64. If you wake up hungry, you'll always sit down hungry?
65. Don't drink except when you're thirsty. (William Penn was not a Boy Scout.)
66. Not getting drunk is good.
67. Sometimes drinking strong drinks is good for you.
68. The most common things are the most useful. (Not actually a paraphrase.)
69. Don't overuse rare things.
70. Don't waste things.
71. Don't tell people to do anything you wouldn't do yourself.
72. Too much of anything is bad.
This feels like it'd be better split into 2 or 3 topics. Also, one or two spots where it's unclear if he's talking about drinking anything or drinking liquor. I think he's far enough in time to be past the "all drinks are alcohol" phase.
Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment And Resignation, Murmurs, Censoriousness, Bounds of Charity, Frugality or Bounty, Discipline, Industry, Temperance
Went to a used bookstore today and tracked down Volume One of T5FSOB! It's the Ben Franklin one, so pretty high on my list. They had about half a dozen volumes. I'd like to get a full set someday, but I don't really have anywhere good to put them. If I found them in good condition for a good price I'd go for it. Otherwise, I'll wait until I have five feet of shelf available.
Summary: A frame story for a knob slobbering wall of text.
Commentary: I've written before about how much I hate the dialogue as a format, and I think Phaedo does a great job of demonstrating this.
First of all, the entire concept of a dialogue is usually more of just an awkward frame story. The two characters don't usually add anything particular to what could've been an essay. In this case, we get about two pages of them talking before Phaedo starts the intro to the intro of his long awkward story.
The awkwardness is the second thing. The Apology while disagreeable in content, is generally pleasantly written. I liked Jowett's translation, although I can see how Grube's might be more appropriate for an intro course or whatever. I looked at about a half dozen editions/translations of the Phaedo, and they all have awkward constructions like:
ECHECRATES: What was the manner of his death, Phaedo? What was said or done? And which of his friends were with him? Or did the authorities forbid them to be present—so that he had no friends near him when he died?
Not only does no one talk like this in real life, but it's also unnecessarily wordy. You could probably cut around half of it without even going particularly skimpy.
"How did he die? What happened? Did he have anyone with him, any friends, or did they make him die alone?"
Wow, that was easy.
And, of course, it's not a dialogue unless the listener is just absolutely orally worshiping the main speaker:
ECHECRATES: You will have listeners who are of the same mind with you, and I hope that you will be as exact as you can.
OMG Phaedo, you're as good as Socrates! Not a high bar.
Anyway, after this threeish pages, Phaedo starts his story. He attempts to word for word explain exactly what was said and done. That means that about half of this "dialogue" is one uninterrupted speech by one of the characters. Why do a dialogue at all if you're not going to have them talk to each other!?
He's on a mission from god to annoy people and make poor decisions.
Summary: Socrates is a mopey dipshit.
Commentary: I really think the last couple pages of this piece sum up why Socrates is such a loser.
For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living - that you are still less likely to believe. And yet what I say is true, although a thing of which it is hard for me to persuade you. Moreover, I am not accustomed to think that I deserve any punishment. Had I money I might have proposed to give you what I had, and have been none the worse. But you see that I have none, and can only ask you to proportion the fine to my means. However, I think that I could afford a minae, and therefore I propose that penalty; Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the sureties. Well then, say thirty minae, let that be the penalty; for that they will be ample security to you.
Delayed gratification is a hard concept for Socrates. Surely, if he truly thinks he's on some divine mission he should recognize that laying low for a couple months or a year to continue his work would be superior to dying now and doing none of it. It's not like he's making any kind of effective statement by martyring himself. I feel like when this story gets retold we hear that Socrates refused to let his friends try to pay a fine for him, but apparently not.
But really, the most important paragraph is this one on the next to last page:
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.
According to Socrates, there are two possibilities after death:
1. Sleepy nothingness
2. Philosophers' Teaparty
#2 is assinine. The idea that if there is an afterlife that's definitely what it's going to be is absurd (especially from the man who claims to know nothing). It's not even in line with (my understanding of) Greek's general beliefs at the time. Further proof of his heresy, I guess.
But #1 is what really reveals the whole game for him. Socrates would rather sleep forever than actually live a life, and he thinks that's how most people feel. I'm not going to pretend I know how most people in ancient Greece felt, and there are certainly days where I would rather not get out of bed (same as anyone). But to say that that would truly be better than the vast majority of the days of your life says one of three things:
1. You live in some absolute hellscape. This seems unlikely, no one else in Athens at the time is writing treatise on how everyone in the city should just off themselves.
