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Daily Advice 1.01.21
Jan. 1st, 2021 08:28 pmMore from Seneca's letter On Anger, this time concerning the punishment of wrongdoing:
Even if you don't have children, you know the difference between the parent who punishes misbehavior appropriately, and the parent who resorts to wrath. The first instructs, the second abuses. This is true even if the official punishment is the same. To be told calmly but firmly that you will be grounded for the next month, coupled with some thoughts as to what you might have done to merit the punishment is an altogether different experience from the same punishment being accompanied by screaming, breaking things, or violence.
We won't all have children anymore than we will all find ourselves appointed as judges, but we can all take these lessons to heart, and approach the world and our fellows as though we were just parents. I think that, to be a just parent of this kind is the literal definition of "maturity." And again, this is true whether or not one has any children. Many parents behave like children themselves, throwing the equivalent of temper tantrums when their kids misbehave.
The extracts from the Stoics seem to have been the most popular things I've posted here, and I wonder if this isn't why. We live in a stunningly, absurdly immature culture. The generations currently passing away-- the Silents and the Boomers-- seem to me to have never grown up. I wonder if we aren't all desperate for an end to childhood. And that's what the Stoics offer: Follow their advice at any age and you can cease to be a boy or a girl, and become, at long last, a real man, a real woman.
To every form of punishment will I resort, but only as a remedy. If you are lingering as yet in the first stage of error and are lapsing, not seriously, but often, I shall try to correct you by chiding, first in private, then in public. If you have already advanced so far that words can no longer bring you to your senses, then you shall be held in check by public disgrace. Should it be necessary to brand you in more drastic fashion, with a punishment you can feel, you shall be sent into exile, banished to an unknown region. Should your wickedness have become deep-rooted, demanding harsher remedies to correct your case, to chains and the state-prison we shall have resort. If with mind incurable you link crime to crime and are actuated no longer by the excuses which will never fail the evil man, but wrong-doing itself becomes to you pretext enough for doing wrong; if you have drained the cup of wickedness and its poison has so mingled with your vitals that it cannot issue forth without them; if, poor wretch! you have long desired to die, then we shall do you good service - we shall take from you that madness by which, while you harass others, you yourself are harassed, and to you who have long wallowed in the suffering of yourself and others we shall gladly give the only boon still left for you, death! Why should I be angry with a man to whom I am giving the greatest help? Sometimes the truest form of pity is to kill.
Seneca is talking about punishing criminals in an official capacity. Obviously, the great majority of us will never be in that position in a public sense. But most of us will find ourselves in exactly this position when we become parents. Even if you don't have children, you know the difference between the parent who punishes misbehavior appropriately, and the parent who resorts to wrath. The first instructs, the second abuses. This is true even if the official punishment is the same. To be told calmly but firmly that you will be grounded for the next month, coupled with some thoughts as to what you might have done to merit the punishment is an altogether different experience from the same punishment being accompanied by screaming, breaking things, or violence.
We won't all have children anymore than we will all find ourselves appointed as judges, but we can all take these lessons to heart, and approach the world and our fellows as though we were just parents. I think that, to be a just parent of this kind is the literal definition of "maturity." And again, this is true whether or not one has any children. Many parents behave like children themselves, throwing the equivalent of temper tantrums when their kids misbehave.
The extracts from the Stoics seem to have been the most popular things I've posted here, and I wonder if this isn't why. We live in a stunningly, absurdly immature culture. The generations currently passing away-- the Silents and the Boomers-- seem to me to have never grown up. I wonder if we aren't all desperate for an end to childhood. And that's what the Stoics offer: Follow their advice at any age and you can cease to be a boy or a girl, and become, at long last, a real man, a real woman.
