reminds me of another aspect of this marked honesty in Stoicism, and that is how to profit from downturns when you are sure a downturn is coming.  There were tales of stock deals and so forth by congress members, people who knew what legislation was coming, and anticipating how it would effect the markets.  One prominent congressman supposedly made millions in the weeks prior to many of the Coronavirus lock-downs pervading the nation in 2020, and then the tapping of the national crude oil reserves.  It seems to be illegal “insider trading”, using privileged information for the purpose of trading, but this is of course, an instance of profit generated by a foreseen downturn.

            Stoic passivity does not mean we do not react at all, but rather act within reason, acting on that anticipation.  A Stoic stock trader for instance, does not deny the approach of downturns but makes ready, and that’s the entire point of “remembering the inevitability of death”.  The Stoic does indeed react, but in the name of preserving his peace of mind, he prepares himself.  Why else the marked negativity of remembering death?  Such is all for the sake of preparation, and tempering oneself in the face of reality.

            Stoicism is at bottom, just a system of thought, or taken that way, where Aurelius hinted that it seemed to explain the universe at large.  By contrast, the other Stoic figures of his time were preoccupied with human conduct, rules of conduct, rather than systems of science.  However, with only hints from Aurelius, he is quite clear that pretty much everything in the universe, including the ruling principle, is interconnected, and some ways, one and the same.  Existence, and death being a fact of existence is like a legionnaire’s tattoo that we all bear.  Inscripted and conscripted to come screaming into this world, we are, and many will leave just as toothless and fearful as the were when they came originally.

            Consider Marcus.  In a republic where there is a representation of the people in leadership, we so often expect and maybe even deserve some sort of reflection of ourselves in our appointed leaders, though only nepotism explained the appointing of Marcus Aurelius, the good Stoic emperor, and not so much other.  But an orphan Stoic philosopher, probably quiet, soft-spoken, gentle, somehow for the era, either reflecting the time, but maybe more aptly, time reflecting him, and with only illusions of love and incursions from the barbarians to the north to deflect.

            How much might Marcus have reflected the attitudes and general demeanor, the running line of talk, of the Rome of his day, and in turn how much might his own actions have influenced the people?  It seemed his son was quite opposite of him, a brutish fighter and hunter, seemingly of choice the opposite of his father.  I could imagine Marcus sending the lad outside to make his own play while the good emperor was at study, but might there have been some reaction of the boy, something of making like karmic amends for his father’s remarkably gentle qualities?

            Such is our interconnection, that one soul might establish a balance when taken with another, and its not as much a rebuke, as the balance seems not overly judgmental, and placid and blank as the average nighttime sky.  Or in one family, one soul might establish a sense of balance with another, particularly between children and parents, or between siblings.  That is to say, if one were overmuch something, the other acts as a counterbalance.  This is our cosmopolitan thread of connection, that these balances are somewhere in the mind observed and acted upon most often without our conscious realization.

            Today we have a collision of various worldviews, and that in a supposed pluralistic nation like old Rome.  Lifestyles are made agendum items for elected officials, and if you disagree morally with a lifestyle, you simply vote against it.  Such is a dangerous way, to legislate one’s lifestyle, and leave no room for the alternatives.  Somehow freedom has taken a different and dangerously hostile face.  Consider that the old Romans had statues from various religions side-by-side in the street, and the thoroughfare was a place where almost anyone could worship.  Eventually came the mad emperors who declared themselves gods, and with them, there was no room for debate.  Many Christians died for not making an oath to the emperor’s godly nature.  Such is the way of tyranny, that it comes down to a central ideal that is broadcast, spread like manure on a plow-field, growing only hatred and mistrust of various differences in society.

            In America’s modern two-party system, there always seems a contradictory view, no matter which side is right or wrong, and this is by nature the dualistic colors of the beast with which Americans are dealt.  When one is right, then the other takes the opposing view by its very nature, and if they don’t, the organization, they face labels of false loyalties.

            If only the various shades of gray in the intricacies of life were settled with but a vote, a slip of paper dropped into a box.

            However, a reasoned life dictates the comparison of various points of view.  There must be some kind of use of reason, an examination of various things.  We could hold painted glass to the sky and admire the colors, and we could do this to no end, long after our retinas had fried into darkness.  And often times it would seem in matters of politics and the plurality that the well-reasoned individual should abstain from judgment; indeed, the very debate choices may be bad or lack sense to the reasoned individual.

