'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius – Stoicism in Modern Language [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3hLZCuh8yM

by llm_nerd • 3 years ago

126 83 3 years ago

jimmyed• 3 years ago

I would never use this, when the original is available to read, that too in English! Consider the sheer dumbification at ~27 minute mark, "The universe has it's rhythm, and im vibin' with it".

dazzawazza• 3 years ago

While it's certainly not to my taste if it exposes more people to philosophy and helps them on the path to a calmer existence... why should we care?

If we can't expose philosophy to everyone.. then many are stuck with religion and that's not good for anyone.

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

What’s bad about being stuck (so-called) with Buddhism compared to this?

For that matter: being stuck with Stoicism compared to Buddhism also wouldn’t be bad.

mistermann2• 3 years ago

Whether religion is not good for anyone is a very interesting and difficult philosophical/psychological question.

jxmorris12• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, Marcus Aurelius didn’t speak English.

minedwiz• 3 years ago

To the extent that English existed in 180 even

kylebenzle• 3 years ago

And, "I'm totally stoked that I never got too into poetry..."

photonthug3• 3 years ago

Reminds me of how NPR is always like "yup the dow was super gnarly today bro, now over to Steve so we can get an update on our best-video-games-of-the-year report" and it makes me grimace. Then I think maybe I'm getting old, but then I think, no dammit, this is just dumb, and it's probably ok for me to expect a little more professionalism from journalists. The news shouldn't need to sound like a twitch streamer, and words from our best and brightest like Aurelius shouldn't need this kind of obnoxious paraphrase either. In the end a work is relevant or it is not.. giving the work some unnecessary "update" to attempt to become/remain relevant just seems unasked for, and silly, and desperate.

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

Part of the charm of reading old works (even translated) is how they clearly phrase themselves in a different way than you. But then you eventually see beyond that and realize that they are 99% like you. The common human experience.

But I don’t get the same vibe from “vibin’ with it”. Ugh.

lebean2• 3 years ago

There's one thing I can't call cap on: that I think.

- Descartes

kstrauser6• 3 years ago

Hunnit.

Zababa3• 3 years ago

Between your comment and the one you replied to, I'm starting to think this is a good exercise. It shows how modern language can be used outside of its usual context, i.e. spoken by modern speakers. As a slightly older person than them, I can understand what they mean better, and remind myself that language evolving is a natural part of life. For them, it can make older works more accessible too, not just by translating them, but by showing to them that there's a mapping between the way they express themselves and the way other people do, and that they don't need to be intimidated by older works with different ways of speaking.

mannyv2• 3 years ago

Dude, I'm here because I'm here. - DC.

messe• 3 years ago

the original is available to read, [...] in English

In other words, not the original. In fact, literally “in other words”.

llm_nerd2• 3 years ago

when the original is available to read

The original is in classic Koine Greek. Every translation since has been an interpretation and rewriting, often picking up the idioms and standards of the day.

sheer dumbification

While you clearly just got that from one of the top comments and didn't actually listen to the video, can you explain what is "dumb" about that? If you've read meditations -- and note that this interpretation is basically section by section in order -- it's actually an entirely reasonable, understandable interpretation.

And having read the "original", where the original to me was an English translation performed in the 17th century by Meric Casaubon -- littered with 17th century-isms of English -- I found this video a fascinating listen because it made me reinterpret various sections.

kstrauser6• 3 years ago

I think what they meant is that you can find a modern translation of the original anywhere you can find books. It’s not some rare, lost tome. It’s right there, ready to be read, if you want it. You don’t have to watch a video summary of it.

mattgreenrocks• 3 years ago

But maybe Aurelius really wanted to convey the fact that life is about finding the right type of energy?

ActionHank• 3 years ago

I often have trouble with challenging people at work. Over time it's become a habit to turn to this book to ride it out.

jacknews• 3 years ago

  I often have trouble with challenging people at work.

Me too. Should I demand a joust, or pistols at dawn?'

For the video, I find the format completely destroys the content. Reading the book, I can almost put myself in the situation of a Roman Emperor arriving at these conclusions, after weary days of argument, etc, etc. In video form, they just wash over as meaningless aphorisms.

PlasmonOwl• 3 years ago

Or you could just drop their coffee mug…?

rgrieselhuber5• 3 years ago

This is my primary objection against Stoicism.

kuchenbecker• 3 years ago

...Why?

steve_adams_864• 3 years ago

Apart from the bizarre parts of classic stoicism, what do you find is worth objecting to?

photon_collider• 3 years ago

‘Meditations’ is one of my favorite books. I revisit it almost yearly and each time I find new nuggets of wisdom. While videos like this may be useful for some people, I do think it’s worth reading the book on your own to form your own interpretation of it, especially since it isn’t a very long. If you like audiobooks I recommend the audiobook recording by Duncan Steen and George Long.

throwaway9980• 3 years ago

Pinned comment on the video:

“I listen to the whole book almost everyday. A true masterpiece.”

