“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” – Silence of the Lambs
Never trust Hunter Biden to pick up pizza and coke for a party.
The last five posts have been fairly dark, and Monday’s post will be dark, too. I already know that dark humor is like aid for the citizens of Ukraine – not everyone gets it (this is a repeat from 1932, LINK). That’s to be expected. We live in interesting times. But the good news is, it’s Friday. Last Friday, I happened upon a friend. I promise, I have more than one, despite what the NSA says.
In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!
My friend noted that he had to go shopping, and he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. I responded, “Well, Marcus Aurelius said that you can find happiness in whatever moment, and the limiting factor is often what you feel about the situation, rather than the situation.” I said this even though I haven’t been shopping since Jimmy Kimmel was funny.
He smiled. We continued talking, and he went off shopping. As I was sitting at my table, I found this quote, from the inestimable P. G. Wodehouse’s , as found here (LINK) from his Jeeves and Wooster series of books (also a television series starring Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster). Setup – Jeeves is the intelligent, dry-witted, valet to Bertie Wooster, an idle British aristocrat. Thanks to Wodehouse, hilarity often ensues:
“Who do you think I am, Alfred Einstein?”
I turned to Jeeves. “So, Jeeves!”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you mean, ‘Yes, sir’?”
“I was endeavouring [Wilder note: the British cannot spell] to convey my appreciation of the fact that your position is in many respects somewhat difficult, sir. But I wonder if I might call your attention to an observation of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said: ‘Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part; of the great web’.”
I breathed a bit stertorously. “He said that, did he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass.”
Bonus points if you knew what stertorously meant. I had to look it up. Snort.
Is she attractive? Neigh.
I’ve heard it said that life is a tragedy to those that feel, a comedy to those that think. Given that, the really funny part of life is that when times are down we don’t want to listen to the simple stoic Truths of life:
- Control what you can, don’t let those things you don’t control (like the Wendy’s® drive through line, or Hunter Biden’s amazing appetite for crack) drive you nuts.
- There is Virtue. We can spend our lives splitting hairs about what is virtuous, or, we could just be virtuous. Be Virtuous.
- Most passions aren’t healthy. Some are, but taken to extreme, even those become unhealthy, like when I lift weights and become so strong that I can rip apart the fabric of the Universe just by tensing my glistening pectoral muscles? See, unhealthy. Understand the difference, and don’t be ruled by emotion. Passion is for 18 year olds, reason is for adults.
- Johnny Depp was pretty good in the movie Dead Man.
- Seek wisdom to guide your virtue.
- Seek justice to create a more virtuous society. Not an equitable society, but a virtuous one. Let Disney™ know that there’s a difference.
- Understand that courage is required – Virtue often comes with a price, which may be about $3.50, in 1973. Or a career in 2020.
- Living outside of Virtue is the clearest definition of Vice.
- Possessions are, for the most part, neither good nor bad, but what we do with them determines their value. Anyone want to buy a slightly used copy of the Necronomicon?
The lures that pull us away from being virtuous are many. PEZ®. TikGram©. InstaFace©. SnapTwit®. PornHULU©. TinderMAX®. EskimoBrotherDataBase (EBDB)™. The idea is that if we’re distracted, we don’t focus on the things that are important in life, like virtue.
One of the things that sets humans apart is that we think about our actions and the consequences. The result of all the lures? It pulls us away from improving ourselves, from having introspection and working through our issues. Issues? I don’t have issues. Like most people, I have subscriptions.
Surround yourself with people who have issues – they always have beer. And 21-year-old nannys.
True life: I was having a problem, something that really, really made me mad, like the Game of Thrones™ parents who named their kids “Daenerys” saw her turn into a war criminal. I didn’t let it consume me like a dragon consuming a daycare center, but in those small, still moments of life that issue managed to creep into my conscious.
Like when I woke up at 3am and it didn’t mean I had to go to the bathroom (which never happens, because I’ve evolved beyond needing liquids to live), I’d think about it. Finally, a hypnogogic conversation with myself provided the answer.
“John, what would you tell your best friend if he had this same problem?”
“Self,” I answered, “I would tell my friend to let it go. It happened a year ago. It wasn’t personal. And it’s probably for the best.”
Coffee spelled backwards is eeffoc. And before I have coffee, I don’t give eeffoc.
I had clarity. I had an answer. I had closure. And it didn’t come from social media. It came from thinking and understanding what advice I’d give my closest friend. Since I hadn’t talked with, well, really anyone, I had to deal with it myself.
I finally did deal with it. And now, when I wake up at 3AM? I worry about the devil since I haven’t had to pee in a month.
