A Year of War and Peace 2017

[hermetic]

So, who saw this all the way through, besides me? Sad that some original participants no longer seem to be here. Tis the nature of the beast, I suppose. They come, they go. But, I do miss you guys.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/11939270

Anyway, I enjoyed doing this. I managed to only miss a couple of days which I caught up with the following day. Mostly I learned a lot about stoicism, which I have found quite comforting in these troubled times. The writer, Brian Denton, ended each discussion with a quote from Epictetus or occasionally Marcus Aurelius or Seneca. I copied and pasted several, like this:

This is the chief thing: Do not be perturbed, for all things are according to the nature of the universal; and in a little time you will be nobody and nowhere, like Hadrian and Augustus.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Denton's final summation:
"What Tolstoy is saying is that we must abandon old ways of thinking if those ways of thinking no longer stand to reason. And isn’t that what we’ve been working on this year? Hasn’t our project been a project of self-improvement by means of literary and philosophical reflection on the lives of Tolstoy’s characters? Haven’t we thought about new ways to address the vicissitudes of life and perhaps avoid the many existential pitfalls those characters fell into? That’s been the idea anyway. I hope it’s helped." (It has.)

Denton says he plans to do this with another book. I am looking forward to it and will let you know what it is, if I can find it. Medium is kind of hard to figure out sometimes..