How can a book like this, written by a man born into aristocracy, ever be taken seriously?

Yea Forums really lives up to its name as a board which doesn't read in these threads

Well pointed, user.

Also, this book is pure selfhelp garbage.

>How can a book written by the best and highest class of people ever be taken seriously?

>it's guaranteed that you will never be an aristocrat with power
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of stoicism or are confusing it with cynicism.
If you follow his advice you are MORE likely, not less likely to better your position in life. Especially if you follow his advice on dealing with people you will surely gain social capital.

There is nothing in stoicism about not being motivated to achieve things, or about giving away things you already have. You should carry out your natural function, that is rational action, to the fullest extent. That includes achieving as much as is within your power to do. Stoicism can set you free from your petty quibbles and addictions to achieve greater things. By understanding what is within your power and what is not, you are free to strive to attain, without being crushed by loss, or held back by the desire for comfort.

>because it's easy to give when you have more than you need.
Gee user, you don't say.
>If Marcus Aurelius was alive today, he would be Bill Gates
So a respectable person with technical expertise and intelligence?

>If you follow his advice you are MORE likely, not less likely to better your position in life

No you aren't, and if you believe this you are a severely delusional normie

privilege this, privilege that, SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LIBERAL FAGGOT!!!!!!!

That's because it literally is a self-help book. It's his own personal thoughts which he wrote down to help him through rough times. It was never meant to be published, he ordered it to be burned upon his death.

>His book is just the scribbling of a trust fund kid, living in a world of delusion, that is a product of the circumstances of his privileged life.
Yes and?

Can you PLEASE mix up the bait next time? I'm starting to get sick of seeing the exact same dumb baits written about Meditations every other week.

ok, enjoy being a slave to comfort and things outside of your control. I wish you well

>rich and powerful people live a blissful life
how I know you're a poorfag

It is incredibly hard to be good as a roman emperor, and this was essentially the problem Aurelius was struggling with. Dont forget that the meditations were not intended to be published but were rather notes to himself, things he struggled with and had to remind himself of.

Roman politics was a constant struggle for power between different aristocratic factions, a military class that constantly pushed for war, and a large populus not afraid to riot. Marcus Aurelius inherited a corrupt, injust and internally torn political system which he was in charge of keeping stable, more for the sake of others than for himself, and regardless of whether he agreed with it or not. despite the absolute power of emperors they were rarely in a position to fundamentally change the rules and go against the corrupt aristocracy, much the same way an american president's power can very easily be undermined by corrupt business interests, a hawkish military-industrial complex, and a hostile state aparatus. To put it in Marxist terms, emperors, even if they wish to do so, are simply not in the material conditions to change the system to a more just one, and are in many cases forced into either Machiavellian brutality or hedonistic indifference. Aurelius managed to carry a heavy burden and avoid both, and the way he did this is admirable even if you disagree with the system he upheld.

Forms of perfection. Forms of immanence. Forms of bliss. These forms of perfection manifold in the plutocracy are elements to reflect upon

You can't see a difference in character between Marcus Aurelius and Bill Gates? You lack no soul.

Besides, Bill Gates doesn't just have an easy-to-be-good life, he has literally done the most evil things possible and his entire existence is dedicated to the work of the elites.

Respectable? Please stop consooming liberal media. It's actually amazing how wearing a few pink sweaters and giving a few interviews has hidden all the greedy and cruel things this guy has done all over the world. There's a reason he's hated everywhere except the West, and even in the west people are catching on

A guy irl told me years ago that Bill Gates was a bad man. I thought he was joking around because although I more or less agreed with him on account of Gates being a billionaire that he had to be a bad man by definition, this guy seemed hyperfocused on the unique evil of Bill Gates specifically. He was deadly serious. And he was right.

You know he spent half his life on the frontline of war right? And wrote a bunch about how he'd much rather not be there, but he had a duty to fulfill?

>(((philanthropists)))
Lmao sometimes I forget that there are many people that are this hopelessly naive.

>OH POOR ME MOWING DOWN GERMAN BARBARIANS WITH MY SUPERIOR ARMY

He had everything he could wish for and still wrote his diaries (don't forget, he never wanted to publish them).

This is not a book from *insert current YouTube "self help" shill here* who wrote his book as a financial product with no other reason than making the most bucks.

Especially if you see his son Commodus, you know that he meant his ideas.
Also most people, most likely you, too, are too invested into certain religions and hate that Aurelius outperformed all religions with his ideas.

It's funny that Aurelius is not only better than an religion and can be seen as a religion itself, his ideas also never prohibit you to have an official religion.
His whole idea is based around just seeing the world how it is and making clear that the only path of happiness is inside you. He even says that a religion is not bad, but not good either. It's just an additional thing that always forces you to do external stuff (like going to church weekly).

The most amazing thing about Aurelius is that he says that you can have a religion and do the mandatory time consumption to be a "faithful" follower, but he also says that you only should do it if it fulfills your inner happiness.
The best criticism of religion of him was simply that religion is centered around external things "praise Jesus", "go to church", and all those other external thing. He nailed it when he said that you don't need it to have to most fulfilling life and you only should devote your life to something if it is for your inner self and not because someone tries to force you into believing in external requirements for a "happy" life.

