(Whatever happens at all happens as it should; thou wilt find this true, if thou shouldst watch narrowly)
He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, the
last of the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors, who wisely sought out
suitable heirs rather than automatically naming their own offspring, and the
last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace, calm, and stability
for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD.
He led the Roman people through the utter devastation brought on by the Antonine plague, the Parthian War and ongoing battles with the German tribes. He was well-loved by the people. Aurelius was also known for being a student of stoicism, an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy that encouraged using reason and logic to guide one's perception. Virtue and duty received particular emphasis. Its founder, Zeno of Citium, studied at Plato's Academy.
(Above is the extracts from the WIKIPEDIA and Following
is the Donald J. Robertson’s article from The TIME on 06 March 2024.)
Why We Still Read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations
In the middle of the second century CE, the most
powerful man in the Western world sat in the legionary fortress of Carnuntum,
by the River Danube, contemplating the fact that one day nobody would remember
his name. “Near is your forgetfulness of all things,” he wrote, “and near the
forgetfulness of you by all” —but he spoke too soon.
More than eighteen hundred years after his demise,
probably from plague, we’re still talking about Marcus Aurelius. In fact, we’re
going on about him more than ever. That’s largely due to the long-standing
popularity of the Meditations, the notes he wrote for himself about how to
apply Stoic philosophy in daily life.
It’s the book Paul Giammati’s character gives
everyone as a Christmas present in The Holdovers (2023): ”For my money,” he
says, “it’s like the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled up into
one.” It can safely be called a self-help classic.
You might be excused for thinking that the problems faced by a Roman Emperor would be of little or no relevance to your own life. Marcus, however, wrote in such an artfully vague manner, that when he talks about preparing himself mentally to deal with ungrateful and deceitful individuals, he sounds like he could be describing your annoying in-laws or office coworkers.
Of course, he was probably referring to conniving
senators or belligerent Germanic chieftains, but for all we know it may simply
have been one of his many children who was testing his patience that day.
There are a handful of references to specific
individuals and events in the Meditations but for the most part it describes
coping with life’s challenges in such a general and mundane way that the wisdom
comes across as timeless. We soon forget we’re peering over Marcus’ shoulder,
reading his advice to himself. We project ourselves into his struggles, as
though he’s inviting us to imagine coping with adversity like a Stoic
philosopher, despite the fact that the Roman Empire is ancient history and we
now live in the Information Age.
It’s no surprise that the Internet is awash with
self-improvement influencers who claim to be inspired by the Stoicism of Marcus
Aurelius. After all, according to the recent TikTok trend, a lot of modern men
think about the Roman Empire once or twice a week. The Stoic Roman emperor has
become the exemplar, for many of these men—and they are predominantly men—of
how to combine sage leadership with emotional resilience.
We can perhaps trace the modern resurgence of
interest in Marcus Aurelius back to Richard Harris’ compelling portrayal of him
in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000). But is Marcus becoming a victim of his own
popularity? Often his most vocal online fans don’t seem to be very familiar
with his writings or the philosophy on which they’re based.
You don’t have to look far to find bloggers and
podcasters who seem pretty confused about Stoicism. There’s perhaps an element
of jumping on the bandwagon. For instance, Andrew Tate, has recently claimed to
be a fan of Marcus Aurelius. There’s a fundamental difference, though, between
the self-improvement advice given by the likes of Tate and the philosophy found
in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
You’ll find many people online who confuse the
Greek philosophy called “Stoicism”, usually written with a capital S, with the
unemotional coping style called “stoicism,” always written in lowercase. Being
“stoic” in the latter sense just means employing the crudest form of emotional
coping by actively suppressing or concealing one’s painful or embarrassing
feelings—aka maintaining a stiff upper-lip.
Tate’s advice is an odd mixture of this
suppression-strategy and the promise that problematic emotions can be useful:
“So all the bad things that happen to you as a man, if you’re Stoic, you get to
take unlimited energy, heartbreak is unlimited energy. So is depression. So is
rage. So is sadness. All these negative emotions…” When he tells young men to
channel their anger into constructive activity such as working out in the gym,
unfortunately, he’s missing one of the biggest insights Stoic philosophy bequeathed
to us.
Stoic philosophy is based upon a much more nuanced
and sophisticated understanding of psychology. The goal is not simply to
eliminate those emotions that are irrational or excessive but to replace them
with more rational and proportionate ones. In fact, Marcus nowhere recommends
that we try to vent our troubling emotions, channel them in a positive
direction, suppress them, or merely distract ourselves from them.
That’s because the Stoics insisted that our
emotions owe more to our underlying beliefs than most of us typically realize.
This insight inspired the pioneers of modern cognitive psychotherapy who
frequently quoted Epictetus’ saying: “People are not distressed by events but
by their opinions about them.”
If you want to deal with your anger in a healthy
way, you’d be better to figure out what it was about your attitude that caused
you to become so annoyed in the first place. Lifting weights or punching a bag
when you’re angry, probably won’t do anything to change those.
Marcus recommends looking for alternative ways of
thinking about annoying events, and people, in order to permanently improve the
way we feel about them. That means using reason to challenge our own beliefs
and attitudes, something utterly alien to some of the current fans of Marcus
Aurelius in the self-improvement field, especially in the so-called manosphere.
The Stoics claimed that anger is usually a reaction
to fear or the belief that we have been injured. In many cases that belief is
perhaps mistaken: if a woman rejects you or someone insults you—have you really
been harmed or is it all in your mind? Remove the underlying sense of injury
and the anger often feels pointless.
Ironically, if Tate had read Marcus Aurelius more
closely, he’d have learned that Stoicism teaches that anger is often a sign
that our feelings are easily hurt—it accompanies emotional fragility not
toughness. As another Stoic, Seneca, famously put it: “All cruelty springs from
weakness.”
Those who equate Stoicism with “healthy” masculine
aggression may be surprised to learn that, in line with his philosophy, Marcus
believed true “manliness” to consist not in anger or aggression, but in the
strength required to exhibit kindness.
(Robertson, a founding member of the
organization Modern Stoicism and the president and founder of the Plato’s
Academy Centre nonprofit, is the author of Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor.)
