thoughts from seneca on essentials and luxuries

“That race of men to whom taking care of the body was a straightforward enough matter were, if not philosophers, something very like it. The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort. Follow nature and you will feel no need of craftsmen. It was nature’s desire that we should not be kept occupied thus.”​ — seneca, letter xc (90)

yet again, seneca’s thinking bolsters something i’ve thought but haven’t written down. or maybe it’s full-on stoic philosophy, but i hesitate to attribute it to stoic philosophy in general because i hear seneca was an edge member of the group. anyways, the older i get and the more people i visit, the more astounded i am at the amount of supplies people have to live. creams and washes and pills and supplements and more.

i hope that someday sooner rather than later, people can see all this stuff we’re using and stop it. aging is normal. the marketplace of goods and services designed to slow or prevent aging is superfluous. if you’re not getting enough vitamins via your diet, why not change your diet? taking vitamin supplements so you can continue to consume a diet that doesn’t meet your needs seems silly.

all this reminds me a little bit of an article i saw the other day about the declining sales of fabric softener. the article, which seemed pretty tongue-in-cheek to me (and decidedly less tongue-in-cheek than the earlier wall street journal article that spawned the media conversation it seems), pinned the declining sales on millenials. and, maybe this is too prideful of me, but i’m 100% happy to take on that blame. i think millenials are rightly seeing the excess that was marketed and sold to our parents and rejecting it. maybe in its heyday fabric softener did something perceived as valuable. but that time is past and we’re over it.

of course, there are always exceptions to these things, but seneca’s point remains. i think the essentials of survival require little of individuals and society to procure. it’s only when we try to get fancy that we (consumerist capitalism?) take shit out of control.

writing: 12:07
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 9:00

living virtuously is possible for everyone, but takes practice

“And there is a world of difference between, on the one hand, choosing not to do what is wrong and, on the other, not knowing how to do it in the first place… virtue only comes to a character which has been thoroughly schooled and trained and brought to a pitch of perfection by unremitting practice. We are born for it, but not with it. And even in the best of people, until you cultivate it there is on the material for virtue, not virtue itself.” —seneca, letter xc (90)

this quote stuck out to me because i appreciate the emphasis it puts on effort. i know that effort isn’t equally valuable in all circumstances, but virtue is one area where i think it is. i believe goodness is an inherent capacity, but that doesn’t mean that everyone cultivates it. and when you see it in someone, that generally means that they’ve put in the effort to cultivate it.

i actually do think it’s easier to be wicked. i’m not totally sure why, but one way i’ve thought about it is the second law of thermodynamics. since the universe tends towards chaos, it makes sense that it’s easier to do the thing that leads to more chaos as opposed to more order.

that said, i think ability to defy the nature of the individual for the good of the collective is one of the things that makes intelligent life special. there are all sorts of intelligence in life so i’m not just talking about humans here, but i digress. putting in the time and effort to practice being a virtuous person is a difficult, but worthy endeavor. the signs of someone who has put in that work show up in their everyday life, their speech, and their work, too. 

it’s tremendously hopeful to remember (or at least believe) that all people have capacity for virtue, whether or not they live into it. in fact, i think if i didn’t believe that, i’d have a much more difficult understanding humanity as a whole.

writing: 9:58
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 10:15

yet another problem of academia…

“I have been speaking so far of liberal studies; but think how much superfluous and unpractical matter the philosophers contain! Of their own accord they also have descended to establishing nice divisions of syllables, to determining the true meaning of conjunctions and prepositions; they have been envious of the scholars, envious of the mathematicians. They have taken over into their own art all the superfluities of these other arts; the result is that they know more about careful speaking than about careful living. Let me tell you what evils are due to over-nice exactness, and what an enemy it is of truth!” — seneca, letter LXXXVIII, (88)

i have a love-hate-but-mostly-hate relationship with academia. and i think the longer i’m around it, the longer most of it frustrates me. maybe i’m just young and i’ll look back at this and eat my words. but for the time being, i’m just going to continue throwing shade.

the gold for me in the above little passage from seneca is the last line and a half: “…the result is that they know more about careful speaking than about careful living. Let me tell you what evils are due to over-nice exactness, and what an enemy it is of truth!”

