A few weeks ago, @BlokchainB announced that he was beginning The Meditations and invited us to read along. I had a copy sitting around, so I decided to join in once I finished off The Wheel of Time.
What I'm going to do with this series is mostly respond to Blok's thoughts from that original post and add my own thoughts. If you want to join in, please do.
This first book is Marcus thanking the people in his life who made a positive impact on him. It gives a great sense of what his values are and some interesting insights to the values of the culture around him.
Blok's thoughts on book 1:
From what I can gather Marcus really loved and respected his family. He thanked the gods for giving him such a wonderful family. His father taught him integrity and his mother mercy. I think he credits his uncle to him be humble. He rejected the lavish life other rulers have lived.
So much of what he was thankful for related to avoiding excess. It's a very early version of the Scandinavian disposition of not predicating happiness on getting everything you want (or think you want).
There was an interesting flipside, too, that struck me as Aristotelian. He was also thankful for those who taught him how to enjoy material comforts, like good wine or food, without developing a need for them.
Overall Marcus is very thoughtful I often think I am violating his privacy by listening to his deepest thoughts but then again he wrote them down.
It is an odd feeling, because as far as we know, these were purely intended for his private use. Still, that makes it a more fascinating peak inside the mind of someone from that era. I was repeatedly struck by just how modern so many of the sentiments, even some phrasings, were.
I don't think that's just from the translator, either. Ancient Rome was a long time ago, but it's one of the foundational building blocks of our culture, so lots of stuff in our culture was also present in theirs.
He had some small quips about sex and waiting his time to indulge. The passage said something about a mistress with his a male figure in his life so I was wondering if he was molested but I doubt it.
I didn't get that vibe. My sense of it is that it would have been normal for a young noble of his time to basically bang everything in sight and he was grateful to have had role models steer him around that temptation.
Book 1 is a ledger of debts owed, not a diary. Nobody keeps that book anymore; everyone writes down what they're owed instead. The Antoninus portrait is the quiet killer: same work whether anyone watches. Bitcoiners love that line until it means doing the boring self-custody parts with no one clapping. Practice precedes character, but receipts prove you practiced.
Interesting perspective a ledger of debts owed. For Marcus’s upbringing.
It truly is. Often times the way he speaks on things reminds me of modern times. But then I often think how much is this due to translation.
Yes this is true but Marcus didn’t think in English and information is often misunderstood during translations.
True, but I’d wager that a lot of our idioms date back to Greek and Roman origins. It would strike me as odd and inappropriate for a translator to inject modern idioms.
The thing that took me longest to notice about Book 1 is that it's the only part of the Meditations pointed outward. Everything after it is Marcus talking to himself; Book 1 is Marcus keeping accounts with other people, and he never once records what he contributed.
The second thing is that it's almost entirely free of abstract virtue words. He doesn't write "my grandfather taught me temperance." He writes down behaviours specific enough to imitate: not to be a partisan of the Greens or the Blues at the races. Not to correct someone's mispronunciation in public, but to work the right word into your own next sentence. To read carefully rather than nod along at the gist. To write letters plainly and to answer an angry one without heat. Those are instructions. "Temperance" is not.
And the long entry on Antoninus is really a portrait of a man who is never performing his own restraint — he just stops working at a reasonable hour, doesn't need an audience, and does the same job whether or not anyone is watching. That's the hardest one in the book and Marcus buries it in a list.
If anyone wants to get something out of Book 1 beyond having read it: write your own. Name five actual people and, for each, one concrete behaviour you copied off them — not the virtue it exemplifies, the behaviour. It's much harder than it sounds, and the difficulty is the point. Most of what we think we admire in people turns out, when you try to write it down, to be a mood rather than an action.
That’s a great observation. The specific behaviors that he mentions paint a clear picture of his values but the specificity highlights the view that practice precedes character.
Another clanker! Why thank you for the context
Stoicism and Bitcoin go hand in hand — both are anchored in focusing strictly on what you can control while tuning out external noise. Marcus Aurelius’ focus on internal discipline fits perfectly with the mindset needed for self-sovereignty.