Herbert Fingarette (1921-2018)

Herbert Fingarette (1921-2018) -

...He enrolled at the University of California intending to major in chemistry, but most of his experiments were flops. He was drafted into the Army and, after serving during World War II, mostly at the Pentagon, returned to the university. There he was captivated by a Bertrand Russell lecture on David Hume and decided to major in philosophy, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1947 and a doctorate in 1949...

“Never in my life will I experience death,” he wrote. “I will never know an end to my life, this life of mine right here on earth.” He added: “People hope never to know the end of consciousness. But why merely hope? It’s a certainty. They never will!”

In other words, he agreed with Epicurus.

But in this film by his grandson he admits that it's harder, at age 97, to be consoled by the Epicurean dismissal of death...

An aging philosopher returns to the essential question: ‘What is the point of it all?’

‘Being 97 has been an interesting experience.’

By the time of his death, the US philosopher Herbert Fingarette (1921-2018) had lived what most would consider a full and meaningful life. His marriage to his wife, Leslie, was long and happy. His career as professor of philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara was both accomplished and controversial – his book Heavy Drinking (1988), which challenged the popular understanding of alcoholism as a progressive disease, was met with criticism in the medical and academic communities. In a later book, Death: Philosophical Soundings (1999), Fingarette contemplated mortality, bringing him to a conclusion that echoed the Epicureans: in non-existence, there is nothing to fear. But as Being 97 makes evident, grappling with death can be quite different when the thoughts are personal rather than theoretical. Filmed during some of the final months of Fingarette’s life, the elegiac short documentary profiles the late philosopher as he reflects on life, loss, the many challenges of old age, and those lingering questions that might just be unanswerable.


Director: Andrew Hasse

Producer: Megan Brooks

Website: FTRMGC18 February, 2019

Our material

I'm reading "A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism" by Adam Gopnik...

"What Smith took from Hume’s demonstration of the limits of reason, the absurdity of superstition, and the primacy of the passions was not a lesson of Buddhist-Stoical indifference but something more like a sense of Epicurean intensity—if we are living in the material world, then let us make it our material."

Start reading this book for free: http://a.co/0Zm39FO

Calvin seems happy...

for a guy who doesn't like the present. As the late Richie Alpert said, be here now.

Is Anyone Happy Anymore?

We’ve lost our ability to take comfort in small things.

By Niall Williams

Mr. Williams is the author, most recently, of the novel “This Is Happiness.”

Recently I have been forced to think a bit about happiness. It’s not something I’ve done before. I have been too busy living. But when an interview with me appeared in The Sunday Times under the headline “Why ‘This Is Happiness’ Author Niall Williams Is Happily Out of Step,” I began to realize that it was not just me but the idea of happiness itself that was out of step with the times, and that it required some mental adjusting, not to say daring, to say aloud the title of my novel.

“How can you be happy now?” the book seems to ask, and it has a point. The catastrophe of climate neglect, the toxic politics, the tangible sense of so many things worsening in your own lifetime, along with a sense of your obscure or outright complicity, all combined to make the idea of any possible happiness seem at best childish, at worse willfully blind. “This Is Unhappiness” seemed a truer epitaph for the times, a sentiment echoed by the recent No. 1 movie in the world, “Joker,” which includes the line, “I haven’t been happy one minute of my life,” with an expletive thrown in for good measure.

Now, some element of being happily out-of-step may come from the fact that for nearly 35 years, my wife, Christine, and I have been living, writing and trying to grow a garden on the outermost edge of Europe, in Kiltumper, on the west coast of Ireland. I don’t mean to suggest that from this green vantage we are impervious to what is going on; we are not. In general, thanks largely to a superb national broadcaster, I find that Irish people are very well-informed.

So, being out-of-step is not from ignorance, nor is Kiltumper an idyll. Then again, no one who has reached their 60s can avoid the gathering evidence of their own mortality. And for the past four years we have been in and out of the cool, spirit-crushing corridors of an oncology ward, since Christine was first diagnosed with stage-three bowel cancer... (continues)

Still not happy?

