Seneca: On the Shortness of Life
forumromanum.org
forumromanum.org
The title is a little cheesy, but the content is gold. It's one of the books I re-read (or re-listen to via Audible) multiple times a year. I find the repetition is really valuable since I can slip so easily back into my old thought patterns.
When I count books that have been most helpful to me, this one is at the top of the list (followed by "War of Art" by Pressfield).
For a synopsis, check out Derek Sivers book notes on it: https://sivers.org/book/StoicJoy
Derek's intro to the notes: "Rating: 10/10. Almost too personal for me to give an objective review, because I found when reading it that the quirky philosophy I've been living my life by since 17 matches up exactly with a 2000-year-old philosophy called Stoicism. Mine was self-developed haphazardly, so it was fascinating to read the refined developed original. Really resonated."
Another great book that I would like to suggest is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
His main complaint is against rich people who "squandered in luxury and carelessness", the various ways in which "riches [are] a burden", how men care too much about the "limit of their lands". Almost every sentence seems spoken to someone too rich for his own good, with too many slaves, mistresses, clients, and land.
It fits in with my picture of Rome as having a strong class hierarchy (and up to 30% slaves!). This are the words from the "optimo iure" to themselves.
And then read the other parts that don't talk about wealth.
Seneca was solace to me when staring death in the face (Cancer) and I can assure you money was no use then.
Seneca was bloody privileged, but he produced a system that helps deal with the problems of privilege (they exist) and also the problems of lack of privilege.
There were certainly many things Seneca didn't have access to from our time. But I think on any sensible measure he was wealthier than almost anyone alive today.
We've made many advances, but we forget that whatever we have often merely replaced an older version that did the job well enough, especially for those with means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger#Imperial_adv...
I'm pretty sure he wish he had dentistry.
I always find a deep sense of joy being able to read such interesting thoughts that were put on paper, papyrus, wood, stone so many centuries ago.
In a similar timeframe will anyone be able to read our digital thoughts?
Lots of famous writing from the ancient world doesn't survive in the original and had to be copied; what we have is copies of copies of copies, etc. And plenty of ancient works are lost.
We will need to copy to newer media what is important for archival purposes even now it seems.
[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-Stoic-Epistulae-Lucilium-Cla...
Edit: in fact the letter I read yesterday was, like the one posted here, on life. Some things I liked from it:
"...death ought to be right there before the eyes of a young man just as much as an old one. [...] Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives."
"To live under constraint is a misfortune, but there is no constraint to live under constraint."
"Whoever has said 'I have lived' receives a windfall every day he gets up in the morning."
EDIT: changed the links to Project Gutenberg links on jwdunne's suggestion
One major problem with it, speaking as a 30-year old, is that it's not trivial to come up with some "ultimage goal" or "prime principle" for life. But maybe that's just me being unimaginative and isn't necessarily a flaw of the philosophy itself.
The real issue is that being consequent about stoicism seems to always result in contradiction given mankind's current state of knowledge. On one hand stoicism is concerned with not wasting time (on indulgences) and at the same time it ignores that a market economy (embedded in a democratic society) is the only way we know of, that can reliably force a larger population to strive for efficiency.
Of course the market economy isn't free - we pay for it by e.g. giving up moral values. It still allows for huge bubbles of inefficiency to form - things like complicance regulations that provide zero real value and only serve as market barriers. And of course we're all just fallible selfish humans, so there's no shortage of people studying and abusing these processes. But all these points are, practically speaking, irrelevant, seeing as how there are no (better) alternatives (yet).
So what is a stoic to do? Give up on a proven path to efficiency because he doesn't want to be a "tool"?
Just imagine how much more of our time would be wasted if there weren't an army of "tools" out there, working 8 hours a day towards the "indulgence" of ensuring that there is allways enough fresh milk stocked in the supermarkets of our cities.
No I didn't say that. I said stoicism seems concerned about efficiency.
> you are making philosophical choices, and many of those were already made by people before you
That's true. My criticism though isn't about philosophy as a whole - just about stoicism because it seems to be contradictory.
It's a philosophy that embraces fatalism and keep you on the path of finding your nature and then keeping on that path, just being yourself, without regards for external influences.
The notion of duty is however very strong in stoicism: social duty is part of your nature. You have to accept your obligations and perform them the best you can, without search for external rewards.
