
On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD) - nkh
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_shortness_of_life/Chapter_I
======
SeamusBrady
Seneca was a Stoic.

But being a Stoic has little to do with the standard cliche of suppressing
your emotions.

It is a philosophy that emphasises a rational response to nature, your own and
that of the universe. "Follow nature" is a common Stoic saying -
unconditionally accept that which is the case and do not disturb yourself with
emotional upheavals about that which one can do nothing.

The French philosopher Pierre Hadot summarised the four features that
constitute the universal Stoic attitude in his book "Philosophy as a way of
life".

These are:

\- We are part of of a Cosmic Whole, made up of the totality of the universe
and the totality of all human beings

\- There is nothing evil in nature. The only evil is moral evil in humans.
Realising this makes a person serene and free, the only thing that counts is
the purity of your own conscience.

\- The belief in the absolute value of the human person

\- The concentration on the present moment through training and spiritual
exercises. Through the present moment we have access to the entire cosmos.

Much of modern cognitive psychology owes it roots to the work of the Stoic
philosopher Epictitus. Much of our beliefs about human rights, the basic
ethical doctrines of Christianity and our notions of healthy psychological
self sufficiency all come from the Stoics.

And yes, I am a fan :)

~~~
Eliezer
> We are part of of a Cosmic Whole

Bet you Seneca never said that. It's a highly evolved modern form of nonsense.

~~~
yters
No, stoics tended to be pantheists.

------
grellas
_Ars longa, vita brevis_ \- originally from the Greek (Hippocrates), where the
original read in full (as translated into English):

"Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment fallible, judgment
difficult."

The original Greek of this is a sublimely succinct rendering of wonderfully
expressed aphorisms. It is found here
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis>) along with a pretty
good explanation of what it all means in the original.

Of course, the underlying philosophical issue concerns man's standing as what
has been called a "cosmic orphan" in the universe, i.e., the one creature
acutely aware of its own mortality even while striving and dreaming to make
something out of life while it exists. The Stoics, like Seneca, essentially
said that we are wise when we make the most of what we have, whatever its
temporal duration.

~~~
hammmatt
I agree.

However, did you consider the idea that we are no wise in any way and we are
in need of more observational evidence?

~~~
eagleal
Could you explain better what you mean? (I think I got it, but ...)

------
Eliezer
I wonder who Seneca thought was carefully arranging the universe so that
everyone would had enough time if only they had used it properly. They didn't
have monotheism back then, did they? Or maybe Seneca was just naturally the
sort of person who rationalized things easily, and imagined a fairer universe
without anyone in particular making it fair.

Anyway, props to the people Seneca was disagreeing with, who managed to be
more honest with themselves about the unfairness of the universe and how
easily it could have been improved than Seneca and many other modern
rationalizers.

<http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified>

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/uk/beyond_the_reach_of_god/>

~~~
randallsquared
"They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?"

 _AD_ 50?

~~~
lionhearted
> "They didn't have monotheism back then, did they?"

I presume he meant Rome, in which case, no, polytheism was the way and Jesus
was worshipped alongside Mars, Jupiter, Julius Cesar, Augustus Cesar, etc.
Even people who explicitly believed in only one god casually acknowledged the
other gods, it wasn't a big deal to go to a local temple in another province
to say a prayer, get a blessing, or make an offering.

Modern monotheism started around 325 at the First Council of Nicea. Since
then, the dogma of monotheistic religions has evolved to say that there's one
God, we understand him, and anyone else making claims of deities is false. But
it's a bit of revisionist history - the vast majority of people in the West
were "casually polytheistic" prior to 325, even people belonging to faiths
that are now strictly monotheistic.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _Modern monotheism started around 325_

So the Jews weren't monotheistic and the Torah never had "you will have no
gods before me" in it? You might say, "that's not modern monotheism" but how
can that be as Christians worship that same God.

~~~
barry-cotter
_You will have no gods before me_

That's henotheistic not monotheistic.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism#Judaism>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Well, I've never seen that claim promoted seriously for the Jews who followed
Yahweh. Yahweh has many names, granted, and there are many false gods
mentioned in the OT, the point being they are not gods but people worshipped
them as such.

Example, in Exodus 3:6 (NIV)

'Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was
afraid to look at God.'

So Abraham, Jacob and Isaac were monotheists. Moses was a afraid to look at
God, not to look at "a god". Monotheism.

The reference to the triune creator God as plural is not unsurprising.

------
markbnine
50 AD for a somewhat relevant post... that's going to be tough to beat.

~~~
wushupork
Julius Caesar's got some good quotes:

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the
hungry-looking.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can.

Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.

and that's between 100BC and 44BC

~~~
michaelkeenan
I think that last one was Shakespeare:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death
but once." - William Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_ , Act II, sc. ii (1599)

------
reasonattlm
The words, even fine words, of men set to rationalize the span of years they
knew they had are no longer relevant in this day and age. The difference
between Seneca and us is that we can toil to turn money into additional years
of life. Scientific research and medicine.

Of course, given that we are on the cusp of this new era of longevity science,
rejuvenation of the old, and greatly enhanced life spans, we look around and
see only the past. It takes a bold, one might even say entrepreneurial, soul
to recognize what might soon be, were people to put their shoulder to the
wheel.

~~~
SeamusBrady
I respectfully disagree with you. One must be wary of the modern cult of
technology as just another way to bypass the human condition.

Even if you live to be 2000, you cannot bypass suffering and you cannot stop
change. Our attention span is between 5 and 15 seconds and you will have to
share that present, that moment with all other human beings, just the same as
if you only had six months to live.

The point is not how long you live, but how well.

As Marus Aurelius says in his Meditations:

"For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from
him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each
thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and
that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a
hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the
longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and
the same thing."

~~~
staunch
I don't know. Imagine an earth filled with up to 2,000 year old humans. Many
(not all) of them would be _amazing_ in a huge variety of ways. They'd have
had the time to spend 10 of our lifetimes learning how _not_ to live well, and
another 10 learning _how_ to live well.

~~~
anigbrowl
For all you or I know such long lifespans might produce nothing but cranky
sadists who are too jaded to find pleasure in anything but stripping folks
like yourself of their naive enthusiasm.

I'm not especially enthused about the prospect of major life extension.
Gerontocracy is already far too common and in the US the older demographic
seems oblivious to the fact that the generations following behind are going to
be stuck with an absolutely massive bill so the boomers can enjoy their
retirement. At least Japan is trying to address the problem by developing
better robots, while we are heading for spending 20% of GDP on health care.

------
heed
From Chapter VII:

"Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a
weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs,
who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears
the morrow."

This is the gist of the essay. I don't know, I find it terribly vague and
subjective. Seneca defines 'waste' as not living in the present and doing
things for others as opposed to, for yourself. Is there a right or wrong way
to live? I'm not so sure. I think you should live the way you want, complain
about the shortness of life, be idle, do nothing, if that's what you really
want to do. The only restriction is not to impose on anyone else's quality of
life or right to live the way they want. I would argue Seneca is trying to
impose, as am I.

------
yantramanav
Very profound and simple thought. Carpe diem!