2. You've got some serious depression. Sucks that Socrates lived a couple millennia before SSRIs, I guess. (Not that he'd have taken them.)
3. You're just a fucking loser. And he apparently thinks everyone is.
I've got whatever mental health issues, but I feel like even in my shittiest, most depressed episodes I never went, "Everyone is so miserable they'd be better off sleeping forever!" I might've felt that way about me but I was at least lucid enough to recognize I was an outlier.
Summary: Socrates is a lazy asshole, but he kind of has a point.
Commentary: The last chunk of Socrates's defense has two main points:
1. Why doesn't Socrates become a politician/advisor if he's going to go around trying to "not teach" people all day.
This is a fair point, and I'd point Socrates to the sections in Fruits of Solitude on discipline. He talks about a voice that tells him not to do stuff. Most decent philosophy talks about how to not listen to that voice, but whatever, he's Socrates.
2. If he's corrupting the youth so much, why aren't the older youths that I corrupted and/or parents complaining about him?
Assuming this is true, and all the criticism is being made by the same couple guys, a fair point. I don't know if that is true though.
Summary: Socrates tricks Meletus into feeding the troll and proves nothing.
Commentary: Plato switches into a dialogue-esque mode for a bit, then into wall of text. I'm kind of surprised neither of the versions I'm looking at edited in quotations marks, paragraph breaks, etc.
The crux of this section is Socrates doing his Socratic method thing to prove... absolutely nothing.
But now please to answer the next question: Can a man believe in spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?
He cannot.
I am glad that I have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the court; nevertheless you swear in the indictment that I teach and believe in divine or spiritual agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any rate, I believe in spiritual agencies, as you say and swear in the affidavit; but if I believe in divine beings, I must believe in spirits or demigods; - is not that true? Yes, that is true, for I may assume that your silence gives assent to that. Now what are spirits or demigods? are they not either gods or the sons of gods? Is that true?
Yes, that is true.
But this is just the ingenious riddle of which I was speaking: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first that I don't believe in gods, and then again that I do believe in gods; that is, if I believe in demigods. For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of gods, whether by the Nymphs or by any other mothers, as is thought, that, as all men will allow, necessarily implies the existence of their parents. You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have been intended by you as a trial of me. You have put this into the indictment because you had nothing real of which to accuse me. But no one who has a particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you that the same man can believe in divine and superhuman things, and yet not believe that there are gods and demigods and heroes.
I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elaborate defence is unnecessary; but as I was saying before, I certainly have many enemies, and this is what will be my destruction if I am destroyed; of that I am certain; - not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many good men, and will probably be the death of many more; there is no danger of my being the last of them.
Rule #1. Never give him a straight answer.
It's not clear why Meletus answers simply to the negative to Socrates's initial question. Why can't a man believe in spiritual/divine categories X and Y and not believe in P and Q? Why not flat out tell Socrates you're not here to explain his beliefs to the others?
Rule #2. Don't let him move on after "proving" something that he hasn't.
Proving that you believe in demigods doesn't prove that you believe in the gods of Athens. You might believe in other gods. You might believe in demigods without believe they aren't the bastards of the gods. Who the hell knows! Socrates doesn't specify, and "proves" his point by saying he does it.
I don't know what Meletus's actual obligations were under Athenian law. Did he have to submit to Socrates's questions? Could he be interviewed but refuse to give answers? Can he question/accuse Socrates himself besides just giving awkward answers that Socrates can twist in whatever way?
Either way, he comes across as an idiot here, as Socrates uses him as an unwitting prop in his non-proof.
58: If you don't have job-work, work on art, gardening, etc.
Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment And Resignation, Murmurs, Censoriousness, Bounds of Charity, Frugality or Bounty, Discipline, Industry
Summary: Socrates humble brags and nonsequitars for a couple pages.
Commentary: I love when the translation used in T5FSOB is publicly available and still considered decent. Makes it much easier to grab and go. I'll be reading it side by side with the more modern and also popular Grube translation from here. Which one I prefer might effect what translation I use for other texts.
People make a big deal about the "corrupting the youth" part of the charges, but he's also accused of not believing in the city's gods, which he did do, and which carried the death penalty for other people. Add in the fact that he was associated with the recently overthrown Spartan puppet government, and I'm not saying we should execute people for being assholes and heretics, just that it doesn't really seem surprising that the Athenians chose to execute this particular asshole/heretic.
