- Joined
- Oct 10, 2022
- Messages
- 511
He is just regurgitating things from the past, as many people do.
My problem with people who study history, like Greene and Holiday, is simple. They want takeaways and 'aha' moments, and they market them to us. They try to make sense of the past, but sense often gets lost, like when they take a nuanced historical event and reduce it to a simple moral lesson, ignoring the complexities involved.
Good judgments are mixed with bad ones, like in Marcus Aurelius' case, recognizing the value of stoic resilience while oversimplifying the ethical implications of his actions, or celebrating military victories without acknowledging the human suffering involved. Greene and Holiday simplify, overreach, and ignore context.
A story without context is a hollow shell, a broken clock that tells the correct time at least twice a day but still incorrect most of the time.
For example, it is unfair to judge Marcus Aurelius by today's standards or to blindly apply his advice to the modern world without considering the context in which he lived. He lived in a time when child mortality was extremely high, and death was everywhere. Society was less mature, and most people couldn't read. He was also quite open about his relationships with many others, including men.
Can we truly judge him fairly, considering the vastly different ethical standards and societal norms of his time compared to today? Ignoring these significant aspects of his life strips away the complexity of his experience and leads to a shallow understanding of who he was and what he believed.
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