All in all, stoicism is a search for personal tranquillity, inner peace. It's not even a philosophy of efficiency, at least I've never seen it described as such.
Stoicism doesn't rely on "tools" either. You can be a milkman and still adopt stoicism as your personal philosophy of life.
Duty is a very big part of stoicism: it acknowledges that we live in a social world and that our nature, our role, requires that we perform our duties to the best of our abilities. This is the only way to achieve some sort of peace, by removing the fact that you need something eternal to yourself to find satisfaction about what you do.
So, you can be a janitor, collect rubbish, be a developer, a manager, an office worker, a CEO, it doesn't matter. You'll only achieve peace if you find your own way to derive satisfaction in whatever fortune you find yourself in at a given instant. In short: accept what fate threw at you, don't sweat what you can't control, and learn to make the best of it.
I'd say it's a perfect philosophy for today.
Yes, that's what drew me in at first too. But the details seem sketchy.
> It's not even a philosophy of efficiency
I believe that ultimately it is.
What is the point of giving up on deriving happiness from external sources, if not to make the path to happiness a shorter and easier one? What is the point of not worrying about things outside your control, if not to help focus your efforts on the things you can actually impact? What is the point of tranquility, if not to allow for more concious rational thought? How is that not efficiency?
> you can be a janitor, collect rubbish, be a developer, a manager, an office worker, a CEO, it doesn't matter
By being a "tool" I didn't mean someone engaging in menial jobs. One can have a prestigeous well-paid job, and still be bored to death, because his heart isn't in it, or because tasks are perceived as too repetitive or too petty. (I hope I'm not offending anyone by saying this, but just think of e.g. divorce lawyers if you need an example.) Yet at the same time that individual might be, because fate saw fit that way, the perfect person for that particular job in a given society.
How can one both accept the fate (or duty?) he was dealt (or that his younger self chose for him), and at the same time still stop wasting his life? How can one find meaning in a process, that over the years has evolved to become devoid of meaning, because ultimately that's what is necessary for it to achieve peak efficiency? E.g. Like lawyers and doctors detaching themselves from their clients and patients, because they'll burn out otherwise. (Again, no offense intended, this is just the first thing to come to mind.)
> Stoicism is a personal philosophy. It doesn't concern itself with the whole of human kind but with you.
That doesn't invalidate any of my original points. The market economy benefits the majority of it's participants. I.e., someone feeling like a tool, wouldn't just quit because of some overall concern for society, but simply because he's still wasting less time this way.
Another concern also is that if we advocate to some broader public to adopt some "new" philosohpy, I think it's a prerequisite that that philosphy be one that ensures the wellbeing of a society as a whole. Otherwise it might prove difficult to engender support.
(By "new" I mean currently unknown/unpopular amongst that broader public.)
Then we'll have to disagree. Being more "efficient" may be a by-product of stoicism, but it's not a measure of it and it's not a stated goal. At any rate, stoicism is not a shortcut to happiness. It's a arduous one because it takes practice and conscious effort.
Stoicism isn't about removing external pleasures either, the philosophers warn us about the dangers of seeking pleasure where it could trap us. They never said you shouldn't enjoy what surrounds you, on the contrary, they urge you to take pleasure in the things that are accessible to you instead of lusting for things that you believe will bring you pleasure.
You can call that efficiency if you wish, but that's a strange way of putting it.
>Another concern also is that if we advocate to some broader public to adopt some "new" philosohpy, I think it's a prerequisite that that philosphy be one that ensures the wellbeing of a society as a whole. Otherwise it might prove difficult to engender support.
I think this is a delusion: billions of people believe in mainstream religions that have encouraged bigotry, hatred and wars. Countless have died in the process.
Stoicism doesn't promote intolerance. It promotes reason, compassion, an awareness of our personal place in the world and our responsibilities to it. In terms of well being for the world, I'll take that over most other forms of philosophies. You are perfectly free to wait until something better (for you) comes along.
I don't think we "know" anything of the sort. That's just an ideology people who believe in market economy subscribe to. Efficiency, for one, is an empty term. Efficiency with regards to what and towards what? And why "force a larger population" to strive for it?
