210104 What I learned in my studies this morning

Today's Tao:

Therefore the wise avoid extremes, excesses, and complacency.

From The Daily Stoic: 

Control your perceptions. 

Direct your actions properly. 

Willingly accept what’s outside your control.

From Marcus Aurelius:

A man with unlimited power, emperor of the most important empire in the world, lived a hard life full of illness, wie, political troubles, and human foibles. Through all this, he reminded himself constantly to focus on virtue and to accept what was rather than wish for something different. 

...plagues and war could only threaten our life. What we need to protect is our character

His dictum in life and in leadership was simple and straightforward: “Do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.”

“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”

Even when death finally came to him, he retained his philosophical approach:

Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine. So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you.

From Eric Hoffer, Part III, Factors Promoting Self-Sacrifice, Make-Believe:

Mass Movements and Armies

There are many similarities between mass movements and armies. 

The similarities are many: both mass movements and armies are collective bodies; both strip the individual of his separateness and distinctness; both demand self-sacrifice, unquestioning obedience and singlehearted allegiance; both make extensive use of make-belief to promote daring and united action; and both can serve as a refuge for the frustrated who cannot endure an autonomous existence. 

But armies are not future-focused. They are instruments of the Present and work to maintain the status quo. 

But the army is mainly an instrument devised for the preservation or expansion of an established order—old or new. It is a temporary instrument that can be assembled and taken apart at will. 

People can leave the army honorably. Leaving the Movement makes one a renegade, a faithless apostate. 

Movements are always utopian. They are brining about the Glorious Future and promise adherents (eventual, unreachable) heaven. 

When the Movement begins to revere the present, "... [I]t ceases then to be a movement and becomes an institutionalized organization—an established church, a government or an army (of soldiers or workers).

(The True Believer, XIII-64)