            Consider the following.  Conquered citizens of the empire forced by law to pledge an oath attesting to the godly qualities of the conqueror.  In modernity, this is paled by various concepts of freedom that we hold dear, but modern political parties nearly promise this same tyranny through a soft coalescing behind a given individual in a campaign for national office.  At some point, debates are either settled or set aside for another day and professional advocates come into play, paid to endorse and defend rhetorically, not ideas, but people.

            We would be better to devote our ideals and actions towards the more functional things, like procuring food and so forth, and let those political operatives go ignored, but its their job to get us to pay attention.  Indeed, the reasoned man can maintain distance, even if the situation necessitated action like the taking up of arms; that distance is the maintaining of his own reason, his own moral clarity and evaluations.  Such is to say that a good soldier may always follow orders, but he has to evaluate those orders against standards of conduct, including his own personally-held standards.

            Politics could be likened to a smoky room.  Staying inside, in the debate, chokes one, stifles one, and one may begin to be effected otherwise.  The reasoned individual knows to leave the fray and find fresh air, such as the old Shakespeare saying that discretion is the better part of valor.

            We have enough basic minutia to worry about, like food and transportation, to borrow our focus from larger political issues.  But there are times when an issue speaks enough to incite one to action, and then we have to doubly and trebly evaluate our premises.  Indeed it was said that evil rules when good men do nothing; some wise man said that, a politician or a rhetorician.  But to worry about the basic necessities is generally cause enough, fresh air, for any citizen being called to politics.

            Imagine the tadpoles sometimes found in freshwater streams.  These seem part of schools or trains, but upon further examination, these are more independent.  Any time you would see them acting in concert, its a reaction to the current of water, and little else; these retain some independence.  Indeed, each worries of his own feedings and so forth.  That baseline instinctual element of reason can call one back to coherence, if only on a most rudimentary level.  Think of soldiers of the American Civil War, cut-off from supply chains and beginning to starve; many found impetus enough to leave the fray, and set down their guns.  And that much has always been common enough to keep men to a certain baseline dignity, a certain baseline of activity and judgment in which he would be hard-pressed to do something that knowingly destroys him.

            When Rome burned at Nero’s order, the tide of judgment turned against him.  He blamed others for the burning, but historicity has held fast.  Somewhere something clicked in the minds of the populace, that whether or not he had the support of an army, he would need to be stopped sooner rather than later.  Had he burned an army barracks, perhaps he would have fell sooner, to make the matter more clear to the legions, to bring it into a proper focus.

            Simply observe the so called “school” of tadpoles or any fishes, and watch them all move likewise to a current.  This is not blind “group think” but a reasoned reaction to currents in the water, and the individual has retained some sort of judgment.  Currents will push the troupe this way or that, and it will seem like they are moving in synchronous motion, but its the water, a common, instinctual reaction that pushes them along.  It is the baseline of reason to want to stay alive; its no wonder that with basic needs cared for, people simply decide they want to die now and then.  The impetus towards survival is not observed.

            Need we then also mention a common origin, in order to tie ourselves together?  Was a time there were not nations, nor intermingling races, but wandering tribes.  Even then, they only reacted in part to a tandem impulse, but kept the survival instinct burning bright.

 

4.  “Personal Enterprise.”

 

“Where life had no value,

death sometimes had its price.

This is why the bounty killers appeared.”

-Sergio Leone

 

“Such was the way that revenge was cheap, and gratitude expensive.”

-Edward Gibbon

 

            If a commonality does not suffice to keep us all vaguely intertwined, then certainly the immediate worries begin to address the balance.  Thinking of the next meal, if nothing else, were it a a few blocks away, a few rooms away, a few steps away, or even at our fingertips already, it calls to us; these and other matters call to us, like housing costs and car insurance.  Laundry.  More pressing matters remind us of our humanity, and in the meantime, we can become blinded to any kind of similarity to anyone else as we go about procuring food and shelter, clean clothes, and so forth.  So even as we do something remarkably common, we do it in a sort of blinded self-interest, a kind of miasma of self-indulgence, a kind of rumple-snort at living.

            Seneca reminds that he is not an expert, but a sufferer of the thing called life.  He merely shares his observations, and does not pretend to give perfect instruction.  He says he has not advanced above basic human concerns, and claims in no way to be above anyone else.  What he gives is the advice of  fellow human being.  Indeed, advice can help, and sometimes it spares us from a rather pronounced indignity or sufferance.  Indeed, in any fold, one need look only to either the top or bottom for an obvious difference in being, but the question is, do we seek help from the avoider or the one that has become injured?  Need way a spectacular success or failure to do more than remind us that we are human, when the common fellow can give as good advice as those others.