Wow.

a1o• 3 years ago

Goes to the things that don't need a video bin

serjester2• 3 years ago

This is awesome. Personally I want a modern translation of Nietzsche’s books since it takes such a commitment to get through their current translations. I’m excited for AI to get to the point where this is trivial.

hospitalJail• 3 years ago

I find it interesting that 'through the flow of information' I spent years on the Greeks, only after 8 years of philosophy I found modern stuff that was relevant to my interests. Nietzsche and Existentialism.

Really makes me wonder if those in Power, have an interest in teaching Virtue based philosophy to intellectuals, and de-emphasizing modern stuff.

makeitshine• 3 years ago

Rick Roderick has a good lecture series on Nietzsche.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA20B690583E9931C

Amezarak2• 3 years ago

I'm genuinely confused. Kaufmann and Hollingdale aren't modern translations?

serjester2• 3 years ago

Take a random sentence I pulled from Kaufmann

> Verily, you who are good and just, there is much about you that is laughable, and especially your fear of that which has hitherto been called devil.

Which could also be said as:

> Those of you who are good and fair, there's much about you that's funny, especially how you're scared of what's always been called the devil.

The average modern english speaker would say the latter is easier to understand. I'd personally love for the entire book to be this digestable.

mannyv2• 3 years ago

Nietzsche in a nutshell: f*ck it, you do you.

mobiuscog• 3 years ago

I sense this may be the new AI benchmark soon.

I'm not saying at all this is AI (although at least some pictures may well be), but I can imagine youtube being filled with AI-generated content in a similar fashion going forward.

Question for HN: How much of this, with the correct prompts, could AI generate right now ?

Zababa3• 3 years ago

Follow up question: How much effort, money and skill would the project of creating a video like this take if you allow yourself the use of AI*, vs if you forbid it.

It's hard to define precisely what "use of AI" is. Generating images with midjourney/stable diffusion would count (even if you edit them), having AI-generated code that's executed by the server of a SaaS you use wouldn't.

BetterWhisper• 3 years ago

All of it, I have tested it and want to automate it currently.

Edit: the biggest hurdle previously was no midjourney API. Now that DALLE-3 is released it is good enough and has an API

JohnKacz• 3 years ago

I could be wrong but I think all of this is AI generated. The images, the translation, and I think even the voice/audio

MrNeon• 3 years ago

The audio is painfully AI right from the start, it lacks meaningful pauses.

tonyedgecombe• 3 years ago

We are going to get flooded with this stuff. Most of it will be mediocre and the majority won’t care.

kstrauser6• 3 years ago

I just finished reading it for the first time. Good timing! My takeaways:

- It looks an awful lot like Taoism if you squint. s/logos/tao/ and focus on mindfulness and living in the present, and there’s a lot in common.

- I’ve read a lot of mythology over the years, but never heard real people talk about praying to Zeus. That was neat reminder of how much beliefs can change over time.

- The emphasis on accepting what life has given you because that’s what logos/tao/gods have willed is a lot more palatable if you’re an emperor than his slaves. It’s great to accept what you can’t change. It’s not so great to accept the bad things you could change if someone hadn’t convinced you it was the way things were meant to be.

- I couldn’t go along with the how-tos on not enjoying yourself. “Here’s how you deaden yourself to music: …” Uh, no thanks.

- “Art these days is so shallow and silly, unlike back in the day.” Ok, great^100-grand-boomer.

There was a lot of good, practical advise, though.

mpol• 3 years ago

"- The emphasis on accepting what life has given you because that’s what logos/tao/gods have willed is a lot more palatable if you’re an emperor than his slaves. It’s great to accept what you can’t change. It’s not so great to accept the bad things you could change if someone hadn’t convinced you it was the way things were meant to be."

This is often read as a critic against Stoa. It's not really true though (though you might find a quote of some stoic somewhere that does agree). The tricky thing here is deciding what you can change and what you cannot change. Or in which way you can change things and how attainable that is and how much effort you want to spend.

Many situations and problems are not clear cut and require some attention devoted to them. Sometimes levers to change something are available where you didn't expect them. And sometimes you think you can change something, but it turns out to not be true.

Stoicism is not about being passive, it is about being active. See what you would like to have changed, and in which way can you change things. And no, complaining endlessly, as is common in our society, does not bring much change ;) That is passive behaviour where you set out to be dependent on someone else bringing change.

kstrauser6• 3 years ago

Fair point. What I know of stoicism comes from that book, and I’m certain this has been debated a million times elsewhere.

I think the “serenity prayer” is a powerful distillation of stoicism as you describe it:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.

