ASL Section II Doc Jacques Louis David paints 'The Death of Seneca'. Seneca was a Stoic philosopher who lived in Rome, under the rule of the emperor Nero. Seneca was sentenced to death since he was accused of conspiracy on the emperor. When Seneca's friends learned about the command, they started to weep but Seneca remained calm. Seneca admired the dedication and the determination of Socrates, who used to fight till the end for his idea. The difficulties Seneca experienced such as earthquakes, tuberculosis, being exiled made him calmer and taught him the ways of dealing with frustration. Also his intellect and connection to philosophy helped him to have a series of calm responses to those sufferings. Seneca's wife wanted to kill herself but the emperor's guards stopped her in order not to increase the emperor's name as cruel. He didn't manage to kill himself when he cut his veins at first, then drinking toxic. Both didn't work. At the end, he died suffocating slowly in a hot bath. Even the moment he was placed in the vapour-bath, he was calm, fighting against the frustration. Seneca thought of philosophy as a way to help humans overcome conflicts between their wishes and reality. Seneca gained experieces through these disasters. He was ready for the day that he ended his life. The ideologies about life and reality he learned via philosophy helped Seneca in managing to bear all the sufferings and difficulties he faced throughout his life. In my opinion, he is in this way similar to those prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the allegory, the prisoners who managed to get out of the cave, or the chains of the boundaries in which our minds are limited in, were able to see the reality. The fact that they see beyond what they were allowed to see helped them to fight against those who oppose to see the light of reality. And they endured all the opposing and consequences they faced, with temper. Similar to them Seneca, as a philosopher who can see the “reality” of his time, criticized the unfair and cruel rule of the emperor which resulted in his death. However he accepted it with temper (not with frustration; one would be expected to get frustrated since s/he was sentenced to death even though s/he was right in what s/he was claiming); since he was very well experienced of suffering through the tragedies in his life, and also because philosophy gave him the capability of responding frustration with temper, and death with acceptance.
Anger exerts a force on the person and overtakes his/her rational self. The apologies and the regret that come afterwards are the very proof of it.
"We will cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful."
The statement above is self-explanatory about the anger part of the chapter. Seneca believes that we are angry because we hope that somewhere out there is a better world. Book gives an example of a noble man who gets angry because of the sound of a broken glass. This supports Senaca’s idea which was; simply the more money a person had, the tenser they became which leads to the anger. This part of the book tells us that there are always an explanation for being angry. However it does state that there is an enormous amount of rage among the rich. It might be due to their high hopes? The more we expect, the more fragile we become against the frustrations.
Another thing about this part of the book is the general idea of perception. What we perceive as normal determines what we will be frustrated with. Therefore our perception of the world and what we consider as normal is a part of our anger. The reactions, that we give, depend on the concept of what is “normal” for us. In conclusion, in order to manage our anger; we should think before acting; reasoning and asking questions (like we did earlier in our project) may help. We should always remind ourselves that we are all imperfect creatures.
Shock There are two possibilities in our lives. We can carry on with our lives living today just as yesterday or accounter a disaster or a shocking thing. We expect it to be the first one so when the second choice happens we are shocked.
As Senaca says our destiny is in hands of the goddess named Fortune. In the old days she was thought to be the goddess of wealth, love and fertility which are done by her cornucopia, but she affects us the most with her rudder as she makes our destiny, death. Seneca says we should be aware of the fact that death can find us any time but it’s not something dramatic. We think that if people live knowing this, they would cherish their lives more.
We are powerless compared to goddess Fortune, we are made of veins and weak stuff. Everything is possible we should be expecting everything because we know everything can happen, even a city can burn down. Seneca gives an example in his responses. He noticed that people of Pompei moved to another spot after a big earthquake. However they can’t run away from their fortune. There isn’t a spot without the possibility of bad things happening. No!
Another example is that, a woman who lost her son was devastated for three years, but Seneca revealed why she was this sad in the first place. It was because she was rebelling to the fact that other mothers still had their sons. The mother of the lost boy saw this as abnormal, but for Senaca this was normal but a sad event. For long time she has seen other people’s sons dying but it wasn’t tragic before it happened to her. "Ending a human life is easy, death is simple. Human beings are fragile." That is what Seneca wants from us to repeat ourselves.