            Imagine then a man walking through a jungle.  Do we look to a perfect person as a guide?  Or conversely, do we look for one that has suffered a few missteps?  It seems past experience with trouble would give someone a wealth of experience for others, but in society we so often look to seemingly perfect people.  It is as if to say to the bomb-injured man, that he could tell us where he thinks the mines are, since he has experience already.  So many would seek the advice of a billionaire.  Do we think we’ll have to worry, personally, about how to hide our billions?  Or would we rather make use of a few dollars here and there to get buy on the basic necessities?  A few years back, a popular television show advertised how to survive on forty dollars a day, and that show ran for a number of years; the advice was practical, and not extravagant or given to fancy: it was relatable to the common experience.

            High or low, then, perfection or bitter experience, beckons us, in the quandry to decide which advice we might prefer.  This goes back to the phenomenalism, exceptionalism that so many preach to us without end.  We can but rely on one that has either sidestepped something, or one that has made the misstep and would help us avoid it, after.  We are given that choice, were phenomenalism is so much easier, bitter experience finds us on the street level, eventually, even as we ourselves begin to point out potential missteps to others, after our own dreams have been contested.  The cult of phenomenalism, on the other hand, would hold a rather rare dream in front of our eyes, and we would forget still the bitter words of the richest and wisest man in his world, from the Bible, King Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, telling us that the trappings of wealth are unimportant, that we should instead enjoy our lives.

            We would gladly forget and finance ourselves into a pit on unimportant baubles, having to toil constantly to survive, get by, make interest payments.  And that, we’re sold on an impossible dream, and we service that dream as we live a life that is almost unbearable.  The promise of the dream, the one in a million dream, is what keeps many on the treadmill of finance and indulgence.   Many of us have been there, faced with that dream, and all the while living on just enough to keep the lights on and food on the table, doing impossible service to that dream, burning, igniting, surviving on the fuel of human hopes and dreams.

            Faced with struggles in the immediate future, was the old way to go the aged and experienced, who had already surpassed and survived those challenges.  They could tell us well where the “vanities” or wastes of time are, what we could be doing so very differently, instead.  Such is the way of a life goal, to look for survival, or happiness, but rather in the commonest sense, people today seem bent on the pursuit of wealth instead of happiness, though the hinge seems to be making a pendulum movement in the opposite direction more and more.  We know one can only buy things, set up experiences, and not actually purchase happiness, barring some procurement of a drug that defaces the mind into a false happiness.  And yet we are sold, by collaboration of different forces, to strive for that ultra-wealthy fantasy, through advertising, through making payments, sold on the easiest way, the best way, and always at a cost.

            There is even a path of least-resistance and seemingly available to all, in the lottery system.  In a capitalist system, this is democracy writ large, perhaps, the seemingly random chance at life-changing abundance, when it is again, available to all, our all who buy in.  Note buy in, particularly, that the wealth-dreams of millions are focused to one, and that one, under phenomenalism, is separated out, perhaps as a news story, a footnote for the public conversation.  One in one hundred million, and the everyone contributes to that, with a corporation and the ticket sellers taking their own little cut of the indulgence.  It is, in many states, specifically endorsed by the states, advertised, and drawings are shown on special television broadcasts.  All is a collaboration to get that precious few dollars per head, every week, and where that is not enough, then two or three times a week; it is collaborated upon and speculated by those behind the scenes.  We are beset by forces angling for our money, an army of people who study on the practice of taking our money.  We are then, under all these forces, given a diet of daydreams, and that without mentioning the television, radio or internet, an endless spectacle to encourage our daydreams, and pull money from our pockets.

            One need only get really close to the wealthy to catch hold of some essential indecencies, some vain and constant pursuit of growing wealth.  All of the phenomenal never give up the pursuit; they rarely take hold of that worker’s dream of never-ending vacation.  Indeed, the few phenomenal ones are consumed almost to the point of torture, obsessed with growing wealth, and get us started on the topic of power?  Sheesh.  Beyond that, it was made a tax credit to donate money to registered charities, which gave the wealthy an incentive to just hand wads and wheelbarrow loads of money over to charitable organizations.  One of this writer’s favorite children’s shows was shown nationwide on PBS, the production financed by one Carnegie Endowment, which was essentially a hand-out of untold wealth, given over to public television, which was also supported partly with taxpayer dollars.  Nevertheless, with an incentive, the wealthy can be made to be more generous than regular old nature seems capable of by itself.

