[1]Jon Meacham on Marcus Aurelius:
I stumbled across a [2]Newsweek article about Marcus Aurelius, from
2010, written by author and political commentator Jon Meacham.
Meacham won a Pulitzer prize in 2009 for his biography of US
president Andrew Jackson.
Meacham's article, A Case for Optimistic Stoicism, was inspired by
the attempted Al Qaeda bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253,
which was bound from Amsterdam to Detroit Metropolitan Airport in
the US. I wanted to write a little about this article because I
think it deserves to be read and because it seems to me that Meacham
has actually understood the essence of Stoicism better than many
others who have attempted to write about it. Though he's not a
scholar of this particular subject he clearly "gets it" and the
Stoic doctrine he gets is one that's really quite central to the
whole philosophy.
… That's what I would simply describe as a philosophical attitude
toward the stark reality of terrorism. One type of folly denies the
reality of these threats and buries its head in the sand. Another
type of folly accepts them but exaggerates our inability to cope and
throws its arms up in the air in despair. What people find so
difficult about Stoicism is that it does neither of these foolish
things. Stoics like the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius could … calmly
accept adversity while nevertheless patiently fighting back against
it, even though the odds seemed stacked against them or the battle
seemed interminable. Life, as Marcus said, is warfare. It never
ends. The good man accepts this, without complaint, and he remains
at his post anyway, standing guard against the enemy.
(Via [3]How to Think Like a Roman Emperor)
Donald Robertson misses another type of people, those who make
political hay out of half measures, hand waving, and pseudoscience
substituting for security - a.k.a. [4]Security Theater - instead of
taking meaningful if maybe unpopular actions to identify and address
risks to mitigate threats.
Also on:
[5]Twitter
__________________________________________________________________
My original entry is here: [6]Stoicism As Inoculation To The
Politicalization Of Terrorism And Security Theater. It posted Fri, 30
Nov 2018 21:55:58 +0000.
Filed under: philosophy,
References
1.
https://donaldrobertson.name/2018/11/23/jon-meacham-on-marcus-aurelius/
2.
https://www.newsweek.com/jon-meacham-case-optimistic-stoicism-70901
3.
http://donaldrobertson.name/feed/
4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater
5.
https://twitter.com/prjorgensen/status/1068625804798685184
6.
https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=2377
