>Bro, just like, don't care about wealth, fame, sex, and comfort.
>If you think about it, bad people are bad, so they have nothing to be happy about. Sure, yeah, that drug dealer has fat stacks, gets to get high all day, is rolling in prime teen puss, and gets respect, and yeah, that billionaire who treats his workers like shit and hordes his money is out on his yacht drinking champagne, eating lobster, and fricking models, but like, they don't get to be le good.
>But you get to be le good, which is the best, so that whole death sentence and torture thing is just an inconvenience.
>And you should be happy when you lose your money, status, and girl because then it shows you that you were just reliant on those to be happy instead of being le good.
>"Nothing bad can happen to a good man," just forget how they killed Socrates after that. Oops. lol.
>So give all praises to God and be righteous!
Great pep talk. How was this like THE best seller in the West for 800 years?
>Don't focus on your money, health, status, friends, girls, career and things.
>You can lose all of these. They are just means to le ends. What good are they without happiness?
>You can even lose your life or get raped bro.
>But you can't lose le Platonic knowledge and le eternal things. And le God is the one thing that isn't a means to an end.
>So focus on the J man. You can even give away all your stuff. You probably should!
Forgot my pic for this one
>Great pep talk. How was this like THE best seller in the West for 800 years.
It actually sort of make sense to me. Unlike what Hollywood shows, the Middle Ages was extremely cucked. Literal homeless virgins were considered the apex of society to look up to across this period. When you start reading about actual chivalry it ends up looking very cucked, like slave morality mixed with "courtly love" where you basically friend zone yourself on purpose.
filtered.
filtered.
filtered.
filtered.
filtered.
filtered.
Your IQ is 105, now return to the sewer and never come back, filth.
>t. 47 IQ
>All of these earthly pleasures could be yours to enjoy, if you'd take them! Who cares about God's law and his so-called sins? Just look at what all these sinners are enjoying right now! Doesn't that, seem better for you than any virtue?
Literal Black person cattle.
Last one.
>Bro, you should want God's will to be done. For God's will to be your will.
>You should want this so bad that you want whatever happens to you, because it's God's will. If God wants to damn you and torture you for literally all eternity and Job you over and over you should be thrilled.
>Also, you should want justice so badly you become le justice, and only by being completely chained by le justice and good do you really become free.
This one might take the cake for being slave morality and also largely incoherent ramblings.
>THE best seller
Good source for courage in a context far more dire than one that consists of lying around all day, with pop tarts in the cupboard, staring at a screen.
>for being slave morality
Even a soldier's is a life of service, anon. The facility with which 'slave morality' flows from the musings of a generation addicted to p*rn and gaming is a little ridiculous.
Based thread wonder if anons will pick up on the subtext
Sounds good to me
>Too much pain is bad.
>But also too much pleasure is also bad.
>It will bind you to your body, which means you can't see le good!
>brb, time to drink some poison
>BTW, don't worry about my will because I'm literally destitute because I don't work.
>cuts dick off to avoid sinning
>gains ecstatic wisdom
>can now fulfill the meaning of life
>this apparently includes being tortured to death
>everything is working towards a divine and perfect plan
>lol oops, that plan involves me getting tortured, having my tongue cut out, and having my right hand severed
>guess I'll just write with my left hand LMAO
I will give these guys one thing, they really had the whole wizard aesthetics down. But it kind of loses its mystique when you realize they basically just look like homeless people (which many of them were).
San Francisco actually has a lot in common with its patron, lol.
"these guys" will look like they look in the orthodox icons, in the afterlife, while the san francisco homeless people will not look like "these guys" in the orthodox icons
orthodox icons are cool, probably as cool as catholic architecture.
the future is bright with Jesus by your side
It was written during a period of time when everyone was subject to relentless, unavoidable misery, so the idea that this misery does not prevent one from living a meaningful life resonated. A lot of writing like this passed out of popularity during the Renaissance once people actually started living past the age of 23, glasses were invented, and you didn't have to watch your entire family and social network shit themselves to death every third Tuesday. Consolation books were quite common as well in the ancient world--Cicero wrote one.
Now, the weird thing are those philosophers entering the Renaissance who couldn't tolerate this departure from a miserable existence and so reframed what were then "modern" comforts as being temporary and deceptive tools to keep from confronting reality. Pascal held that belief, as when he said that we MUST be miserable otherwise we wouldn't seek out amusements.