            We would look at a Warren Buffet, and we would immediately see, even in advanced age, he presses on at the pursuit of more and more wealth.  And in addition to his income, there is a wealth of responsibility, thousands of workers relying on the stray thoughts that come down the pike from the one man, like a king or pharaoh of old, holding court over the housing of thousands of people.  And in Buffet’s specific case, so many people listen to his investment advice, too, as the journalists apparently spend a lot of time asking him questions on the topic.  And nevermind how many have become millionaires by his investment advice, but just the fact of his vast wealth gives him that sort of crown of success that so many seem to look up to, where yet others would possibly even think good ole Warren had ruined his own life the day he realized he had more than a million in the bank.

            He is famous for nothing else but successful money-making, yet would be held-up as an example to the masses, as an example to those in business school, and to those investing, those interested in the private sector.  He has also weighed in on some political matters, like the Affordable Care Act, so called “Obamacare”, as the cult of phenomenalism has him as one of its chief figures.  What almost orgasmic delight they had when a commoner happened upon Sir Paul McCartney and Warren Buffet sitting on a bench along a public street.  It was poster filled with poster children for the pasting and stapling all over newspapers and the like for days, and the notion was told that even a commoner might rub elbows with two famous, wealthy celebrities.

            Perhaps to this end I sound like a revolutionary, as if I have some moneyless idea as counter to capitalism, but I do not.  I point at the system and regret some aspects, but I too live in the system, and to a large extent, I play the same game as all of my readers.  I simply remind there are plenty of other things in life to worry over, rather than money.  And despite popular opinion, plenty of happy experiences do not cost anything at all.  Do not discount the old King Solomon, writing dejectedly of his earlier years wasted on the acquisition of wealth and power; it seems he had simply over-burdened himself with worries and baubles, all which needed continuing care and polish.  His own one-time avarice, made his life miserable, but it was just like the food glutton, that it took more than one meal to make a fat person; it took diligence and a continued effort.  His regret in his chapters was how much he did towards the goal of wealth, and that he did not focus his life more on other aspects; when the time was gone, there was no way to go back and un-do all of those wasted years.

            Consider that ethics are enforced by the government apparatus, so that the others can freely pursue wealth under the system;  judgments are made on money-making opportunities, which seem to free up executives from real ethical concern.  They can focus on pure commerce, the building of wealth, while legal experts and accountants give them pointers in the right direction to keep everything within the real of legally-allowed enterprise.  Indeed, many executives today approach the narrow scope of things that selling a valuable company is easier than actually keeping it running.  They, somewhere along the line, bought in to the daydream of a buyout and an early retirement, leaving a small army of workers unemployed in the meantime, but the executive gets a cut of the sale as reward, as a salary bonus.  “Slash and burn capitalism” was a term once used over the actions of some dubious stewards of industry, people that ruined competitors, people that bought companies just to sell them for higher prices, people of some preferences that seem on the far margins of legally-sanctioned behavior.

            It happened with the Hostess baked goods company.  They could seemingly take the money and run, the executives could, in the shuttering of the firm, meanwhile thousands of workers relied on the company running to make a continuing income.  Nevertheless, the executives could pocket a portion of the sale price and take an early retirement, while totally disregarding the rank-and-file workers.  The Japanese model was oriented against these techniques through many decades, with the worker cared for by the company.  The companies seemed genuinely interested in the well-being of the workers, and the workers were generally kept happy.  However, the Japanese companies coming to America, particularly the auto industry, fear the unions, and keep their US-based factories in states that are less friendly to unionizing.

            It was one of the King Richard’s in Shakespeare, under fear of death, that offered anyone in earshot his crown in exchange for horse to flee his own death; seemingly all things can be boiled-down to more immediate concerns, seemingly so distant from the concerns of large commerce and the apparatus of corporations.  It is a matter of speculation as to how often the worker’s concerns are taken into consideration, like the auto industry.  At first there were skilled craftsmen, then came the Ford model of unskilled workers doing menial tasks at a low rate of pay.  Eventually, the pendulum swings back to somewhat skilled craftsmen, as Ford itself would later have a hand-assembled engine factory where a highly skilled worker, piece-by-piece, readies an engine.  This is not considering the unions that rose-up to fight for fair wages, and not even really considering the army of fast food workers in almost every town across the nation that are still largely non-union workers.  Also not held out in the debate is Walmart’s training videos that discourage unionization of its workers.

