Almost cut my hair. (Actually, I did cut my hair, two weeks ago.)

The letter today is a bit of an odd one. It's letter five, and in it Seneca begins with a comment that adds an important qualification on the sentiments expressed in the second letter, and in the Stoical way of life generally. "Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance," he says, "and the simple way of life need not be a crude one." Therefore, "avoid shabby attire, long hair, an unkempt beard, an outspoken dislike of silverware, sleeping on the ground and all other misguided means to self-advertisement." Lucky for me, I deleted that line denouncing silverware in last week's post just before publishing...

At any rate, Seneca's basic point is this: in striving to live the good life, don't make yourself look like a lunatic. This is a pretty interesting statement. "The standard which I accept is this: one's life should be a compromise between the ideal and the popular morality." Compromise? "People should admire our way of life but they should at the same time find it understandable."

Seneca raises a difficult problem here.

On the one hand, it seems that we should want to live out the ideal good. One ought to seek perfection, right? But on the other hand, such a life would be so radically different from the lives of others that it would totally fail in the ultimate goal of the good life, i.e. making the world a better place for everyone. A good life, according to Seneca at least, is only good insofar as it helps others live good lives, also.

It does no one any good for me to go live a perfect life in a cave somewhere, and it is impossible to live an ideally "perfect" life within society. Therefore, "compromises" must be made. I have to keep using silverware, and shave before class each morning, and enjoy a piece of greasy pizza with friends, have a cup of coffee from Starbucks, and wear clothes made in factories -- regardless of how unnecessary I think shaving every day is, or how unhealthy I think pizza is, how harmful and homogenizing Starbucks has been to coffee-shop culture, or how much factories hurt the environment and how little pay those who work in them receive [I'll spare you my thoughts concerning silverware].

I guess this is what is behind my own desires for a more centrist political movement. Personally, regardless of the outcome of the primaries and general election this year, I'm very pleased that so many people are talking about moving beyond the polarized red-and-blue politics and ideological fighting of recent years.  I know there is not broad public support for the anarchist-socialist views of human government that I would personally support, but neither is there broad public support for oppressive tyranny, or even for a dictatorship that claims to be "benevolent."  Compromise, therefore, is necessary. We have to work together to figure out what the "common good" looks like.

This is not to say we should live unexamined lives, though, either, or reject all political involvement because there just isn't a candidate we fully agree with. "Our clothes," Seneca reminds us, "should not be gaudy, yet they should not be dowdy either. We should not keep silver plate with inlays of solid gold, but at the same time we should not imagine that doing without gold and silver is proof that we are leading the simple life."

That's the essential point. Living the good life means more than driving hybrids or proudly proclaiming that none of our groceries come from Wal-Mart. Just as no one today would think me a high-moral prophet for wearing a button indicating myself to be "anti-silverware."  A life that seeks true morality, separate from common propriety and social mores, may not actually "look" that different from ordinary life. As with anything, it's what's below the surface and behind the edifice that really counts. We may never achieve the ideal good, in life or in society, but we can work towards the ideal, and push life a little closer to a true realization of the "common good." 

I Can't Get No Satisfaction (But If I Try, I Find I Get What I Need)

The first letter in my Penguin edition ("Letter II") of Seneca's Letters makes a couple of interesting points. The main idea in this letter is "don't go after more than you need; seek satisfaction, not excess." He begins by observing that frequent moves, "restlesness," is unhealthy behavior, "symptomatic of a sick mind." "Nothing," he says, "is better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company." Making frequent moves (physically) is dangerous in the same way that scattered reading habits are: "To be everywhere is to be nowhere. People who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships. [...] A plant which is frequently moved never grows strong." Finally, he comments on individual wealth: "It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. [...] You ask what is the proper limit to a person's wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough."

This really goes against a lot of the conventional thinking of our own day, as it undoubtedly did when Seneca was writing (i.e. around Nero's reign). Our culture values excess, and often doesn't understand the person who says "I have enough." "Settling down" is sometimes perceived as "giving up," surrendering to the grip of family or circumstance. We always want to be "moving on" and "moving up."

I've felt the same urge to move "onwards and upwards" recently in my applications to Ph.D. schools. I've tried to mediate that urge to some extent (I didn't apply to anywhere terribly far away from home), but the feeling that I needed to move on and go elsewhere for my Ph.D. was definitely there.

