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'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius – Stoicism in Modern Language [video]
- jimmyed 3y agoI would never use this, when the original is available to read, that too in English! Consider the sheer dumbification at ~27 minute mark, "The universe has it's rhythm, and im vibin' with it".
- dazzawazza 3y agoWhile it's certainly not to my taste if it exposes more people to philosophy and helps them on the path to a calmer existence... why should we care? If we can't expose philosophy to everyone.. then many are stuck with religion and that's not good for anyone.
- avgcorrection 3y agoWhat’s bad about being stuck (so-called) with Buddhism compared to this? For that matter: being stuck with Stoicism compared to Buddhism also wouldn’t be bad.
- mistermann 3y agoWhether religion is not good for anyone is a very interesting and difficult philosophical/psychological question.
- jxmorris12 3y agoUnfortunately, Marcus Aurelius didn’t speak English.
- minedwiz 3y agoTo the extent that English existed in 180 even
- kylebenzle 3y agoAnd, "I'm totally stoked that I never got too into poetry..."
- photonthug 3y agoReminds me of how NPR is always like "yup the dow was super gnarly today bro, now over to Steve so we can get an update on our best-video-games-of-the-year report" and it makes me grimace. Then I think maybe I'm getting old, but then I think, no dammit, this is just dumb, and it's probably ok for me to expect a little more professionalism from journalists. The news shouldn't need to sound like a twitch streamer, and words from our best and brightest like Aurelius shouldn't need this kind of obnoxious paraphrase either. In the end a work is relevant or it is not.. giving the work some unnecessary "update" to attempt to become/remain relevant just seems unasked for, and silly, and desperate.
- wharvle 3y agoNPR when I was in college used language and an affect very similar to broadcast news from the 60s or 70s, which is before I was born so it's certainly not like it was "speaking to me on my generation's terms" or whatever. And I preferred it that way. The new "hip", vernacular style they go for sucks. If I want that shit, podcasts exist. I thought it sucked when they were starting to do it and I was still in the young, "hip" demo they were trying to target.
- photonthug 3y agoAt the risk of ranting.. yeah, it's pretty bad and I also remember how much I used to like it. It's one thing if it was only style changes, but the dumbing-down of much of the content also is pretty hard to miss. Banter, "fun" stories, piles of shameless fluff, the fan-service moving closer to social-media levels of pandering crap, the podcast-level of contempt for the time/intelligence of the viewership. I guess we all become what we hate. Today is actually a pretty good day for them, but above the fold it's still This week's news quiz separates the winners from the losers. Which will you be?, and the search term "Barbie" appears before "Boeing".
- avgcorrection 3y agoPart of the charm of reading old works (even translated) is how they clearly phrase themselves in a different way than you. But then you eventually see beyond that and realize that they are 99% like you. The common human experience. But I don’t get the same vibe from “vibin’ with it”. Ugh.
- lebean 3y agoThere's one thing I can't call cap on: that I think. - Descartes
- kstrauser 3y agoHunnit.
- Zababa 3y agoBetween your comment and the one you replied to, I'm starting to think this is a good exercise. It shows how modern language can be used outside of its usual context, i.e. spoken by modern speakers. As a slightly older person than them, I can understand what they mean better, and remind myself that language evolving is a natural part of life. For them, it can make older works more accessible too, not just by translating them, but by showing to them that there's a mapping between the way they express themselves and the way other people do, and that they don't need to be intimidated by older works with different ways of speaking.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mannyv 3y agoDude, I'm here because I'm here. - DC.
- messe 3y ago> the original is available to read, [...] in English In other words, not the original. In fact, literally “in other words”.