            What I advocate is not revolution, not the outright abandonment of capitalism, but a more pronounced sense of personal economy.  A Charlie Chaplin filmed coined the term “personal enterprise”, but in Chaplin’s vision of personal enterprise, so many moments of smiles and rest and positivity were taken in passing, moments in between the more responsible and productive things of society.  Clearly he had a vision ripped from the headlines, of unemployment, new factories opening, of union picket lines and so forth, a kind of balance between commerce and that “personal enterprise”.  I would note early in his film, Chaplin’s factory worker has nervous breakdown from working at a frantic pace throughout his entire work shift, and from there he languishes between prison stays and various attempts at “regular life”.  Indeed, during rampant unemployment, Chaplin’s tramp asks not to be released from a prison stay, but to be allowed to continue to enjoy what for him has become easy-living, free from regular responsibilities,  in a dubious comfort.

5.  Personal Economy

 

“Lord, show me what I fear, so I don’t fear it no more.”

 

-Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

 

            A lot of things can cause a person to smile, and there are also a great many things that can be bought to induce a smile in a person.  However, things are often forgotten not long after purchase, if not taken up in earnest, and all we’re left with is a cramped, packed-tight storage bin full of things, an empty pocket, and a ghost of a faded smile that is wanting some new trinket to bring the smile back to full energy.  It is a kind of existential emptiness we then feel, along with feelings of mistrust at the various commonplace forces that lead to those earlier decisions, the things that influenced our prior pursuit of happiness.  We are lead again back to King Solomon, who with all his wealth and respect, just simply found after a number of decades that he really could not buy happiness.  No amount of beautiful women or land, gardens, palaces or gold could amount to happiness, in no combination did those things add to that total.  He would likely stand alone and almost friendless in the world of today, but then again, we discount his vast wealth, so he might be a revered “phenomenal figure” like a Warren Buffet, who today, for envy of his wealth, is constantly in the public discourse.  Worse still, he might be discounted, particularly by the media, for his “eccentricities”, and be cordoned-off from the public in a space reserved for famous odd people.

            The Stoics and other old “lifestyle philosophers” such as the Epicureans and the Cynics lead the quest, not for “truth” like in modern philosophy, but for the “chief good”.  Happiness is a “good”, when achieved under proper conditions, and is an admirable goal for the Stoics; however the path is made to have a few different specific steps, or conditions.  The “chief good” is kind of a point on the compass, a point on the scale of our orientation towards the life.  It is then, not a method, but destination.  The realization of such a thing as the chief good, if it did not provoke outright happiness, there would be some level of contentment, be it in personal conduct, personal finance, the law, war, or politics.  This is generally aimed at personal conduct or one’s frame of mind, like a singular profound thought or mantra, rather than a scientific explanation of anything, and nor a controversial puzzle, as in modern philosophy.  Having observed the chief good in daily life, one could sleep well at night with a kind of satisfaction that things were well, rather than continually obsessing about new ways of earning a fortune.  One could keep pushing and keep enjoying a deeper kind of peace during many different circumstances of life.

            The chief good, the greatest good, was always a personal goal in life, which might or might not effect others, and as an idea, its invisible, seeming to be mere words until its brought into practice.  The Stoics wore cheap clothing, and the Epicureans tended their gardens.  It is said of so many of them, jokingly, that their chief good was fresh cheese, because of their love of the substance.  The various branches of philosophy each had a style or “lens” under which to place everything “under the sun”.  That was their own interpretation of a “chief good”, a kind of orientational thought that helped them aim themselves in daily life and thought.  Even Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, after many chapters cataloging his life, comes to a chief good, though it requires some interpretation.  It’s something like “live well and honor God.”  “Live well” of course, is open to interpretation, as we remember our Stoics in cheap clothing and no shoes, and our Epicureans tending fresh fruits and vegetables in their gardens.  The Cynics could be almost horrific in their essential mistrust and distrust of practically anything, the most famous of which lived in a wine barrel among stray dogs.  These could all be said to be oriented towards Solomon’s good life, with the Stoics rebuking wealth like Solomon seems to in his later years, and the Epicureans with the gardens like Solomon had procured earlier in his kingship, and the negativity he displayed in his writings remind of Marcus Aurelius’s Negative Visualization and the Cynic mistrust of nearly everything.

