5 ms·

Thats right, advice from a goddamn emperor on how the downtrodden should not feel downtrodden

daedalus_f 4y ago
Marcus Aurelius writings that are collected together in the Meditations were never intended to be published, they were his thoughts and advice for himself.
- refurb 4y ago
  Ok, does that mean the writing aren’t useful? No
kodah 4y ago
Kind of a weird take. Marcus Aurelius' life, although that of an emperor, was filled with a lot of strife that he used philosophy to deal with. His stoic philosophies come from his early life, which saw the death of his father, and adoption by a series of people he didn't know, all the way to the death of both of his sons. Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Say, there are two types of people: (1) a person who mostly experiences challenges at or just above their ability to solve them (2) a person who mostly experiences challenges way above their ability to solve them (even plausibly so) Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists, etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there's a camp-2. (Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1, they're privileged as if that isnt desirable!. So both sides are superstitious about the other).
  - kodah 4y ago
    For much of Marcus' life he wasn't able to solve things though. In fact, that's what much of his philosophy talks about, and his (fairly open) history. Much of stoicism is focused around dealing with things you can't change, which also makes this take very odd.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    This isn't my experience at all. I think the main difference is disagreement on what constitutes a solvable problem and the value of trying.
  - DarylZero 4y ago
    That's not remotely true. Political conservatism and social radicalism demonstrably don't correlate with personal experience in that way: children adopt the beliefs of their parents (and/or peers). Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
    - gruez 4y ago
      >Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Can we put some numbers on this? A few offhand examples of "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" doesn't really support your claim.
      - DarylZero 4y ago
        You can easily put numbers on it, lots of polling data. But from your memory just look at how there are "red states" and "blue states" -- they clearly don't correspond to personal life trajectory in the way stated. Political attitudes very clearly reproduce as culture, like language. I'm not giving examples just citing these popular phrases which exist to note the phenomenon.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    Just because one is an emperor does not mean they can suddenly solve any problem. This is precisely what Aurelius' writings [1] focus almost exclusively on. In spite of being the most powerful man in the world he found himself to be quite helpless in terms of actually improving the state of mankind which was his genuine motivation. As a peer comment mentioned, these writings were never meant to even be seen by anybody other than himself. They're effectively his diary. He found himself not only largely unable to help better mankind, but could not even better his own son. Aurelius is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders of humanity to have lived; his son (Commodus) - one of the worst. Father deified, son assassinated (to great celebration) and struck from all official record. And it wasn't simply failure to achieve, but also failure of circumstance. He was surrounded by death which climaxed with a many years long plague that by some estimates killed more than 30% of the entire empire's population, including some of Aurelius' own immediate family. [1] - http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.pdf http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.... # That book has a lengthy, and necessary, intro (well multiple actually) explaining stoicism and providing various historical context. Aurelius' writings themselves only begin on page 25 of the book, 59 of the PDF.
  - exolymph 4y ago
    Absurdly ignorant statement. One of the most potent inspirations for stoicism is mortality itself, which no one escapes.
  - andi999 4y ago
    Isnt it that most of the time you choose which camp you are in? If you study a subject you are apt for you are in camp 1, if you believe aptitude doesnt exist and you choose a different one you end up in camp 2. If you just learned programming and apply to faang you are in camp 2, etc. It is not a passive thing.
  - nswest23 4y ago
    Viktor Frankl wrote _Man's Search for Meaning_ [0] about his experience in a Nazi concentration camp - something that he definitely didn't have the ability to 'solve on his own,' and developed a philosophy, logotherapy, that's pretty consistent with stoicism. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
- UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
  So just like every other human being but without the power, money, social standing or connections. I love MA writings (Seneca too) but I dont take their personal lives as any example of fight against adversity. They are like boxing coaches who rarely if ever boxed, let alone being knocked down by a rival. Same with Mr Munger (his very real tragedies notwithstanding).
- brnt 4y ago
  Meditations is an important work to me, but it's absoltely valid critique to observe it was written by someone absolutely part of an elite, from birth. That does not diminish his setbacks, and it's an exercise for the reader to gain something from it, or not. But, like any pirce of advice, the scripture is biased and it's important to be aware of that.
meowkit 4y ago
If you mischaracterize this as “advice for the downtrodden” then sure your snark makes sense. Except it isn’t that. Its the internal monologue of a roman emperor dealing with the extreme stresses of his life and his role in the world.
- Delk 4y ago
  People kind of throw it around as if it were applicable advice for others, too. It's a good remark that it's effectively the emperor's diary instead, though. I didn't know that.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    That’s not a problem. Others find The Meditations applicable to their own lives because they contain honest self-advice. Some observe others finding the writing self-applicable, so they recommend it to people who haven’t read it yet.
DigiDigiorno 4y ago
You made the incorrect assumption either that having the "power to revoke" means the necessity to exercise that power, and/or that revoking feelings means inaction on all events leading to them. The advice says nothing about how the downtrodden should act about their situation of downtroddeness. Focusing and making assumptions on the unfairness of the statement is a bit of victim mentality. In fact, your statement reminds me of an article I read somewhere. I think it was titled "Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life"
Majestic121 4y ago
It could be quote from Epictetus, who had a similar philosophy and lived his life as a slave, made lame by his master breaking his leg, before becoming a philosophy teacher.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  These dudes also had a (to most contemporary people) deeply weird metaphysics that brought them to these understandings and allowed them to share them despite extreme differences in their lives. Unless you also believe that the entire universe including yourself is a single sentient being and every event is perfectly predetermined, you're gonna find some contradictions here. It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. Individual parts of it can still be individually valuable of course, but other parts truly are just an emperor telling people to deal with it. A more western-digestible analogy would be believing in the resurrection of christ without believing in his divinity. You could still get useful advice from the sermons but it stops being a coherent foundation of belief for your role in the world.
  - codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
    Stoicism, Daoism, Buddhism, all the Hindu religions stemming from advaita vedanta, heck even proto Indo Europeans all have very similar monistic metaphysics, I don't think it's weird at all. Different names for the same thing: - logos - Dao - Brahman - Wralda > It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. I absolutely agree with this, and I'd say anyone who wants to take Stoicism seriously should adapt a similar metaphysical perspective. I'd also say that anyone who already understands one of the above religions already has the ability to readily understand the others, at least compared to the standard Westerner.

