Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 11 Part 2 (2-7)

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 11 Part 2 (2-7)

Bonus: 

Summary: YOU'RE GONNA DIE!

Commentary: I think this is my favorite, even if I disagree with it:

2. You will think little of a pleasing song, a dance, or a gymnastic display, if you analyse the melody into its separate notes, and ask yourself regarding each, “Does this impress me?” You will blush to own it; and so also if you analyse the dance into its single motions and postures, and if you similarly treat the gymnastic display. In general then, except as regards virtue and virtuous action, remember to recur to the constituent parts of things, and by dissecting to despise them; and transfer this practice to life as a whole.

"If you look at anything good and break it down, you can make it seem bad."

That's great, Marc. 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 11 Part 1(1)

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 11 Part 1(1)

Bonus: 

MA would support this happy.

Summary: Do things that make you happy, as long as its for the right reasons.

Commentary:

Trying to wrap up some of the half finished stuff before we get to April, and not feeling 1984 tonight. I feel like part one would've made a decent short story/novella, but most of two drags is kind of repetitive. 

Something I've talked a little about with Meditations before, but still sticks out to me in this part is how Marcus Aurelius wants you to be happy, have goals, etc. I think a lot of Stoicism is often distilled down to "you shouldn't feel things at all." He wants you to feel things, he's just particular about what those things are.

1. These are the characteristics of the rational soul: It beholds itself; it regulates itself in every part; it fashions itself as it wills; the fruit it bears itself enjoys, whereas the products of plants and of the lower animals are enjoyed by others. It reaches its individual end, wheresoever the close of life may overtake it. In a dance or an actor’s part any interruption spoils the completeness of the whole action. Not so with the rational soul. At whatever point in its action, or wheresoever it is overtaken by death, it makes its part complete and all-sufficient; so that it can say, “I have received what is mine.” Also it ranges through the whole universe, and the void around it, and discerns its plan. It stretches forth into limitless eternity, and grasps the periodical regeneration of all things, seeing and comprehending that those who come after us will see nothing new, and that those that went before saw no more than we have seen. Nay, a man of forty, of any tolerable understanding, has, because of the uniformity of things, seen, in a manner, all that has been or will be. Characteristic of the rational soul also are:—Love to all around us, truth, modesty; and respect for itself above all other things, which is characteristic also of the general law. Thus there is no discordance between right reason and the reason of justice.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 18 (3.2)

 Orwell's writing is a little dry for a torture scene. Thematically it works:

O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.

'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'

'Yes.'

And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment -- he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some period of one's life when one was in effect a different person.

'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possible.'

'Yes,' said Winston.

The Party can make you not just "reject the evidence of your eyes and ears," but actually convince you that your reality is different.

There's plenty of fodder for the O'BrienXWinston shippers.

And it gives us this scene:

 

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 17 (3.1)

 Apparently, they've destroyed so much of English that only 12 words rhyme with rod.

English is apparently regarded as a relatively difficult language for rhyming.

This gives me ideas for A to Z this year...

A to Z Theme Reveal 2026

 Once again, it's time for the only blogging challenge I do (because my wife helps run it) April A to Z!

This year's overarching theme is: Aspiration!

I'm going to aspire to read more poetry, and (hopefully) learn to enjoy it a bit more. I checked one of the indexes, and there is at least one poem starting with every letter XZept for X and Z in T5FSOB, so that'll be pretty manageable. Maybe I can find authors that match those letters (The Great Poets Xerxes and Zeno?) or dip into The Great Books or something.

If this is your first time here, Fifteen Minute Classics is a (somewhat loosely defined) classic literature (and occasionally movies, video games, and whatever else catches my fancy) blog that started as a 2024 New Years Resolution. The first year, I worked my way through "The Harvard Classics Five Foot Shelf of Books (AKA T5FSOB) Fifteen Minutes A Day (AKA 15MAD)" reading list. Published between 1909 and 1916, The Harvard Classics was designed to give anyone who was willing to read them (even if it as only for 15 minutes a day!) the basics of a liberal education (the basic education a person needs to be a functional citizen of a democracy. Morals, some philosophy, foundational literature. Like Gen Eds if they didn't suck!).

I got through the whole list the first year (and, I think, posted every day. I didn't start tracking it until part way through), added a Star Wars blog (one year, I'll A to Z Star Wars...). It was honestly great. I learned a lot, enjoyed myself, and it's just a cool thing to have done.

Year 2, I kind of meandered around through a bunch of different stuff, did A to Z on the "Great Ideas of Western Thought", and started a third blog for random stuff that doesn't fit on the other two, and realized I should mostly stick to the classics anyway. And I kept up my streak of posting every day!

This year, I missed a random day in January (;_;).

In the meantime, I'm going to try to finish up the three books I'm hypothetically in the middle of blogging. Failing that, I can knock them off on the off days for A to Z I guess. See you all in April!

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 16 (2.10)

 THEY GET CAUGHT (they are idiots). 

As he looked at the woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching up for the line, her powerful marelike buttocks protruded, it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so, and after all, he thought, why not? The solid, contourless body, like a block of granite, and the rasping red skin, bore the same relation to the body of a girl as the rose-hip to the rose.

Julia doesn't think she's pretty.

 

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 15 (2.9.3)

 Orwell's essay is starting to get questionable here:

 The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

I would argue that most middle class people are happy to remain middle class, or maybe slightly move up to a more comfortable middle class, not to become high class. I have no idea where his idea that a common aim for the low class is to abolish a class system at all comes from.

Likewise, his claim that mechanization removes the need for social levels, even if people still have different jobs. Even if we're entirely post scarcity, some jobs, hobbies, etc. will still be more prestigious than others.

Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

This part is spot on though. Along with:

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary.

Alternative facts!

But remember, 1984 is a book by a socialist about bad socialists, so:

Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. 

Julia dozes through the whole thing and tells Winston he's good at reading, because of course.