Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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Stoic Week day 7: Nature

The final day of the Stoic Week takes us to the Stoic view of Nature, which is at the same time naive and perceptive. We will need to reconcile it with our own modern view, which is in itself an interesting exercise.

The works of the gods are full of providence, and the works of fortune are not separate from nature or the interweaving and intertwining of the hings governed by providence. Everything flows from there. Further factors are necessity and the benefit of the whole universe, of which you are a part. What is brought by the nature of the whole and what maintains that nature is good for each part of nature. Just as the changes in the elements maintain the universe so too do the changes in the compounds.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.3

We know, living on a world in which resources are rapidly waning and that is slowly turning into a trap from which our civilization might not get out alive, that Nature is not so benign and constant in nurturing us.

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A reminder for my Patrons

And for everybody else, too: the first batch of recommendations in the Odds and Ends series was posted yesterday to my Patreon page. It features:

  • two books (one heavily discounted, the other free)
  • a book bundle
  • a documentary you can watch on Youtube
  • a free online course for book lovers
  • a virtual field trip to ancient Egypt
  • and a free game app

Check it out if you are my Patrons and you missed it, and if you feel like, please give me feedback. I’m having quite a lot of fun sifting through the web for items to include in these posts, but I’d like to know what you’d like to see.

Thank you!


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Stoic Week day 6: Resilience

We go back to Marcus Aurelius again, and the guy is at it again with the following…

Be like the headland, on which the waves break constantly, which still stands firm, while the foaming waters are put to rest around it. ‘It is y bad luck that this has happened to me.’ On the contrary, say, ‘It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without getting upset, neither crushed by the present nor afraid of the future.’ This kind of event could have happened to anyone, but not everyone would have borne it without getting upset.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.49

In the end, for the Stoics, it’s what we carry that counts – so if the outside world sucks, the important thing is that I am able to tap my own personal mental resources to weather the storm.

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Stoic Week day 5: Emotions

Terribly late, because we took a night off to see some friends and have dinner together. More of an Epicurean evening than a Stoic one, but still, today’s topic is emotion, and we start with Epictetus, a former slave that became a philosopher.

It isn’t the things themselves that disturb people, but the judgements that they form about them. Death, for instance, is nothing terrible, or else it would have seemed so to Socrates too; no, it is in the judgement that death is terrible that the terror lies. Accordingly, whenever we are impeded, disturbed or distressed, we should never blame anyone else but only ourselves, that is, our judgements. It is an act of a poorly educated person to blame others when things are going badly for him; one who has taken the first step towards being properly educated blames himself, while one who is fully educated blames neither anyone else nor himself.

Epictetus, Handbook, 5

So, what should we do with our emotions?

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Invoking the Emperor of Dreams

This is going to be an interesting weekend: I have a story I need to complete by Monday, and it’s turning into a headache. Its now 4 am in the morning as I write this (a very Lovecraftian state of affairs, don’t you think?) and I’ve started writing at 8 pm, and not a single word I wrote in these eight hours I did not cancel. repeatedly. And gladly so, because they sucked.

I have the outline, the plot points mapped, the characters and their names and traits and back story, I know what will happen, and how. The twist is there, and the drama and the irony. Everything’s perfect. What sucks, and sucks big time, is the language.

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Stoic Week day 4: Community

Fourth day of the Stoic Week, we are beginning to end, and again the suggested text to be pondered brings back high school memories:

It is important to understand that nature creates in parents affection for their children; and parental affection is the source from which we trace the shared community of the human race … As it is obvious that it is natural to us to shrink from pain, so it is clear that we derive from nature itself the motive to love those to whom we have given birth. From this motive is developed the mutual concern which unites human beings as such. The fact of their common humanity means that one person should feel another to be his relative.

Cicero, On Ends, 3.62-3.

There is in the Stoics this idea of interconnectedness (is that a word?) of all people that is central in their development of a social policy. We are all the same tribe, and we should work together as part of the same unit – an extension of what Marcus Aurelius told us yesterday.

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Odds & Ends on Patreon

They say we should always steal from the best, and they are right. Case in point: writer and game designer Shanna Germain has just launched her Patreon page, and among the perks she is offering to her Patrons there is a curated collection of cool stuff – free or inexpensive – that she likes, and that she thinks her Patrons might like too.

And that’s a great idea, and one worth stealing.
After all, I already do something similar with the Karavansara University and in Italian with my strategie evolutive book club, and a weekly collection of cool stuff for my Patrons sounds like the perfect thing to expand my Patreon offer.
I might call it Odds and Ends.

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