Marcus Aurelius writings that are collected together in the Meditations were never intended to be published, they were his thoughts and advice for himself.

refurb 4y ago
Ok, does that mean the writing aren’t useful? No

kodah 4y ago

Kind of a weird take. Marcus Aurelius' life, although that of an emperor, was filled with a lot of strife that he used philosophy to deal with. His stoic philosophies come from his early life, which saw the death of his father, and adoption by a series of people he didn't know, all the way to the death of both of his sons. Marcus did achieve the title of emperor, but dismissing him because of his accomplishments, especially when stoicism was a key and integral part of his life along the way, is odd.

mjburgess 4y ago
Say, there are two types of people: (1) a person who mostly experiences challenges at or just above their ability to solve them (2) a person who mostly experiences challenges way above their ability to solve them (even plausibly so) Stoicism, political conservatism, rugged individualists, etc. are just those in camp-1 unaware there's a camp-2. (Likewise, social radicals are in camp-2, saying of 1, they're privileged as if that isnt desirable!. So both sides are superstitious about the other).
- kodah 4y ago
  For much of Marcus' life he wasn't able to solve things though. In fact, that's what much of his philosophy talks about, and his (fairly open) history. Much of stoicism is focused around dealing with things you can't change, which also makes this take very odd.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  This isn't my experience at all. I think the main difference is disagreement on what constitutes a solvable problem and the value of trying.
- DarylZero 4y ago
  That's not remotely true. Political conservatism and social radicalism demonstrably don't correlate with personal experience in that way: children adopt the beliefs of their parents (and/or peers). Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Hence "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Can we put some numbers on this? A few offhand examples of "champagne socialists" and "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" doesn't really support your claim.
    - DarylZero 4y ago
      You can easily put numbers on it, lots of polling data. But from your memory just look at how there are "red states" and "blue states" -- they clearly don't correspond to personal life trajectory in the way stated. Political attitudes very clearly reproduce as culture, like language. I'm not giving examples just citing these popular phrases which exist to note the phenomenon.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Just because one is an emperor does not mean they can suddenly solve any problem. This is precisely what Aurelius' writings [1] focus almost exclusively on. In spite of being the most powerful man in the world he found himself to be quite helpless in terms of actually improving the state of mankind which was his genuine motivation. As a peer comment mentioned, these writings were never meant to even be seen by anybody other than himself. They're effectively his diary. He found himself not only largely unable to help better mankind, but could not even better his own son. Aurelius is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders of humanity to have lived; his son (Commodus) - one of the worst. Father deified, son assassinated (to great celebration) and struck from all official record. And it wasn't simply failure to achieve, but also failure of circumstance. He was surrounded by death which climaxed with a many years long plague that by some estimates killed more than 30% of the entire empire's population, including some of Aurelius' own immediate family. [1] - http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.pdf http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2133/Aurelius_1464_LFeBk.... # That book has a lengthy, and necessary, intro (well multiple actually) explaining stoicism and providing various historical context. Aurelius' writings themselves only begin on page 25 of the book, 59 of the PDF.
- exolymph 4y ago
  Absurdly ignorant statement. One of the most potent inspirations for stoicism is mortality itself, which no one escapes.
- andi999 4y ago
