"No one grows tired of receiving benefits, and to bestow benefits is to act according to nature; so never grow tired of receiving benefits by bestowing benefits on others." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In other words: helping people is human nature and so we help ourselves when we help others. Or, as Seneca put it: "You must live for another if you would live for yourself."
"Pride's greatest secret is that it is always under threat." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners
"The word compete means 'strive together' or 'strive in common.' It is a concept that is more collaborative than antagonistic, but this is not the sense we get when the word is used today." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners
"Here is a running tip: You can't feel grateful and bad for yourself at the same time. Gratitude decreases negative affect." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners
"There is clear guidance for how to develop a good character, and it is guidance that will especially resonate with an athlete: We develop good characters in the same way that we become better runners. We practice." - Sabrina B. Little, The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners
"Adapt yourself to the circumstances in which your lot has cast you; and love these people among whom your lot has fallen, but love them in all sincerity." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." - Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
"History has a lot to teach us, but only if we are willing to listen and learn. If we see the same sort of things taking place now that happened in the past, including drought and famine, earthquakes and tsunamis, then I ask again, might it not be a good idea to look at the ancient world and learn from what happened to them?" - Eric H. Cline, 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
"[S]he changed her mind on a number of issues (e.g., using or refusing to use certain pronouns, and the significance thereof), and some of the things she once said she later preferred to say differently. And so she corrects herself, pushes herself, forgives herself - this is what a living understanding looks like, instead of dead dogma. We should all be so willing to collaborate with our old selves throughout our life journey." - Ken Liu, describing Ursula K. Le Guin in his introduction to her The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction and Fantasy
"They do not come to you, the objects whose pursuit or avoidance causes you such disquiet, but in a certain sense you go to them; so if you will only let your judgement about them remain at rest, they too will remain unmoved, and you will be seen neither to pursue them nor to avoid them." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
In other words, things/people do not force us to think or feel a certain way, it is our own judgements and thoughts about them that cause our distress - we do it to ourselves. Marcus is telling himself that if he doesn't form, accept or fixate on such thoughts in the first place the distress will not come; so don't go to those thoughts in your mind.
"What the idea of 'doing one's moral best' comes down to, when it is sincere and genuine, is something close to Aristotle's idea that, in effect, one lives an ethically good life by trying to do so. The trying is itself the succeeding" - A.C. Grayling, Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life
"The rightful first subject of skepticism isn't others. It's ourselves." - Ward Farnsworth, The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook
"So after you work a lifetime to get yourself all set up and then delude yourself into thinking that you have some kind of ownership claim on your station in life, you're riding for a fall. You're asking for disappointment. To avoid that, stop kidding yourself, just do the best you can on a commonsense basis to make your station in life what you want it to be, but never get hooked on it. Make sure in your heart of hearts, in your inner self, that you treat your station in life with indifference. Not with contempt, only with indifference." - James Stockdale, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot
I can say from (current) experience this is very good advice as your station in life is something that you can influence, but it is subject to vast other influences that are beyond your control, rendering itself beyond your own control. "What are we to do, then? To make the best of what lies within our power, and deal with everything else as it comes."*
*Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.17
"[Socrates] was ... the first to show that life affords scope for philosophy at every moment, in every detail, in every feeling and circumstance whatsoever." - Plutarch, "On Old Men in Public Life"
Via The Socratic Method: A Practioner's Handbook by Ward Farnsworth"To the Stoic, the greatest injury that can be inflicted on a person is administered by himself when he destroys the good man within him. For the non-Stoics, almost all great injuries are based on deprivations of 'things' controlled by external persons or forces. To a Stoic, there is no such things as being a 'victim'; you can only be a 'victim' of yourself." - James Stockdale, Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot
I wake up today feeling the same. Except not. It has unofficially been the case for decades now that the President is above the law, as we have "looked forward, not backward" at crimes committed in office. But now we have the Supreme Court giving the presidency "absolute immunity" to commit crimes while in office. In a country where one person is set above the law we are all less safe, less free. So much for the Jeffersonian sentiment: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
This 4th of July we should not celebrate our liberty, but mourn its loss.
