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A review by bobbuildsbooks
On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long If You Know How to Use It by Lucius Annaeus Seneca
2.0
Ok I can't deal anymore. I stopped reading at page 26.
I liked Seneca's previous work of compiled letters on "How to Die", which was incredibly insightful and eye opening.
But this current letter I'm on is just so terrible and makes me resent him. Stoicsicm is great and all but everything has an extreme end to it and this is it. He's so incredibly and blatantly biased towards philosophy and trashes every other subject, including history. He literally states that the terrors of History should not be learnt by the people, lest people try to outdo the terrors. What even the heck??? Lol a stoic is actively condoning ignorance?
Then he throws so much shade at the most mundane of things that don't mean anything at all, like how people who look forward to certain events are trashy because between now and then it's just gaps that they spend looking forward to the future and hence wasting the "longer" duration of time VS the actual event which only lasts for a few fleeting moments max. Gee Seneca, you must be so fun at parties.
Perhaps I'm just not in the right frame of mind to read Seneca the extreme stoic. I'm not saying he is trash. He is incredibly intelligent and dedicated, far beyond most humans. He has extremely valuable insights, especially on death. I just don't know if I would ever be so dedicated as to let my significant other kill herself for me lmfao.
I will come back to this book when I am in a more appropriate state of mind to filter out his gems from this vat of extreme cynic nonsense.
Peace out
I liked Seneca's previous work of compiled letters on "How to Die", which was incredibly insightful and eye opening.
But this current letter I'm on is just so terrible and makes me resent him. Stoicsicm is great and all but everything has an extreme end to it and this is it. He's so incredibly and blatantly biased towards philosophy and trashes every other subject, including history. He literally states that the terrors of History should not be learnt by the people, lest people try to outdo the terrors. What even the heck??? Lol a stoic is actively condoning ignorance?
Then he throws so much shade at the most mundane of things that don't mean anything at all, like how people who look forward to certain events are trashy because between now and then it's just gaps that they spend looking forward to the future and hence wasting the "longer" duration of time VS the actual event which only lasts for a few fleeting moments max. Gee Seneca, you must be so fun at parties.
Perhaps I'm just not in the right frame of mind to read Seneca the extreme stoic. I'm not saying he is trash. He is incredibly intelligent and dedicated, far beyond most humans. He has extremely valuable insights, especially on death. I just don't know if I would ever be so dedicated as to let my significant other kill herself for me lmfao.
I will come back to this book when I am in a more appropriate state of mind to filter out his gems from this vat of extreme cynic nonsense.
Peace out