/lit/ - Literature

Apart from meditations from Marcus Aurelius.
Presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, kings, emperors, and even tribal leaders count.

Labour not unwillingly, nor without regard to the common interest, nor without due consideration, nor with distraction; nor let studied ornament set off thy thoughts, and be not either a man of many words, or busy about too many things. And further, let the deity which is in thee be the guardian of a living being, manly and of ripe age, and engaged in matter political, and a Roman, and a ruler, who has taken his post like a man waiting for the signal which summons him from life, and ready to go, having need neither of oath nor of any man's testimony. Be cheerful also, and seek not external help nor the tranquility which others give. A man then must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.

Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body,
the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these
things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good
and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful,
and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong,
that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that
it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the
divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can
fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate
him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like
eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against
one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one
another to be vexed and to turn away.

Why does no one ever bring up class when discussing stoicism? I’m not a communist, but most of the original writers were part of the ruling class or at least wealthy, so a philosophy of “do your duty and accept everything” would have been fine. Pretending those rules apply as well to a lower-class fuckup is a recipe for failure.

Why are Americans so utterly devoid of virtue?

Not trying to troll or start a flamewar, I am just genuinely curious.

It seems American culture has zero tolerance for wisdom of any kind. Honesty, integrity, humbleness, sincerity, modesty, all of these things Americans hate. Honesty is weakness, integrity is inflexibility, humbleness is timidity, sincerity is awkward, modesty is puritanism.

I have never seen a society so filled with, what you might call, 'anti-virtues'. Americans have no taste for honest pursuits, and content themselves to live their lives out of line with nature, to great personal ruin. Nobody has ever really explained this phenomena to me, except to dismiss it with one-liners. I have traveled the world extensively, and America alone is one in this regard. Throughout the world people recognize certain things as inherent truths that we often forget about. But when you speak to the soul, it electrifies them. It is within us all, except for the Americans, who despise to hear it, and condemn it with every quiet breath.

Thoughts?

Which version of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is the best? I wanna get it.

ITT: authors ruined by the internet