- llm_nerd 3y ago>when the original is available to read The original is in classic Koine Greek. Every translation since has been an interpretation and rewriting, often picking up the idioms and standards of the day. >sheer dumbification While you clearly just got that from one of the top comments and didn't actually listen to the video, can you explain what is "dumb" about that? If you've read meditations -- and note that this interpretation is basically section by section in order -- it's actually an entirely reasonable, understandable interpretation. And having read the "original", where the original to me was an English translation performed in the 17th century by Meric Casaubon -- littered with 17th century-isms of English -- I found this video a fascinating listen because it made me reinterpret various sections.
- kstrauser 3y agoI think what they meant is that you can find a modern translation of the original anywhere you can find books. It’s not some rare, lost tome. It’s right there, ready to be read, if you want it. You don’t have to watch a video summary of it.
- llm_nerd 3y agoEh, their comment reads more like gatekeeping. And I wouldn't call any translation the "original". Each are doing precisely what this video does, though obviously to different degrees. Speaking of which, too many are far too focused on this being a "video". It's an "audiobook" with some AI images. The use of YouTube for audio is pretty common. It's something one might casually listen to in the background while doing other things, marvelling that Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, arguably the most powerful and richest person on the planet at the time -- five hundred years before the birth of Islam and barely after Christ -- had such approachable, reasonable, "modern" thoughts and concerns and outlooks.
- kstrauser 3y agoYou raise good points I wouldn’t argue against. You mention something important I left out of my micro-review in another post. I was fascinated that a book so old sounded so utterly modern. It was so candid and intimate with little flowery pontificating (which you wouldn’t expect from it, but still). Instead of a history lesson, it’s a guidebook for modern living. Clever guy, our Mark.
- mattgreenrocks 3y agoBut maybe Aurelius really wanted to convey the fact that life is about finding the right type of energy?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ActionHank 3y agoI often have trouble with challenging people at work. Over time it's become a habit to turn to this book to ride it out.
- jacknews 3y agoI often have trouble with challenging people at work. Me too. Should I demand a joust, or pistols at dawn?' For the video, I find the format completely destroys the content. Reading the book, I can almost put myself in the situation of a Roman Emperor arriving at these conclusions, after weary days of argument, etc, etc. In video form, they just wash over as meaningless aphorisms.
- PlasmonOwl 3y agoOr you could just drop their coffee mug…?
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoThis is my primary objection against Stoicism.
- kuchenbecker 3y ago...Why?
- lebean 3y agoBecause he's a challenging person.
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoAnd yet I’m not the one who made it personal.
- steve_adams_86 3y agoApart from the bizarre parts of classic stoicism, what do you find is worth objecting to?
- photon_collider 3y ago‘Meditations’ is one of my favorite books. I revisit it almost yearly and each time I find new nuggets of wisdom. While videos like this may be useful for some people, I do think it’s worth reading the book on your own to form your own interpretation of it, especially since it isn’t a very long. If you like audiobooks I recommend the audiobook recording by Duncan Steen and George Long.
- throwaway9980 3y agoPinned comment on the video: “I listen to the whole book almost everyday. A true masterpiece.” Wow.
- a1o 3y agoGoes to the things that don't need a video bin
- serjester 3y agoThis is awesome. Personally I want a modern translation of Nietzsche’s books since it takes such a commitment to get through their current translations. I’m excited for AI to get to the point where this is trivial.
- hospitalJail 3y agoI find it interesting that 'through the flow of information' I spent years on the Greeks, only after 8 years of philosophy I found modern stuff that was relevant to my interests. Nietzsche and Existentialism. Really makes me wonder if those in Power, have an interest in teaching Virtue based philosophy to intellectuals, and de-emphasizing modern stuff.
- makeitshine 3y agoRick Roderick has a good lecture series on Nietzsche. https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA20B690583E9931C https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA20B690583E9931C
- Amezarak 3y agoI'm genuinely confused. Kaufmann and Hollingdale aren't modern translations?
- serjester 3y agoTake a random sentence I pulled from Kaufmann >> Verily, you who are good and just, there is much about you that is laughable, and especially your fear of that which has hitherto been called devil. Which could also be said as: >> Those of you who are good and fair, there's much about you that's funny, especially how you're scared of what's always been called the devil. The average modern english speaker would say the latter is easier to understand. I'd personally love for the entire book to be this digestable.