            Research indicates that bought experiences are more memorable and thusly more beneficial to overall happiness than bought goods.  A good rest during a good vacation, for instance, does a lot more good in the long run, than buying a succession of constantly-evolving consumer goods.  The experience even lingers much longer than the happiness of purchasing things, lasting months afterward.  So in a sense, the old ways of taking week-long trips on vacation time as observed in the past, was more beneficial for anyone in the long run than so many other possibilities.  Today we have the “stay-cation” where so many stay home and watch television, “binge watch”, or obsess over social media.  The supreme gluttony of the thing is self-sustaining in the sense that we are then in our binge session bombarded with advertisements, which cause us naturally to do more impulse buying on things that do not provide happiness.

            There was a television show, an “adult show” aimed at the generations of the youngsters of the 1980s and 1990s, now grown up in the 2000’s and 2010’s who had grown up on television, comic books, and films.  Popular characters of that earlier time period were featured in stop motion skits that lampooned so much of what we hold dear, but occasionally, stereotypes would be reinforced.  Indeed, the reinforcing of stereotypes was comfortable, easy, but they gave us the fan version of the stereotype.  Depicted in the opening of the show was a cyborg chicken being forced to watch a wall of screens, each set to different shows; the novelty for the mad scientist was not to make a cyborg, but to see what the television did to another living thing.  He had an evil grin on his face, this mad scientist, as he strapped in the chicken to his chair for the viewing.

            Why, we’ve trapped a good many people into buying an endless string of television sets and cellular phones, each newest one with the latest and greatest features, needful things, or things made needful by advertising and personal avarice.  But in that, we can’t just have a new great television or phone, we have to have service providers, and so forth, voice and data for the phone, internet and streaming services for the television, and then the purchase of individual films.  One could make a thing argument that watching a film is an enjoyable experience, but within minutes the experience is diminished and being buried in memory.  In the modern parlance, there is an entire “ecosystem” of purchases surrounding phones or televisions.

            Always a new feature waiting to be unveiled in time for the “holiday season”, and since Apple’s ascendance there is of course now new iPhones and Apple devices.  Again, the rub is that it is not just one purchase, but there is device, service provider, maybe digital storage.  In the same way the old personal computers of years past caught people in the same cycle of purchases, with the base system, then peripherals like printers and extra data storage, but then there was the great joy of buying one expensive program on disc, one program for each task one wanted to do with the computer.  The original home computers were comparable in price to economy cars of the time.

            So we sit and are distracted, thinking somewhere in mind that we’re having a good time, sitting at the desk, the couch, wherever, with a device on hand or in hand.

            This is indeed a sedentary lifestyle, first and foremost, but unhealthy in other aspects, such as exposure to the spectrum of light provided by device screens.  This can damage the sleep cycle, leaving a person so tired that the just sit with their devices, on and on, in a seemingly endless pattern of lethargy, and as I stated earlier, the situation feeds itself: it is self-sustaining.  Never mind lack of exposure to natural light in the daily life, with some healthy UVB rays and vitamin E.

            Solutions are more readily at hand than we’d like to believe, with stillness and mediation, even meditation, but a breath away at all times.  But that silence of no running device can bear out other life problems for the modern sufferer, and those are much easier ignored in misery than approached in bravery and fortitude.  We could always push the problems away for another day, even as Marcus Aurelius reminds himself in the Meditation that his time as a human is limited; he need not put off dealing with those matters.  He makes it seem a waste of time to set aside solving the problems for a later day.

            Indeed, the most silly little things can make a person smile, things not even considered, but just done as if by whim, and a person can be made happy for a time.  And in Pain Management programs, there are sessions of forced laughing and smiles; studies indicate the body does not rationally know the difference between the real and fake happiness.  Happiness helps curb pain.  Fake laughter tricks the body into hurting less, or at least, tricks one’s perception from feeling pain.  In the further reaches, circumspection, meditation, bring deeper happiness, something beyond just a smile, something like a deep sense of peace.  This costs nothing except for time, though time is often a valuable commodity in modernity.  This blatant trickery of the mind and body seems effective, though studies are becoming more intricate on the subject even as we speak.  Cancer sufferers, in chronic mortal pain, are coached in laughing sessions, and in the broadest sense, comes an axiom to the making that there is no “happiness pill” no modern science solution effective beyond the simple work around of feeling happiness, or distracting a sufferer.

