This was a hard read. We’re not moving forward on racial discrimination and that is disheartening.
I appreciate you laying it all out there and exposing it to the light and helping me to better understand the issues facing people of color especially the black communities.
We must do better and I hope your writings encourage all of us to fight back against these atrocities.
This is a very long list, complete with sources, and stunning in implication. When do you sleep?
A-4 strikes close to home here in Florida where “school choice” has been jammed down our throats by the DeSantis regime. Public schools were once an equalizer in our nation, imperfect though they were/are. They educated rich and poor alike. Voucher funded private schools threaten the very classless society we say we value.
Since starting to read your posts, I feel like I’ve dropped into a much deeper level of inquiry. Reality is being attacked, but, it’s also breaking open, revealing new stories. Thank you for telling the stories rarely seen elsewhere.
My sleep schedule has been highly irregular this past week with the bestseller campaign push going and almost to the finish line much much quicker than I anticipated. Glad you appreciate and see the hard work being put into this. And Iemme confess to you I’ve been holding back. I grew up in good ole St Pete lol. So I know…lawdy lawdy do I know what you’re talking about but lemme back up this was well before the state got taken over by right wing wack jobs.
Small world isn’t it? St Pete is a city always trying to define itself, buffed by dreamers and schemers alike. I’ve seen many changes over the last 65 years. Moving here at age 12 was a confusing lesson in racial injustice, green benches and economic opportunism. Today we have our first black mayor, Mayor Walsh, who earnestly tries to thread the needle between economic growth and affordable housing. Like everyone before him, he treats them like opposing forces instead of essential partners.
Over the last 10 years we’ve lost huge swaths of long term housing to hedge funds, Airbnbs and last year another swath from Hurricane Helene. Our hospitality based economy struggles to find workers who can afford to live here. We need a new paradigm.
Xplisset, this is just from the Daily Stoic from today. It made me think of you. I hope you have read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but if not I hoe you will. You are a stoic. His writings keep me calm and remind me it’s the human struggle. From one kind person to another.
Seneca wasn’t perfect. He struggled, as all humans do, with inconsistencies between his philosophy and his actions. He was a Stoic but…he was also ungodly wealthy. And you know…he worked for Nero.
So, why should we listen to him? Why did Lucilius, his friend and correspondent, take his advice seriously?
As it happens, the two had an exchange about this very issue. Seneca quotes Lucilius writing to him, asking, “How is it that you are advising me? Have you already advised yourself? Have you got yourself straightened out?” Seneca replies,
I am not such a hypocrite as to offer cures while I am sick myself. No, I am lying in the same ward, as it were, conversing with you about our common ailment and sharing remedies. So listen to me as if I were talking to myself: I am letting you into my private room and giving myself instructions while you are standing by.
Seneca wasn’t writing from a sage-like place of superiority. No, he was writing as a fellow traveler, someone in the trenches of life, wrestling with the same struggles as everyone else. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself… It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can…The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten… I write as one amateur to another, talking about difficulties I have met, or lights I have gained…
This is the essence of Seneca’s Letters, Marcus’ Meditations, and Epictetus’ Discourses. It is also how we hope you read what we produce here at Daily Stoic. We are not all-knowing experts looking down from a pedestal. We, like the ancient Stoics, are fellow students, half a step ahead walking the same path, trying our best to learn and grow together.
Working my way thru the week's posts. Between yours & LFAA & Civil Discourse & several others, I've gotten behind!
I was aware of the horrible tragedies in Darfur and the crap with removing the Nursing profession from a professional degree but there was much here I hadnt seen.
This was a hard read. We’re not moving forward on racial discrimination and that is disheartening.
I appreciate you laying it all out there and exposing it to the light and helping me to better understand the issues facing people of color especially the black communities.
We must do better and I hope your writings encourage all of us to fight back against these atrocities.
This is a very long list, complete with sources, and stunning in implication. When do you sleep?
A-4 strikes close to home here in Florida where “school choice” has been jammed down our throats by the DeSantis regime. Public schools were once an equalizer in our nation, imperfect though they were/are. They educated rich and poor alike. Voucher funded private schools threaten the very classless society we say we value.
Since starting to read your posts, I feel like I’ve dropped into a much deeper level of inquiry. Reality is being attacked, but, it’s also breaking open, revealing new stories. Thank you for telling the stories rarely seen elsewhere.
My sleep schedule has been highly irregular this past week with the bestseller campaign push going and almost to the finish line much much quicker than I anticipated. Glad you appreciate and see the hard work being put into this. And Iemme confess to you I’ve been holding back. I grew up in good ole St Pete lol. So I know…lawdy lawdy do I know what you’re talking about but lemme back up this was well before the state got taken over by right wing wack jobs.
Small world isn’t it? St Pete is a city always trying to define itself, buffed by dreamers and schemers alike. I’ve seen many changes over the last 65 years. Moving here at age 12 was a confusing lesson in racial injustice, green benches and economic opportunism. Today we have our first black mayor, Mayor Walsh, who earnestly tries to thread the needle between economic growth and affordable housing. Like everyone before him, he treats them like opposing forces instead of essential partners.
Over the last 10 years we’ve lost huge swaths of long term housing to hedge funds, Airbnbs and last year another swath from Hurricane Helene. Our hospitality based economy struggles to find workers who can afford to live here. We need a new paradigm.
Xplisset, this is just from the Daily Stoic from today. It made me think of you. I hope you have read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but if not I hoe you will. You are a stoic. His writings keep me calm and remind me it’s the human struggle. From one kind person to another.
Seneca wasn’t perfect. He struggled, as all humans do, with inconsistencies between his philosophy and his actions. He was a Stoic but…he was also ungodly wealthy. And you know…he worked for Nero.
So, why should we listen to him? Why did Lucilius, his friend and correspondent, take his advice seriously?
As it happens, the two had an exchange about this very issue. Seneca quotes Lucilius writing to him, asking, “How is it that you are advising me? Have you already advised yourself? Have you got yourself straightened out?” Seneca replies,
I am not such a hypocrite as to offer cures while I am sick myself. No, I am lying in the same ward, as it were, conversing with you about our common ailment and sharing remedies. So listen to me as if I were talking to myself: I am letting you into my private room and giving myself instructions while you are standing by.
Seneca wasn’t writing from a sage-like place of superiority. No, he was writing as a fellow traveler, someone in the trenches of life, wrestling with the same struggles as everyone else. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself… It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can…The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten… I write as one amateur to another, talking about difficulties I have met, or lights I have gained…
This is the essence of Seneca’s Letters, Marcus’ Meditations, and Epictetus’ Discourses. It is also how we hope you read what we produce here at Daily Stoic. We are not all-knowing experts looking down from a pedestal. We, like the ancient Stoics, are fellow students, half a step ahead walking the same path, trying our best to learn and grow together.
Working my way thru the week's posts. Between yours & LFAA & Civil Discourse & several others, I've gotten behind!
I was aware of the horrible tragedies in Darfur and the crap with removing the Nursing profession from a professional degree but there was much here I hadnt seen.
Thanks yet again