Growing In Goodness

The 6 Mistakes of Man According to Cicero

9/30/2019

One of the many interesting things attributed to the Roman statesman Cicero is a fragment called "The Six Mistakes of Man." It isn't entirely clear whether he actually wrote it, but since I'm a fan of all things Ciceronian, I thought it would nonetheless make for an interesting blog post in my According to Cicero series.

Studying the Six Mistakes is a good idea since regardless of authorship, they are perennially applicable. Life can be so much easier of we don't sabotage ourselves with unnecessary errors!

According to Cicero the six mistakes that people seem to keep making throughout history are:

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Why Ask Questions?

8/28/2019

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August 2019 marks Common Sense Ethics' 6th birthday! In honor of the blog turning 6, I will be launching a Socratic Dialog on the ideal government on my YouTube channel some time in the coming months.

Today's guest post about Socrates is contributed by my friend Winton Bates. Winton has a background in economics. He writes about the good society, psychology, philosophy, and other topics at his website Freedom and Flourishing:

When I started blogging, about a decade ago, I decided that the title of each article would be a question. As I saw it, the response to each question would lead to further questions. It also prompts me to reconsider whether I am answering the right question.

I have found it is not easy to ask questions that get to the heart of an issue if you don’t know much about it. I have often revised questions in the middle of writing an article as I have learned more about the subject matter.

A friend made the comment that the approach I had adopted on my blog was somewhat Socratic. I doubted whether that was so, but I knew little about Socrates. I decided that it was time I learned more about him.

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Character Education is Up to Parents, Not Schools

7/31/2019

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Albert Einstein notably said that, “Most people think that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong. It is character.” Einstein should know, because it was at his urging that Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the Manhattan Project, which would develop the world’s first atomic bomb. Though he was not personally involved in the Manhattan Project, it was a decision which Einstein regretted his entire life – he was horrified by having contributed to the destruction that the bomb made possible.

In my estimation, we are typically educated so that we will get into the right college and be successful monetarily. Far less emphasis is placed on developing a strong moral character, which is often only an afterthought. If intellectual achievement outpaces the development of moral character, we get a population of people bent on being smart and successful but not much concerned about the needs of others.

How does someone develop moral character? I'll give you a hint; not in school. The largest scientific study conducted on the subject concluded that school-wide character education programs produce no improvements in student behavior or academic performance. Moral character develops in the family and through exposure to various life experiences. Parents therefore need to be intentional about character education for their children, and in this post, I’ll give some tips for how to do it.

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What the Game of Thrones Ending Really Means

6/2/2019

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Some tyrants come as liberators. That is the final twist in Game of Thrones, a show known for it's shocking plot twists. This is what George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is ultimately about; what war really does to people, the difficultly of just rule, the inability to overcome personal moral failings, and the cyclical nature of tyranny.

Game of Thrones, the show based on the Song of Ice and Fire novels, is a bit more about putting spectacle over story. But Queen Daenerys as the final villain, rather than Cersei or the Night King, is George R. R. Martin's surprise ending, make no mistake about it. Viewers were naturally horrified to watch a sympathetic character turn bad, but that's the whole point! We were tricked in order to get us to understand the cruelty and horror of war by watching a character we knew and maybe liked become a tyrant.

This isn't just my hot take on it, either. George R. R. Martin was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. He acknowledges that the perception of war as something glorious is a problem. Though not a radical pacifist, he states in this interesting clip that his goal with A Song of Ice and Fire, is to show the true cost of war.

Violence under the guise of "breaking the wheel," promoting democracy, human rights, and most other justifications is still abominable. That is why we should be looking for non-violent solutions to problems rather than perpetually glorifying war and violent conflict.

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Why Cicero Merits Renewed Attention

5/11/2019

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Justice and liberty have no better spokesman than Cicero.

Cicero was a Roman Senator whose writings, as Historian Edward Gibbon put it, “breathed the spirit of freedom.” Particularly influential was his idea of natural law, echoed by John Locke and other enlightenment thinkers: Human nature included reason, which could discover justice, which was the basis of law. Voltaire said “He taught us how to think.”

Cicero stayed loyal to the Roman Republic against Julius Caesar. Marc Antony had him murdered for his principles, and his head and hands were nailed to the Senate speaker’s podium as a warning to others, making him a model of resistance against tyranny to America’s revolutionary leaders.

