Meditations – Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays

I have no problem saying that Sun Tzu’s art of war may be one of the worst things I have ever read. It is platitudes of shit you already knew. I mean, where you really planning on attacking your enemy at their strongest? Did you really need fucking Sun Tzu to tell you to attack your enemies at their weakest? If you did, perhaps consider sitting war out altogether. I don’t think it is for you.

Not much better is Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. It’s the book of shower thoughts, and while they are largely better than my shower thoughts, I found most of what was in the book to be a bunch of unsubstantiated assertions about life. I gave up on reading that, and my giving up on a book is fucking rare.

I am now pleased to added Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations to that list.

I don’t think Marcus would be upset with me. Apparently this book was just his personal reflections, and he never sent it off to an agent to get it published. He wrote it for himself and (i think) his son, and at some point after his death someone else said “Gee, I like this too” and off it went to the publishing house. It too reeks like low effort shower thoughts. I dislike this kind of philosophy, the untested thoughts of some ancient rando. Frankly, there is just so much here to which my immediate reaction is “um, is it though? Is it really?”

10. The Natural can never be inferior to the artificial; art imitates nature, not the reverse. In which case, that most highly developed and comprehensive nature – Nature itself – cannot fall short of artifice in its craftsmanship.

Book 11

That’s false, and anyone can find clips of Niel deGrasse Tyson talking about the ‘stupid design’ we see in nature.

28. People ask, “Have you ever seen the gods you worship? How can you be sure they exist?” Answers: i. Just look around you. ii. I’ve never seen my soul either. And yet I revere it.

Book 12

Aurelius never considered the possibility that he isn’t revering anything at all. But both points i and ii are really bad arguments to the existence of god. Having come out of religion, I am actually comfortable in the fact of my living in a cold and indifferent universe, and I don’t like to listen to people who say otherwise, even if Aurelius puts it in a pretty acceptable way. Will of the gods? Fuck you, prove it!

I am of two minds about some of the advice here. Marcus is constantly reassuring himself (and by extension, us) not to worry about the future. Mother-fucker, not worrying about the future is how I got to be in the shit situation that is my life. Not worrying about the future is the reason people like my have ‘suicide’ listed as our retirement plan. This is beyond bad advice.

And yet…

I started to read this right as Russia invaded Ukraine (back in 2022 for all you future readers), and as I was reading it the paranoia among my friends and family really hit a high. My brother (who didn’t believe me when I said Putin would invade, #fuckyouIwasright) messaged me wanting to say goodbye in case he didn’t get a chance to later. There was, after some fifty years of silence, a renewed fear of our old friend nuclear extinction. Was I worried?

Nah, not really. Not with my buddy Marcus at my side. As Marcus would point out, there’s nothing I can do about it. Fuck am I meant to do, move to Italian south and grow tomatoes and forage for mushrooms? Sure, I don’t want to get nuked, but really what the fuck am I meant to do, send Putin a strongly worded letter? Sign a Petition? Move to Argentina (I’m assuming New Zealand won’t have me… it’s my first choice.)

For more thoughts on this, see my post at my sister blog.

I do have to spend a second or two talking about the translation. I at first attempted to read a copy of this that I got from project Gutenberg. It was un-fucking-readable. Gregory Hays has done a very good job of making the text accessible. But I did have moments of skepticism, like when I encounter the words ‘Criminal Psychology’ and wonder if they really had such a concept back then well before Sigmund Freud. There were also single lines of text here and there that I did not know how to interpret. As with all translations, I am never sure if I have read a book by Aurelius or a book by Hays.