Introspection is our friend, as long as we don’t allow ourselves to drown in a sea of self-pity, and as long as we use it to measure ourselves against virtue. How do we measure it?
As near as I can find, Marcus Aurelius was religious, but certainly not a Christian. As Caesar, he was the Humongous Maximus of religious stuff, and his writings wondered about what impact the gods had in the lives of men, at least after he got that petroleum from those pesky kids.
Marcus Aurelius, the early years.
The impact of religion is enormous. When we live without a concept of a greater purpose, it’s like having pancakes without syrup, or thermonuclear weapons without the initial fission core that puts the hydrogen in H-Bomb. With no greater purpose, our lives are less than what they could be. As I’ve said before, most atheists aren’t atheists – they actually hate God, generally because they know that the life they are leading and/or the choices they are making are not virtuous. They know it.
Of course, I’ve met (and almost every atheist reader here) atheists that don’t hate God. Those folks? We’re cool. Generally, they don’t dislike people like me who believe in God, they just approach the world in a different way. But I’ve noticed this about the atheists that don’t hate God – they generally like living in a society where people believe in God. Why? It’s a more virtuous society, and the streets are very empty on Sunday morning.
I won’t hold myself up to be Virtuous, or even virtuous. I will note that I really, really do try. I think I’m more virtuous this year than last year, though I shower less because of my greater virtue. And that’s the point. Every day, I try to be better inside than the last. I try to make the world a bit better than it was the day before. And I try to tell the Truth.
Unfortunately, I bet sometimes people still say after a post like this, “John Wilder? Well, you can tell him from me, he’s an ass.”
Ha!
I’m not even awake.
Me, I don’t need this sh*t. I am reality. There’s the way it ought to be, and there’s the way it is.
Sgt. Barnes
Works for me.
John, since both many (non-Christian) religions along with a third of all Americans ( https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/11/23/views-on-the-afterlife/ ) believe in reincarnation, you should acknowledge that both you and Marcus Aurelius could in fact be one and the same spiritual entity living the good life in different times. This possibility is one that science or Christianity can never disprove, and would neatly explain why both you and Marcus get called an ass occasionally. If in fact you do by any readers of your posts, which I sincerely doubt. Despite our different beliefs in other areas, your loyal readers all believe in the importance virtue and want to live in a society that is virtuous – something that is sadly becoming increasingly hard to find.
“makes puts”??? It’s one or the other. Fun fact – they got the moniker of “hydrogen bombs” because the initial “Mike” prototype used pure cryogenic liquid deuterium, a particular isotope of hydrogen, as its nuclear “explosive”. Later militarized versions – and all the ones in service today – instead use chunks of solid lithium-6 deuteride. Technically, the lithium provides more mass than the deuterium to the resulting nuclear explosion, so they could be legitimately called “lithium bombs”. But you are correct in your garbled assertion that the fission bomb trigger “makes” / “puts” hydrogen in the H-bomb – its initial trigger FISSION neutrons near-instantaneously converts the lithium into tritium, another hydrogen isotope, as a preliminary step in reacting with the deuterium in the next-step FUSION explosion. A more correct term than “hydrogen or H bomb” would be “fusion bomb”.
Another fun fact – gaseous tritium is also carried along seperately in a hydrogen bomb to be squirted into the fission trigger at its detonation to increase its neutron production. Now, tritium has a radioactive half life of 12 years – however much you put in a bottle that goes into a nuclear storage bunker, after 12 years there’s only half as much of it in there. So if you build a hydrogen bomb in 1970 and put it in a silo for a launch in 1982, you gotta worry about whether or not it’s still gonna work with only half its original tritium. By 1994 there’s only a quarter of the original tritium in there. By 2006 it’s only got an eighth. By 2018 it’s only got a sixteenth. This is the condition that 400 Minuteman IIIs that have been sitting in North Dakota for half a century now find themselves…
If you wonder why the US and the USSR dropped their nuclear arsenals from 30,000 warheads each in the mid-1970s down to the current 4000 or so today, don’t credit arms-control diplomacy. Credit basic half-life physics and the scavanging/recycling/hassle needed to maintain what was originally built after retirement of both the Soviet and Savannah River SC 1950s nuclear plants that produced the original arsenal of tritium.
https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/tritium-facility-savannah-river-site-reaches-key-milestone
A big detour from virtue, perhaps – but perhaps the biggest virtue of all is not using nuclear weapons. Let’s hope Putin is virtuous.
LOL. “importance virtue” = “importance OF virtue”. It would appear that critiquing others invokes karma in one’s own self….