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38 Life Lessons in 38 Years

4/13/2019

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I just celebrated my birthday, so I thought it would be a fun change of pace to write a post about what I have learned in almost 4 decades of life.

I don't want this to read as a list of regrets. Really a more positive take is that I'm hoping these 38 life lessons can help others!

1. Don't Waste So Much Time

Speaking of regrets, this is my biggest one. I wish I had spent more time on languages, musical instruments, and generally applying myself than on wasting time with friends, watching TV, etc. Life is short. Use your time wisely. You'll have less time when you start working, and even less for quite a while if you have children!

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Tranquility Parenting - Stoicism for Parents - Book Review & Video

3/31/2019

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Tranquility Parenting: A Guide to Staying Calm, Mindful and Engaged, a just released book by Brittany Polat, offers lots of practical help and straightforward ways to overcome parenting challenges by implementing principles from Stoic philosophy within the family. I've been using some of the thoughtful techniques from the book already.

Her mantra for helping kids and parents deal with frustrations is "Don't get upset, just solve the problem." I think this is excellent advice for parents. Brittany expands on this by helping us to re-frame our value judgments in Stoic context. For example, rather than thinking "My kids are fighting, I can't believe I have to deal with this again," we should just drop the value judgement at the end of the sentence.

When we look at the situation in a factually oriented way, we think the same thing, "My kids are fighting," but minus the negativity. Then we are better able to deal calmly with the problem at hand. With practice, we can implement this advice over and over to make our lives as parents easier...

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Parents! Cut Yourselves a Break

2/16/2019

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Welcome Holly Hamilton-Bleakley, a philosophy professor and mother of six, to my YouTube channel! Holly is the author of the wonderful blog, Philosophy For Parents.
Here she shares wisdom gleaned from 20 years of motherhood and her extensive knowledge of philosophy.

We discuss:

The difficulty of becoming a parent for the first time.
How to best handle the challenges of parenthood.
The strengths and virtues necessary for being a good parent.
How to slow down and cut yourself a break when you have little kids.
Dealing with the feelings of impermanence that parenting brings.
How the issue of raising children is ignored by most Western philosophers, and more.

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Why Is Politics so Divisive?

1/26/2019

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"Socrates was about getting to the bottom of an argument. About not giving up on it. About facing his own ignorance and confronting his own prejudices. Most of all, he was about having a real conversation." - Classicist Mary Beard

I'm just going to come out and say it. Contemporary politics is unbearable, petty and divisive. So how did things get this way? Why has the political sphere become so divsive in recent years? I'll take a stab answering that question here.

I am optimistic that there will be a return to a more Socratic way of doing things; a return to some sembalance of civility and reason. Perhaps if we are willing to look critically at why things have gotten so divisive, we may find some solutions to bring the sanity back to politics.

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The Philosophy That Could Save Humanity

12/29/2018

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Most of what we know about ethics is wrong, and unless we get our act together soon, humanity is doomed. That is, according to The Zombies (On Morality), a just released book by Josh Bachynski, which I've had the pleasure of reading, reviewing, and discussing on my YouTube Channel (see the video at the end of the post). Our lack of appropriate ethics is the basis of all of our problems. Essentially we are infected with a virus which sabotages every society that we try.

The problem, in Josh's estimation, lies with people imposing what he calls "objective-prescriptive," moral beliefs on others, when doing so may be sub-optimal for them. If the essence of morality is goodness, then any sub-optimality may be immoral for the person imposed upon. His argument is about maximizing what is ideal for each person. Nothing matters but the maximal epitome of what's positive and ideal.

To be more precise, he calls his system inter subjective-predictive morality or ISPM for short. ISPM is about giving each person what is morally ideal for them based on what they want, based on fact, rather than offering generalizations about what is right for everyone or what everyone should do, even if it isn't evident. Provided they aren't hurting someone else, there is no self-evident justification from barring someone from their best end good or from living their most valuable life.

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<<Previous

The 6 Mistakes of Man According to Cicero

Why Ask Questions?

Character Education is Up to Parents, Not Schools

What the Game of Thrones Ending Really Means

Why Cicero Merits Renewed Attention

38 Life Lessons in 38 Years

Tranquility Parenting - Stoicism for Parents - Book Review & Video

Parents! Cut Yourselves a Break

Why Is Politics so Divisive?

The Philosophy That Could Save Humanity

Growing in Goodness

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