>And of course we're all just fallible selfish humans
Not sure about that either -- if it's meant in the extreme. I know millions who have devoted themselves to various external causes, even to the point of being improsoned and losing their jobs etc for it. From patriotic duty in an occupied land, to overthrowing a dictatorship, to working for civil rights and for equality, people following the communist ideals in the 20th century, etc. Even the nazi party followers were willing to sacrifice themselves (young soldiers etc), for some outer cause. Same for those who fought against them of course.
>Just imagine how much more of our time would be wasted if there weren't an army of "tools" out there, working 8 hours a day towards the "indulgence" of ensuring that there is allways enough fresh milk stocked in the supermarkets of our cities.
We have lived in societies were there wasn't always "enough fresh milk stocked in the supermarkets of our cities" and people managed just fine.
In fact common people had even more free time than now. Leaving your "9-5" job or your small shop you worked on every afternoon without any worry (and no boss to get you on the mobile), working only 5 days a week and with month long holidays annually, siesta and afternoon naps, people strolling and idling in cafes and city squares, etc, was very common, in 20th century Paris, Vienna, Rome, Barcelona, Athens, etc. In fact, up to the 80s-90s it was still almost like that. We might not have had Walmart 24/7 superstores or all kinds of BS foods and "indulgences" but it's not like they were missed much, if any.
I think this is rather easy to check - just have a look at per capita GDP.
> Efficiency, for one, is an empty term.
How did you reach this conclusion?
> Efficiency with regards to what and towards what?
With regard to how much effort you need to spend in order to achieve some outcome.
> And why "force a larger population" to strive for it?
Because it means we all waste less time/effort (on inefficiencies).
> I know millions who have devoted themselves to various external causes
I wasn't talking about specific individuals, but humans in general. Virtually every society will have some bad apples amongst it, and even those that don't will at least have incompetent ones.
I don't mean this in any derogatory way - in the end it's just genetics, random mutations and all that stuff. It's not exactly a process we can reasonably influence or even just comprehend.
> We might not have had Walmart 24/7 superstores or all kinds of BS foods and "indulgences" but it's not like they were missed much, if any.
I'd like to see a credible source for this claim. I for one would certainly miss some of those things.
Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues
"Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Freque...
The best book I have read on the Stoics is the Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, by the way, which has articles on every aspect of the philosophical movement.
"The part of life we really live is small."5 For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.
Cherish the moments you really live. The moments you create your memories.
"Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! "
People, here on HN also, are so busy planning their future life ("I will retire when I'm 40!"), that they spend all their life planning their life, without actually living their life.
Ah... I could give a seminar about this essay. It helped me in so many ways.
In some ways Benjamin Franklin's autobiography also feels similar, not sure why.
Old men should die, their children should be allowed a tilt at creating a better future for themselves.
I think children's ability to internalize a world system is possibly an advantage now given that the world of now is sharply different from the world of the 1970's when I grew up. When they come to formulate new ideas about how to run things they may have a much more solid grasp of reality than the view of our generation.
From an evolutionary fitness standpoint people who stop thinking are not likely to live very long so there would be pressure toward plasticity.
Equating the natural order of the world and universe (the old die, entropy increases, things change) with genocide is not a good thing to do. Genocide is the knowing murder of a race or group; the death of the old is the order of the universe.
One observes a current state of the world; the other implies that you value your concept of "natural" and "change" more than you value every living human.
Writing "people should die" and then "surprised I'm being down-voted for this one" ... is weird.
Do you still think old men should die? Then they have to be killed. Do you not? Then why should they die in this world?
Your ultimate values shouldn't change depending on the challenges that the universe throws at you. If people shouldn't die, and the universe says that they shall, well, the universe is a cold and uncaring place and it's our job to make it better.
Also, "I guess that mortality is something people struggle with" is kind of a condescending thing to say. Like, "you're downvoting me because you're not mature enough to understand the things that I understand".
Not only that, do you think they should die not by being humanely euthanized when they hit MAX_AGE, but by releasing a disease that slowly cripples everyone's body and mind over the course of several decades?
Death is bad, but at least one can make the case that a person doesn't suffer after they're dead. Aging is terrible for everyone.
If the option was to enjoy (say) 130 years of middle age life followed by a sudden painless and invariably fatal brain seizure then I would agree that would be better than the current slide into a nightmare.
No
And I doubt that it would cause a population explosion either. The only countries that have a low enough non-aging-related mortality rate tend to be the countries that have a birthrate below replacement anyways.