  Isnt it that most of the time you choose which camp you are in? If you study a subject you are apt for you are in camp 1, if you believe aptitude doesnt exist and you choose a different one you end up in camp 2. If you just learned programming and apply to faang you are in camp 2, etc. It is not a passive thing.
- nswest23 4y ago
  Viktor Frankl wrote _Man's Search for Meaning_ [0] about his experience in a Nazi concentration camp - something that he definitely didn't have the ability to 'solve on his own,' and developed a philosophy, logotherapy, that's pretty consistent with stoicism. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
So just like every other human being but without the power, money, social standing or connections. I love MA writings (Seneca too) but I dont take their personal lives as any example of fight against adversity. They are like boxing coaches who rarely if ever boxed, let alone being knocked down by a rival. Same with Mr Munger (his very real tragedies notwithstanding).
brnt 4y ago
Meditations is an important work to me, but it's absoltely valid critique to observe it was written by someone absolutely part of an elite, from birth. That does not diminish his setbacks, and it's an exercise for the reader to gain something from it, or not. But, like any pirce of advice, the scripture is biased and it's important to be aware of that.

meowkit 4y ago

If you mischaracterize this as “advice for the downtrodden” then sure your snark makes sense. Except it isn’t that. Its the internal monologue of a roman emperor dealing with the extreme stresses of his life and his role in the world.

Delk 4y ago
People kind of throw it around as if it were applicable advice for others, too. It's a good remark that it's effectively the emperor's diary instead, though. I didn't know that.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  That’s not a problem. Others find The Meditations applicable to their own lives because they contain honest self-advice. Some observe others finding the writing self-applicable, so they recommend it to people who haven’t read it yet.

DigiDigiorno 4y ago

You made the incorrect assumption either that having the "power to revoke" means the necessity to exercise that power, and/or that revoking feelings means inaction on all events leading to them. The advice says nothing about how the downtrodden should act about their situation of downtroddeness. Focusing and making assumptions on the unfairness of the statement is a bit of victim mentality. In fact, your statement reminds me of an article I read somewhere. I think it was titled "Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life"

Majestic121 4y ago

It could be quote from Epictetus, who had a similar philosophy and lived his life as a slave, made lame by his master breaking his leg, before becoming a philosophy teacher.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
These dudes also had a (to most contemporary people) deeply weird metaphysics that brought them to these understandings and allowed them to share them despite extreme differences in their lives. Unless you also believe that the entire universe including yourself is a single sentient being and every event is perfectly predetermined, you're gonna find some contradictions here. It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. Individual parts of it can still be individually valuable of course, but other parts truly are just an emperor telling people to deal with it. A more western-digestible analogy would be believing in the resurrection of christ without believing in his divinity. You could still get useful advice from the sermons but it stops being a coherent foundation of belief for your role in the world.
- codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
  Stoicism, Daoism, Buddhism, all the Hindu religions stemming from advaita vedanta, heck even proto Indo Europeans all have very similar monistic metaphysics, I don't think it's weird at all. Different names for the same thing: - logos - Dao - Brahman - Wralda > It's not really a unified coherent practical philosophy when separated from that cosmology. I absolutely agree with this, and I'd say anyone who wants to take Stoicism seriously should adapt a similar metaphysical perspective. I'd also say that anyone who already understands one of the above religions already has the ability to readily understand the others, at least compared to the standard Westerner.