Blue_Lux said:

I'm sorry Enlil, I actually meant that little poetic trick as a real statement.

I'm thinking most here are familiar with the events surrounding Seneca's death. I meant that to say that Nero may have thought he was getting rid of those who plotted to kill him, including by making Seneca commit suicide, but he was to die almost the same death, in a tortuous way, only a couple years later. I meant that to say... I thought it would be clearer.

You may be able to put down philosophy, as the republicans and religious acolytes desire, but it will be the source of your demise. I mean this to say... It will be the destruction of a philosophical and historical education containing Classical ideas that leads to the downfall of people, and that means failed government, and opportunities for tyranny. My point is that Trump is a direct threat not only to democracy but the entire standard of our history, which has been bequeathed to us by those whom I cite, many in recent past but nonetheless I give recognition to those in the far past, as too few do or even consider regularly.

Quote:

The Roman historian Tacitus memorialized Seneca’s death in his historical account of those times, Annals of Imperial Rome. When Nero forbad Seneca from making a will for his extensive estate, the philosopher proclaimed his legacy would not be material things but would be the image of the life (imago vitae suae) that he had lived. Seneca espoused a virtuous way of living and a dignified way of dying. He urged others to fortify themselves with a philosophy of life. Seneca personified virtus (from Latin vir, “man,” and carrying connotations of valor, courage, and character) when faced with death. In his youth, he had struggled with suicidal ideation but realized that the effect his death would have on his family would be catastrophic and so chose to live (epigraph). In his Moral Epistles to Lucilius, Seneca writes about leaving life contentedly. He wrote that every man ought to make his life acceptable to others but that his death ought to be acceptable to himself alone. He went on to write that “the eternal law has done nothing better for us than this: it has given us one entrance to life, but many exits.”

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Compare the death of Nero with the death of Seneca. It is said the look on Nero's face, dead as a doornail, was utterly horrifying.

Seneca truly has the last laugh, as with Socrates and Cicero. I'm saying the final say, here, is with philosophy and reinforcing a spirit of seeking to understand more about the world, and make the world bigger and brighter rather than constricted and contrived.

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Blue_Lux said:

There should be a maximum cap on net worth far below what many people already have.

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