Remember, ~2.1cpw is replacement rate. Even with no deaths, you'd need 2.0cpw for replacement rate. That's not a large variation.
So I think innovation and progress requires turnover, fair enough. I also don't believe that "current human society" is necessarily any better at decision making than "Middle Ages society", so I wouldn't think that humankind is now equipped to deal with immortality.
So yeah, I guess I'm saying that old men should die. I wish it weren't awful as it so often is, and I wish that maybe it were a bit longer, but there it is.
* also fair to question the assumption of historical "progress"; I'm not sure but humans weren't better off as hunter-gatherers than what I fear our future could become.
Let's apply that test. The old do not die (of old age) instead they live on, and what happens?
Does the world reach a new nirvana? Does peace reign? Or do things go on as they are now? If we're such a hot bunch where are the solutions for the wars that are currently pumping the news cycle?
Lay them on the page and I will listen and believe me, I will change my mind.
That's just what we have on our plate now, think on to the future. When society faces new challenges where will the new thought (and thinkers) come from to meet them?
But forget the questions and the species preserving game theory. The moral issue is that getting rid of ageing and installing a gerontocracy is selfish and penalizes all subsequent generations, actual and imagined, either through snuffing them out, or by subduing them and taking their chances from them.
I can live with a cold and uncaring universe, that's just the way it is (if you take the view that we count for anything on the scale of the Universe and anthropomorphizing something that we have neither the perception or cognition to form a proper understanding of). But, human arrogance (for example, imagining that human agents might be able to change the aforementioned non anthropomorphic, non perceptable, non cognitively encompassed universe) and overweening selfishness (ie. all future children count for nothing) is something I think is a matter of choice and something that anyone wise enough to merit living forever will be able to opt out of.
And here is the answer to the conundrum of let's kill the old. If we as a species have the intrinsic merit to live forever we will opt out of doing so to make way for our children. If we don't merit this then there will be no death camps and euthanasia programs, just nuclear war, famine, environmental collapse and all the rest of it.
But if you think that in the world where people don't die of old age, we should kill them ourselves - I want you to come right out and say it. I won't tell you that you're wrong.
But you don't get to hide behind "the natural order of the universe". That's not how ethics works.
If we should let people die in this world, we should kill them in that one. If we should let people live in that world, we should try to save them in this.
> human arrogance (for example, imagining that human agents might be able to change the aforementioned non anthropomorphic, non perceptable, non cognitively encompassed universe)
This just strikes me as bullshit. What are you saying we can't do, exactly? In one sense, we can't change the universe: the laws of physics are constant and inviolable. And yet we went to the moon.
But eliminating aging wouldn't be changing the universe in that sense, any more than eliminating smallpox was. Was that arrogance? Was it bad to mess with the natural order of the universe like that?
To the contrary, everything you are and believe depends entirely on the peculiarities of the universe we live in. To claim that you have a higher moral compass than that is like a brain in a vat talking about the weather outside the vat maintenance facility.
Insofar as death is oblivion, the destruction of the self, it is rational to be unconcerned about being dead. You won't exist to have feelings on the matter - which is exactly the same situation as for all time prior to the point in your development at which you like to think that you became yourself.
Equally, it is rational to be very concerned about being dead at some point in the future. Humans are creatures of action. We like to achieve, observe, and experience. We place value upon these things, and death will stop us from gathering that value.
So the world of people might be divided at any point in time into (a) the group that is horrified by the prospect of oblivion, and (b) the group that is unbothered by personal extinction. It's a very sharp dividing line, not often explored in casual conversation, for all that one person's views might cross back and forth between camps over the years. Try a poll of the folk you know at some point in time: I think you'll find the results interesting.
Whatever your opinions on oblivion, however, it seems near universally agreed that the process of becoming dead is something to be feared - so much so that we work to hide the ugly reality from daily life, we put it from our mind, and we even rise up in anger to confront those trying to do something about it by fighting aging through the development of new medicine.
Terrible pain, injury, and degeneration are not on anyone's wish list. But we'll all be receiving these dubious gifts anyway - unless something is done about it. The difference between our age and the age of the Greek stoics is that we have the chance to do something about it: defeat aging by repairing its damage, improve our biochemistry, and ultimately replace our bodies with superior technology that is immune to all that plagues us now.
But that's the rub, right? When we have shuffled off this mortal coil...