Salvete eis qui legant - 

Stoicism is coherent, I would say.  It accords with how life is.  It is a project, not a belief system.  Its doctrines have survived in a paucity of reporting and original texts, and stand or fail in our application of them and in our consciences.  To live according to Nature is a project, a quest, a  continuous goal.  In that regard, it parallels religious orientations, but it is not a religion; rather, an attitude and an empiricism.  

Valete. 

Jordan Peterson of Toronto

Salvete, qui legantes sint - 

My sons have been talking of this "new feller", Professor Jordan Peterson, and the HUGE splash he has been making in the cyber-world.  From what I have gaathered so far, he's made of equal parts Joseph Campbell, Karl Jung, and Dr. Laura Schlesinger.  I have yet to read his materials.

But the online response to his teaching and exhortations has been, as I said, HUGE.  He's become an overnight Absurdity cure, apparently.  So tonight I will begin his book, "12 Rules: an Antidote to Chaos".  If indeed it's aimed at the problem of life in the modern world, it is ipso facto of interest.

Controversy surrounds him - so I make no pronouncements yet.  Would it matter if I did so, prematurely?  Not to the world, but to me - yes!  Defective as I am, I still need to try to be fair and accurate.

I have read a critique of him published recently by another author I need to read - one Pankaj Mishra, author of "Age of Anger", his book about the general return to authoritarianism and violent nationalism and so on world-wide.  Mishra's topic seems critical to me, watching from the sidelines as the world's bedbugs - Neo-Nazis, Tea Party-ists, and others of dubious intent - have come to the fore over the last decade or so.

More to come.  Valete.

Thick, the Clouds

Bene --

Coming back from depression.  Again.

It's always a question of "How" for me - some people may well have a facility of pluck or discipline or grit that allows them to throw a stern, guiding hand over their individual selves and steer this way or that, independent of their emotions - and despite having tried feebly over the years to nurture such a facility in my Self - I lack such a power.  I only encounter something like it in the depths of depression, something that says, "No, all the rhymes and platitudes of others fail; I have the choice, to try to live or to take myself away."  And thereafter I only arise from those depths by accepting my weaknesses and nursing myself with positives - I live, I breathe, I am not among the worst off, I grow old but am still able to get by, I enjoy little but can still enjoy nonetheless.  So the first is somewhat on the order of the Existential, but the second is decidedly Epicurean!  And then, in my silly & superficial profession, I style myself Stoic:  taking as a base that there is ultimately one universe, that some to-us-more-or-less-magical basis informs it, that causation exists and eliminates mere chaos, that the order of things cares not a fig for human lives or frailties, and so on.

Reason, if at the base of things, is something we discover and apply, as best we can.  But being human, it is not the Reason of the Cosmos that I cultivate, but that of a human being -- social, individual, and imperfect like all palpable things.

Valete.

Avete -

Et nunc brevissime -

Among my blog-subscriptions is one that often shows old photos of Betty Page, in various states of attire.  A signal female model in a signal position in our recent cultural twists and turns, and yet another "pretty face".  In the un-simple confusion of biological life, being male involves being moved by "pretty faces" of various sorts. There is so much connected with that: how to sort it out? 

One way is this, to remember that "a pretty face" is a-dime-a-dozen in itself; that there is no "pretty" without some desire, some weakness on the part of the viewer; that more real than the impression that an image makes is the person (unknown for the most part) embodied within the source of the impression; that underneath said vision is a being, whether your superior or inferior or your more-or-less-peer, but certainly a creature with its own agenda; that we are morally bound to treat people well (if at all possible), and so to defer to her (or him or whatever); and, after all, that said creature is in the end just a messy-mixed-up-wonder of mucus, stomach acid, bacteria, noxious filth, and God knows what else! 

Such thoughts can push the superfluity of sexual excitement back a bit towards the proper indifference that we, as rational folks, should show towards strangers. 

Valete.

Feet Slipping on the Rocks

Salvete, qui legant -

How many of us recall being in water up to our necks and trying to find toe-purchase atop slimy, mossy lake stones?  That seems an apt metaphor for my mental and moral state just now.  Trying to get a grip, as it were. 

My life is not that of a gung-ho hot-shot nor even that of a giddy, myopic gas-bag.  My firmament in life is a slippery rock of absurdity - being myself too-much-that and not-enough-this, and so on.  The world of youthful competition and 24/7 performance-merit passed me by long ago, and it is one part of human nature with which I've never identified, except in fantasy. I've worked in my life - mostly for attorneys and their ilk, piddly stuff, but for people who DO live in the 24/7 giddiness - and seen them from a distance, occasionally felt the breeze of accomplishment myself.

But it's not me; that stuff is not forthcoming.  I remain out-of-it, strange, aside, "oddly conventional", and so on.  I balance atop the rock, liquid mossy, but that's as much as I can manage, it seems. 

So it is from this perpetual perspective of anomy that I face society's daily push-and-shove, and in particular these days the lightning and thunder spectacle of a Presidential election.  A decade ago I stopped asking "Why?" and accepted that people have their bestial norms and must act according to them:  a need to find enemies, a need to blame others, an inability to understand strangers, and (for oh-so-many) those very plain internal maps to winning, exploitation, and abuse of the "other".  This is nature; this is sadness for me, gaiety for them. 

There are a few lights in the dreariness: the Symbolic Sun (Invictus so far, if not truly immortal), friends, material fortune (to have a job, income, a home), and especially the boon of simple love, of wife and kids at home. 

