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On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

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Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#21

Post by heed »

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.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#22

Post by anigbrowl »

staunch wrote: post #7
SeamusBrady wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

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.

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.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#23

Post by gojomo »

AngryParsley wrote: post #14
SeamusBrady wrote: post #4

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…

- 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. What about natural disasters and diseases? I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil. They've killed more people than people have. If you want to play games with definition and only count things as evil if they intend to do harm, wel…

Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not.

I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.)

Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#24

Post by lunaru »

markbnine wrote: post #3

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

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.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#25

Post by wushupork »

markbnine wrote: post #3

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

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

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#26

Post by mapleoin »

gojomo wrote: post #23
AngryParsley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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. What about natural disasters and diseases? I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil. They've killed more people than people have. If you want to play games with definition and only count things as evil if they intend to do harm, wel…

Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not. I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.) Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

Spaceships!!

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#27

Post by zackattack »

Eliezer wrote: post #12
SeamusBrady wrote: post #4

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…

> We are part of of a Cosmic Whole Bet you Seneca never said that. It's a highly evolved modern form of nonsense.

"Highly evolved modern form of nonsense"... can you explain please?

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#28

Post by lionhearted »

lunaru wrote: post #24
markbnine wrote: post #3

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

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.

> 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

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.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#29

Post by lionhearted »

randallsquared wrote: post #13
Eliezer wrote: post #11

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 t…

"They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?" AD 50?

> "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.

Re: On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

#30

Post by AngryParsley »

gojomo wrote: post #23
AngryParsley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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. What about natural disasters and diseases? I would call earthquakes and smallpox evil. They've killed more people than people have. If you want to play games with definition and only count things as evil if they intend to do harm, wel…

Smallpox may have killed more people than other people have. Earthquakes, probably not. I think most people reserve 'evil' as a moral judgment of intentional acts. Plate tectonics and viruses having no intention would thus not be considered 'evil'. (That's not a word game; that's the common meaning.) Smallpox is pretty much conquered. What's your plan for fixing earthquakes?

I meant combined, earthquakes and smallpox have killed more than humans have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is defined as something that is immoral, causes pain or harm, is offensive, or threatening.

The group of people I hang out with skew toward the definition I accept, but really it's just a definition. My real objection is that stoics (and many others) rationalize the current state of things as good. The alternative is to recognize that there are still a lot of big problems humanity needs to solve.

I consider the eradication of smallpox the second greatest accomplishment of humanity so far. The first is the green revolution, headed by Norman Borlaug. His new strains of crops saved about a billion lives in the 20th century.

With regards to earthquakes: Just because we can't solve a problem doesn't mean it's not a problem. I'm not offering a solution, just pointing out that earthquakes kill people. I don't want people to die, so that makes earthquakes bad in my book. It also makes disease, aging, and lots of other things bad. Is does not imply ought.

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