Seneca suggests we should think of Fortune every day, every morning. We shouldn’t postpone what we want to do, because it’s not for certain that we will make it through the day. Every thing must be expected. This way, disastrous events will give less pain to us.
Let’s think that Fortune is trying to get you and mistakenly get someone else’s life. You’d be grateful for that. Therefore, if we accept the good things that Fortune brings to us, we should also accept the ones that we are not equally happy with. Fortune is a metaphor of course, but internalizing this concept will help us have less frustration. Less frustration will lead to a calmer and more enjoyable life. Being prepared to any occasion is essential for our welfare, because frustration can ruin even the days without any problems, thinking that one might occur at any time.
Synthesis of Sense of Injustice Asya, Birce, Ekin,
When we were born we were thaught that if we behave well we would be rewarded and being naughty will have consequences. The idea of bad things happen to bad people was always there until we met the real life. We saw it everywhere in holy books, heard it from our parents and our teachers, saw it in the cartoons on the TV. This sometimes works; we see very successful people who have a pure heart such as Mother Theresa. We see some people who had done bad things and were punished at the and just as Adolf Hitler. As Seneca says and as we see, things do not come up as we predict them to be. A rewarded person may be the most evil person in the world and an infant in famine in Africa may be the purest human being in that moment but one of the most severely punished. At this point the direct system breaks down into pieces and people cannot reason this out. Ones reaction may be looking for reasons to blame oneself or he accuses life and her being injust. Seneca reasons this out with a divine power, an immoral goddess; Fortune. Seneca thought that Fortune is unpredictable and can do anything to anybody. Fortunes wheel is random for everybody, so our destiny is too. It may be thought that Seneca reasoned this problem out from his life experiences he did not have anyone to turn to Fortune. Thus we understand that our life depends on randomness and as Seneca advises we should expect anything from life and we should be ready for it. Another idea that came through these is we cannot fully apply these concepts into our everyday lives in 21st century. Today, we have a chance to break the leash and in a way fight against fortune and sometimes beat it.
Anxiety Arıncan Ülkü, İrem Kahyaoğlu, Uğur Yeşilbayraktar and Berke Can Gürer
“Anxiety is to wish for the best in an uncertain situation, but at the same time, to fear for the worst to happen”.(P.96)
Reassurance is the simplest way to avoid anxiety. However, it is very dangerous, because it makes the anxious unprepared for the worst scenario. So, the anxious will be more vulnerable to shock.
People believe if we have an optimistic perception things will end up good, and a pessimistic one will draw bad fate. Well guess what, this is a big lie. Everything has a reason to occur/appear, your expectations or thoughts doesn’t have a concrete effect on what actually is happening however just a way to comfort yourself. Seneca's question is really important. Can it be that worse? Is this what I fear? Preparing yourself for worse to happen is better than comforting (fooling) yourself that everything will end up good. Because if you prepare yourself for bad you will realize that your fear is overrated, however preparation for good will leave you nude, shocked and vulnerable. You might then become confused about what to do next or how to bear.
"Wise man can lose anything. He has everything invested in himself". There is no way to prevent anxiety however controlling yourself is the key as Stoicism refers. However within this control you may lose your mind because of the self pressure you make on yourself, fortune and likes are materialistic values hence you really need to be able to control yourself however there is more in life like love, virtues. Seneca mentions that a wise man might have a fortune, many friends, or a perfect look. But, the essential of wisdom is to still be happy, or at least satisfied if we lose them.
An example for anxiety can be given from the exams. Students are frustrated in the anxiety of learning their grades after an exam. If they would prepare themselves for the worst and understand that it is not the end of the world, they would highly be relieved.
Feeling of being mocked by is separated into two categories: by inanimate and animate objects. Both lead to the same, self-destroying frustration. Blaming the world for misfortunate events, believing that every undesired event happened in order to annoy us, intends to frustrate us leads to meaningless anger. For example, king of Persia’s trying to revenge from a river because his horse has drowned in it is pointless.