I’m not religious, but that’s beautiful.

flatline• 3 years ago

Given that our other principal source of extant stoic writing is from a former slave, Epictetus, I’m inclined to agree that the criticism is baseless.

zer0tonin• 3 years ago

- The emphasis on accepting what life has given you because that’s what logos/tao/gods have willed is a lot more palatable if you’re an emperor than his slaves. It’s great to accept what you can’t change. It’s not so great to accept the bad things you could change if someone hadn’t convinced you it was the way things were meant to be.

Funnily enough, the founder of stoicism was a slave.

- I couldn’t go along with the how-tos on not enjoying yourself. “Here’s how you deaden yourself to music: …” Uh, no thanks.

Which is what actually makes it very unlike taoism.

bigstrat20032• 3 years ago

The emphasis on accepting what life has given you because that’s what logos/tao/gods have willed is a lot more palatable if you’re an emperor than his slaves.

My dude, one of the most famous Stoics (Epictetus), who was one of the influences on Marcus Aurelius, was a slave.

blackoil• 3 years ago

Hindu text Gita has a similar message. You shall act as per your Dharma (roughly between job profile and life principles) and accept the result as will of God.

Which is not surprising, there was a continuous trade/communication between Chinese, Indian, Romans and ready of world. Slow paced but over decades ideas will spill over different cultures.

tiahura• 3 years ago

Get the Robin Watterford edition.

bigstrat20032• 3 years ago

Agreed. It's well translated, and the annotations help a lot.

teddyh• 3 years ago

As free audiobook: <https://librivox.org/the-meditations-of-the-emperor-marcus-a...>

falcor84• 3 years ago

And here it is as a typing exercise: https://www.typelit.io/chapters/Meditations

haunter• 3 years ago

There is already a very popular audiobook service [0] for nonfiction book summaries which was a surprise to me but also not. It feels like just the result of our sped up life, you need to watch this, you need to read this, you need to play this. Of course you don't _need to_ but for some people this is life in the 21st century. And I bet they also happy about it, just read the testimonals ('the concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.')

0, https://www.blinkist.com/

Zababa3• 3 years ago

I agree with your point of "sped up life". Some written content has a main point and exists to transmit you that main point. In those case speeding up that is a good thing. On the other hand, some written content is a journey, and transmit things through experience.

For example, "bad" documentation that forces you to learn a tool from first principles to do anything with it will produce lots of non-users, and some users with a deep understanding of the tool. If you replace that "bad" documentation with a cheatlist or cookbook or how-to, you may produce way more users, but they won't be forced to acquire the level of skill and knowledge that previous users had.

For some people quickly extracting the main point of Meditations will be how the book can have the most impact on them. For others it will be being forced to plan for some reading time to get through the book. For others it may be the process of searching the most useful form of the book, or even creating it. That seems far stretched, but I think you can learn a lot by trying to expose people to Meditations.

cwalkatron• 3 years ago

Can't believe The Holdovers isn't mentioned anywhere in these comments. That's why this is here, right?

thepasswordis• 3 years ago

Here is 'Meditations' in musical format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk1Sr1kfIL4

It's like lofi hip hop beats with the text being read over the top. I love it.

billbrown3• 3 years ago

Stoicism is an excellent philosophy for the ancient world but tt's entirely insufficient for the modern era. Ayn Rand's Objectivism is Stoicism plus Aristotelianism refined and refactored. Aaron Smith elaborates well:

https://newideal.aynrand.org/the-false-promise-of-stoicism/

billbrown3• 3 years ago

I've read Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca and found them refreshing. They're just not as coherent as her philosophy.

snakeyjake2• 3 years ago

Ayn Rand's Objectivism is Stoicism plus Aristotelianism refined and refactored.

That must be why I find people who talk about stoicism to be insufferable dicks.

snakeyjake2• 3 years ago

lol.

A “stoic” would read this and move on.

Read the book again, fellas.

marmakoide• 3 years ago

Ayn Rand is teenage fantasy you are supposed to grow out as soon as you start to engage into adult life, working, develop romantic relationships, etc.

billbrown3• 3 years ago

And yet it's proven invaluable in each of those areas for the 30 years after. It's clear your knowledge of Objectivism is akin to thinking you understand Stoicism from reading the dictionary definition.

yakshaving_jgt• 3 years ago

I wonder if anyone else found Meditations to be pretentious.

I always see people fawn over it. Personally I thought it was rubbish. Especially the part where he describes sex. It’s definitely more than just the rubbing of a membrane, or whatever it was that he said.

danidiaz• 3 years ago

"ponderous pensées on human frailty by an apologetic autocrat"

From this article about a different emperor: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n04/christopher-kelly/a-...

richboyguy101• 3 years ago

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'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius – Stoicism in Modern Language [video]

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