I don’t normally get to dick around with ancient wisdom texts much—I’ve studied the Jewish stuff a bit and what not, but normally I am all about the analytic philosophy. I teach a bunch of horrible crap though so with the hope that I could find some ethical works that didn’t make me sick I started reading some Stoics. Here are some gems that will grow chest hair on your balls or vagina.
Enjoy the wisdom of Epictetus
(From Encheiridion)
Let death and exile and everything that is terrible appear before your eyes every day, especially death; and you will never have anything contemptible in your thoughts or crave anything excessively.
[Professor Passion breaks it down for his students: Imagine you have received a rectal punch. Not such a big man anymore are you?]
How long do you put off thinking yourself worthy of the best things, and never going against the definitive capacity of reason? You have received the philosophical propositions that you ought to agree to and you have agreed to them. Then what sort of teacher are you waiting for, that you put off improving yourself until he comes? You are not a boy anymore, but already a full-grown man. If you now neglect things and are lazy and are always making delay after delay and set one day after another as the day for paying attention to yourself; then without realizing it you will make no progress but will end up a non-philosopher all through life and death. So decide now that you are worthy of living as a full-grown man who is making progress, and make everything that seems best be a law that you cannot go against. And if you meet with any hardship or anything pleasant or reputable or disreputable, then remember that the contest is now and the Olympic games are now and you cannot put things off any more and that your progress is made or destroyed by a single day and a single action. Socrates became fully perfect in this way, not by paying attention to anything but his reason in everything that he met. You, even if you are not Socrates, ought to live as someone wanting to be Socrates.
[Prof. Passion break down: Stop being a Nancy boy. As kids we got better just by getting older. Those days are gone. There is nothing else worth doing but working at being better.]
For each action, consider what leads up to it and what follows it, and approach it in the light of that. Otherwise you will come to it enthusiastically at first, since you have not borne in mind any of what will happen next, but later when difficulties turn up you will give up disgracefully. You want to win an Olympic victory? I do too, by the gods, since that is a fine thing. But consider what leads up to it and what follows it, and undertake the action in the light of that. You must be disciplined, keep a strict diet, stay away from cakes, train according to strict routine at a fixed time in heat and in cold, not drink cold water, not drink wine when you feel like it, and in general you must have turned yourself over to your trainer as to a doctor, and then in the contest “dig in,” sometimes dislocate your hand, twist your ankle, swallow a lot of sand, sometimes be whipped, and, after all that, lose. Think about that and then undertake training, if you want to. Otherwise you will be behaving the way children do, who play wrestlers one time, gladiators another time, blow trumpets another time, then act a play. In this way you too are now an athlete, now a gladiator, then an orator, then a philosopher, yet you are nothing wholeheartedly, but like a monkey you mimic each sight that you see, and one thing after another is to your taste, since you do not undertake a thing after considering it from every side, but only randomly and half-heartedly.
In the same way when some people watch a philosopher and hear one speaking like Euphrates (though after all who can speak like him), they want to be philosophers themselves. Just you consider, as a human being, what sort of thing it is; then inspect your own nature and whether you can bear it. You want to do the pentathlon, or to wrestle? Look at your arms, your thighs, inspect your loins. Different people are naturally suited for different things. Do you think that if you do those things you can eat as you now do, drink as you now do, have the same likes and dislikes? You must go without sleep, put up with hardships, be away from your own people, be looked down on by a little slave boy, be laughed at by people who meet you, get the worse of it in everything, honor, public office, law course, every little thing. Think about whether you want to exchange these things for tranquility, freedom, calm. If not, do not embrace philosophy, and do not like children be a philosopher at one time, later a tax-collector, than an orator, then a procurator of the emperor. These things do not go together. You must be one person, either good or bad. You must either work on your ruling principle, or work on externals, practice the art either of what is inside or what is outside, that is, play the role either of a philosopher or of a non-philosopher.
[Prof. Passion break down: Do you want to be a scholar or an activist? Are you all about inquiry and discovery or are you about imposing your preferences. Don’t confuse the two. Check your ball sack/vagina. Is it full of steel? Mine is.