I mean, look at this:
I mean when they told you to be upon your guard, and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of my eloquence. They ought to have been ashamed of saying this, because they were sure to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and displayed my deficiency; they certainly did appear to be most shameless in saying this, unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for then I do indeed admit that I am eloquent.
Yes, Socrates, you're a terrible public speaker, but also totally truthful. This isn't a borderline self contradictory statement at all.
Then he goes and repeats himself for a paragraph or two without actually saying/proving much of anything. Then starts telling some rambly stories that're tangentially related to his actual argument. Seriously, he's literally one of those assholes that yells at random people on the quad while they're just trying to go to class.
PrOcaSTiNATIoN iSN't WEAKNesS, It's A PROteCTION RESPOnSE.
Summary: Do Hard Things if You Want an Easy Life
Commentary: I've decided to move these into the "sand" slot, like the poems, because I can't find a good way to charge through it. I don't want to summarize 4 sections and 20 notes a date, but I also don't want to spend the next month and a half on it. Doing one tonight since I got home from work late and had to roll into my writing group, but hopefully moving to Plato's dialogues (ugh) tomorrow.
55. If you want your family to live happy and easy, learn discipline.
56. Everyone in the family should know their job. There should be a time and place for everything. When in doubt, go with God.
Did William Penn invent, "Do Hard Things if You Want an Easy Life"?
Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment And Resignation, Murmurs, Censoriousness, Bounds of Charity, Frugality or Bounty, Discipline
Why are there no videos about the money lender/pawn shop balls?
Summary: Glass houses, stones, etc.
Commentary:
Censoriousness
41. We are prone to criticizing others in ways we wouldn't want ourselves. Nothing is worse than harping on others faults and ignoring your own.
42. When we see other people we are quick with critiques, but we are clueless when we're on our own.
43. This is because of our bad nature. We think too highly of ourselves, and would rather criticize than help.
44. (43 repeated, but especially about money.)
45. We refuse to help others with our money and blame them for misfortune.
46. We have a right to criticize, but a heart to help. Anything else is cruelty, not justice.
Bounds of Charity
47. Lend exactly the amount you can afford, not more or less. Especially if it will help others more than it hurts you.
48. If someone pays you back, that's good for you. If not, don't ruin their life to try to get it back. You owe God anyway.
49. Be generous and merciful and you will be rewarded.
These are mostly fine, if repetitive. Could do with a little more "be a good person for its own sake" and less "be good so paradise will be even paradisier."
Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment And Resignation, Murmurs, Censoriousness, Bounds of Charity
Apparently superdickery.com is gone. Luckily, Archive.org has it.
Summary: You should be grateful God only makes your like as shitty as he does!
Commentary:
Disappointment And Resignation
32. Disappointment that aren't our fault are trials, and we should make sure we benefit from them.
33. Don't whine at God about your problems, turn them into blessings.
34. We deserve so few good things, and we should be thankful for them.
35. We'd go bald if not for God.
36. No matter how bad you are, you're not too bad for God.
37. Jesus is dead, but his love lives on. Turn to him and you'll gain more than you lose.
Murmuring
38. Everything we have (including ourselves) is really God's.
39. Don't be ungrateful for the time God gives you.
40. It's hard to keep an appropriately God slobbering perspective, but do it anyway.
This is something that I dealt with a lot in the original 15MAD entries. Long story short, a lot of Christian authors like to go on and on about how terribly humanity is, how great God is, and how we should all be grateful he doesn't torture us more, or he's not really torturing us, or whatever.
On the whole, I find it pretty incompatible with the base idea of a liberal education, which is that anyone who puts in the time, work, etc. can learn to be a good, thinking person. The "liberal" in liberal education means "free", it's the education that you need to be responsible and effective with your freedom. I don't really see how you can argue to that someone is free if you go on for a couple pages about how God controls anything and we're all pieces of shit.
Not dropping this yet, but thinking about it. If I slogged through every book in the T5FSOB that I hated, I'd have a couple miserable years (and lousy blogposts) ahead of me.
Topic List: Ignorance, Education, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment And Resignation, Murmurs
One time, a lady drove by while I was working in the yard, and told me to chain my car to a stump.
Summary: Measure twice, cut once.
Commentary: The two weeks of hell are almost over! So hopefully less bullshitty entries again starting tomorrow.
30. Not thinking things through is the cause of all unhappiness. Our second thoughts are usually different than our first, but we rarely remember that.
31. It's our own fault we're unhappy, since we do things we know we shouldn't.
Way back at the beginning of they year, I talked about getting my chess rank up as one of my goals. I've been playing more this year, doing puzzles, etc. Earlier this week, I joined a new league and won my first game.
18. We take a lot of pride in ourselves, but we're only temporary.
19. No one has a good reason for being ignorant of themself.
20. The value of a gift determines how we should respond to it. If you're ignorant of the worth, you can't respond properly.
21. If you don't know yourself, how can you know you creator? Think of how amazing and complex you are, how all the body parts fit together, how your soul animates and lives in them. We should appreciate God more for how well designed we are. But we don't, because we don't.
22. We want people to obey us, but won't obey God. And God is much more above the highest man than the highest man is above the lowest.
23. Humans are cruel and impatient with each other, but God is infinitely patient. (Except all the smiting...)
24. We try to make our bodies pretty, but not our souls.
25. We get nervous and try to show respect to important people, but not to God.
26. When we pray "thy will be done" we mean our own. Or at least act that way.
27. Instead of beginning with God and ending with the world. God should be both Alpha and Omega.
Ignorance of God=Pride isn't indefensible, it's just super specific. I guess you could mostly expand these to a broader concept of "creation" or "order" or something.
26 is the best one. In the original:
26. In his Prayers he says, Thy Will be done: But means his own: At least acts so.
Definitely acceptable as background narration while your warrior monk, holy assassin, etc. preps to go murder heretics or whoever.
It's definitely one of the weird parts about praying, and something I remember struggling with some in my Sunday school days. "Hey God, please do this thing. If it's what you were going to do anyway, omnipotent, omniscient, dude who sort of listens to me."
The standard response is that God works in mysterious ways, and you just thought you wanted God to grant your prayer, but it'll be worth it when the opposite happens in the long run.
You're just a cosmic child, you don't know any better.
I did not realize how much these flowed from one to another. But I don't really want to do one whole "part" (by his organization) because that's 80+ at a time, and that feels like too much to digest.
4. We teach people to be scholars, not people. To talk about things, not know them.
5. Children know what makes sense.
6. We rush to make kids memorize things they won't use, instead of helping them gain the practical knowledge they have natural interest in.
7. Language is good, but "things" are better.
8. Children would rather make something than memorize.
9. We should study and act according to nature.
10. Follow the pace of nature, and you'll learn at the right pace.
11. The world would no longer be a mystery to us. God set us up to understand nature.
12. People would make better decisions if they studied the world and how it was made.
13. Who would abuse the world if they saw how God is in all of it?
14. Ignorance is what makes us abuse the world.
15. It's a shame we don't have school books about nature written in Latin, so kids could learn both at the same time.
16. Many people in all jobs are ignorant of why they do their jobs. You can only be a master of something if you know both why and how it's done.
17. If man is really the apex of evolution, we only have to know ourselves to know the world. But we are unconcerned with what made us.
Obviously, Penn is very religious. For a lot of these, you can make it work in a more generalized form without religion, but it's pretty hard to twist it out of some. I like the idea of making them more generally applicable, but not overly changing them just to take out God.
Summary: William Penn wanders around in his woods (that's what the name of the state means) and thinks stuff. Some of which he hopes you will find helpful.
Commentary: Penn wraps up the trio of colonial Pennsylvania adjacent authors in volume one. While older than either, I wonder if he might form a kind of link between Franklin and Woolman, being Quaker like the latter and a statesman like the former.
He appears to have grouped his thoughts in groups by topic, which are:
Ignorance, Education, Pride, Luxury, Inconsideration, Disappointment and Resignation, Murmuring, Censoriousness, Bounds of Charity, Frugality or Bounty, Discipline, Industry, Temperance,
Nevermind, I'm not sitting here listing all these or all be here all night. I'll update a list later.
My plan is to take a chunk each day (probably two or three topics) and rewrite them here. Putting something into your own words is a good way to make sure you understand it, and these should be pretty short and manageable.
Off the top of my head, it's interesting that he seems to have primarily chose negative things to write on, as opposed to Franklin's Virtues, Adler's Great Ideas, etc.
Ignorance:
1. It's amazing how many people are totally ignorant of themselves and the world.
2. People take in the beauty of great buildings and works of art, but don't try to learn about themselves. They would benefit from doing so.
3. The world is beautiful, but we know so little about it. That should be the main thing we education children in until their 20s.
I think this is really what this whole project is about. Trying to learn more about myself, humanity, and the world. As I've said before, I don't feel like I got the education I would've hoped for. Some of that is my fault, but I'm trying to correct all of it now. Speaking of, education is the first topic for tomorrow.
