Have you anything worth waiting for? Your very pleasures, which cause you to tarry and hold you back, have already been exhausted by you. None of them is a novelty to you, and there is none that has not already become hateful because you are cloyed with it. You know the taste of wine and cordials. It makes no difference whether a hundred or a thousand measures pass through your bladder; you are nothing but a wine-strainer. You are a connoisseur in the flavour of the oyster and of the mullet; your luxury has not left you anything untasted for the years that are to come; and yet these are the things from which you are torn away unwillingly.
What else is there which you would regret to have taken from you? Friends? But who can be a friend to you? Country? What? Do you think enough of your country to be late to dinner? The light of the sun? You would extinguish it, if you could; for what have you ever done that was fit to be seen in the light? Confess the truth; it is not because you long for the senate chamber or the forum, or even for the world of nature, that you would fain put off dying; it is because you are loth to leave the fish-market, though you have exhausted its stores.

~ Seneca, Letter 77

The prose is plain and clear, really nicely written, the story itself is rather sad. In the end, you’re kind of left with this feeling of, “What did it all mean?” The biggest failure of the story, I think, was the lack of communication in his relationships—with his parents, with his wife, with his daughter, even with his friends. So much pain could have been avoided with clear communication.

I think he’s a real hero. A lot of people who have read the novel think that Stoner had such a sad and bad life. I think he had a very good life. He had a better life than most people do, certainly. He was doing what he wanted to do, he had some feeling for what he was doing, he had some sense of the importance of the job he was doing. He was a witness to values that are important … The important thing in the novel to me is Stoner’s sense of a job. Teaching to him is a job—a job in the good and honorable sense of the word. His job gave him a particular kind of identity and made him what he was … It’s the love of the thing that’s essential. And if you love something, you’re going to understand it. And if you understand it, you’re going to learn a lot. The lack of that love defines a bad teacher … You never know all the results of what you do. I think it all boils down to what I was trying to get at in Stoner. You’ve got to keep the faith. The important thing is to keep the tradition going, because the tradition is civilization.

~ Interview given late in life by John Williams on Stoner

Maybe I just picked up the mantle of stoicism as an excuse for my total lack of interest in the mundane, and when I speak about the mundane, I mean the fleeting elements of the world, as opposed to the eternal.

In line with this thinking, I wonder if people pick philosophy based on what is most in their nature, as opposed to what is most reasonable and coherent. And if I am justified in believing in stoicism, defined as only valuing virtue and being indifferent to everything else, particularly externals like possessions.

But at the same time, gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you if I was indifferent to a holiday in Namibia or not. I certainly think I am, but then again, how much of that is influenced by stoic thought that I should see it that way, and how much of that is genuine? One could argue if the second is true, stoicism did its job, but this is like the difference between liking strawberry ice cream and telling yourself you like strawberry ice cream. I don’t know what the point of this was.

Anyways, when I looked at the Spitzkoppe, an impressive mountain in Namibia that many would call awe-inspiring, I didn’t feel this overwhelming sense of awe as when I experience something more transcendental, be it a philosophical argument/worldview or an experience of the divine. When I hear about a new war, or a new climate disaster, or how someone had a horrific death, I do not react like my family with anguish and horror, but with disinterest and wonder why they care. Though not once have I come across a convincing argument for the existence of God, I yearn for something at least akin to the divine, and maybe Kierkegaard’s thought of making a leap of faith is correct.

The fundamental problem of virtue ethics is the problem of evil: in a world where evil does not seem to care if one is virtuous or not—think of a child getting cancer or a corrupt politician taking bribes versus a virtuous politician being shunned—why would one act virtuously in a world where it seems virtue doesn’t guarantee happiness or even reward it? One possible answer would be God. If God existed, we would have the guarantee of immortality in the afterlife for the virtuous, but since we do not have that, maybe we need to adopt the Kierkegaardian position and just take a leap of faith, believing that virtue will provide happiness. But maybe even that framing is wrong? If we consider it from the lens of control—if we consider what we can control, possessions can be taken away, bodily harm can be inflicted upon you, fame and glory fade over time—if we rely on externals for happiness, then we are relying on the whims of destiny for our happiness. But if we instead only rely on virtue for our happiness, which we are in full control of, then happiness is guaranteed if we are diligent. It’s less about virtue providing happiness and more about changing our perception, making virtue our happiness. At least that’s what I think.

You know what I like to do in situations like this? Grab a bunch of beers, admire the night sky, and get drunk.

The cessation of any action, the extinction of any keen desire, or of any opinion, is as it were a death to them. This is no evil. Turn, now to your different ages; such as childhood, youth, manhood, old-age; for every change of these is a death.* Is there any thing alarming here? Go, now, to your life; first as it was under your grand-father, then as it was under your mother; and then as it was under† your father: and, as you find there many other alterations, changes, and endings, ask yourself, was there any thing in these to alarm me? Thus, neither is there, in the ending, ceasing, and change, of your whole life.

~ Marcus Aurelius, Book IX verse 21

A movie in the Mad Max universe—batshit crazy action, extremely cool VFX, and lots of explosions. 7/10.