Of course, the modern reality is that we live in a degree of lavish comfort and material health, wealth, and safety (as long as you're not of a specifically unlucky demographic) that would have been unheard of when Boethius wrote, even among royalty.
Boethius was writing for the common man, who could be assumed to be miserable. Now, misery is somewhat less common, and his message doesn't resonate when you're both miserable and can look at the average assistant manager at a gas station who's getting more pussy and is in less debt than you are.
I think this really undersells how weird the medievals were. The people who were the most respected men of their era, semi-legends like a Ford or Buffet, would be guys people would cross the street to avoid walking near today. People would call the cops on these saints and have them escorted to the nearest homeless shelter or tell them to get a job.
The relationship with wealth was entirely different. One of the worst things you can say about a Musk or Trump is that they inherited their wealth instead of making it. The idea of coveting as a major defect of a person, or of commerce being somehow dishonorable is like the exact opposite today, when not working is a moral defect and side gigs make someone more outstanding. The ideal craftsman for instance isn't one who ups production or has a ton of assistants to churn out product. High quality and beauty is pretty much the one criteria of greatness instead, not commercial reach.
So it is very bizarre, even moreso than the ancients. It's antithetical to modern ethics in many ways. The famous saints are full of hiers who squandered the family fortune, giving it all away. Augustine did this, Bonaventure, Anthony, etc.
But it ain't just misery. People today kill themselves way more often
>People today kill themselves way more often.
Point taken otherwise, but I'm not sure how you'd be able to prove this point.
Though, yeah, the medieval world was in many ways unthinkable to us, as they thought differently than us, and so the thought-ways (if you will) of the era is fundamentally inaccessible, even though contemporary literature we have from the time, which is still interpreted through a modern lens. Hermeneutics be a b***h.
I would say that in absolute terms the lives of the ancients were more replete with misery than our own, and that this had a significant impact in the ways in which the relationship between philosophy, material comforts, and divine comforts were conceptualized.
Even transitioning from the medieval to the Renaissance era, there was a turn from broadly "the natural world is evil" cast of mind to one that often found in nature an accompanying scripture to the Scripture--see Raymond Sebond and others who wrote in his tradition.
Though of course, that point too is unprovable.
It's "unprovable" if you want modern demographic tables, but it's pretty damn probable by common sense in that we do have records of suicide in the middle ages and its considered at least somewhat strange and shocking. Whereas the US suicide rate is almost as high as Haiti's murder rate. I know several people who killed themselves. If suicide was THAT common in the middle ages it would almost certainly be mentioned more.
And it isn't that surprising. Existentialist and scientist "the world is essentially meaningless and valueless," dogma is even taught in K-12 settings. The only philosophy I got exposed to in high school was existentialist stuff taking the absolute purposelessness of human existence as self-evident fact. When most people are relativists, it's easy to see when despair comes from. If you're not getting high and gluttoning out or fricking there is nothing else but the good - and if you get bored of those...?
>If suicide was THAT common in the middle ages it would almost certainly be mentioned more.
But would it though? It was thought of as shocking and rare primarily because of the massive stigma associated with it, not least of which was held in the fact that it was considered a ticket straight to Hell. That to me would suggest that there would be disincentive to TALK about suicide, not necessarily disincentive to commit it. I've been suicidally depressed before, and I can tell you I didn't give a damn in those moments what posterity would think about me.
There was actually a great book written about this (I've only read excerpts in university, granted) by Alexander Murray that explores the complexity of answering the question of Medieval suicide rates. While it was usually mentioned obliquely if at all in official records, there are frequent enough references to self-destruction and excess or otherwise unexplainable deaths or "murders by forces unknown" for us to assume the suicide rate was much higher than what any official record from the area can account for.
Though, again, there is no way to know with certainty. I can't really claim the suicide rate was higher then, but there's at least enough anecdotal information available to suggest it wasn't that significantly lower than it is now.
As a possible counterpoint it's worth considering that adultery was also a sin but that didn't stop people writing about it, even in comedic contexts, nor with murder or theft. I think the other guy's on to something with his claim that if people were an heroing left and right there'd be a bigger record of it.
Yes, but very notably adultery is not a sin which by its nature foregoes all opportunity for forgiveness, unlike suicide.