Thanks for catching the typo. Marcus has much better hair than I do . . .
I was trying to talk through in my analogy that the fission was required to get to the fusion. Didn’t know how they handled the deuterium/lithium bits. Makes sense.
John, a wonderful post. Your stoic advice was stellar.
Thank you!!
“…since Jimmy Kimmel was funny.”
How does one go from “The Man Show” to what he is today? Did Hunter sneak some crack into Jimmy’s coffee?
“I said this even though I haven’t been shopping since Jimmy Kimmel was funny.”
Keep your eye on the ball: he’s telling you he’s never been shopping in his life.
QED
He is the human equivalent of dryer lint.
“The Funniest Post You’ll Read Today About The Stoics” By definition. It’s the only thing I’ll read today about the stoics so it will be the funniest. It’s possible it’s the only thing I’ll read about the stoics all year.
Don’t tempt me…
Okay, that would be awesome, Aesop.
Hehehe. See, truth in advertising!
John, apparently we are sharing some sort of Cosmic One Mind on the Stoics, as they have been on my mind a great deal this week as well (although I lack the memes and puns).
Is being virtuous even something we talk about in public anymore? We talk about a great many things – a lot of “consciousness” things, conscious of this or that – but not becoming virtuous or undertaking real self improvement. I wonder if simply it seems too difficult to many – and, being too difficult to many, is something that is not to be tried at all.
As a commenter posted on my blog today, someday needs to both be the adults in the room and act like them. I would argue that virtue allows us to do that.
The sad fact is most people think that virtue means “didn’t break the law” – which is not true, at all. Virtue will make a comeback. Soon.
Stoicism is the Western version of Zen, but with less slapping. “Reality is real. Stuff happens. Deal with it.”
Yes, less slapping. So, does that make Will Smith zen? Or is Will Smith the answer to “what sound does one hand clapping make?”
I would never, even through Jeeves, tell John Wilder that he’s an ass, because that wouldn’t be true. I was thinking of complaining, because a picture of the pop-eyed AOC is nothing to look at while still on the first coffee of the day. But that was more than offset by the first-rate bikini picture of the nonexistent 1-year-old’s nanny that followed. Well played, sir, well played.
Speaking, if only tangentially, of coffee (and eeffoc), the tiny amount of teevee news that I permit to be inflicted on me has given many opportunities to see the Holy NATO logo. I wonder about this “NATO / OTAN” business. Either they hired a corporate branding consultant for vast sums of $$$, or it’s a satanic incantation of some sort. I’m betting on the latter.
James those aren’t her “pop eyes”, those are her “crazy eyes.”
It’s the French. They demanded their version. Which probably smells like snails.
One of your better posts John Wilder. I too have been given some thought lately of what is virtue and by extension who is virtuous. Organized religion (politics always) certainly hasn’t been cutting it lately and for awhile. I am not an atheist, nor an agnostic, I have found faith in those institutions quite lacking. My bible certainly is getting thumb worn lately. I am so stealing your epic and “virtuous” comment, “Coffee spelled backwards is eeffoc. And before I have coffee, I don’t give eeffoc.” That at best, describes my morning state of being, it’s core concept, of course at this juncture in life I don’t give much eeffoc during the day too…
Thank you! Hopefully Pugsley programmed the eeffoc machine . . . .
Bill Murray starred in the movie “Groundhog Day”, in which, having tried debauchery and self-destruction, he was forced to explore virtue, striving to make each day better than the last. Each day started exactly as the past day had, so he had every opportunity to review the mistakes of the day and correct them next time around. In the sense that it’s about “do your best, every day”, I really like it.
However, stepping back a little, consider that while Bill Murray’s character is living each day a little bit differently (better, he hopes), all of the other characters in his world are living the same day over, too, and doomed to change only in reaction to HIS changes. It’s almost as if he’s the star of a movie, and everyone else needs to keep shooting the scene over and over again until HE finally gets it right. There’s only one developing soul in that universe, which is unsettling.
And here’s a bit of movie trivia: the director knew that Murray had a reputation for losing interest in projects before they were finished, so he shot the scenes in reverse order! The cheerful, engaged, hard-working redeemed soul at the end of the story was Murray getting started, and the jaded cynic that he plays at the start of the story is Murray, ready to move on to something new.
Now that live music is back in Charleston, we see Bill often. Never talk to him, but once. Asked if he was friends with Jeff & Gene’s older brother Jimmy Guercio (James William as Producer). Yes, he said. How? Lived in Edison Park until 10.
I love it. And it really is a tale about virtue – didn’t know about the reverse order part.