But Aurelius isn't a critic of religion, he simply is someone who tells you to never waste your time with a religion for the religions sake. Do what your inner self needs. It can be being part of a religious group, but not because of others deciding for you, but instead it's you who decides to join or not to join a religious group.

the most retarded post. The dude you're talking about is a Roman emperor who forced people to worship him and his predecessors

He would write about death as if it was around him. Pretty logical to say he was writing meditation on the battlefield.

A good man is either unknown, or a fiction made up by those that are not good for their own con game. No one gets to be known unless they are either doing bad things to get ahead or are doing bad things back to get back at those that took from them.
I don’t take lessons of life from thieves or their victims. The guy who does it right neither has to take more than his share nor puts himself in a position where he has to give up what he has and wants to keep.
And you will never know his name.

stick to YA

Aurelius never wanted to be emperor, rather than literature and philosophy he had to dedicate his days to orchestrating grand campaigns and maintaining a state that ran from Armenia to Maghreb, and those features of deification were inseparable from the imperial power structure. He mourned his role as an 'imperial slave to unworthy masters', but of course the mouth-breathing inhabitants of these threads will repeat ad infinitum 'but he was muh rich emperor he could have had anything and he did the hecking immorality by killing Germans during the Marcomanni wars' or some other vulgar attempt to apply modern 'morality' like this individual

>Aurelius never wanted to be emperor
Imagine falling for Who me? I couldn't possible become the king/emperor/etc. schtick

This has been going on for years, it's either a very dedicated shitposter who makes these threads to bait people with the same set of pedestrian criticisms which are phrased slightly differently each time or it's unironically because it's just the type of person who gets misled into reading Aurelius' half-written schizo notes because it's le emperor's handbook without having read any prior Graeco-Roman philosophy, who creates these threads and then comes here and airs their perceived grievances

imagine thinking there's some grand conspiracy just because people complain about Meditations from time to time

The majority of the time I look at the catalogue I see a thread exactly like this, Aurelius threads are almost like a general that gets posted again soon after each one runs its course, and as I said their content is eerily consistent. I do not underestimate autism

wow one thread out of dozens

By the time this guy became Emperor, a good Emperorship carried the enormous burden of austere martial living coupled with the enormous weight of managing a declining empire personally.

Agreed

>declining empire
It wasn't declining. Things were still pretty damn good during Commodus' time and he and his freemen did tons of stupid shit

What an over-generalisation

>being Roman emperor was easy
huh?

Well it is not like he had a choice in the matter, his imperial adoption wasn't exactly in his power, notably however he refused to ascend to the office alone and demanded the senate permit him to co-rule along with his adopted brother Verus

This exact thread has been made at least 5 or 6 times in the past 4 months.

Turns out ruling is hard.

>It's easy to be good, when your ancestors already did all of the prerequisite evils required to hold a position of power.
You must be insane. It's easy to be good when you have the power of life and death over everyone around you?

Checking privileges is not a good thing to universalize. The values, the reasoning, the language we use, the whole culture we're in are a product of less than perfect people and societies. If we drop it, nothing else remains. There is a widespread idea that revolution that starts from zero is possible, but it's false: revolution can totally undevelop something to zero, but it still depends on previous history.

Practically all philosophy is from men born into aristocracy.

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Its easy to follow what society deems to be good when you're born into the class that reaps the reward from the structures in place that create what behaviors are considered good in the first place.
Your class essentially formed what is 'good' for its own benefit and, being born into that class, of course its fucking easy to show off how "good" you are.

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>It's easy to be good, when your ancestors already did all of the prerequisite evils required to hold a position of power
Spoken like a true lowly being in the spiritual scale

The higher you are, the higher the temptations

Someone hasn't heard of the battle of teutenborg forest. Roman legions weren't invincible user!

>Its easy to follow what society deems to be good

Don't change the subject. He talked about actual goodness, not "what society deems to be good".

Unless, you're one of those people that doesn't believe in good or evil, and yet decides to just REEE in jealousy at more priveleged classes, and self-contradicting by saying that they deserve to be REEE'd at because they are evil, despite the fact evil doesn't exist?

>A lot of rich people become a philanthropists
They do so to evade taxes and to have a better public image, both of which means more money for them in the long run.

How can a book like this, written by a bunch of losers in the desert, ever be taken seriously?
It's easy to be good, when you have nothing to fight for and nothing to lose.

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I'm sure 8 winter campaigns spent in military tents on the frozen banks of the Danube combatting hordes of barbarians trying to flood into Roman provinces was a real blast user

>he would be Bill Gates,
How dare you equate that evil tranny scumbag Gates with Marcus Aurileus you worthless cockroach

I literally said that good and evil exist, and its determined by the structure of the society in place. People complain about privileged classes being 'evil' because (1) they are oftentimes very hypocritical in upholding values, such as the constant chorus of how evil theft is while wagetheft is far more impactful, and (2) because from the perspective of those who are being exploited in a given society, privileged classes are in an inherently antagonistic relationship, which can influence their subjective morality from the morality given by the ruling class's narrative if they view society in such a way.
Of course, morality that can develop from lower classes is not given as much respect in the institutions in place as the higher class's notion of good and evil, which means the narrative of the ruling class will naturally have far more influence in their society than just in their class. Meaning that Aurelius the aristocrat showing off him being a good person in a society in which what people see as being a good person is mostly influenced from the structures and organizations in place that enrich the the aristocrat class will naturally be far easier than if Aurelius was a plebian or slave.

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