I don't know if suicide was more common then than now, and again the record will never be able to speak to it. My original point was only that we can't clearly say it was LESS prevalent then than now simply on account of what historical records exist, as there were fairly powerful historical reasons it wouldn't have been spoken about during that era.
Both good points. I would agree you're right that this absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. That said I think the hypothesis that the relative weakness of the kinds of social/spiritual norms today, which were more prevalent historically, could be a contributing factor to deaths of despair in a way that the historical levels of material poverty aren't, is plausible and interesting enough to be worth consideration. I mean, let's imagine that we knew for sure that suicide rates were equal to or greater than present rates but remained so sparesly documented. Strange!
The suicide rate today is highest in dysfunctional third world societies which comprised the entire world in the middle ages, no doubt they were killing themselves more. And if people WEREN'T killing themselves then what's the point of the taboo????
>Boethius was writing for the common man, who could be assumed to be miserable.
Could the average man even read? The people who could read (Priests/monks, merchants, aristocrats, etc) would have some form of social standing that would make them less likely to be totally miserable.
>once people actually started living past the age of 23, glasses were invented, and you didn't have to watch your entire family and social network shit themselves to death every third Tuesday.
Meme brainlet take. By the way Renaissance coincided with the plague. I wonder how people feel writing several paragraphs about things they know nothing about.
The Black Plague took place solidly in what modern historians call the Late Middle Ages, and it's widely thought that the depopulation and so rarefaction of the labor population during this era is what led in part to the emergence of the Renaissance, which was enabled by the elevation of a new merchant and working class.
The laity also interpreted in many cases (as evidenced from what writings we have from non-clergy during this era) the devastation of the plague, which didn't discriminate between men of God and heathens, as an indictment of the Church's self-appointment as God's Kingdom on earth, which may have indirectly led to the Protestant Reformation.
We have the plague to thank for much of modernity, though historically it was still situated firmly in what's now regarded as the Middle Ages.
>Now, misery is somewhat less common
If anything, I feel that despite our material wealth and comfort people are more miserable than ever before, save for standout periods like The Great Depression.
It's not really possible to say. Here in the US we've only been tracking things like "happiness index" since '72. Also complicated by the fact that ancient minds conceptualized happiness/unhappiness differently than us. If you'd have asked a medieval if they were happy, I honestly have no idea what they would have said, and I'm not sure if they would share the framework we have for conceptualizing individual satisfaction as a criterion for "happiness."
What is undeniable is that people lived in conditions of more intense material immiseration than they do now, life expectancy was lower, autonomy was lower, illness went ineffectively treated, and upward mobility functionally did not exist as concept. It was in the shadow of this era that Hobbes famously said that life was "nasty, brutish, and short."
I think people generally underestimate just how badly it would have sucked to live in the medieval era (or nearly any era besides near-modernity). I am deeply frustrated with the benighted and pathetic way most modern people crawl through the mire of their lives, accomplishing nothing lasting in their souls, never for a moment reflecting on themselves, and palliating their meaningless existence with intensities of amusement that if they emerged in any other era would be considered instruments of Hell. BUT, this era also has a greater wealth of resources than any other in history, longer lifespans, more and more accessible medical care, less conscription, and an overall higher quality of life in material terms than ever before, including the lowest rate of global destitute poverty in history. We also have a greater ease of access to the collective genius of history than ever before. I can read the corpus of Aristotle while waiting for a bus, and if I'm feeling sacrilegious I can tell an AI to roleplay as him and debate his ideas. My point is that modernity lived unreflectively can be a waking hell unrecognized and more hellish for that fact, but if you use the opportunity of modernity well I can think of no better time to be born.
> I think people generally underestimate just how badly it would have sucked to live in the medieval era
Like what? Do you fall for the meme that you got shitted on your head by a bird every single time you walked out of your house door in medieval times?
> I can read the corpus of Aristotle while waiting for a bus, and if I'm feeling sacrilegious I can tell an AI to roleplay as him and debate his ideas.
Ok. Doesn't sound really impressive to be honest. When you think about all the labour necessary to keep up carbusses, AI, technology, roads it really sucks to be honest.
