I have been practicing Stoicism, part of which is the practice of hypomnêmata, which is copying phrases into a journal and contemplating the meaning of things in writing. It is a form of meditation. One of the readings is from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Book 4 Section 3, which includes this list
- that rational beings exist for one another;
- that doing what’s right sometimes requires patience;
- that no one does the wrong thing deliberately;
(This is from the Gregory Hays translation)
This last line gets me every time. The George Long translation is “men do wrong involuntarily” which may be a little easier to stomach, but still shows a strange optimism. Aurelius was the Emperor. He had to have known professional criminals and con-men. In short, since absolute scoundrels like the current president exist today, there must have been people just like him back in Rome.
He was sure to have met someone absolutely selfish, callous, cruel, uncaring, and completely unconcerned with the well being of others, and obsessed with having power despite having no capabilities of using it. Someone who could not say a kind word about anyone other than themself. A person whose every action did active harm to others. A person who only wanted worshipers instead of friends.
And yet Marcus wrote what he wrote, insisting on a positive view of people, in absolute terms. So the challenge of all this so not think of some people as absolute evil, despite every bit of evidence that they are. They are mistaken, misinformed, and ignorant of the good.
This is surprisingly difficult.
It should be easy.
I should be able to appeal to the higher nature of humanity, and with this hope that the scoundrels will be better, and point out the error of their ways, and of course struggling with the idea of forgiveness.
What harm does this Scoundrel to do me? Personally? Outside of a disenfranchisement effort aimed at my state, nothing directly. However, the Scoundrel hurts the hive, and what hurts the hive hurts the bees, because what hurts the bees hurts the hive. (No, I’m not comparing Americans to practically genetically programmed bees. The analogy is from the Stoics.)
I can’t see past the most obvious description of the Scoundrel Administration: The cruelty is the point. Every action is designed to hurt someone, for no good reason, but simply to make the Scoundrel feel better and his worshipers feel okay with themselves.
Trying to square this with “nobody does wrong voluntarily” is to have to understand a moral stance in direct opposition to my own. This is normally a good thing to do, to check that I am on the correct path, but to replace the Scoundrels morals with my own, I find myself imagining only situations where I commit the first sin: treating people as things. I cannot behave as the Scoundrel does without requiring people around me to abnegate themselves for my comfort. To wit:
- I do not wish to do dishes, but for my wife to do them
- My wife will scold me if she has to do the dishes all the time
- I do not want my wife to scold me.
- Therefore, my happiness is contingent on my wife shutting up and doing the dishes
Every example in my daily life forces my wife into full Stepford mode. Is my comfort worth so much pain suffered by others? No.
So I struggle, as I always do with this text.