Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 10 Part 1 (1-17)

  Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 10 Part 1 (1-17)

Bonus: 

I wonder how long it would take me to blog Homestuck

Summary: I literally don't know if I've read some of these before.

Commentary: 

1. Wilt thou ever, O my soul, be good and single, and one, and naked, more open to view than the body which surrounds thee? Wilt thou ever taste of the loving and satisfied temper? Wilt thou ever be full and without wants, setting thy heart on nothing, animate or inanimate, for the enjoyment of pleasure; not desiring time for longer enjoyment; nor place, nor country, nor fine climate, nor congenial company? Wilt thou be satisfied with thy present state, and well pleased with every present circumstance? Wilt thou persuade thyself that all things are thine; that all is well with thee; that all comes to thee from the Gods; and that what is best for thee is what they are pleased to give, now and henceforth, for the preservation of that perfected being, which is good, just, and beautiful; which generates, combines, embraces, and includes all fleeting things that dissolve to bring forth others like themselves? Wilt thou never be able to live a fellow citizen with Gods and men, approving them and by them approved?

Something I don't think is talked about enough in discussions of stoicism is how important the dichotomy between body and soul is. All of the, "NOTHING MATTERS! YOU'RE GONNA DIE!" comes from the fact that that stuff only affects the body. But I don't know that there's a lot about how to live up to what your soul wants. It's all just, "be good and honest and listen to your soul." A bit more about what that looks like might be nice.

9. Mimes, war, panic, sloth, servility, will wipe out the sacred maxims which you have gathered by observing Nature and stored in your mind.

Damn mimes! (Footnote in other editions translate this to theatres for shitty plays.) Very Homestuck.

16. Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.

Shut up and do it! 

 

 

"The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov (1958)

"The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov (1958)

Bonus: 

Very dramatic

Summary: IN THE FUTURE, WE DISCOVER... MAAAATH

Commentary: 

Last one in this series of classic AI related stories that I previewed for my students:

1. I'm curious about what exact math has and hasn't been lost. They don't appear confused/impressed by the addition part of multiplication.

2. I'm surprised there's not some sort of elite math cabal.

3. The would definitely still be some kind of spectrumy math savants.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury (1950)

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

Bonus: 

Yes, Soviet Animation!

Summary: Robot house burns down.

Commentary:

I think it's reasonably well established that I'm not a huge fan of overly flowery language, but:

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed. Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

Is pretty much perfect. 

"The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury (1950)

"The Veldt"

Bonus:

Everyone is so pink!

Summary: Children program the holodeck to eat their parents for taking it away.

Commentary: The devil is in the details, and the little details are both the strongest and weakest part of this story.

“Matter of fact, we’re thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence.”

“That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it?

And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?”

“It would be fun for a change, don’t you think?”

“No, it would be horrid. I didn’t like it when you took out the picture painter last month.”

“That’s because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son.”

“I don’t want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?”

While the "nursery" (a psychically programmed holodeck) is the focus of the story, I think all the other gadgets that are mentioned in passing are really what's interesting/depressing here. The kids don't even want to paint or anything anymore, let along brush their own teeth.

I'd insert anti-AI rant here, but I don't think you even need to go that far. There are plenty of things that we used to know how to do 50 years ago that we mostly lost 5 or 10 or 20 years before AI. Cooking/baking from scratch, basic crafts like sewing, writing a letter, doing math on paper. I'm not trading in my calculator or my search engine, but I do think there's some value in being able to sit down and actually, physically do things.

On the other hand:

“Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that’s all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit—Africa in your parlor—but it’s all dimensional, superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens. It’s all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here’s my handkerchief.”

So the whole thing is what sounds like a hologram (though without using the term), sounds, and a smell-o-vision. But then at the end, it's strongly implied the lions eat them. I'd have accepted "don't worry, they're not really lions, just disguised 50s technobabble about them being tiny bumpercars with projectors or something and they somehow manage to eat them anyway, but the fact that the nursery supposedly has no real parts at all (although you'd think it'd at least have the ability to raise the floor to make steps or chairs or something) makes the ending kind of iffy. Maybe the parents are just so dependent on their smart house they're ignorant of how it works.