            The Stoics have a way of seasoning themselves against unpleasant circumstances that often rob people of their peace and joy in life.  They call this Negative Visualization.  In other words, they have already considered many of the negative outcomes of a given event, or a given choice.  This is a conscious practice, to imagine the worse ahead of time, before it can happen, or threaten to happen.  They see it, almost experience it, with the power of imagination, even as Seneca reminds that we suffer more in imagination than in “real life”.  In effect, things that would ordinarily destroy calmness and happiness are made powerless over a person, because it has lost its surprise, lost its novelty, due to earlier Stoic practice by a person.  One “steels” oneself, by using that tonic of having partly experience bad outcomes already, like the downcast in society who have a negative mindset: they don’t expect to lose, but rather approach every new possibility as a chance to get into the daylight of happiness again, they pin their hopes on things and become blinded to all the other possibilities in the matter.  Those types of people can hang on to some pretty thin hopes, and become more vulnerable to various deceptions and lies of the modern age, because deep down, they really want to believe, having become desperate through circumstances, circumstances that may or may not be of their own making.

            One preserves his contentment by tempering it with daydreams seemingly of bad things happening, which all prepares on, dulls the edge of surprise and concern if the worst  does indeed take place.  Otherwise, it is like being high on a ledge, having won and won in life one ascends higher and higher, until finally one day, and from a great height of fortune, one push might change literally everything in that person’s existence.  At the top, there is usually only one move, and that is downward; therefore we diminish hopes as a bargain against the sting of disappointment and frustration.  This is completely unlike the normal way of buying a lottery ticket in the dim hope of winning, being that one in three hundred million, but rather a way of telling oneself one will not win to begin with, possibly never entertaining the notion: in the mind, one has already lost, and will feel no disappointment.  This is where one generally buys a ticket and daydreams idly about what to do with all the money, completely empty wasted time, and the practice is subtly encouraged by the lottery commission.

            To win, lose or not contest the thing.

            This depends in part are where one’s hopes are invested, and having been through Negative Visualization, the Stoic usually makes his hopes more modest.  For instance, if one were going to play a multi-state million dollar lottery, does he hope for the one top ticket, when that is so unlikely?  No.  Instead one would hope for a more likely smaller prize, having tempered hope.  I note in this circumstance, the odds are in the millions, making the practice of participating unadvisable.  The Stoic has already lost and is considerably un-flapped.  He has not wasted the idle times of daydreams of the impossible wealth, but probably planned for more hard times ahead, which is infinitely more likely than the improbable lottery win.

            To win, lose or not contest the thing: to never play the lottery, one would suppose, robs some of the fun of life, but one must be honest, and beyond that, steeled against idle daydreams.  In the case of various state “Education Lotteries”, one could, under controlled circumstances, tell himself that the ticket is a donation to the funding of education, and in that, the purchase is not immoral or amoral.  One could convince himself, having taken a moment under controlled conditions, but the key is to have that moment under controlled conditions.  Almost like the pastor’s prayer closet, one can have a space for this, a safe corner of the world in which he reflects on the doings of life.

            Aurelius, as an aged man writing in his journal, consistently reminded himself of his old age and the spectator of approaching death from old age.  He did not let it hide or lurk waiting on him; he brought it out in the open for a proper examination by the rational mind.  After so often reminding himself of his advanced age, one would think he came to accept it, or was at least prepared for it; this is the entire point of Negative Visualization, an inoculation against a huge disappointment, by taking a lesser disappointment under controlled circumstances.  This is like the antivenin that is developed for various poisonings, in which science derives from the poison a cure, but mind the poison itself is used as a base, and in that sense, we have that the lesser poison was the cure for the greater poison.

            Seneca, with all his life advice, was executed by a Roman emperor.  If only he had ink and paper when the sentence was pronounced, we would have a prime example of a Stoic faced with imminent death, rather a natural death from old age.  He would have possibly heard the horsemen approaching, poor Seneca, and knowing the end was but moments away.  We could have seen how such a fountain of Stoic wisdom truly faced the spector of coming death.  Seneca otherwise, does not mention death much, but gives a wealth of life advice.  Of the lottery, he would perhaps say that such a practice is to follow the crowd, and the crowd leads one the wrong way generally.  He quipped also that to try and guide oneself was to have a fool for a master, as well.

