Earlier this week I discovered your YouTube channel and sub stack, and I just want to comment that I really enjoyed this post. Really good stuff Jared.
Wonderful reflection. Do you think perhaps earlier on the path, it might be necessary for some to be "straightened" first before it becomes a natural straightening? I notice myself it is often hard to set habits and good practices in motion but once they are it becomes more fluid. Probably has to do with the neuroplasticity of the brain.
Yes, it also calls to mind Aquinas. I think he also instructed a "fake it till you make it" sort of view. Of course that's the beginning. As Marcus notes, that isn't how it should end.
The Marcus quote from §6 reminded me very much of 17th-century English polymath Sir Thomas Browne’s short masterpiece, Urne Buriall, which is all about the fickle nature of memorials, fame, etc…
"Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian’s horse, confounded that of himself... Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? The first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah’s long life had been his only chronicle... [T]he iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity."
If you haven't read this astonishing piece of literature, I would urge you to do so.
Earlier this week I discovered your YouTube channel and sub stack, and I just want to comment that I really enjoyed this post. Really good stuff Jared.
Wonderful reflection. Do you think perhaps earlier on the path, it might be necessary for some to be "straightened" first before it becomes a natural straightening? I notice myself it is often hard to set habits and good practices in motion but once they are it becomes more fluid. Probably has to do with the neuroplasticity of the brain.
That's a good point. It reminds me of notebook 1, where Marcus reflects on all the people who taught him how to live.
Yes, it also calls to mind Aquinas. I think he also instructed a "fake it till you make it" sort of view. Of course that's the beginning. As Marcus notes, that isn't how it should end.
The Marcus quote from §6 reminded me very much of 17th-century English polymath Sir Thomas Browne’s short masterpiece, Urne Buriall, which is all about the fickle nature of memorials, fame, etc…
"Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian’s horse, confounded that of himself... Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? The first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah’s long life had been his only chronicle... [T]he iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity."
If you haven't read this astonishing piece of literature, I would urge you to do so.