3/5 good prose, interesting details, spotty world building.

 

I never realized how little of Pride and Prejudice is actually about Darcy and Elizabeth's relationship.

 Also, listening to audio books isn't reading. That doesn't make it bad, it's just its own thing.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 9 Part 2 (22-42)

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book  Part 2 (22-42)

Bonus: 

Listen you your ruling part

Summary: They're getting shorter!

Commentary: 

23. You yourself are a part of a social system necessary to complete the whole. Accordingly, let your every action be a similar part of the social life. And if any action has not its reference, either immediate or distant, to the common good as its end, this action disorders your life and frustrates its unity. It is sedition like that of the man who, in a commonwealth, does all in his power to sever himself from the general harmony and concord.

Does yawning count as an action for the common good?

26. You have endured innumerable sufferings by not being satisfied with your own ruling part when it does the things which it was formed to do. Enough then of that.

You know the right thing to do, and denying it will just make you miserable.

Begin to pray about them and you will see. One man prays: “May I possess that woman!” Do you pray: “May I have no wish to possess her!” Another prays: “May I be delivered from so and so!” Pray you: “May I not need to be delivered from him!” A third cries: “May I not lose my child!” Let your prayer be: “May I not fear to lose him!” In fine, turn your prayers this way, and observe what comes of it.

I feel like that second one is very different. Need not be delivered could just mean he moves away for a job or something. 

 

 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 9 Part 1 (1-21)

  Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book  Part 1 (1-21)

Bonus: 

Basically Aristotle.

Summary: Everything bad is bad, especially feeling good.

Commentary:

I think I'm getting sick, so very sleepy during the reading today. This one felt especially repetitive and MA is really into his, "pain isn't bad, pleasure is bad," "dying isn't bad!", schtick. The lengths here are all over the place. Some one liners, and some that run most of a page.

The one that stood out was the first one:

1. He who does injustice commits impiety. For since universal Nature has formed the rational animals for one another; each to be useful to the other according to his merit, and never hurtful; he who transgresses this her will is clearly guilty of impiety against the most ancient and venerable of the Gods.

He who lies sins against the same divinity. For the nature of the whole is the nature of all things which exist; and things which exist are akin to all that has come to be. Nature, indeed, is called truth, and is the first cause of all truths. He, then, that lies willingly is guilty of impiety, in so far as by deceiving he works injury: and he also who lies unwillingly, in so far as he is out of tune with universal Nature, and in so far as he works disorder in the Universe by fighting against its design. He is at war with Nature who sets himself against the truth. He has neglected the means with which Nature furnished him, and cannot now distinguish false from true.

He, too, who pursues pleasure as good, and shuns pain as evil, is guilty of impiety. Such a one must needs frequently blame the common nature for unseemly awards of fortune to bad and to good men. For the bad often enjoy pleasures and possess the means to attain them, and the good often meet with pain and with what causes pain. Again, he who dreads pain must sometimes dread a thing which will make part of the world order, and this is impious. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is clear impiety. In those things to which the common nature is indifferent (for she had not made both, were she not indifferent to either), he who would follow Nature ought, in this also, to be of like mind with her, and shew the like indifference. And whoever is not indifferent to pain and pleasure, life and death, glory and ignominy, all of which universal Nature uses indifferently, is clearly impious. By Nature using them indifferently, I mean that they befall indifferently all beings which exist, and ensue upon others in the great chain of consequence which began in the primal impulse of Providence. Providence, in pursuance of this impulse, and starting from a definite beginning, set about this fair structure of the universe when she had conceived the plan of all that was to be, and appointed the distinct powers which were to produce the several substances, changes, and successions.

Anytime you do anything bad=work against the gods=pleasure=working against the gods=not wanting pain=working against the gods.

Seems like a pretty miserable worldview. Also assuming that anything we do for pleasure is negative. If enjoying writing a cool story or dancing or whatever gives you pleasure and adds something good to the world, I don't see how it's a bad thing.