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Thoughts Only Map Reality
The way things are
. . . nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one's irritation so long as one doesn't make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.1
The Alcoholics Anonymous Prayer.2
Sense of what is possible
It is wrong to complain because something has happened to one man which might happen to any; `Complain if an unjust decree is made against you alone.'(Seneca, Letters, XCI.) See an old man who prays to God to keep him in perfect and vigorous health, that is to say to restore his youth.
Stulte, quid haec frustra votis puerilibus optas. (fool, why do you vainly ask for these things in your childish prayers?(Ovid, Tristia, III, vii, II.)3
Here is your noble spirit – the one which has put itself in the hands of fate; on the other side we have the puny degenerate spirit which struggles, and which sees nothing right in the way the universe is ordered, and would rather reform the gods than reform itself.4
Ain't it hard when you wake up in the morning
and you find out that those other days are gone?
All you have are memories of happiness
lingerin' on.
All your dreams and your lovers won't protect you;
they're only passing through you in the end.
They'll leave you stripped of all that they can get to,
and wait for you to come back again.
Yet still a light is shining
from that lamp on down the hall.
May-be the star of Bethlehem
wasn't a star at all.5
Fantasy and reality
Fantasy was once defined, tongue in cheek, as reality that just hasn't happened yet. It particularly human – childlike – to enjoy as much fantasy as is possible without jeopardizing our future reality. The boundary between fantasy and reality must be well-defined and well-understood. Insofar as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not. It was well-defined in ancient Greece, even if they might have been oblivious to it. The Greeks invented play. Appropriate play seems to be the balance between what must be – reality and what must be done – and what can be – fantasy and entertainment.6
Real heroes don't seem to exist today. Saturday cartoons deal with superhuman characters. Comic books deal with superhuman characters. These are fine fantasy, but not heroes. John Wayne movie types seem larger than life.
People carry the desire to look up to superheroes in real life. They look for politicians that are perfect. They wanted to put John F. Kennedy on a pedestal. Kennedy nurtured the image. Photographers at the White House were asked not to photograph the President and his wife while they were having their after dinner smoke.
The perfection is presented as a reassuring mirage, but the reality should be able to be public. How we have put people on pedestals! That is what we have historically done with religious prophets. The Christian church took Jesus and held him to be superhuman. He could do no wrong. The Pope must be infallible. In Confucianism, the religion that sprang up after Confucius, the disciples tried to build Confucius into a superhero. The organized religion ignored Confucius' own sayings to the contrary. His written records indicate he had his own doubts about himself and about what he was trying to do.
With Buddha and Mohammed it is as if their image had to be inflated to proportions that allowed for miracles. So what if these people were neither superhuman nor Godlike? At least the things they had to say contributed useful thoughts, symbols, examples, aids to the ways we deal with ourselves and others.
Facades and the map of reality
If you refuse to deal with me in terms of what is important to you, I am uninformed about you. You cause me extra effort and require me to deal with a facade; to deal with contrived hilarity or good humor, for instance. Since only a small man is repelled by the way things are, it is a reflection of your (inadvertent) low esteem of me that you would present only a facade for me to deal with. Your facade – your game – is not worth my time. It does not help me if I must deal with things that are not as they really are.
Cunning words, an ingratiating face and utter servility, these things Tso-ch'iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find them shameful. To be friendly towards someone while concealing one's hostility, this Tso-ch'iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find it shameful.7
I am open with my family, to the extent of my powers. I quite freely reveal to them the state of my feelings for them, also my opinion of them, and of everyone else. I make haste to disclose and make myself clear to them; for I wish for no misunderstandings, either in my favour or my disfavour.8
Lying is indeed an accursed vice. We are men, and we have relations with one another only by speech. If we recognized the horror and gravity of an untruth, we should more justifiably punish it with fire than with any other crime.9
. . .I look like a commonplace pygmy when the standard is that of certain past ages when, even if no other stronger qualities were present, it was usual to find a man moderate in his vengeance, slow in resenting insults, scrupulous in keeping his word, neither double-faced nor pliable, nor prone to make his faith conform to the will of others or the turn of the times. I would rather let an affair run to ruin than twist my words to further it. As for this new virtue of pretense and dissimulation which is so highly thought of at present, I hate it mortally. . ..10
Style versus substance
There are enough arguments [of verbal tricks] in different parts of my book, either borrowed or imitated. So we must be somewhat on our guard against taking for strength what is only nice phrasing, or for solid what is merely acute, or for good what is only beautiful. . ..11
Therefore if a man is cunning or deceitful in his speech, he is answered by cunning or deceitful speech, and if his wealth comes in by crooked methods, it flows out again by crooked methods.12
--------------------
1 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 226.
2 ++++Move near reality?
3 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 373.
4 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Letters from a Stoic. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969. Pg. 200.
5 Young, Neil. "Star of Bethlehem". .
6 ++++Expand or reference.
7 Confucius. The Analects. Translation and introduction by D. C. Lau. Harmondsworth,. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1979. Pg. 80.
8 Montaigne, Michele de. Essays. Translation and introduction by j. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1958. Pg. 150.
9 Montaigne, Michele de. Essays. Translation and introduction by j. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1958. Pg. 31.
10 Montaigne, Michele de. Essays. Translation and introduction by j. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1958. Pg. 207.
11 Montaigne, Michele de. Essays. Translation and introduction by j. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1958. Pg. 315.
12 Confucius. The Wisdom of Confucius. Lin Yutang, ed. New York: Random House, 1938, 1966. Pg. 149. Editor's comment.
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