"Surveillance capitalists work hard to camouflage their purpose as they master the uses of instrumentation power to shape our behavior while evading our awareness." - Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
"I want you to imagine walking into a control room with a hundred people, hunched over a desk with little dials, and that that control room will shape the thoughts and feelings of a billion people. This might sound like science fiction, but this actually exists right now, today." - Tristan Harris, "How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day"*
*Via Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading by Chris Anderson
"A person often acts unjustly by what he fails to do, and not only by what he does." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I'm watching rally footage of Donald Trump and I can't believe the staggering amount of falseness that he generates, almost constantly. Particularly struck that even within the realm of his misinformation, he misinforms about that: he is saying that global cooling, fear the Earth would freeze was once a supposed problem in the .... 1920s. And that there was a Time magazine cover about it.
Global cooling scare is a standard climate change denier trope: it was a Newsweek article that is the source of this myth, and it was during the 1970s, not 20s.
There was no consensus of impending global cooling in the 1970s, nor a panic. The majority of research papers were concerned with global warming, even then. And the Time magazine cover allusion is reference to a fraud generated by a climate denier.
Yet how many people in that rally audience will ever be confronted with this information?
"Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself; whoever acts unjustly, acts unjustly towards himself because he makes himself bad." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"[Scientific thinking's] strength lies not in the certainties it reaches but in a radical awareness of the vastness of our ignorance. This awareness allows us to keep questioning our own knowledge, and thus, to continue learning." - Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science
I actually prefer the title the book was originally released with (that edition is now out of print): The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy.
"Over the past two decades, influential figures in American and British public life have adopted an ever-more-tenuous connection to the truth - and a complete disregard for evidence, expert knowledge, or logical coherence - with no political consequences." - Cailin O'Connor & James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
"[W]e are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers from Ptahhotep to Sartre
This is Durant explaining Aristotle's conception of excellence of character.
'The first great distinction of Aristotle is that almost without predecessors, almost entirely by his own hard thinking, he created a new science - Logic." - Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers from Ptahhotep to Sartre
"It is unjust to complain that what may happen to anyone has happened to someone." - Montaigne, "Of Experience" (1580)
Via The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual by Ward Farnsworth
In other words, there is no point in moaning, "why me?" when something we prefer not to happen has happened to us.
"The best way to avenge yourself is not to become as they are." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, good actions.
"Aristotle had spent money lavishly in the collection of books (that is, in those printless days, manuscripts); he was the first, after Euripides, to gather a library; and the foundation of the principles of library classification was among his many contributions to scholarship. Therefore, Plato spoke of Aristotle's home as 'the house of the reader,' and seems to have meant the sincerest compliment" - Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers from Ptahhotep to Sartre
"In our daily activities all of us are confronted with other people and often with those whom we would rather avoid. These are our challenges, lessons, and tests. If we consider them in that manner, we won't be so irritated by these experiences, nor will we be so apt to think, 'I wish this wasn't happening,' or 'I wish he'd go away,' or 'I wish he would never say another word,' thereby creating pain and grief for ourselves. When we realize that such a confrontation is exactly what we need at that moment in order to overcome resistance and negativity and to substitute loving-kindness for those emotions, then we will be grateful for the opportunity. Eventually we will find (mostly in retrospect, of course) that we can be very grateful to those people who have made life most difficult for us." - Ayya Khema, Know Where You're Going: A Complete Buddhist Guide to Meditation, Faith, and Everyday Transcendence
I'm reminded of Epictetus: "[The] man who insults me ... becomes my training partner; he trains me in patience, in abstaining from anger, in remaining gentle."
"[W]hatever you do, do it with this in mind, that you should do it as a good person ought, according to the specific conception that you have formed of what it means to be good. And hold to this in all that you undertake." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Hasten, then, towards your goal, and dismissing idle hopes, come to your own rescue, if you have any care for yourself, while it is still possible." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Here is the weakest point in Buddha's philosophy; he never quite faces the contradiction between his rationalistic psychology and his uncritical acceptance of reincarnation." - Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers from Ptahhotep to Sartre
"So other people hurt me? That's their problem. Their character and actions are not mine." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling." - Cleanthes, "Hymn to Zeus"
Cleanthes was the successor of Stoicism's founder Zeno.* This is one of those wonderful quotes that brings to our attention a truth that we already know and it seems so obvious but we still have a hard time accepting or living by it. No amount of frustration, lamentation or self-inflicted misery will ever be able to change things that are out of our control: the only reasonable option is to deal with whatever happens as best we can.