- Amezarak 3y agoThat sounds like it's from Thus Spake Zarathustra? It's translated that way intentionally, because Nietzsche wrote it to sound archaic and reminiscent of Old Testament language, on purpose, as a stylistic choice. The translators are accurately reflecting that. His version of Zarathustra is undoing the "mistake" of the original Zarathustra. You don't see this in translations of his other works, like The Gay Science or On The Genealogy of Morality, which are better introductions anyway, not being explicitly literary like Zarathustra.
- mobiuscog 3y agoI sense this may be the new AI benchmark soon. I'm not saying at all this is AI (although at least some pictures may well be), but I can imagine youtube being filled with AI-generated content in a similar fashion going forward. Question for HN: How much of this, with the correct prompts, could AI generate right now ?
- Zababa 3y agoFollow up question: How much effort, money and skill would the project of creating a video like this take if you allow yourself the use of AI*, vs if you forbid it. It's hard to define precisely what "use of AI" is. Generating images with midjourney/stable diffusion would count (even if you edit them), having AI-generated code that's executed by the server of a SaaS you use wouldn't.
- BetterWhisper 3y agoAll of it, I have tested it and want to automate it currently. Edit: the biggest hurdle previously was no midjourney API. Now that DALLE-3 is released it is good enough and has an API
- JohnKacz 3y agoI could be wrong but I think all of this is AI generated. The images, the translation, and I think even the voice/audio
- MrNeon 3y agoThe audio is painfully AI right from the start, it lacks meaningful pauses.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoWe are going to get flooded with this stuff. Most of it will be mediocre and the majority won’t care.
- kstrauser 3y agoI just finished reading it for the first time. Good timing! My takeaways: - It looks an awful lot like Taoism if you squint. s/logos/tao/ and focus on mindfulness and living in the present, and there’s a lot in common. - I’ve read a lot of mythology over the years, but never heard real people talk about praying to Zeus. That was neat reminder of how much beliefs can change over time. - The emphasis on accepting what life has given you because that’s what logos/tao/gods have willed is a lot more palatable if you’re an emperor than his slaves. It’s great to accept what you can’t change. It’s not so great to accept the bad things you could change if someone hadn’t convinced you it was the way things were meant to be. - I couldn’t go along with the how-tos on not enjoying yourself. “Here’s how you deaden yourself to music: …” Uh, no thanks. - “Art these days is so shallow and silly, unlike back in the day.” Ok, great^100-grand-boomer. There was a lot of good, practical advise, though.
- mpol 3y ago"- The emphasis on accepting what life has given you because that’s what logos/tao/gods have willed is a lot more palatable if you’re an emperor than his slaves. It’s great to accept what you can’t change. It’s not so great to accept the bad things you could change if someone hadn’t convinced you it was the way things were meant to be." This is often read as a critic against Stoa. It's not really true though (though you might find a quote of some stoic somewhere that does agree). The tricky thing here is deciding what you can change and what you cannot change. Or in which way you can change things and how attainable that is and how much effort you want to spend. Many situations and problems are not clear cut and require some attention devoted to them. Sometimes levers to change something are available where you didn't expect them. And sometimes you think you can change something, but it turns out to not be true. Stoicism is not about being passive, it is about being active. See what you would like to have changed, and in which way can you change things. And no, complaining endlessly, as is common in our society, does not bring much change ;) That is passive behaviour where you set out to be dependent on someone else bringing change.
- kstrauser 3y agoFair point. What I know of stoicism comes from that book, and I’m certain this has been debated a million times elsewhere. I think the “serenity prayer” is a powerful distillation of stoicism as you describe it: > God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference. I’m not religious, but that’s beautiful.
- tiahura 3y agoGet the Robin Watterford edition.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoAgreed. It's well translated, and the annotations help a lot.