All in all, anxiety should be prevented, at least partially by comforting oneself by believing that the worst outcome actually is not as bad as it seems. Being too optimistic results in pain, because world isn’t a perfect place. SENECA'S THEORY MAY NOT GRANT YOU HAPPINESS/JOY BUT SURELY WILL PREVENT YOU FROM SORROW/UNHAPPINESS.
FINAL Chapter 3 Özlem, Mine, Cansu, Yiğit
We can actually affect our destinies say Stoics, but still we are depended on external necessities. Dealing with frustration is basically all about categorizing things in two groups: necessities and possibilities. If there is the smallest possibility, it is still in the area that you can chose to do whatever it takes to get the thing that you wanted. On the other hand, all the rules of nature such as natural disasters and death are in the necessities part and there is nothing that you can do about them. In order to sustain that peace in mind, people should accept the situation instead of denying it, because it would be very drudging to deny the situation and wishing to achieve the impossible. People have reasons to make that distinction and act accordingly, with sense. With that sense, we can analyze the situation and understand what will happen according to how we respond; as a result, we will be able to choose our attitude towards that situation and this will lead us to distinctive freedom. The metaphor dog with a leash is used to describe our condition. The leash is long enough for us to move and gaze around, but still not long enough to wander around and go anywhere we want: we are still tied up. A leashed dog might want to go wherever it wants, so do we, but since we are tied and we cannot do that, we should accept the conditions we are in and we should give in rather than opposing and being dragged around because we cannot change the fact that we’re tied. The annoyance due to frustration of not owning what they want leads people to have so many achievements, inventions, so at some level, it served for humanity’s improvement. Jolts of discomfort, anxiety, pain and outrage stimulates the energy in people’s minds. However, if we lose the peace inside us, these jolts would serve no purpose; which is why, according to Seneca, wisdom lies within realizing what we are capable of and how we can sustain calmness in our minds. This was why Seneca accepted his fate and withdrew from the palace when Nero's men knocked on the door. Maybe he should have protested. But he knew that he couldn't change anything even if he did protest. Therefore it is was useless to cry.
This philosophy of frustration leads to three interpretations of life. First: there is always a distinct possibility that we achieve what desire because we'll never know what Fortune will do next. She may grant us what we need. Therefore, it is always worthwhile to take risks. Second: Since the possibility that we'll be successful is low, we should be more reserved about expecting too much. It is no problem that we don't achieve extraordinary things as long as we are not frustrated. Raising expectations from life would lead us to dissappointments, which also might lead to unhappiness. the unhappiness would cause the person to become more individual and self-centered. This unhappiness due to lack of satisfaction would also prevent the person from coping with the unexpected and therefore drag him/her to a vicious circle. Third: Life is the sum of both of these two previous views. Expectations and realities should be balance with reason in order to archieve our reasonable desires while being frustrated at a minimum level. A person who has deep understanding of Seneca's views would prefer the third interpretation because both the first and the second lead to unhappiness either through dissappointment and anger or isolation.
I have to say that what I appreciate about your work is your attempt to make Botton's ideas even more accessible. It seems in your attempts to work with his ideas, either knowingly or unknowingly you have mimicked his style of writing and tone. In this regard the piece is nicely unified. However, there are some sentence structure errors that take away from the work as a whole.
I would also offer a cautionary note. It is clear that the process that I requested be undertaken for this assignment was not engaged in. In fact it would have been impossible, as google pages were being sent to me as late as noon on Friday. We will engage in another assignment like this at another point in the year, and I will deduct major points for not following the process. If you have not figured this out, I more interested in you demonstrating your thinking rather than the end result- the answer. Answers are boring; thinking is interesting.
Now in regards to a grade. I feel that I am unable to award your work a grade in the WOW category. If you examine your rubric it asks for a creative approach to the response, and while your responses were decent they were not creative. Question... how do you generate a creative response... well if you are interested come and talk to me. To this end I feel that your blog entry deserves at 3/4 or an 8.5/10.