It sucks because labour was put into it. You just get the final product and think: "whoa, no amount of suffering was necessary to produce all these marvelous things that totally didn't exist in the Middle Ages, like cars and books!" While in reality all those things did exist in the Middle Ages and people still suffer to make all those things.
do you fall for the meme that medieval man ackshually only worked four hours a week
Nobleman performed zero hours of manual labour a week.
When will you kys?
Do you think youre a nobleman
So because there was physical work in the Middle Ages, life in the Middle Ages was suffering? Today there's still physical work and it's arguably harder than in the Middle Ages.
There was a ~43% child mortality rate by age 10, there was no modern medicine, there was no generalized education so literacy was minimal, and upward mobility did not exist. Many people you know, family and friends, would die of tuberculosis, flu, sweating sickness, pneumonia, side-sickness, and seemingly unexplainable maladies, often slowly and without access to palliative care.
And of course labor is necessary to maintain modernity, but the majority of modern labor is 1) performed with a degree of specialization that means those who engage in most of that labor can also benefit from the comforts of modernity, and 2) not in service to mere subsistence, but to technological development or service industries, meaning disruptions to that labor system are less likely to result in destitution or death.
I'm not arguing that modernity is not without its share of misery, nor that all medieval people were unrelentingly miserable, but I think we underestimate just how much more comfort we have in modernity as a result of basic education, accessible technology, functional social supports, and opportunities for freedom of movement and expression.
>opportunities for freedom
>comfort
So, in your opinion, would the citizens of A Brave New World be better off than us? They have far more comfort and pleasure. They are designed from birth to fit their social niche. They are also freer in that goods are plentiful and they can consume as they wish. Sure, society is very conformist but:
A. People choose conformity readily. It is what they desire. They riot when this is interrupted.
B. Those who want to be poets or scientists get sent to their own islands and are given all the resources they want to investigate such strange passions.
Or is it possible that being good, knowing good, and fulfilling a certain purpose is necessary for a good life?
Consider Boethius' case that happiness is achieved by being good and that the wicked ultimately fail to be happy for this very reason. Perhaps lack of material benefits does hinder the development of virtue, but it seems equally clear that a surplus of them also corrupts the development of virtue. His whole point though is about moral freedom, the freedom to know and do the good.
Compelling argument, but I don't think I agree.
At least within my experience, people who are in pain or who lack critical resources tend not to be moral or philosophical exemplars, but to be more focused on their pain/discomfort than the development of moral faculties. Our culture loves to believe that pain is a purifier for the soul, but all the chronically ill, disabled, and destitute poor people I know tend to behave in ways that are morally worse than their peers. This makes sense, as if all your time is dedicated to resource gathering it doesn't leave much space for pursuing the personal or public good. Obviously these people would not constitute an underclass within medieval society as they do in modernity, but that wouldn't mitigate the extent to which the majority of their time and efforts are devoted to subsistence.
I absolutely agree with you that an excess of material wealth can corrupt moral development, but I think a deficit in necessary resources is far more likely to hinder self-development of any kind.
You can look at the prevalence of devout faith during the medieval era as evidence of moral development, but how moral can this belief be when it's not choiceful? If Christianity is the only thing in the offing, if my parents, family, and even my polity are all Christian, how much can I take "moral credit" (so to speak) for my adhering to the moral framework into which I was born without choice?
Goodness requires choice. Faith requires choice. And choice is predicated on some certain degree of freedom, which I would argue is far less available to the sick, the destitute poor, and those born into social circumstances that deprive them of coherent alternatives.
>Goodness requires choice. Faith requires choice. And choice is predicated on some certain degree of freedom, which I would argue is far less available to the sick, the destitute poor, and those born into social circumstances that deprive them of coherent alternatives.
Well, this sort of goes with Boethius point. And, merging both Plato and Aristotle, I don't think he would deny that virtue can be taught nor that being provided with a certain type of environment is helpful for the cultivation of both virtue and the skills/wisdom necessary for true self-determination.
But then the issue isn't really one of comforts, it's about being given an enviornment that fosters moral and intellectual development. We might do this slightly better today, but we certainly don't do it near as well as we could.
Schools, at least those I attended, were more giant daycare centers and programing centers for following authority than places where the prerequisites of virtue and freedom were instilled. Indeed, even when I did get into higher level classes, the few AP classes my school offered, the only philosophy I was exposed to was post-modernism and relativism. I won't deny that some authors here are good, but they certainly don't seem like the foundation.