So I'm still here.  Still trying to breathe and balance near the banks of Chaos River. 

Valete. 

P.S.  Yeah, post-commute-blues, feeling sorry for myself.  But this did help re-center me, and - as Jackie Gleason used to say - "Awaaay we go!" 

Friday Blues: Not Too Unusual

Salvete qui legentes êstis -

Sometimes Friday is graced, not with Venus or Friya or Frigg, but with the proximity of freedom.  Not true freedom, for that is rare and has to do more with ability and virtue than with a lack of fetters, but the relative freedom of the coming weekend, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, closing in a kind of eclipse on Sunday evening. 

But sometimes Friday is simply Fatigue-Day, Down-Day, Out-of-It-Day.  So today for me.  I am in a down cycle, emotionally, and trying to find fresh sources of oxygen (as it were).  What is to hand? 

First - Only what is "up to me", what I can do and control or affect.  This includes my mood, but not all of it, not my body or my neurology or my complement of good sleep.  Those things I can affect, but not command.  Even my state of mind, available to suggestion and even command from the "ruling faculty", can be an obstacle and a pitfall. 

But here memory is important, and an internal vigilance: 

1. To recall that your emotions and mood are susceptible to your Reason, that Reason is our gift from the Gods or from the Creation, that Great Source of Turmoil, with which to deal with its debris on earth. 
2. I can keep a mental eye open for the self-defeating, the undeservedly-self-castigating, the either-or-despairing, and other fallacious tricks of the mind that -- quite automatically, in my case -- cripple my little self and urge it to self-destruction. 
3. I can patch up what I can in the outside world -- whether at work, with my co-workers, with my family, with my friends and acquaintances, with problems financial -- patch things up with whatever I have of good humor and sensitivity and diligence.
4. I can above all watch out for Fear, for the Habit of Dread that infects me and my family, and recognize its imprimatur on my thoughts, on my disposition, on my judgments, and pull myself back when I lean too far into it, or reverse my opinion when I see its fell influence on an opinion.
5. I can look to the 'Engine Room' -- fuel supply, body status, metabolism -- and, quite literally, feed myself with an eye to decent fueling, decent material and nutritional input.  I can even improve the 'Guest Quarters' upstairs with a bit of fun food or a glass of wine, some luxury for the weary fool. 
6. And, in terms of what's up to me, I can cut myself a little slack, remember that I'm just a beastie trying to emulate the Gods, a mortal, "only human" as Robocop once said, a multicelled macro-animal gifted with Reason, and that the world is -- above all -- IM-perfect, not made okay, not made safe or good or complete or glorious, but rather dirty and dangerous, uncaring and paltry: as a termite with some Divinity in him, I can rebel against defeat and decline and dismay. 

There!  I'm better already!  Improved thanks to Lore, Thought, Reason, thyroxine, caffeine, Ensure© and some sandwich from Subway©, and neither should I forget the affable conversation and amusement afforded us by my boss.  Now to the rest of the day, and on to the weekend. 

Omnibus, valete bene.

Felix est quem ....

Participating in our present age's revival of Stoicism, I have often had occasion to ask myself: How in the world can I, arguably an abject slave of pleasure and indolence, a rattle-headed, timid, and puerile old do-nothing, how can I of all people call myself a Stoic? For many is the time that my own native scrupulousness has argued that I was a hypocrite to do so while I remained so full of petty defects and so short on decisive willpower; and many is the time that I've been tempted to just jump ship and go native, to simply devote myself to whatever overpowering pleasure I can find.

Well, I haven't jumped ship. In fact, you might say that I'm still aboard, swabbing the deck. I haven't given up because I remember (a) that Nature is anything but simple, anything but black and white - that almost nothing is perfect or absolute; (b) that half a man is better than none, and an educated half-a-man may well be better still; and (c) that God has given me a certain problem to work on (i.e., myself), unknown to others, and that therein I have my work cut out for me.

And there's another rationalization that I think has substantial weight to it: (d) that "Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum" (which I read as: "Happy is he whom other people's dangers make cautious"). In other words, why not improve oneself?  Moreover, even if I am not living a Cynic's life, homeless on the street, even if am neither Saintly nor Sagely, even if I cannot BE perfect, I can at least participate in the transmission of this most useful philosophy and way of life. Helping others to learn and understand how to live, in the course of living my own transient, microscopic little life, this benefits them, myself, and the world at large.

We are all aliens and strangers, and each comprises a little hidden world of his or her own. If we recuse absolutism and fanaticism and set about living decent lives, in toleration if not in real harmony, then the good of one can rub off on the good of another.  In fact, the more that people are decent -- or better yet, virtuous -- the more lives and souls can be spared violence or the guilt of violence. Apply your Stoicism, apply your virtues, and try to live well. It's what we're meant to do.

Sharing a Blogger’s Resentment, Worry and Despair – and My Comments (Which I Think are Worthwhile)

I just finished posting a long, long comment on a fellow blogger’s site (his site is well-named as “Help, They Want Me to Socialize!”).

He was worrying about his future, and so much of what he was rehearsing was exactly the kinds of things that I’ve had to cope with and only slowly learned to understand over 59 years of less-than-ideal life. In any event, I see my comment as a sort of manifesto or wake-up-call for people with depression, and am sharing it here.

You can follow this link to the site and my comments: