Ecrasez l'infame!

 

Voltaire used this maxim or motto in his correspondence.  It may be translated as: "Crush the infamous (thing)!"  That thing was the Catholic Curch of the time, busy banning and sometimes burning books, including some by Voltaire, and it's oppression of thought and freedom in combination with the government of Louis XV.  It became a sort of war cry of the Enlightement, and was directed not merely against the Church and the autocratic King but also superstition, bigotry, stupidity, ignorance and what the superstitious, bigoted, stupid and ignorant people in power were prone to do then and remain prone to do now.

Though centuries have passed since the time of Votaire, it seems human nature hasn't changed in any significant sense.  But we have, through the application of science and technology, become vastly more capable of communicating and imposing the most contemptible aspects of our nature. In this fashion our capacity for reasoning and problem solving is placed at the service of our cruelty and cowardice--reason serves the irrational.  We're only capable of reason, not reasonable.  We are reasonable only when we must be, or it pleases us to be.

Those who want to impose their religious beliefs on others are still trying to do so.  Efforts are being made to display the Ten Commandments in public schools in Texas and other states.  While lower courts have enjoined these exhibitions, as our Supreme Court has allowed group prayer in the middle of high school football fields, the First Amendment be damned, it's likely it would bless even the recitation of the Commandments at the start of each class.  

Our peculiar Secretary of Defense proselytizes on behalf of a very peculiar church which asserts that Jesus doesn't want women to vote and are subordinate by the will of God.  The subjugation of women seems to be common to all Abrahamic religions from their inception. 

Subjugation is characteristic of the times, perhaps of all times, for us. As freedom is being eroded one comes to appreciate the allure of a solitary life. Oh, to be a hermit!  Or at least to be otherwise apart from the scene of our current crimes. One wonders if this was the attraction of a monastery, or still could be.

Perhaps the infamous things surrounding us can't be crushed, and escape is the only reasonable option. But it seems ignoble not to oppose infamy. And perhaps what Pierre Hadot called the inner citadel available to Marcus Aurelius and other Stoics can protect us from being subjugated, while we oppose it subjugation.

The Storm We Must Endure

"Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow, out of a storm we must endure all night..."

Yes, there's a storm coming.  A siege of sorts, perhaps.  "A horror of thoughts that are suddenly real."  In either case, something we must endure.

I quote from Wallace Stevens' poem titled, dourly (or should I say wryly?), Man Carrying Thing.  Dour to me, I think, if not to Stevens.  Stevens can evoke a grim sort of Stoicism in me sometimes, a serene kind other times.  I hope for serenity though I think the coming storm will be dour.  Thoughts, our own and those of others, horrible in themselves suddenly become real and imminent.

The signs are hard to miss.  There are no notable people on our national stage, though there are players aplenty.  Those who preen on it are largely rogues or their pusillanimous followers, or merely venal and self-involved as may be expected in what has become a plutocracy.  

A plutocracy has no established social or political agenda beyond what favors wealth and the interests of the wealthy, to the extent those interests extend beyond wealth.  It's a very simple system of government in some respects, as a result.  It's devoted primarily to the protection of wealth already acquired, and the acquisition of additional wealth by those already wealthy.  Secondarily, it may be devoted to the pursuit of whatever ideology is preferred by the plutocrats, if they or a majority of them agree on one, but it may be assumed that ultimately that ideology will involve the accumulation of money, which is power.

In a nation dominated by the acquisition and use of money, the wealthy will be few, but because they have money they're able to manipulate those without it.  Those without it will dream of it and admire and emulate those who have it.   Ultimately, those manipulated won't particularly care what's told to them by the wealthy, their wealth rendering them as idols to idolaters.  They'll do as told in the hope that they, too, may be wealthy sometime.  Alternatively, they may believe that the wealthy must know what they're saying and what should be done, because they're wealthy.

Whether our Glorious Union is a true plutocracy or some form of oligarchy is uncertain.  It certainly isn't a democracy, representative or otherwise, given the influence of money which has been enshrined even in the law.  But it's manipulation and the urge to be manipulated which I think will ignite the coming storm.  Our legislature is corrupt or has become a kind of sanctuary for fools, our executive will be headed by an incompetent but possibly well-meaning dotard or a sociopath and con man, our Supreme Court is dominated by moochers and reactionaries.  The majority of our people are intolerant and unthinking, and tribal in their sensibilities.  Short term prospects aren't good.

Some say Stoicism is a philosophy of he status quo, but I wonder if it is, instead, a philosophy or way of life which provides comfort and strength when the status quo is intolerable.  More and more things are beyond our control and will disturb us if we don't recognize that's the case and instead do the best we can with what is in our control--our thoughts, our feelings, our conduct.  We need not do what others do, we need not think as others think, and so we may if we try hard endure the storm which rages around us and need not be a part of it.  

Pierre Hadot in his book about Marcus Aurelius referred to an Inner Citadel.  Imagine a Roman Emperor who needed to seek such refuge.  If he did, and managed to wage war and rule an empire while doing so, what a fortress it could be for others.

Regarding Senescence

Both Cicero and Seneca, and no doubt other wise and good people, wrote of old age.  They did so to extol it; to tell those of us who are not as wise as they were that our disaffection with it is unwise and unneeded.  As I race (or so it seems) into my twilight years (well, late afternoon years, perhaps) I'm inclined to wonder just how much of such reflection is wisdom and how much of it is wishful thinking.

I don't doubt their sincerity.  Perhaps I do doubt Seneca's sincerity, though, at least a bit.  Regardless, I ask myself if they were trying to persuade themselves if not others that the evidence of aging--which can't be spoken or written away and which is disturbing sometimes, at least--is also evidence of something else, something less apparently bad and even good.  This is not necessarily an easy task. 

It's not necessarily a Stoic task either.  Pierre Hadot and others have claimed that the ancients engaged in spiritual exercises and have made that case convincingly.  Marcus Aurelius' notes to himself are such; Epictetus' recommendations, called "negative visualization" in this latest resurgence of Stoicism, are others.  Imagine the worst and what is the case or will be the case may be tolerated with equanimity (the anxious have always been Stoics, perhaps--something of a surprise).  But extolling age, if that is a practice, is of a different kind.  Were these two sages engaged in "positive thinking"?

The fact is that aging is a kind of progressive failure of the body and its little helper, or guiding spirit, or prisoner depending on your point of view, the mind.  There isn't much in that to celebrate when you think of it, unless you have a soul inclined to clap its wings and sing and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress as I think Yeats' poem says.  That singing presumes a life after death which somehow turns out to be much better than the one that ends in death, and many think that improbable.  I'm not certain what I think, and not for the first time.

As I contemplate with a sense of resignation if not delight the degradation of what physical and mental powers I possess, I think of Warren Zevon's song invitingly titled My Shit's Fucked Up.  The singer goes to a doctor as he's feeling kind of rough and is told that his shit's fucked up.  He tells the doctor he doesn't see how, and the doctor replies that the shit that used to work won't work now.  It's a kind of anthem of the aging sung in a mournful tune that is unmistakably Zevonesque. 

And as I noted, this is certainly true.  Wherefore then is old age the crown of life as Cicero called it?  An increasingly heavy crown, it seems.

Continuing with the popular music theme, which has somehow replaced that which was evoked by the mention of Cicero and Seneca, another view of old age or at least older age is given by Steely Dan in the song Janey Runaway.  In that song an older, well-heeled man, tells of the new lease on life he experiences taking up with a young woman who ran away from home.  It's a kind of anthem to lechery, the fantasy of an older man.  But alas, although the libido doesn't seem to decrease for us aging males the opportunities to indulge it sadly do, at least if one is not rich and living Gramercy Park.

Fantasies and mourning aside, how does a Stoic pass this time as time so indifferently passes him by?  By realistically acknowledging it and accepting it, I think, neither bemoaning it nor extolling it.  It's one of the many things beyond our control (for now, at least; perhaps soon we'll find a way to control it).  As such, it shouldn't disturb us or worry us.  It's simply life and we do the best we can with what we have and take the rest as it happens.