But Seneca's point is a sharp one: the person who is poor is really just the person who feels he or she does not have enough. How it is possible to feel poor in an age of excess like our own (or like Seneca's) is difficult to grasp, but as the recent credit crisis shows, there are many in our society who find it impossible to get by without spending more than they earn, making themselves truly poor in the process.

My own desire to move from DeKalb reflects, to some extent at least, an unrealistic feeling of poverty on my own part, or sense of dissatisfaction with where I am. But, like I said, when I applied to Ph.D. schools I made a conscious decision to limit myself to the midwest. As it has turned out, it looks like I'll be moving back to Michigan to attend MSU, which is really ideal for a number of reasons. It lets me "move up" in the sense that I'll be attending a school with more resources and a better department than the school where I'm at now, but it also lets me stay somewhat close to friends I've made in DeKalb, while moving back closer to some close family and friends in Michigan. While MSU (and Michigan generally) is not perfect, it's not bad, either. I'm looking forward to moving on but also moving back, and especially to moving someplace where I'm sure to stay for at least another four years (there is no such thing as a "fast-track" Ph.D.).

The only way out of the present economic crisis is, much like the way I have found satisfaction with where my life is headed, a general acceptance of "enough." You can blame the credit crunch on high gas prices, bad economic policy by the Bush administration, or the Iraq war, but the bottom line, it seems to me, is excessive spending habits. The "hankering after more" that causes us to max out credit card after credit card, until we are stuck with debt that we cannot pay off.

Only when we recognize "enough," Seneca suggests, will we recognize the true wealth available to us all: the wealth that comes in being content with where we are, in letting our roots sink in, and in passing time with familiar company. There is a real danger in restlessness, be it physical, mental, or economic. As Seneca warns, "to be everywhere is to be nowhere."

Prologue, Preface, Introduction

So, I'm starting another blog. I suppose it would be a good idea to give a few reasons why I've decided to try this blog thing out again, and lay out a few things readers can expect from my blog in the weeks, months, etc. to follow.

1: Why?
Why keep a blog? Why write anything? Well, a number of reasons...
First, a few people have been asking recently if/when I was going to start writing on a blog again. Blogs are very handy ways to keep in touch with people, and I've been wanting to revive my dead blog-presence for some time now.

Second, it's nice to write. It's especially nice to write things that are not directly work-related. Hawthorne said he wrote to "open an intercourse with the world." I like the way he puts that. Writing in this particular format allows me to air out some of the dustier parts of my brain, and gives me room to stretch out a bit and explore some less-trodden regions of my mind.

2:What is this blog about?
The title of this blog is "Forwarded Letters from a Stoic." That needs some explanation. Initially, at least, I mean that title quite literally. Over spring break I picked up a copy of a Penguin edition of Seneca's Letters from a Stoic. I've been wanting to get to know stoical philosophy (i.e. classical writers like Zeno of Citium, Seneca, Cato, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus) a little better for a while now, and I'm going to slowly work my way through Seneca's Letters. This blog is, at the outset, a record of that journey. It's a place for me to forward on to readers some of the especially interesting or relevant portions of the Letters, and to reflect a bit on why I find those portions interesting and relevant.

The actual title of Seneca's Letters is Epistulae morales ad Lucilium ("letters to Lucilium concerning morality"), which gives a better idea of what these letters are all about - they're mostly concerned with moral instruction. Apparently, though, it's not clear that there ever was a person named Lucilium that these "letters" were written to, so the title (as titles usually are) may be somewhat misleading.

However, the basic form of these writings is that of a collection of letters. Each letter begins with a salutation to Lucilium and ends with the standard Latin Vale ("be well"). So these are not just a bunch of ramblings by Seneca; they carry some ostensible purpose, and they are written to someone in the hope that the person who reads them (be it Lucilium or you or I) will find them morally instructive.

In the future, the title of this blog might become less literally accurate. In other words, I won't always be forwarding letters from Seneca. However, I do still intend to forward on selections from some writer or another that I happen to be reading, unrelated to my school work. So the forwarded "letters" will not always be from Seneca's Letters, but they will always be "letters" forwarded by me, and I have been accused of being a little "stoical" on more than one occasion.

In any event, that's the basic idea behind this blog. We'll see how it goes. Stay tuned.