This whole thing definitely didn't need to be in T5FSOB. I think if you were making an anthology with shorter pieces/excerpts, you could probably sneak in one chapter (I'd say 2, where he's refusing to write the wills, or 8, where he's dealing with the Indians), but as a whole it's very repetitive, not very well written, and kind of pointless.
1/5 on the pretentious classics scale. Next up, William Penn! (This entire volume is Pennsylvania adjacent.)
I couldn't find an actual TONIGHT... SOMEONE DIES! tv promo, but this song is pretty good.
Summary: THE END
Commentary: It's kind of weird to end a journal with someone else dying...
About a Quarter before six, the same Morning, he seemed to fall into an easy Sleep, which continued about Half an Hour; when, seeming to awake, he breathed a few Times with more Difficulty, and expired, without Sigh, Groan, or Struggle!
Now, concerning Lads being trained up as Seamen; I believe a Communication from one Part of the World to some other Parts of it, by Sea, is, at Times, consistent with the Will of our heavenly Father; and to educate some Youth in the Practice of sailing, I believe, may be right: But how lamentable is the present Corruption of the World! how impure are the Channels through which Trade hath a Conveyance! how great is that Danger, to which poor Lads are now exposed, when placed on shipboard to learn the Art of sailing!
I was expecting more about why it's so corrupt and stuff, but we don't get a ton (other than that they drink a lot).
Rising to work in the Night is not commonly pleasant in any case; but, in dark rainy Nights, it is very disagreeable, even though each Man were furnished with all Conveniences: But, if Men must go out at Midnight, to help manage the Ship in the Rain, and, having small Room to sleep and lay their Garments in, are often beset to furnish themselves for the Watch, their Garments or something relating to their Business being wanting and not easily found, when, from the Urgency occasioned by high Winds, they are hastened and called up suddenly, here is a Trial of Patience on the poor Sailors and the poor Lads their Companions.
This Man, at the Time appointed, did, by slight of Hand, sundry Things; which, to those gathered, appeared strange.
The next Day, I, hearing of it, and understanding that the Shew was to be continued the next Night, and the People to meet about Sun-set, felt an Exercise on that Account: So I went to the Publick-house in the Evening, and told the Man of the House that I had an Inclination to spend a Part of the Evening there; with which he signified that he was content. Then, sitting down by the Door, I spake to the People as they came together, concerning this Shew; and, more coming and sitting down with us, the Seats of the Door were mostly filled; and I had Conversation with them in the Fear of the Lord, and laboured to convince them that, thus assembling to see those Tricks or Slights of Hand, and bestowing their Money to support Men, who, in that Capacity, were of no Use in the World, was contrary to the Nature of the Christian Religion.
Man, fuck John Woolman. Why you hatin' on juggling, man?
Summary: Selling Indians rum is bad! (Also slavery bad)
Commentary: I'm just happy John's writing about something else.
I perceived that many white People do often sell Rum to the Indians, which, I believe, is a great Evil; first, they being thereby deprived of the Use of their Reason, and their Spirits violently agitated, Quarrels often arise, which end in Mischief; and the Bitterness and Resentments, occasioned hereby, are frequently of long Continuance; Again, their Skins and Furs, gotten through much Fatigue and hard Travels in Hunting, with which they intended to buy Clothing, when they become intoxicated, they often sell at a low Rate for more Rum; and afterward, when they suffer for want of the Necessaries of Life, are angry with those who, for the Sake of Gain, took the Advantage of their Weakness: Of this their Chiefs have often complained, at their Treaties with the English.
Quakers are mostly anti-drinking as a whole, but I think he takes special offense on selling to Indians. Partially because he probably thinks they can't handle their liquor (as most people did at the time) and partially because they're already poor, which makes tanking advantage of them worse. Honestly, the parts about the Indians have been the most interesting in this whole piece so far.
I was going to move the Doom posts over to the other blog, but it felt weird to have the first one there be this one, so I'll finish it out on here.
I finished Evilution. It's garbage all the way down (I think there's maybe 1 decent level in the back third) ending with an Icon of Sin (ughhhhhh) fight that's not even set up properly.
Apparently, there was a lot of drama when Final Doom came out over the fact that what was going to be a free wad got bought out at the last minute. The drama should've been that id paid for this shit and allowed it to be published under their name.
I'd be willing to bet you could put together 30 better levels from the pile in Maximum Doom.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, never touching these again.
