Having a well-informed take > Knowing you’re not well-informed enough to have a valid take so you don’t share your half-baked idea > Having an ignorant take and sharing it freely
Bear in mind this does not absolve us of our responsibility to have wise understandings of major things in life like existential questioning and ethical frameworks, as they’re the core and cusp of humanity. 👍
Idk how to feel about this
Stoicism was big on duty, so think of it less like “Don’t worry, be happy” and more like “You have the power to choose what you prioritize; don’t offer ignorant takes just to offload the anxiety of not currently having a take, it’s okay not to always have one immediately ready for every issue you’ve ever heard”
I see what you did there, lol
lmao, it went right over my head
This is kinda a funny coincidence but I remember a similar sentiment from another Marcus; Marcus Fenix from Gears of War 4.
Thats the nice thing about being old. You don’t have to have an opinion about everything
This makes me wonder if that line was an intentional nod to his namesake.
Of course a literal emperor doesn’t want you to take the time to be informed on issues.
I mean he’s not wrong exactly but this strikes me as self-serving.
Aurelius’s Meditations were not published in his lifetime; they were his personal journals which were collected and published after his death. He writes elsewhere in his Meditations very strongly in favor of truth, curiosity, and honesty. The message here is not “Be ignorant” or “Be passive”, but in the spirit of the very orthodox Stoic that Aurelius was, paraphrasing, “The outside world should not trouble you, because you should live a life wherein you have done what you can to change it; worry past your own abilities is torturing yourself for no gain.” (and, more controversially to a modern reader, also paraphrasing, “All worry and suffering are self-inflicted, we have the power, through self-discipline, to refuse them entirely; all matters of internal thought, including qualia received from the outside world, can be refuted by internal thought”)