Likewise, moral education was extremely lacking, more conditioning than education.
But it doesn't cost much to provide this sort of education. The classical schools that still exist don't charge more than the average state spends per pupil. So, this points to an overall deficit in society's priorities. Can we really act surprised that demagogues reign in such a system? God forbid we pursue such things if GDP growth might drop a few percentage points.
Hardship can help build character, it just requires the proper foundations first. Clearly, the properly prepared person can overcome great hardships. Boethius' work has stood the test of time and he wrote it from a prison cell amidst torture and his own immanent death. Saint Ireneaus likewise composed marvelous works while being led to be fed to wild beasts for a ghastly crowd. And this allowed them to be truly free, to choose what they thought was good in the harshest circumstances, just like Socrates or Origen.
Granted, and well said. I have profound issues with the modern education system and the ways in which modern culture is constructed to favor a specific value set. I suppose it's impossible to say with certainty if the medieval era or modernity is more or less apt for moral development than the other, both because we don't have the data, and because I'm not sure what data we'd look at. The context of moral practice in modernity is very different from the medieval context, as in modernity so much of goodness is temperance in varied forms that would have been unthinkable in their extremes (in absolute terms and in terms of necessity) then.
I suppose, in full honesty, I personally prefer modernity because it allows me to both pursue the good and be comfortable, and that likely wouldn't have been available to me then.
Of course, that raises the allied question, speaking of the need for choice in morality, whether moral goodness forged in comfort is even valid if it hasn't been tested by hardship. In either case, I suppose it's not the case that modernity is any more good, but only more civil, but if the civility of society deprives moderns of the opportunity available in hardship to test their grasp on goodness, how is that any better than if pain deprives them of this opportunity?
I suppose both modernity and the medieval era deprived people of certain arenas to understand themselves, though in opposed ways. But, still, given the two alternatives, and in the absence of any ability (I feel) to say whether one or the other is more conducive to goodness, I would prefer a general custom of immoral comfort to immoral hardship. Most philosophers were wealthy, though most saints suffered.
This is also a very good point--glad you're doing better now.
The destitute and the poor are just as free as the rich. The people who in need bite the hand that feeds, resent their peers and seek to live out their desires regardless of the pain they cause are the same that in richness would sink to hedonism and berate their fellows for a lifetime. Or at least a good portion of them would be.
I say this having been both homeless and relatively successful.
>I need the wealth of Jeff Bezos and the pussy of Leonardo DiCaprio to define "good"
Filtered.
OMG!! is that Fortuna's Wheel? Like from the book "Confederacy of Dunces"? OMG! This is literally just like when Ignatius' wheel got spun donwards!!!
Well, if it is impossible to acquire a high standard of life, then denying the world, dissolving all your attachments to material things, striving for ego-death, etc, etc, are only reasonable things to do. How else are you going to be happy? But if you aren't so powerless, and can actually attain some measure of success, then it is just pathetic and cowardly.
Like all of those who had fallen prey to the corrupted doctrines of the ~~*One*~~, he believed that one should achieve ~~*oneness*~~ with the ~~*Absolute*~~, dissolving the self/ego. Likely, his soul was utterly destroyed and consumed by the ~~*One*~~ at his death. An unfortunate loss for us all.
This. If you have access to all the modern technology we have and can consoom then it would be ridiculous to take these people seriously. They are from a bygone era of idiocy, before we had the light of science and production, not much better than monkeys. They didn't think happiness was in things because they didn't have enough.
The proper response to these is "have sex."
I'm not just talking about pleasure, anon, I'm talking about achieving actual excellence in a given art or skill, achieving real success, making a good family, simply living your life to the fullest and not wasting it inside a house all day, etc, etc. Obviously, religions of detachment and retreat from the world are great... if you cannot do any of these things. Otherwise, if you can actually make something out of your life, then running away from the Earth only indicates cowardice.
>simply living your life to the fullest and not wasting it inside a house all day
Books for this feel? asking for a friend
The Odyssey
Materialism versus Neoplatonic Christianity - Round 1 - FIGHT!
Atheistic Relativism versus Transcendental Logos is up next
Like, we know that Nietzsche's body was too frail to stand up to military training and Plato's very namesake was a way of lauding his physical strength in combat, so what do you expect?