i often have the sense that, for want of exactness, academic research misses the forest for the trees. i can’t tell you how many people i know who are doing research that they think is pointless. on one hand, i understand that the freedom from proving the impact of one’s work is necessary to take long-shots that are risky, but could return really great insights. but i also believe that some things (like academic appointments) really shouldn’t be forever. especially if you ain’t doing shit. (>_>)

i guess my real issue is when, over time, it seems clear that a particular person or area of work of a particular person isn’t showing any promise, things are allowed to continue onward. that’s the point at which i think things become more about ‘over-nice exactness’ and an enemy of truth. it is definitely possible to waste time, energy, and financial resources on things that aren’t useful. and that, imo, is when things become the enemy of truth. not because they’re bad in and of themselves, but because they’re distracting from things that could making the world a better place.

all that said, i think individual academics can bring significant insight to situations. a late favorite professor of mine, alice amsden, has been on point in her predictions about the rise of economies in some countries way more so than any individual, including others in her field, ought to be. i can’t help but chalk that up to her decades of research and persistent study.

so maybe this is all just a wash. this whole thing from seneca was really about grammar so maybe a lesson can’t be drawn in the way i’m trying. oops?

what is the point of expensive coffins?

a couple of weeks ago, i had a conversation with a new mit friend, forrest. somehow we got on the topic of silly things people do. forrest brought up that at one point he worked in a cemetery or morgue or something. and then we got to talking about coffins. forest mentioned that he sometimes saw people buried in coffins that cost upwards of $15,000. to both us this felt like literally burying money in the ground. not that money is everything, but still… forrest even wrote an essay about it with a title too good not to share: “how americans rest in peace.”

it’s too funny that even in death, americans have still found a way to involve absurd amounts of money. why do we do this? it reminds me of the things the ancient egytians used to bury pharaohs with.

actually, what we do is worse. at least what the egyptians did had some sort of spiritual meaning. just like charon’s obols (the coins under the tongue for the greeks to help them make it to the afterlife), egyptians were buried with things believed to be taken with them on the other side. expensive coffins don’t even make it to that level of meaning.

why do we do this? $15,000 could do so much good for someone who’s alive.

bizarre.

on escaping the fear of death, new leases on life, and distinguishing between the good and bad things in this world

at the bottom of this post are the longer passages from which the immediately following pull quotes are from. they’re both from seneca, letter LXXVIII (78), on death:

“My own advice to you – and not only in this present illness but in your whole life as well – is this: refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear.”

“Illness has actually given many people a new lease of life; the experience of being near to death has been their preservation.”

“… the one requirement is that we cease to dread death. And so we shall as soon as we have learnt to distinguish the good things and the bad things in this world.”

i’m really feeling these lines right now as i continue to ruminate about death. as a person who has been near to death, i have experienced conscious (and maybe even unconscious) changes in how i live my life. and, though i hesitate to say this, i actually feeling pretty lucky in that regard. knowing how close i was to not existing has, in seneca’s words, been my preservation. i have been saved from potentially many years of wandering because i have had my sights focused on making the most of what life i have left (knowing that it could be over in a second).

and not only have i been given focus, i’m also finding myself increasingly unafraid of putting myself out there. to be clear, i’m still pretty afraid of it, but it gets easier to push through every time i remind myself (usually while mediating) that this could be my last day.

and then finally, that last quote about learning how to distinguish between good and bad things. knowing how easily death can come makes it so much easier to know how to “distinguish the good things and the bad things in this world.”

reading this particular letter from seneca really helped me crystallize many disparate thoughts. really digging seneca’s version of stoic philosophy.

longer quotes:

“My own advice to you – and not only in this present illness but in your whole life as well – is this: refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear. There are three upsetting things about any illness: the fear of dying, the physical suffering and the interruption offer pleasures. I have said enough about the first, but will just say this, that the fear is due to the facts of nature, not of illness. Illness has actually given many people a new lease of life; the experience of being near to death has been their preservation. You will die not because you are sick but because you are alive. That end still awaits you when you have been cured. In getting well again you may be escaping some ill health but not death.”

“… the one requirement is that we cease to dread death. And so we shall as soon as we have learnt to distinguish the good things and the bad things in this world. Then and only then shall we stop being weary of living as well as scared of dying. For a life spent viewing all the variety, the majesty, the sublimity in things around us can never succumb to ennui: the feeling that one is tired of being, of existing, is usually the result of an idle and inactive leisure. Truth will never pall on someone who explores the world of nature, wearied as a person will be by the spurious things.”