210829 What I learned in my studies this morning

Trip to the 80s, 

Childhood in an evening, 

HI-fidelity. 

Daily Stoic:

If I have a quarter in my pocket, and everything I need, I am truly rich. 

If I want to be Croesus by the end of the day, I have two options.... 

Today's Meditation:

Today's Meditation II:

Today's Poem:

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, I Sing the Body Electric

From Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, Letter LXXXVIII, Part 1:

Today we'll go through the first part of this lengthy letter.

Seneca doesn't tread lightly here. He doesn't care to spare the sensitivities of anyone who might practice, or, failing that, at least value, other pursuits.  He flat out says they are not worth the time for adults.

They are useful only in so far as they prepare people for love of Wisdom.

Spending a bit discussing Homer and Hesiod and other literary giants, and the value of questions about their works such as "How old are Achilles and Patroclus?", he dismisses it all as unimportant. 

The other arts fare no better in his examination. Art, music, literature, painting, poetry, wrestling, geometry, astrology, and all.

Musicians can teach harmony, but can they teach harmony of the soul?

Geometricians can define a straight line, but can they tell us it means to lead a straight life?

Astrologers can tell us that the planets control our lives and foretell the future, but can they tell us why we should care about something that is either not true or not important (since, as events are controlled by the stars /gods, they are inevitable and we can't change them anyway)?

He goes on to condemn "painters . . . sculptors, marble-masons and all the other attendants on extravagance. I must equally reject those oil and dust practitioners, the wrestlers, or else I shall have to include in the list the perfumers and cooks and all the others who place their talents at the service of our pleasures."

So . . . are there no benefits to studying liberals arts (at least, the limited list of which Seneca will admit)?  For the development of virtue, no. However,

In other words, even the curtailed count of liberals arts which Seneca allows are useful in that they prepare the soil of the mind to receive the seeds of wisdom. 

We'll pause here and pick this up again tomorrow with part 2.