The (countercultural) wellspring of happiness

The Fate of Fausto: Oliver Jeffers’s Lovely Painted Fable About the Absurdity of Greed and the Existential Triumph of Enoughness, Inspired by Vonnegut

A soulful meditation on the eternal battle between the human animal and its ego, played out on the primordial arena of elemental truth.

BY MARIA POPOVA

In his short and lovely poem penned at the end of his life, Kurt Vonnegut located the wellspring of happiness in a source so simple yet so countercultural in capitalist society: “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

A generation later, artist and author Oliver Jeffers — one of the most beloved and thoughtful storytellers of our time — picks up the message with uncommon simplicity of expression and profundity of sentiment in The Fate of Fausto (public library) — a “painted fable,” in that classic sense of moral admonition conveyed on the wings of enchantment, about how very little we and all of our striving matter in the grand scheme of time and being, and therefore how very much it matters to live with kindness, with generosity, in openhearted consanguinity with everything else that shares our cosmic blink of existence.

Inspired by Vonnegut’s poem, which appears on the final page of the book, the story follows a greedy suited man named Fausto, who decides he wants to own the whole world — from the littlest flower to the vastest ocean... (continues)

Happy Fins

Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise
Can high taxes be good for business? You bet.

...people in the United States have been peddled a myth that universal government programs like these can’t coexist with profitable private-sector businesses and robust economic growth. As if to reinforce the impossibility of such synergies, last fall the Drumpf administration released a peculiar report arguing that “socialism” had negatively affected Nordic living standards.

However, a 2006 study by the Finnish researchers Markus Jantti, Juho Saari and Juhana Vartiainen demonstrates the opposite. First, throughout the 20th century Finland remained — and remains to this day — a country and an economy committed to markets, private businesses and capitalism.

Even more intriguing, these scholars demonstrate that Finland’s capitalist growth and dynamism have been helped, not hurt, by the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services that support basic human well-being. These services have buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation.

With Finland’s stable foundation for growth and disruption, its small but dynamic free-market economy has punched far above its weight. Some of the country’s most notable businesses have included the world’s largest mobile phone company, one of the world’s largest elevator manufacturers and two of the world’s most successful mobile gaming companies. Visit Finland today and it’s obvious that the much-heralded quality of life is taking place within a bustling economy of upscale shopping malls, fancy cars and internationally competitive private companies.

The other Nordic countries have been practicing this form of capitalism even longer than Finland, with even more success. As early as the 1930s, according to Pauli Kettunen, employers across the Nordic region watched the disaster of the Great Depression unfold. For enough of them the lesson was clear: The smart choice was to compromise and pursue the Nordic approach to capitalism.

The Nordic countries are all different from one another, and all have their faults, foibles, unique histories and civic disagreements. Contentious battles between strong unions and employers help keep the system in balance. Often it gets messy: Just this week, the Finnish prime minister resigned amid a labor dispute.

But the Nordic nations as a whole, including a majority of their business elites, have arrived at a simple formula: Capitalism works better if employees get paid decent wages and are supported by high-quality, democratically accountable public services that enable everyone to live healthy, dignified lives and to enjoy real equality of opportunity for themselves and their children. For us, that has meant an increase in our personal freedoms and our political rights — not the other way around.

Yes, this requires capitalists and corporations to pay fairer wages and more taxes than their American counterparts currently do. Nordic citizens generally pay more taxes, too. And yes, this might sound scandalous in the United States, where business leaders and economists perpetually warn that tax increases would slow growth and reduce incentives to invest.

Here’s the funny thing, though: Over the past 50 years, if you had invested in a basket of Nordic equities, you would have earned a higher annual real return than the American stock market during the same half-century, according to global equities data published by Credit Suisse.

Nordic capitalists are not dumb. They know that they will still earn very handsome financial returns even after paying their taxes. They keep enough of their profits to live in luxury, wield influence and acquire social status. There are several dozen Nordic billionaires. Nordic citizens are not dumb, either. If you’re a member of the robust middle class in Finland, you generally get a better overall deal for your combined taxes and personal expenditures, as well as higher-quality outcomes, than your American counterparts — and with far less hassle.

Why would the wealthy in Nordic countries go along with this? Some Nordic capitalists actually believe in equality of opportunity and recognize the value of a society that invests in all of its people. But there is a more prosaic reason, too: Paying taxes is a convenient way for capitalists to outsource to the government the work of keeping workers healthy and educated.

While companies in the United States struggle to administer health plans and to find workers who are sufficiently educated, Nordic societies have demanded that their governments provide high-quality public services for all citizens. This liberates businesses to focus on what they do best: business. It’s convenient for everyone else, too. All Finnish residents, including manual laborers, legal immigrants, well-paid managers and wealthy families, benefit hugely from the same Finnish single-payer health care system and world-class public schools.

There’s a big lesson here: When capitalists perceive government as a logistical ally rather than an ideological foe and when all citizens have a stake in high-quality public institutions, it’s amazing how well government can get things done.

Ultimately, when we mislabel what goes on in Nordic nations as socialism, we blind ourselves to what the Nordic region really is: a laboratory where capitalists invest in long-term stability and human flourishing while maintaining healthy profits.

Capitalists in the United States have taken a different path. They’ve slashed taxes, weakened government, crushed unions and privatized essential services in the pursuit of excess profits. All of this leaves workers painfully vulnerable to capitalism’s dynamic disruptions. Even well-positioned Americans now struggle under debilitating pressures, and a majority inhabit a treacherous Wild West where poverty, homelessness, medical bankruptcy, addiction and incarceration can be just a bit of bad luck away. Americans are told that this is freedom and that it is the most heroic way to live. It’s the same message Finns were fed a century ago.

But is this approach the most effective or even the most profitable way for capitalists in the United States to do business? It should come as no surprise that resentment and fear have become rampant in the United States, and that President Drumpf got elected on a promise to turn the clock backward on globalization. Nor is it surprising that American workers are fighting back; the number of workers involved in strikes last year in the United States was the highest since the 1980s, and this year’s General Motors strike was the company’s longest in nearly 50 years. Nor should it surprise anyone that fully half of the rising generation of Americans, aged 18 to 29, according to Gallup polling, have a positive view of socialism.

The prospect of a future full of socialists seems finally to be getting the attention of some American business leaders. For years the venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has been warning his “fellow zillionaires” that “the pitchforks are coming for us.” Warren Buffett has been calling for higher taxes on the rich, and this year the hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio admitted that “capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people.” Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus of Young & Rubicam, has put it perhaps most succinctly: He sees capitalism “slowly committing suicide.”In recent months such concerns have spread throughout the capitalist establishment. The Financial Times rocked its business-friendly readership with a high-profile series admitting that capitalism has indeed become “rigged” and that it desperately needs a “reset,” to restore truly free markets and bring back real opportunity. Leading captains of finance and industry in the United States rocked the business world, too, with a joint declaration from the Business Roundtable that they will now prioritize not only profits but also “employees, customers, shareholders and the communities.” They are calling this “stakeholder capitalism.”

If these titans of industry are serious about finding a more sustainable approach, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. They can simply consult their Nordic counterparts. If they do, they might realize that the success of Nordic capitalism is not due to businesses doing more to help communities. In a way, it’s the opposite: Nordic capitalists do less. What Nordic businesses do is focus on business — including good-faith negotiations with their unions — while letting citizens vote for politicians who use government to deliver a set of robust universal public services.

This, in fact, may be closer to what a majority of people in the United States actually want, at least according to a poll released by the Pew Research Center this year. Respondents said that the American government should spend more on health care and education, for example, to improve the quality of life for future generations.

But the poll also revealed that Americans feel deeply pessimistic about the nation’s future and fear that worse political conflict is coming. Some military analysts and historians agree and put the odds of a civil war breaking out in the United States frighteningly high.

Right now might be an opportune moment for American capitalists to pause and ask themselves what kind of long-term cost-benefit calculation makes the most sense. Business leaders focused on the long game could do a lot worse than starting with a fact-finding trip to Finland.

Here in Helsinki, our family is facing our second Nordic winter and the notorious darkness it brings. Our Finnish friends keep asking how we handled the first one and whether we can survive another. Our answer is always the same. As we push our 2-year-old daughter in her stroller through the dismal, icy streets to her wonderful, affordable day-care center or to our friendly, professional and completely free pediatric health center, before heading to work in an innovative economy where a vast majority of people have a decent quality of life, the winter doesn’t matter one bit. It can actually make you happy. nyt 

Winter reading

If you're looking for something fun and fictional-literary on the general theme of happiness to enjoy during the winter break, here are a couple of suggestions. Add yours, if you like. 100 notable books of 2019...

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers...

When Chicagoan Russell Stone finds himself teaching a Creative Nonfiction class, he encounters a young Algerian woman with a disturbingly luminous presence. Thassadit Amzwar's blissful exuberance both entrances and puzzles the melancholic Russell. How can this refugee from perpetual terror be so happy? Won't someone so open and alive come to serious harm? Wondering how to protect her, Russell researches her war-torn country and skims through popular happiness manuals. Might her condition be hyperthymia? Hypomania? Russell's amateur inquiries lead him to college counselor Candace Weld, who also falls under Thassa's spell. Dubbed Miss Generosity by her classmates, Thassa's joyful personality comes to the attention of the notorious geneticist and advocate for genomic enhancement, Thomas Kurton, whose research leads him to announce the genotype for happiness.

Russell and Candace, now lovers, fail to protect Thassa from the growing media circus. Thassa's congenital optimism is soon severely tested. Devoured by the public as a living prophecy, her genetic secret will transform both Russell and Kurton, as well as the country at large.

What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and finally magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence. goodreads

The Schopenhauer Cure: A Novel by Irvin D. Yalom...

Suddenly confronted with his own mortality after a routine checkup, eminent psychotherapist Julius Hertzfeld is forced to reexamine his life and work -- and seeks out Philip Slate, a sex addict whom he failed to help some twenty years earlier. Yet Philip claims to be cured -- miraculously transformed by the pessimistic teachings of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer -- and is, himself, a philosophical counselor in training. Philips dour, misanthropic stance compels Julius to invite Philip to join his intensive therapy group in exchange for tutoring on Schopenhauer. But with mere months left, life may be far too short to help Philip or to compete with him for the hearts and minds of the group members. And then again, it might be just long enough.  g'r

And, there's a nice juxtaposition of Schopenhauer vs.Nietzsche around pages 326-331. "Schopenhauer says that if we go into any cemetery, knock on the tombstones, and ask the spirits dwelling there if they'd like to live again, every one of them would emphatically refuse..."

But Nietzsche's Zarathustra, announcing eternal recurrence, disagrees. "Was that life? Well, then, once again!"



Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Businessby Neil Postman,
Andrew Postman (Introduction)

Television has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time, to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs. In this eloquent, persuasive book, Neil Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compelling suggestions as to how to withstand the media onslaught. Before we hand over politics, education, religion, and journalism to the show business demands of the television age, we must recognize the ways in which the media shape our lives and the ways we can, in turn, shape them to serve out highest goals... g'r

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” 

==

“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.” — 197 likes

More quotes…

Learning from the Germ...

by
Susan Neiman

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Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil

by 

Susan Neiman

 4.34  ·   Rating details ·  89 ratings  ·  24 reviews

As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past

In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories.

Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.

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Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

by 

Margaret Renkl

4.53 · Rating details · 544 ratings · 124 reviews
An Indie Next Selection for July 2019
An Indies Introduce Selection for Summer/Fall 2019

From New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family--and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.

Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents--her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father--and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child's transition to caregiver.

And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds--the natural one and our own--"the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love's own twin."

Gorgeously illustrated by the author's brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut.

At This Ultramarathon, There's No Finish Line

Can self-torture make these people happy? "Big Dog," aka Lazarus Lake, aka Gary Cantrell, is their ringmaster. Is he happy? Thanks for this, Ed.

The conceit of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra is simple: Runners have an hour to complete a 4.167-mile loop at the race organizer's home. Then they do it again, and again, and again—breaking for food and rest only in the spare time before they start the next loop. Hundreds of miles and a whole lot of pain later, the last competitor still running wins.

"You'll wonder how someone can inflict so much pain without a weapon," says the sixtysomething man who goes by Lazarus Lake. He is leaning against a metal barrier on his property in Bell Buckle, Tenn., wearing a red beanie embroidered with GEEZER. He has a bushy white beard, a pot belly and square-rimmed glasses. He looks like a lumberjack Santa.

It is 6:35 a.m. on an October Saturday. In a small clearing, just off an access road, Lake spray-paints a starting corral around a pack of six dozen men and women in tank tops and short shorts. We are just minutes from the start of the seventh running of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra, the multiday race that Lake thought of when he was a high schooler 50-odd years ago, thinking of ways to test the body's limits.

Ultrarunning—racing distances longer than a marathon—has grown rapidly in popularity over the last decade; there are now more than 150 100-mile races in North America, according to Ultrarunning Magazine. The sport inflicts a range of horrors on its athletes: gnarled toenails, battered joints, respiratory distress.

But the distinctive format of Big Dog's Backyard Ultra is especially diabolical. Runners must complete a 4.167-mile loop every hour. After finishing one hour's loop they can rest, eat and use the Port-a-Potties until the next hour's starts. Fail to complete a loop before time elapses, you're out. Complete one but fail to appear on time in the starting corral for the next one, you're out. During daylight hours the runners follow a leafy dirt trail in Lake's backyard. After dark the race moves to a road course, for safety's sake, then back to the backyard come morning. The race goes on—hour after hour, through daylight, darkness, sun and rain—for as long as there are still runners, plural, who can complete the loops. There is no finite distance to conquer. In other words: Run till you drop. The race has no finish line, is always tied, and is always sudden death. Of the 72 runners who have entered the event, only one will be credited with finishing. The rest, DNFs. The winner receives a small gold coin, inscribed I SURVIVED. Everyone else gets a silver one with I GAVE MY ALL IN BIG'S BACKYARD... (continues)

Dancing birds

Need a study break? My colleague Prof. Hinz sent around a video of a cockatoo dancing to Elvis ("Don't Be Cruel") while his perch-mate looked on unimpressed. Prof. Bombardi said it made his day, & that it suggests the evolutionary significance of music. Look for the cockatoos a few birds in, in this clip. Dancing birds: who knew?

Postscript. A follow-up question from Dr. Hinz: "These are so funny to watch. Maybe I should get a bird. The question that’s now haunting me: shall I say that what these grooving birds are doing is art?" What would Collingwood say? Dewey would say of course it is, if we humans can relate to it as one of the "sources of art in everyday life"...

Marcus Aurelius on Happiness (Final Report by Levi Jaeger)

As we moved into the last part of the semester and began this final project, I was looking for an interesting piece of philosophy to read.  Having read the Art of Happiness by Epicuras, I was curious to see what the other side of the spectrum had to say about happiness. I settled on Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.  Arelius was one of the most powerful men in the world. Ruling as the Roman Emperor from 161-180 AD, he was the last ruler from the group of Emperors known as the Five Good Emperors.  However, he has gone down in history not as a great leader, but as one of the greatest Stoic thinkers.  

Right from the start, the Stoic outlook on philosophy is a bit dicey in parts..  One of the major concerns raised against Stoicism stance on happiness is that it rewards apathy.  Bertrand Russell has critiqued Stoic philosophy by saying “We can't be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pretend that, so long as we are good, it doesn't matter being unhappy.”  The concern has some validity to it. There is an element of not caring on external issues since they are beyond your control. Aurelius even says “Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people...  It will keep you from doing anything useful” (Book 3, Section 4). Later in Meditations, he goes so far as to just resign himself that the obnoxious individuals must always exist, and by acknowledging their presence does not make him intolerant. So there are valid grounds for Russell’s critique.

There is a bit of a stick-and-stones-can’t-break-my-bones vibe going on here, but much of Meditations seems to be a manual for coping with the craziness of life, not a practical guide to making the world a better place.  It is his fourth book where he provides the most on-topic descriptions for the path to happiness. He points to the fact that we all want to get “away from it all.”  But instead of a vacation to the mountains, Aurelus tells us that we can get away from it all at any time by going within one’s soul. He writes, “Nowhere you can go is more peaceful--more free of interruption--than your own soul… An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquility” (Book 4, Section 3).  To this end, he tells us to look at events in a straightforward fashion. “Choose not to be harmed--and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed--and you haven’t been” (Book 4, Section 7). In a physical sense, this philosophy admittedly does not make much sense. But he records a personal mantra that he repeats to himself in the morning in Book 2, Section 1 that seems to frame the discussion towards dealing with people, not policy.

Much of Aurelius’s advice seems best suited for handling troublesome neighbors, obnoxious family members, rough personal relationships, and frustrating coworkers and managers.  Becoming a more tranquil person will do nothing to stem impending consequences of Climate Change, but it never hurts to have a more decent outlook on your life. Maybe Aurelius was onto something.  It appears that he recognized that as a political leader he still needed to make sure he was mentally in a good place in order to go about his duties.

On that note, as I read through Meditations, I was struck by the practical nature of Aurelius’ reflections.  Much of the third book is spent discussing death and the limited time we have.  “Forget everything else,” he writes. “Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant… The span we live is small--small as the corner of the earth in which we live it” (Book 3, Section 10).  Much of what Aurelius’s words of wisdom are action oriented trying to maximize what time we have. Time is of the essence, and we cannot waste in pointless conflict with those around us. He writes that we need to acknowledge our differences, but work together in spite of the differences (Book 2, Section 1).  He advises you to deal generously with irrational individuals and treat them like a human (Book 6, Section 23). And he even encouraged the reader to not be put off by dealing with difficult tasks, but to practice and attempt the impossible (Book 12, Section 6).

While I personally agree with much of Aurelius’s’ philosophy, I do recognize that it has some fatalistic and elitist elements to it.  I think there is a lot of merit to his method of training oneself to respond patiently to the chaos of the world. Don’t let it get under your skin, and just move on.  In closing, this final quote of Marcus Arelius sums up my takeaway of my reading of Meditations:

"Dig deep; the water--goodness--is down there.  And as long as you keep digging, it will keep bubbling up." (Book 7, Section 59)

Happiness is our own hands.  It can only be found if we actively seek it out in ourselves, in the company we keep, and in the life we lead in this fine world. 

Quiz questions:

1. What is Russell's critique of Stoicism?
2. According to Aurelius, where do we find complete tranquility?
3. Where does Aurelius write that "The span we live is small--small as the corner of the earth in which we live it."

(Edit: Posts I commented on)

https://philoshap.blogspot.com/2019/12/art-and-happiness-maybe-not-broken-this.html?showComment=1575783818735#c734185102043259506

https://philoshap.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-have-decided-to-read-alan-watts-book.html?showComment=1575783081421#c5496112835540084335