I want this game to be real.
I think it's more about the person doing bad the successful ones usually see themselves as good because psychopathy is impersonal and they would probably have natural affection for a system that's benefitting them. When someone does something nasty to someone it's usually out of a feeling that they deserved it and there is some justification to that. I've never read this book but you seem confused on a type of general principal that's really more about pointing out how life always views itself as perfect. The most skillfull successful people are going to see themselves as completely blameless because everything falls into place so easy for them. If they have any sort of weird freakish emotions attached to that it's usually more out of sociopathic frustration and that's connected to an unsuccessful person, but then those emotions are childish so sometimes even charming. Life is always kind of perfect and warm and childish according to its limitations, anything beyond that is idealism
>Life sucks so you should like stop caring and stuff so that when you die you uh stay dead
>Great pep talk. How was this like THE best seller in the West for 800 years?
didn't sell any copies. out of all the vast numbers of books they could preserve, medievals painstakingly copied this one over everything else (besides the Bible) because it was the best.
It's frightening to think I spend time on this board with the same people who aggresively simplify books in this ignorant manner. Even scarier: I debate and argue with them.
It always annoyed me how almost all people who advocated stoicism, monasticism and renunciation came from the top 5 percent of their societies and usually only started to do so after they completely fried their brains with hedonism. Boethius, count Tolstoy, prince Siddhartha, emperor Marcus Aurelius, Seneca...
>Marcus Aurelius
he was simultaneously frying his brain with opioids as he was penning his journal
Epictetus, like THE Stoic, was a slave.
Also:
>It always bothered me that only the literate class wrote.
What did you expect? The later middle ages actually do have plenty of low born mystics and ascetics who wrote, but that's because the church acted as a way for the poor to become educated if they became priests. No real opportunities like this existed on any large scale prior to this. However, illiterate people existed v among the Desert Fathers, they just couldn't write.
>all people who advocated stoicism, monasticism and renunciation came from the top 5 percent of their societies and usually only started to do so after they completely fried their brains with hedonism
And when the peasants do it "it's all just cope", right anon?
People in the past actually believed that high moral quality contributed to a better life both materially and spiritually. They weren't entirely wrong since the culture heavily punished those who failed to live to these standards but it also acts as a guide for self contentment and happiness. There are a great deal of people who do not actually feel good about being a bad person.
It's not like Boethius was talking out of his ass either, he may have been a wealthy man but he lived his life according to the rules he wrote. He was a man of conviction and great sense of duty, much like Pliny the Younger centuries before him. He wrote that piece not knowing if he was about to die the next day or in the next month. It was a heartfelt work of a man who worked diligently and faithfully his entire life and was now facing his final days.
mongoloid
If you don't care about
>wealth, fame, sex, and comfort.
Why would you think some evil dude who has those things is living better than you do?
>>"Nothing bad can happen to a good man," just forget how they killed Socrates after that. Oops. lol.
Did we both read the apology? Lmao
Sounds good and just to me.
It is utterly depressing how many replies to this bait are along the lines of "people had less stuff to consume and less comforts then so they believed silly things."
Sometimes I forget how widespread moral nihilism and relativism has become. We truly live in a degenerate era, an era where people can't even remember what lives filled with meaning are.
Yes - it is a veritable truth that access to agony psychologizes your mind to believe the fantastical more.
The more materialist realities of the world are the truth we have access to RIGHT NOW and that is why more of us are more likely to believe in them.
If, by a mere moment, we managed to witness even an iota of transcendent reality would the hordes and masses clamber over each other to prove their faith and loyalty and love.
As it stands - there is not even a speck of this reality manifesting itself anytime soon - and the idealism you espouse dies a pitiful, unremarkable death.
And don't even try and phenomenologize "Meaning" either - it's a crutch for the navel-gazers and the ones with too much time on their hands.
>It is utterly depressing how many replies to this bait are along the lines of "people had less stuff to consume and less comforts then so they believed silly things."
And yet it remains unrefuted.
I wonder why people bother reading philosophical works and instead of actually thinking and trying to find value in it choose to instead go on dumbass reductive rants like this.
There's also the possibility that all the threads that I see like this are simply attempts to spark conversation, but what can possibly be discussed when you start from here?
I agree with him not gonna lie.