Marcus Aurelius

while my son and i were watching 'gladiator' on tv last night, i had occasion to explain to him a bit about ancient rome, in particular the 'old man at the beginning', emporer marcus aurelius. i explained to aidan that the emporer wrote an untitled book of stoic philosophy, widely referred to as 'meditations' , that is still largely relevant to this day, as 'a central theme to "Meditations" is to analyze your judgement of self and others and developing a cosmic perspective,' something that would fit right in here at totjo with the tao flavored discussions.

anyway, not sure if it had been brought up except by andy spalding some time ago. i thought it was interesting, and hopefully yall will too.

Stoicism is the Western brother to Taoism, my friend! In fact, it was my stoic philosophy roots that led me to Taoism in the first place! The two systems are almost freakishly similar if you ask me. Replace "nature" in Stoicism with "the Way" and you have Taoism essentially.

I love Meditations and need to reread it soon!

Mmm. Aurelius is WONDERFUL.

i was very glad that the movie brought the gravitas and wisdom to the role of the old emporer that it did. aidan had many questions about him, and i had to fire up the old googler to get them right!

It's been many years since I've pulled Aurelius' book from the shelves, but I've been meaning to, so thank you for the reminder.

Reading some of the quotes, I can definitely see the parallels with Taoism.

One thing that bothers me, however, is the concept that our lives are insignificant...

Soon you'll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most—and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial.

I don't agree with this, or any other philosopher who thinks our lives don't matter. I believe in the contrary, that every single aspect of our lives are significant. I wrote something about this recently .

We are NOT just dust in the wind.

LibriVox has it on audio...

The version they have has a quote "we are the minds of god, with the bodies of animals"... I love that...

Jacen, while its true we have a slight affect on the destiny of our kind as individuals, its important to remember that it would continue whether we did or not...

That's life, and whether its a beautiful utopia in the future we design, or a wasteland from our destruction, and no human survives...

Cockroaches will, and thus so does life....

We have to remember our place...

Even dust has its effect on creation...

Marcus Aurelius is a prime example of how absolute power does not corrupt absolutely

Akkarin wrote: Marcus Aurelius is a prime example of how absolute power does not corrupt absolutely

Indeed! It helped, of course, that he had a servant follow him around whispering "Remember you are mortal" wherever he went too.

Remember too on every occasion which leads you to vexation to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune.

-Marcus Aurelius


He seems like the kind of man who had things figured out. I myself couldn't think of a better candidate to handle the Roman Emperor's responsibilities.