            This seems contradictory advice, from different parts of his collected correspondence; however, he merely cautions us.  He imparts us a sense of mistrust, which is a part of tempering those hopes and not giving over to the wasted time of daydreams.  Instead, we indulge a more modest hope, at best, if not outright expecting failure, and the ultimate point of the narrative is to use one’s own sense of reason, to go forward by intelligence, which is, after all, what separates man from the rest of the animal kingdom.

 

6.  Good And Evil

 

            No person will ever just look at themselves in the mirror and say, “I’m a bad person”, unless they are in a fairly chaotic state of mind, like hastening suicide or in the throes of depression.  There’s always something animal inside, that if it is not purely good, it is at least honest about its greeds and guiles that come forward in daily life, and that honesty belies, for those people, a goodness that trumps the goodness of others.  Each was born, was cared for as an infant, learned and grew into the people we might meet any old time of day.

            And not one of them a self-professed “bad person” of the entire lot?

            In the time of Marcus Aurelius, even the great philosopher fell into the trap of labeling some people bad or good, and really, it becomes clear that its just a matter of perspective whether someone is else is deemed good or bad.  Think of national enemies, men who seem cruel and evil to us, bent on destruction.  In their own lands, their might be people that regard them as brave, honest and true heroes of their own nations.  Such as Russia, for instance, when a lady on the street told me that Russians literally know they are bad people.  I was amazed and argued the point that from the perspective of Russian interests, they are great champions of their cause, and probably lauded for the traits the employ that undermine other interests, with those same traits demonized on Western news broadcasts, and lamented in diplomatic bodies.

            Solomon for example, given the crown of his people, felt the need to buy properties for his own personal holdings, and procure foreign wives.  Foreign wives were usually frowned upon by the Israelites because of their attention to their own family trees and heritage.  Tribalism writ large.  His taking of multiple foreign wives was a compounded sin to his people, despite diplomatic interests, or interests of honest romance, or lust.  And he probably would never say he was a “bad person” in his later writing about the matter, but he would concede that he was misguided and not following the most simple honest path to a decent life.  Indeed, the properties and the concubines did not make him a bad person, per se, but may have constituted gross acts of inpropriety. 

            He would not step to the level of saying he was bad, because he knew his heart and mind during those times, when those things were done.  Just misguided, and not bad, he would perhaps say.  He was probably, at those times, seeming to him to be the same as he ever was, and not dictated to himself by his actions, but his thoughts: inside a person, its their thoughts that make them bad or good, and that is why so many label themselves “good people”.  They know their own flow of thoughts and find nothing shameful or reprehensible among any of their thoughts, that all have lead logically from one diversion or other, each with its own reason, whether that reason is significant or not.

            Solomon did later come around or awaken to a better way of life-his own Chief Good-in the form of honoring God.

            It was Aurelius that said of circumstances that if something happened to both evil people and good people, then it was neither evil or good itself.  Solomon said time and chance happened to all, and chance we see the possibly of both positive and negative outcomes.  In our own walks, each of us deep down believe we are deserving of something much better, something may even above everyone else, because we know that honest little animal child living within.  We know that inner core animal child within is not bad. 

            But I submit that it is not explicitly “good” either.  It is self-interested and can be capable of greed and cruelty to others in the name of its own interests, just like the international game of football that we call War and Peace among various nations.  It seems the smaller nations, without an enemy to focus on, just go after some of their own people; meanwhile, the larger nations fight each other, and they focus that prerogative to energize and motivate their own people in the name of the national interest.

            There was the old thought of stealing bread in times of desperation and hunger, but that too can be an evil to others, particularly if you owned the bread, or needed the bread for yourself before the hungry, self-interested person stole it.  Then you, also self-interested, make it a cause to address the matter, because it is an evil to you.

            Self-interest too is a never ending flood, with most of us feeding three times a day, a continual chain in which entire industries make loads of money doing nothing but moving boxes of food for us, so that we may purchase those boxes, get at them.  We need more things, and more things as time goes on, be it three times a day, or once a week, some internal clock is pinging in our ears about needing something, and whether it is difficult or not, expedient or “out of the way”, in the modern age, a person needs a means of sustaining themselves within a system of concrete floor stores and online ordering; we are meant to purchase with money all that stuff, so first, we need to get money by some means.

 

            And then we’re caught up in the system, but a product of nature servicing his/her own nature.

Epilogue.

 

            In the end, we can see through, or see beyond some of the popular lies, we can deconstruct and look afresh on the many things that drag on our attention in modern life.

            So, with this in my mind, live well.  Live reasoned.