*See Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman for a biography of Cleanthes.
"We think that our discontent is due to exterior things because we have not yet realized that they originate from within."- Ayya Khema, Come and See for Yourself: The Buddhist Path to Happiness
"'Best,' to the Stoics, did not mean winning battles. Superior did not mean accumulating the most honors. It meant, as it still does today, virtue. It meant excellence not in accomplishing external things - though that was always nice if fate allowed - but excellence in the areas that you controlled: Your thoughts. Your actions. Your choices." - Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman, Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
"A generous person does not wait until a gift is expected of them, such as a special occasion, or being asked for something, before they think of giving." - Ayya Khema, Come and See for Yourself: The Buddhist Path to Happiness
"[W]e should remind ourselves not to be unfriendly if someone is unfriendly towards us. In view of the fact that they are creating bad karma in that moment, we should feel compassionate rather than unfriendly. We should bear in mind that if we are unfriendly in turn we will be creating bad karma too. Most people act according to the mundane law of repaying unkindness with unkindness, and believe there is no reasonable alternative. As Buddhists, however, we are asked to undertake the course of action recommended by the Buddha: not to repay unkind and unpleasant behavior in the same coin, but to indicate through our behavior there is another way. This will be of benefit to ourselves, and perhaps to the other person as well." - Ayya Khema, Come and See for Yourself: The Buddhist Path to Happiness
"Spreading negativity is always harmful, mostly to ourselves." - Ayya Khema, Come and See for Yourself: The Buddhist Path to Happiness
"Even while we remain mindful, our everyday behaviour should not be applied like a mask, or be based on an identification with some personality. It should come from the heart." - Ayya Khema, Come and See for Yourself: The Buddhist Path to Happiness
This is another instance of Buddhist teaching overlapping with Stoic exhortations to strive to be a sincere, good intentioned, honest person - constantly. Epictetus says to decide what kind of person you want to be and then act accordingly in all that you do, where as here Khema says not to pretend to be a person you're not or conduct yourself in a certain manner if it's insincere. These are like different sides of the same coin.
"The time we actually have cannot be calculated; it is a question of making proper use of it." - Ayya Khema, Come and See for Yourself: The Buddhist Path to Happiness
This is similar to the sentiment Seneca expressed in On the Shortness of Life: "Life is long if you know how to use it." (There is much overlap between Buddhist and Stoic teachings; e.g. focus on mindfulness, that our thoughts are the origin of our suffering, that happiness can only be found within, the promotion of kindness to all, etc.)
"The Socratic way seeks a different kind of comfort - with uncertainty, with fallibility, and with beliefs that are never more than provisional. On this view the good life isn't a result reached by winning the struggle. The struggle is the good life." - Ward Farnsworth, The Socratic Method: A Practioner's Handbook
"We have built networks for the delivery of information - the internet, and especially social media. These networks, too, are a marvel. But they also carry a kind of poison with them. The mind fed from these sources learns to subsist happily on quick reactions, easy certainties, one-liners, and rage. It craves confirmation and resents contradiction. Attention spans collapse; imbecility propagates, then seems normal, then is celebrated. The capacity for rational discourse between people who disagree gradually rots." - Ward Farnsworth, The Socratic Method: A Practioner's Handbook
Farnsworth is here comparing the modern marvel of the internet to the ancient marvel of Rome's water network. Rome's pipes were made of lead, though, and transmitted lead through the system over time. The metaphor being that the way social media is structured is inherently toxic.
"Good maxims, if you keep them often in mind, will be just as beneficial as good examples." - Seneca, Epistles 94.42-43
Via The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual by Ward Farnsworth"[T]he Stoic believes that virtue gives rise to joy and peace of mind as well. Virtue produces these good consequences as side effects. The primary mission of the Stoics, in other words, is to be helpful to others and serve the greater good, and they don't do this to make themselves happy. They do it because it is the right and natural way to live. But doing it in that spirit, as it turns out, makes them happy." - Ward Farnsworth, The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual
