13 ms·

On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

124 points by nkh 17y ago

reasonattlm 17y ago
The words, even fine words, of men set to rationalize the span of years they knew they had are no longer relevant in this day and age. The difference between Seneca and us is that we can toil to turn money into additional years of life. Scientific research and medicine. Of course, given that we are on the cusp of this new era of longevity science, rejuvenation of the old, and greatly enhanced life spans, we look around and see only the past. It takes a bold, one might even say entrepreneurial, soul to recognize what might soon be, were people to put their shoulder to the wheel.
- SeamusBrady 17y ago
  I respectfully disagree with you. One must be wary of the modern cult of technology as just another way to bypass the human condition. Even if you live to be 2000, you cannot bypass suffering and you cannot stop change. Our attention span is between 5 and 15 seconds and you will have to share that present, that moment with all other human beings, just the same as if you only had six months to live. The point is not how long you live, but how well. As Marus Aurelius says in his Meditations: "For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing."
  - staunch 17y ago
    I don't know. Imagine an earth filled with up to 2,000 year old humans. Many (not all) of them would be amazing in a huge variety of ways. They'd have had the time to spend 10 of our lifetimes learning how not to live well, and another 10 learning how to live well.
    - ericd 17y ago
      I see a planet of profoundly bored and weary 2000 year olds. But with 100 years of productive youth without a corresponding increase in time spent being very young or too old to work effectively, there would be outsized productivity gains.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      For all you or I know such long lifespans might produce nothing but cranky sadists who are too jaded to find pleasure in anything but stripping folks like yourself of their naive enthusiasm. I'm not especially enthused about the prospect of major life extension. Gerontocracy is already far too common and in the US the older demographic seems oblivious to the fact that the generations following behind are going to be stuck with an absolutely massive bill so the boomers can enjoy their retirement. At least Japan is trying to address the problem by developing better robots, while we are heading for spending 20% of GDP on health care.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- scorciapino 17y ago
  > The difference between Seneca and us is that we can toil to turn money into additional years of life No, we can not; we can't even undo the damage caused by the diseases of affluence, and this hyped and religious belief in salvation by the science would make the most primitive polytheist laugh.
- melling 17y ago
  We might be being a little premature on being on the cusp of a new era. All this technology and science takes time. For example, the war on cancer started almost 40 years ago. We are from a cure. We have so much more to learn before we can really extend life or "cure" death.
grellas 17y ago
Ars longa, vita brevis - originally from the Greek (Hippocrates), where the original read in full (as translated into English): "Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment fallible, judgment difficult." The original Greek of this is a sublimely succinct rendering of wonderfully expressed aphorisms. It is found here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis) along with a pretty good explanation of what it all means in the original. Of course, the underlying philosophical issue concerns man's standing as what has been called a "cosmic orphan" in the universe, i.e., the one creature acutely aware of its own mortality even while striving and dreaming to make something out of life while it exists. The Stoics, like Seneca, essentially said that we are wise when we make the most of what we have, whatever its temporal duration.
- hammmatt 17y ago
  I agree. However, did you consider the idea that we are no wise in any way and we are in need of more observational evidence?
  - eagleal 17y ago
    Could you explain better what you mean? (I think I got it, but ...)
markbnine 17y ago
50 AD for a somewhat relevant post... that's going to be tough to beat.
- lunaru 17y ago
  6th century BC - The Art of War - relevant to leadership & entrepreneurship in competitive markets. Edit: Human history is full of interesting "posts". If only we had the time to absorb all the wisdoms of times passed.
  - lionhearted 17y ago
    > The Art of War If you like the Art of War at all, you simply must read von Clauswitz's On War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War#Synopsis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War#Synopsis At least read the first 20 pages. An incredibly clear, insightful thinker. He was an utter perfectionist, he worked on the book for decades and died with it incomplete, but the beginning in particular is precisely accurate and insightful like almost nothing else I've read.
- wushupork 17y ago
  Julius Caesar's got some good quotes: It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life. It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking. As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can. Cowards die many times before their actual deaths. and that's between 100BC and 44BC
  - michaelkeenan 17y ago
    I think that last one was Shakespeare: "Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once." - William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, sc. ii (1599)
SeamusBrady 17y ago
Seneca was a Stoic. But being a Stoic has little to do with the standard cliche of suppressing your emotions. It is a philosophy that emphasises a rational response to nature, your own and that of the universe. "Follow nature" is a common Stoic saying - unconditionally accept that which is the case and do not disturb yourself with emotional upheavals about that which one can do nothing. The French philosopher Pierre Hadot summarised the four features that constitute the universal Stoic attitude in his book "Philosophy as a way of life". These are: - We are part of of a Cosmic Whole, made up of the totality of the universe and the totality of all human beings - There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans. Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is the purity of your own conscience. - The belief in the absolute value of the human person - The concentration on the present moment through training and spiritual exercises. Through the present moment we have access to the entire cosmos. Much of modern cognitive psychology owes it roots to the work of the Stoic philosopher Epictitus. Much of our beliefs about human rights, the basic ethical doctrines of Christianity and our notions of healthy psychological self sufficiency all come from the Stoics. And yes, I am a fan :)
- Eliezer 17y ago
  > We are part of of a Cosmic Whole Bet you Seneca never said that. It's a highly evolved modern form of nonsense.
  - scorciapino 17y ago
    So it's time to actually read some Seneca instead of betting on your prejudice. I think I've read most of his work, and while I can't remember anything specially about this, as it was a well-known part of the stoic's cosmovision, from bits of information here and there, you can actually see this clearly.
  - yters 17y ago
    No, stoics tended to be pantheists.
  - zackattack 17y ago
yantramanav 17y ago
Very profound and simple thought. Carpe diem!
Eliezer 17y ago
I wonder who Seneca thought was carefully arranging the universe so that everyone would had enough time if only they had used it properly. They didn't have monotheism back then, did they? Or maybe Seneca was just naturally the sort of person who rationalized things easily, and imagined a fairer universe without anyone in particular making it fair. Anyway, props to the people Seneca was disagreeing with, who managed to be more honest with themselves about the unfairness of the universe and how easily it could have been improved than Seneca and many other modern rationalizers. http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified http://lesswrong.com/lw/uk/beyond_the_reach_of_god/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/uk/beyond_the_reach_of_god/
- randallsquared 17y ago
  "They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" AD 50?
  - lionhearted 17y ago
    > "They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" I presume he meant Rome, in which case, no, polytheism was the way and Jesus was worshipped alongside Mars, Jupiter, Julius Cesar, Augustus Cesar, etc. Even people who explicitly believed in only one god casually acknowledged the other gods, it wasn't a big deal to go to a local temple in another province to say a prayer, get a blessing, or make an offering. Modern monotheism started around 325 at the First Council of Nicea. Since then, the dogma of monotheistic religions has evolved to say that there's one God, we understand him, and anyone else making claims of deities is false. But it's a bit of revisionist history - the vast majority of people in the West were "casually polytheistic" prior to 325, even people belonging to faiths that are now strictly monotheistic.
    - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
      >Modern monotheism started around 325 So the Jews weren't monotheistic and the Torah never had "you will have no gods before me" in it? You might say, "that's not modern monotheism" but how can that be as Christians worship that same God.
heed 17y ago
From Chapter VII: "Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow." This is the gist of the essay. I don't know, I find it terribly vague and subjective. Seneca defines 'waste' as not living in the present and doing things for others as opposed to, for yourself. Is there a right or wrong way to live? I'm not so sure. I think you should live the way you want, complain about the shortness of life, be idle, do nothing, if that's what you really want to do. The only restriction is not to impose on anyone else's quality of life or right to live the way they want. I would argue Seneca is trying to impose, as am I.

124 points by nkh 17y ago

The words, even fine words, of men set to rationalize the span of years they knew they had are no longer relevant in this day and age. The difference between Seneca and us is that we can toil to turn money into additional years of life. Scientific research and medicine. Of course, given that we are on the cusp of this new era of longevity science, rejuvenation of the old, and greatly enhanced life spans, we look around and see only the past. It takes a bold, one might even say entrepreneurial, soul to recognize what might soon be, were people to put their shoulder to the wheel.

SeamusBrady 17y ago
I respectfully disagree with you. One must be wary of the modern cult of technology as just another way to bypass the human condition. Even if you live to be 2000, you cannot bypass suffering and you cannot stop change. Our attention span is between 5 and 15 seconds and you will have to share that present, that moment with all other human beings, just the same as if you only had six months to live. The point is not how long you live, but how well. As Marus Aurelius says in his Meditations: "For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing."
- staunch 17y ago
  I don't know. Imagine an earth filled with up to 2,000 year old humans. Many (not all) of them would be amazing in a huge variety of ways. They'd have had the time to spend 10 of our lifetimes learning how not to live well, and another 10 learning how to live well.
  - ericd 17y ago
    I see a planet of profoundly bored and weary 2000 year olds. But with 100 years of productive youth without a corresponding increase in time spent being very young or too old to work effectively, there would be outsized productivity gains.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    For all you or I know such long lifespans might produce nothing but cranky sadists who are too jaded to find pleasure in anything but stripping folks like yourself of their naive enthusiasm. I'm not especially enthused about the prospect of major life extension. Gerontocracy is already far too common and in the US the older demographic seems oblivious to the fact that the generations following behind are going to be stuck with an absolutely massive bill so the boomers can enjoy their retirement. At least Japan is trying to address the problem by developing better robots, while we are heading for spending 20% of GDP on health care.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
scorciapino 17y ago
> The difference between Seneca and us is that we can toil to turn money into additional years of life No, we can not; we can't even undo the damage caused by the diseases of affluence, and this hyped and religious belief in salvation by the science would make the most primitive polytheist laugh.
melling 17y ago
We might be being a little premature on being on the cusp of a new era. All this technology and science takes time. For example, the war on cancer started almost 40 years ago. We are from a cure. We have so much more to learn before we can really extend life or "cure" death.

grellas 17y ago

Ars longa, vita brevis - originally from the Greek (Hippocrates), where the original read in full (as translated into English): "Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment fallible, judgment difficult." The original Greek of this is a sublimely succinct rendering of wonderfully expressed aphorisms. It is found here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis) along with a pretty good explanation of what it all means in the original. Of course, the underlying philosophical issue concerns man's standing as what has been called a "cosmic orphan" in the universe, i.e., the one creature acutely aware of its own mortality even while striving and dreaming to make something out of life while it exists. The Stoics, like Seneca, essentially said that we are wise when we make the most of what we have, whatever its temporal duration.

hammmatt 17y ago
I agree. However, did you consider the idea that we are no wise in any way and we are in need of more observational evidence?
- eagleal 17y ago
  Could you explain better what you mean? (I think I got it, but ...)

markbnine 17y ago

50 AD for a somewhat relevant post... that's going to be tough to beat.

lunaru 17y ago
6th century BC - The Art of War - relevant to leadership & entrepreneurship in competitive markets. Edit: Human history is full of interesting "posts". If only we had the time to absorb all the wisdoms of times passed.
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > The Art of War If you like the Art of War at all, you simply must read von Clauswitz's On War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War#Synopsis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War#Synopsis At least read the first 20 pages. An incredibly clear, insightful thinker. He was an utter perfectionist, he worked on the book for decades and died with it incomplete, but the beginning in particular is precisely accurate and insightful like almost nothing else I've read.
wushupork 17y ago
Julius Caesar's got some good quotes: It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life. It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking. As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can. Cowards die many times before their actual deaths. and that's between 100BC and 44BC
- michaelkeenan 17y ago
  I think that last one was Shakespeare: "Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once." - William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, sc. ii (1599)

SeamusBrady 17y ago

Seneca was a Stoic. But being a Stoic has little to do with the standard cliche of suppressing your emotions. It is a philosophy that emphasises a rational response to nature, your own and that of the universe. "Follow nature" is a common Stoic saying - unconditionally accept that which is the case and do not disturb yourself with emotional upheavals about that which one can do nothing. The French philosopher Pierre Hadot summarised the four features that constitute the universal Stoic attitude in his book "Philosophy as a way of life". These are: - We are part of of a Cosmic Whole, made up of the totality of the universe and the totality of all human beings - There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans. Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is the purity of your own conscience. - The belief in the absolute value of the human person - The concentration on the present moment through training and spiritual exercises. Through the present moment we have access to the entire cosmos. Much of modern cognitive psychology owes it roots to the work of the Stoic philosopher Epictitus. Much of our beliefs about human rights, the basic ethical doctrines of Christianity and our notions of healthy psychological self sufficiency all come from the Stoics. And yes, I am a fan :)

Eliezer 17y ago
> We are part of of a Cosmic Whole Bet you Seneca never said that. It's a highly evolved modern form of nonsense.
- scorciapino 17y ago
  So it's time to actually read some Seneca instead of betting on your prejudice. I think I've read most of his work, and while I can't remember anything specially about this, as it was a well-known part of the stoic's cosmovision, from bits of information here and there, you can actually see this clearly.
- yters 17y ago
  No, stoics tended to be pantheists.
- zackattack 17y ago

yantramanav 17y ago

Very profound and simple thought. Carpe diem!

Eliezer 17y ago

I wonder who Seneca thought was carefully arranging the universe so that everyone would had enough time if only they had used it properly. They didn't have monotheism back then, did they? Or maybe Seneca was just naturally the sort of person who rationalized things easily, and imagined a fairer universe without anyone in particular making it fair. Anyway, props to the people Seneca was disagreeing with, who managed to be more honest with themselves about the unfairness of the universe and how easily it could have been improved than Seneca and many other modern rationalizers. http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified http://lesswrong.com/lw/uk/beyond_the_reach_of_god/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/uk/beyond_the_reach_of_god/

randallsquared 17y ago
"They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" AD 50?
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > "They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" I presume he meant Rome, in which case, no, polytheism was the way and Jesus was worshipped alongside Mars, Jupiter, Julius Cesar, Augustus Cesar, etc. Even people who explicitly believed in only one god casually acknowledged the other gods, it wasn't a big deal to go to a local temple in another province to say a prayer, get a blessing, or make an offering. Modern monotheism started around 325 at the First Council of Nicea. Since then, the dogma of monotheistic religions has evolved to say that there's one God, we understand him, and anyone else making claims of deities is false. But it's a bit of revisionist history - the vast majority of people in the West were "casually polytheistic" prior to 325, even people belonging to faiths that are now strictly monotheistic.
  - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
    >Modern monotheism started around 325 So the Jews weren't monotheistic and the Torah never had "you will have no gods before me" in it? You might say, "that's not modern monotheism" but how can that be as Christians worship that same God.

heed 17y ago

From Chapter VII: "Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow." This is the gist of the essay. I don't know, I find it terribly vague and subjective. Seneca defines 'waste' as not living in the present and doing things for others as opposed to, for yourself. Is there a right or wrong way to live? I'm not so sure. I think you should live the way you want, complain about the shortness of life, be idle, do nothing, if that's what you really want to do. The only restriction is not to impose on anyone else's quality of life or right to live the way they want. I would argue Seneca is trying to impose, as am I.