2 comments:
ASL Section II Doc
Jacques Louis David paints 'The Death of Seneca'. Seneca was a Stoic philosopher who lived in Rome, under the rule of the emperor Nero. Seneca was sentenced to death since he was accused of conspiracy on the emperor. When Seneca's friends learned about the command, they started to weep but Seneca remained calm. Seneca admired the dedication and the determination of Socrates, who used to fight till the end for his idea. The difficulties Seneca experienced such as earthquakes, tuberculosis, being exiled made him calmer and taught him the ways of dealing with frustration. Also his intellect and connection to philosophy helped him to have a series of calm responses to those sufferings.
Seneca's wife wanted to kill herself but the emperor's guards stopped her in order not to increase the emperor's name as cruel. He didn't manage to kill himself when he cut his veins at first, then drinking toxic. Both didn't work. At the end, he died suffocating slowly in a hot bath. Even the moment he was placed in the vapour-bath, he was calm, fighting against the frustration.
Seneca thought of philosophy as a way to help humans overcome conflicts between their wishes and reality.
Seneca gained experieces through these disasters. He was ready for the day that he ended his life.
The ideologies about life and reality he learned via philosophy helped Seneca in managing to bear all the sufferings and difficulties he faced throughout his life. In my opinion, he is in this way similar to those prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the allegory, the prisoners who managed to get out of the cave, or the chains of the boundaries in which our minds are limited in, were able to see the reality. The fact that they see beyond what they were allowed to see helped them to fight against those who oppose to see the light of reality. And they endured all the opposing and consequences they faced, with temper. Similar to them Seneca, as a philosopher who can see the “reality” of his time, criticized the unfair and cruel rule of the emperor which resulted in his death. However he accepted it with temper (not with frustration; one would be expected to get frustrated since s/he was sentenced to death even though s/he was right in what s/he was claiming); since he was very well experienced of suffering through the tragedies in his life, and also because philosophy gave him the capability of responding frustration with temper, and death with acceptance.
Anger exerts a force on the person and overtakes his/her rational self. The apologies and the regret that come afterwards are the very proof of it.
"We will cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful."
The statement above is self-explanatory about the anger part of the chapter. Seneca believes that we are angry because we hope that somewhere out there is a better world. Book gives an example of a noble man who gets angry because of the sound of a broken glass. This supports Senaca’s idea which was; simply the more money a person had, the tenser they became which leads to the anger. This part of the book tells us that there are always an explanation for being angry. However it does state that there is an enormous amount of rage among the rich. It might be due to their high hopes? The more we expect, the more fragile we become against the frustrations.
Another thing about this part of the book is the general idea of perception. What we perceive as normal determines what we will be frustrated with. Therefore our perception of the world and what we consider as normal is a part of our anger. The reactions, that we give, depend on the concept of what is “normal” for us. In conclusion, in order to manage our anger; we should think before acting; reasoning and asking questions (like we did earlier in our project) may help. We should always remind ourselves that we are all imperfect creatures.
Shock
There are two possibilities in our lives. We can carry on with our lives living today just as yesterday or accounter a disaster or a shocking thing. We expect it to be the first one so when the second choice happens we are shocked.
As Senaca says our destiny is in hands of the goddess named Fortune. In the old days she was thought to be the goddess of wealth, love and fertility which are done by her cornucopia, but she affects us the most with her rudder as she makes our destiny, death. Seneca says we should be aware of the fact that death can find us any time but it’s not something dramatic. We think that if people live knowing this, they would cherish their lives more.
We are powerless compared to goddess Fortune, we are made of veins and weak stuff. Everything is possible we should be expecting everything because we know everything can happen, even a city can burn down. Seneca gives an example in his responses. He noticed that people of Pompei moved to another spot after a big earthquake. However they can’t run away from their fortune. There isn’t a spot without the possibility of bad things happening. No!
Another example is that, a woman who lost her son was devastated for three years, but Seneca revealed why she was this sad in the first place. It was because she was rebelling to the fact that other mothers still had their sons. The mother of the lost boy saw this as abnormal, but for Senaca this was normal but a sad event. For long time she has seen other people’s sons dying but it wasn’t tragic before it happened to her. "Ending a human life is easy, death is simple. Human beings are fragile." That is what Seneca wants from us to repeat ourselves.
Seneca suggests we should think of Fortune every day, every morning. We shouldn’t postpone what we want to do, because it’s not for certain that we will make it through the day. Every thing must be expected. This way, disastrous events will give less pain to us.
Let’s think that Fortune is trying to get you and mistakenly get someone else’s life. You’d be grateful for that. Therefore, if we accept the good things that Fortune brings to us, we should also accept the ones that we are not equally happy with. Fortune is a metaphor of course, but internalizing this concept will help us have less frustration. Less frustration will lead to a calmer and more enjoyable life. Being prepared to any occasion is essential for our welfare, because frustration can ruin even the days without any problems, thinking that one might occur at any time.
Synthesis of Sense of Injustice Asya, Birce, Ekin,
When we were born we were thaught that if we behave well we would be rewarded and being naughty will have consequences. The idea of bad things happen to bad people was always there until we met the real life. We saw it everywhere in holy books, heard it from our parents and our teachers, saw it in the cartoons on the TV. This sometimes works; we see very successful people who have a pure heart such as Mother Theresa. We see some people who had done bad things and were punished at the and just as Adolf Hitler.
As Seneca says and as we see, things do not come up as we predict them to be. A rewarded person may be the most evil person in the world and an infant in famine in Africa may be the purest human being in that moment but one of the most severely punished. At this point the direct system breaks down into pieces and people cannot reason this out. Ones reaction may be looking for reasons to blame oneself or he accuses life and her being injust. Seneca reasons this out with a divine power, an immoral goddess; Fortune. Seneca thought that Fortune is unpredictable and can do anything to anybody. Fortunes wheel is random for everybody, so our destiny is too. It may be thought that Seneca reasoned this problem out from his life experiences he did not have anyone to turn to Fortune. Thus we understand that our life depends on randomness and as Seneca advises we should expect anything from life and we should be ready for it.
Another idea that came through these is we cannot fully apply these concepts into our everyday lives in 21st century. Today, we have a chance to break the leash and in a way fight against fortune and sometimes beat it.
Anxiety
Arıncan Ülkü, İrem Kahyaoğlu, Uğur Yeşilbayraktar and Berke Can Gürer
“Anxiety is to wish for the best in an uncertain situation, but at the same time, to fear for the worst to happen”.(P.96)
Reassurance is the simplest way to avoid anxiety. However, it is very dangerous, because it makes the anxious unprepared for the worst scenario. So, the anxious will be more vulnerable to shock.
People believe if we have an optimistic perception things will end up good, and a pessimistic one will draw bad fate. Well guess what, this is a big lie. Everything has a reason to occur/appear, your expectations or thoughts doesn’t have a concrete effect on what actually is happening however just a way to comfort yourself. Seneca's question is really important. Can it be that worse? Is this what I fear? Preparing yourself for worse to happen is better than comforting (fooling) yourself that everything will end up good. Because if you prepare yourself for bad you will realize that your fear is overrated, however preparation for good will leave you nude, shocked and vulnerable. You might then become confused about what to do next or how to bear.
"Wise man can lose anything. He has everything invested in himself". There is no way to prevent anxiety however controlling yourself is the key as Stoicism refers. However within this control you may lose your mind because of the self pressure you make on yourself, fortune and likes are materialistic values hence you really need to be able to control yourself however there is more in life like love, virtues. Seneca mentions that a wise man might have a fortune, many friends, or a perfect look. But, the essential of wisdom is to still be happy, or at least satisfied if we lose them.
An example for anxiety can be given from the exams. Students are frustrated in the anxiety of learning their grades after an exam. If they would prepare themselves for the worst and understand that it is not the end of the world, they would highly be relieved.
Feeling of being mocked by is separated into two categories: by inanimate and animate objects. Both lead to the same, self-destroying frustration. Blaming the world for misfortunate events, believing that every undesired event happened in order to annoy us, intends to frustrate us leads to meaningless anger. For example, king of Persia’s trying to revenge from a river because his horse has drowned in it is pointless.
All in all, anxiety should be prevented, at least partially by comforting oneself by believing that the worst outcome actually is not as bad as it seems. Being too optimistic results in pain, because world isn’t a perfect place. SENECA'S THEORY MAY NOT GRANT YOU HAPPINESS/JOY BUT SURELY WILL PREVENT YOU FROM SORROW/UNHAPPINESS.
FINAL Chapter 3 Özlem, Mine, Cansu, Yiğit
We can actually affect our destinies say Stoics, but still we are depended on external necessities. Dealing with frustration is basically all about categorizing things in two groups: necessities and possibilities. If there is the smallest possibility, it is still in the area that you can chose to do whatever it takes to get the thing that you wanted. On the other hand, all the rules of nature such as natural disasters and death are in the necessities part and there is nothing that you can do about them. In order to sustain that peace in mind, people should accept the situation instead of denying it, because it would be very drudging to deny the situation and wishing to achieve the impossible. People have reasons to make that distinction and act accordingly, with sense. With that sense, we can analyze the situation and understand what will happen according to how we respond; as a result, we will be able to choose our attitude towards that situation and this will lead us to distinctive freedom. The metaphor dog with a leash is used to describe our condition. The leash is long enough for us to move and gaze around, but still not long enough to wander around and go anywhere we want: we are still tied up. A leashed dog might want to go wherever it wants, so do we, but since we are tied and we cannot do that, we should accept the conditions we are in and we should give in rather than opposing and being dragged around because we cannot change the fact that we’re tied. The annoyance due to frustration of not owning what they want leads people to have so many achievements, inventions, so at some level, it served for humanity’s improvement. Jolts of discomfort, anxiety, pain and outrage stimulates the energy in people’s minds. However, if we lose the peace inside us, these jolts would serve no purpose; which is why, according to Seneca, wisdom lies within realizing what we are capable of and how we can sustain calmness in our minds. This was why Seneca accepted his fate and withdrew from the palace when Nero's men knocked on the door. Maybe he should have protested. But he knew that he couldn't change anything even if he did protest. Therefore it is was useless to cry.
This philosophy of frustration leads to three interpretations of life. First: there is always a distinct possibility that we achieve what desire because we'll never know what Fortune will do next. She may grant us what we need. Therefore, it is always worthwhile to take risks. Second: Since the possibility that we'll be successful is low, we should be more reserved about expecting too much. It is no problem that we don't achieve extraordinary things as long as we are not frustrated. Raising expectations from life would lead us to dissappointments, which also might lead to unhappiness. the unhappiness would cause the person to become more individual and self-centered. This unhappiness due to lack of satisfaction would also prevent the person from coping with the unexpected and therefore drag him/her to a vicious circle. Third: Life is the sum of both of these two previous views. Expectations and realities should be balance with reason in order to archieve our reasonable desires while being frustrated at a minimum level. A person who has deep understanding of Seneca's views would prefer the third interpretation because both the first and the second lead to unhappiness either through dissappointment and anger or isolation.
MY COMMENTS
I have to say that what I appreciate about your work is your attempt to make Botton's ideas even more accessible. It seems in your attempts to work with his ideas, either knowingly or unknowingly you have mimicked his style of writing and tone. In this regard the piece is nicely unified. However, there are some sentence structure errors that take away from the work as a whole.
I would also offer a cautionary note. It is clear that the process that I requested be undertaken for this assignment was not engaged in. In fact it would have been impossible, as google pages were being sent to me as late as noon on Friday. We will engage in another assignment like this at another point in the year, and I will deduct major points for not following the process. If you have not figured this out, I more interested in you demonstrating your thinking rather than the end result- the answer. Answers are boring; thinking is interesting.
Now in regards to a grade. I feel that I am unable to award your work a grade in the WOW category. If you examine your rubric it asks for a creative approach to the response, and while your responses were decent they were not creative. Question... how do you generate a creative response... well if you are interested come and talk to me. To this end I feel that your blog entry deserves at 3/4 or an 8.5/10.
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