- teddyh 3y agoAs free audiobook: <https://librivox.org/the-meditations-of-the-emperor-marcus-aurelius-antoninus-by-marcus-aurelius/ https://librivox.org/the-meditations-of-the-emperor-marcus-a...>
- falcor84 3y agoAnd here it is as a typing exercise: https://www.typelit.io/chapters/Meditations https://www.typelit.io/chapters/Meditations
- haunter 3y agoThere is already a very popular audiobook service [0] for nonfiction book summaries which was a surprise to me but also not. It feels like just the result of our sped up life, you need to watch this, you need to read this, you need to play this. Of course you don't _need to_ but for some people this is life in the 21st century. And I bet they also happy about it, just read the testimonals ('the concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.') 0, https://www.blinkist.com/ https://www.blinkist.com/
- Zababa 3y agoI agree with your point of "sped up life". Some written content has a main point and exists to transmit you that main point. In those case speeding up that is a good thing. On the other hand, some written content is a journey, and transmit things through experience. For example, "bad" documentation that forces you to learn a tool from first principles to do anything with it will produce lots of non-users, and some users with a deep understanding of the tool. If you replace that "bad" documentation with a cheatlist or cookbook or how-to, you may produce way more users, but they won't be forced to acquire the level of skill and knowledge that previous users had. For some people quickly extracting the main point of Meditations will be how the book can have the most impact on them. For others it will be being forced to plan for some reading time to get through the book. For others it may be the process of searching the most useful form of the book, or even creating it. That seems far stretched, but I think you can learn a lot by trying to expose people to Meditations.
- cwalkatron 3y agoCan't believe The Holdovers isn't mentioned anywhere in these comments. That's why this is here, right?
- thepasswordis 3y agoHere is 'Meditations' in musical format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk1Sr1kfIL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk1Sr1kfIL4 It's like lofi hip hop beats with the text being read over the top. I love it.
- AirMax98 3y ago[flagged]
- ahelwer 3y agoGood way to describe it. I tend to see it occur on lists alongside The Art of War and The Prince, which have this weird reputation as titanic, dense tomes read by Serious Men but in reality are more like pamphlets that you can go through in about half an hour. The first time I saw a copy of The Art of War in person I actually laughed out loud.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- billbrown 3y agoStoicism is an excellent philosophy for the ancient world but tt's entirely insufficient for the modern era. Ayn Rand's Objectivism is Stoicism plus Aristotelianism refined and refactored. Aaron Smith elaborates well: https://newideal.aynrand.org/the-false-promise-of-stoicism/ https://newideal.aynrand.org/the-false-promise-of-stoicism/
- billbrown 3y agoI've read Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca and found them refreshing. They're just not as coherent as her philosophy.
- snakeyjake 3y ago>Ayn Rand's Objectivism is Stoicism plus Aristotelianism refined and refactored. That must be why I find people who talk about stoicism to be insufferable dicks.
- snakeyjake 3y agolol. A “stoic” would read this and move on. Read the book again, fellas.
- marmakoide 3y agoAyn Rand is teenage fantasy you are supposed to grow out as soon as you start to engage into adult life, working, develop romantic relationships, etc.
- billbrown 3y agoAnd yet it's proven invaluable in each of those areas for the 30 years after. It's clear your knowledge of Objectivism is akin to thinking you understand Stoicism from reading the dictionary definition.
- yakshaving_jgt 3y agoI wonder if anyone else found Meditations to be pretentious. I always see people fawn over it. Personally I thought it was rubbish. Especially the part where he describes sex. It’s definitely more than just the rubbing of a membrane, or whatever it was that he said.
- danidiaz 3y ago"ponderous pensées on human frailty by an apologetic autocrat" From this article about a different emperor: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n04/christopher-kelly/a-shocking-story https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n04/christopher-kelly/a-...
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- luksamer 3y ago[flagged]
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