Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"It is a sort of uninstructed neo-Platonism gone somewhat beserk amid the endless wheat, the untouchable girls and the occassional brilliance of an otherwise dreary and dismal Middle West" - from the introduction. I am immediately reminded of Pale Fire.

"...every man's mind is god and has flowed from that source; that nothing is our own property, but even our child, our body, our very soul have come from that source, that all is as thinking makes it so; that each of us lives only the present moment, and the present moment is all we lose." - and then a Buddhist moment.

"Therefore the fact that [even the best men do not survive death] (if indeed that is a fact) should assure you it ought not to be otherwise" - MA trying reconcile himself to his extinction at death. The beginning of the Christian hope that a good life ensures an good afterlife. I'm more sympathetic to the Homeric Greeks who struggled in life only to live on in fame and repute.

"All that you pray to reach at some point in the curcuit of your life can be yours now - if you generous to yourself. That is, if you leave all the past behind, entrust the future to Providence, and direct the present solely to reverence and justice." - isn't there something evangelical in this? There is also something of a split in his attitude to the divine: reverence - God the father; and justice - God the son?

"Kindness is invincible...What can the most aggressive man do to you if you continue to be kind to him? If...you gently admonish him and take your time to re-educate him?" - turning the o other cheek Stoic style. It probably works if you're Emperor of Rome.

"What a noble thing is the soul ready for its release from the body...prepared for whatever follows - extinction, dispersal, or survival. But this readiness must come from a specific decision: not in mere revolt, like the Christians, but thoughtful, dignified" - to MA, 'Christians' are like Jihardis for us. The difference for MA between a Stoic and Christian is a lack of dogma, about the afterlife.

"The properties of the rational soul...it gathers for itself the fruit it bears - whereas the fruit of plants and the corresponding produce of animals is gathered by others." - obviously, Aurelius doesn't anticipate Marx's theory of surplus value.

"A slave running from his master is a fugitive. Law is our master. A law-breaker is therefore a fugitive." - coming from an emperor of Rome, this expresses the essence of the concept of the rule of law, someting the prime minister of Hungary thinks is debatable.

" what [the Gods] want is not servile flattery, but the development of all rational beings into their own image: they want the fig tree to do the proper work of a fig tree, the dog of a dog, the bee of a bee, and man the proper work of a man." - Homer definitely assumed servile flattery was the order of the day. It looks like Plato rung in the changes.

"To continue the same man as you have been up to now, to be torn apart and defiled in this life you live, is just senseless self-preservation like that of half-eaten gladiators who, mauled all over and covered in blood by the wild beasts, still plead to be kept alive for the next day, when in the same state they will meet with the same claws and teeth." - Netflix and chill for the ancient Romans.

"Will you not convince yourself that all your experience comes from the gods, that all is well and all with be well for you, now and hereafter" - replace 'the gods' with 'God' and you have a perfectly Christian exhortation.

"In general, you can always re-educate one who has lost his way: and anyone who does wrong has missed his proper aim and gone astray" - a moment of Socratic optimism, that I not sure Socrates would share.

"Calm acceptance of what comes from a cause outside yourself and justice in all activity of your own causation." - he implies that rational activity is part of the causal chain, but not determined by it. This is actually my view of the free will/determinism problem.

"Injustice is sin. When universal Nature has constitutional rational creatures for the sake of each other - to benefit one another as deserved, but never to harm - anyone contravening her will is clearly guilty of sin against the oldest of the gods..." - Nature then is divine and sentient, the gods presumably individualised expressions of this divinity.

"It was almost as if when I met him, I met this other side of myself. Someone who understood me and made me feel safe. It wasn't passionate, really...We just knew we could be happy together. We knew we could raise a child."

missteps, bliss, revisionist, orchestrated, rectify - when Evelyn and Celia's notes are directly quoted the level of the vocabulary in higher. But why not in the transcripts of Evelyn's story?

"Because the truth is at the age of thirty-five, I have yet to love somebody enough to sacrifice for them" - so the frame and the story are united in a religious view of sexual relations.

"Women have sex for intimacy. Men for pleasure. That's what culture tells us" - this is becoming something of a theme.

"to imply that she has not adequately threaded the needle that is 'being sexually satisfying' without ever appearing to 'desire sexual satisfaction'" - italics not withstanding, not even Roger Scruton thought this about desirable female sexuality. The patriarch wants his women to look sexually unavailable, not sexually unreachable.

"A white woman and a black man in the early eighties" - my first reaction was, surely it would have easier then? But then I realised that's a British perspective. Now I'm more aware how much more prominent race is in America.

"I'm too old, Celia. But thank you for that." - there really was a time when when teenage roles were played by teenage actors. These days it seems every teen role is embarrassingly miscast. Liquorice Pizza was spot on though.

"But the truth is, praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even" - praise, or fame, which is the praise of strangers? Or is it unethical to praise my students?

"Men are born for each other. So either teach or tolerate." - most profound, and original thing so far.

"Suppose you have made yourself an outcast from the unity of nature [by severing oneself from society doing]" - MA sees human society as an intrinsic part of nature, we see it the other way round; the hermit goes back to nature. A Judaic idea not a Roman one.

"Just as you see your bath - all soap, sweat, grime, greasy water, the whole thing disgusting - so is every part of life and object in it." - we marvel at the precocity of Roman engineering, but they didn't invent the shower.

"The work of universal nature is to translate this reality to another, to change things, to take them from here and carry them there. All things are mutations, but there is equality too in their distribution" - not dissimilar to the scientific conservation of mass energy. But what is the relationship between universal nature and the divine?

Monique: "I hope you can give me the benefit of the doubt, going forward, that we're on the same page..."
Evelyn: "...a journalist who will...say exactly what I mean and...mean what I say" - Monique speaks in clichés, almost bizspeak. Hopefully, TJR will exploit that.

Time to find out what my students are reading. Last time it was 'Twilight', lets hope for a better result!

"...remember too that the happy life depends on very little." - even a Hungarian teacher's salary will suffice.

"The second [principle] is resistance to the promptings of the flesh." - Roman, not Judaic.