Washington Post-A reader reflect on Montaigne's essays

I found this article and wanted to share it:

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Of Montaigne: Straight Talk Goes Unbent Through Time's Prism
By John BrunsSpecial to The Washington PostMonday, November 8, 2004; Page C10
My father-in-law often speaks to Joan and me, though he has been gone for years. He was an inveterate writer of letters, composer of sermons and maker of notes. Even in the small things he left a record.
We still find his words, written in tiny, careful script on the backs of photographs, taped to the objects he left us and in the boxes of papers that remain. It's as if he's found a way to pop up and say hello now and then. In a dusty album there's a photograph of three little boys and their pet, circa 1911, when he was 9 years old. On the back of the photo, he'd written, in a child's hand, "Theodore, Ridgeway, me and the dog." At the bottom of a shoe box I found a snapshot of him 65 years later, with two little children -- my children. The three of them are staring at an overgrown shrub. On the back of the snapshot he'd written, "Teddy and Susannah and I search for raspberries, 1976."
My children have children of their own now. The years have gone by and I've been wondering how to speak to the little ones when they're grown. My newfound friend, Michel de Montaigne, whom I first encountered in Western Civ when I was 18, has come back to help me.
I had no use for Montaigne in college. His portrait revealed to me a severe-looking French guy in a ruffled collar, bald, with a pencil mustache. I thought his essays, full of Latin quotations and rarely to the point, were as boring and impenetrable as he seemed.
Forty years later, in aching awareness of time passing, I've taken another look at Montaigne's essays. "I have had no thought of serving either you or my own glory," he says, in an introductory note to the reader. His sole aim is to reveal himself honestly to his family and friends, "so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features of my habits and temperament, and by this means keep the knowledge they have had of me more complete and alive." In these few words he's suggested to me what I must do.
I've wondered lately how I could have missed so much about Montaigne in college. Perhaps I had a bad translation. More likely, I was just too young to appreciate him. When you're 18 there are activities more urgent than rumination.
Now I'm more patient, and things seem very different. Of course I couldn't handle Montaigne: I had no time to think. There would be a quiz, and I was trying to absorb every word, every paragraph and every quotation in such a way as to expeditiously complete my assigned reading before the Midway Inn, a few miles down the road, stopped serving beer.
It's not that I couldn't see the forest for the trees in that first reading, though I didn't. It's as if I marched purposefully through the forest, keeping my eyes on the path, and missed not only the forest but also the strange and wonderful creatures I might have seen from the trail if only I'd taken a few moments and looked around.
Montaigne writes about anything he pleases, large or small. He writes Of Smells; Of Prayers; Of The Art of Discussion; Of Cannibals; Of Glory. On and on he goes, to speak of women, thumbs, nakedness, cripples, liars and books. These topics don't seem to have been part of a grand design -- he appears to have just sat down and written about them as he felt the urge. Montaigne considers topics at his own pace; circles around them, pokes at them, goes where his curiosity leads. He speculates.
As I wrote that last paragraph I picked up my copy of the essays, turned to a random page and read this sentence, from his essay, "Of Drunkenness": "The pleasure we want to reckon on for the course of our life should occupy more space in it." In such observations lies much of what I love about Montaigne. Cannibals and drunkenness are simply tools for him, ways to get at the one real topic: Montaigne, the man, and how he should live.
When Montaigne writes he's not telling us what we should think, or what he claims to think. He's thinking. He's allowing us a peek at all the twists and turns of his thought, the quirks, the flaws, the flip-flops. He writes, "I may indeed contradict myself now and then; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict."
We're bombarded, as Montaigne must have been, by the exaggerations and lies of people seeking political favor, financial reward, the admiration of others. As it has ever been, many people are so thoroughly seduced by these treasures that without shame or apology they will say and do anything to attain them. By the time he wrote his essays Montaigne had said goodbye to all that. He craved straight talk, and he found it in candid observations about a host of small things.
Montaigne's essays were a substitute for Etienne de La Boetie, who had died, leaving Montaigne without a confidant. I try to keep that in mind when I read his essays: They're letters to a lost friend. When I read them, I'm the friend. I read them now and then, one per sitting, as if they'd just arrived in the mail, postmarked Chateau Montaigne, Bordeaux, 1580.
If you're very lucky you reach a point in life when you recognize, as Montaigne must have, that spin won't work forever; that no matter what you say and do the truth about you will become apparent to anyone who cares to reflect about you. My friends and family are well aware of my imperfections; they catch me in my exaggerations with ease. There seems no way but Montaigne's -- the way of candor and curiosity -- to be remembered well by the people I care about.
My grandchildren are tiny now, but as I write I can see them as young people, perhaps graduating from college, getting married, raising their own families, reading what I've written and remembering me. Or possibly, as has been my experience with Montaigne, rapport will come slowly. Some cold evening in their middle age, when no letters have come in the mail, perhaps a grandchild or two will sit by the fire and read something I've written.
In this way, the way of words and imagination, we'll cross time and space together.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Machiavellian Business

In regard to our last reading The Prince and Machiavelli, I have to say that I was somewhat put off by his writings during the first round of reading his discourse. It was with my second reading that I started putting the pieces together and appreciating at least some of his thoughts. When I first opened the book, I thought he appeared tyrannical and as cold as metal. During the second reading I resisted putting more into his words than what was already there.
Considering yesterday’s class and my team’s assignment about building a business utilizing the Machiavellian perspective, I wanted to think about it a little further. Would the Machiavelli approach work in building a business? He does have some good advice and makes valid observations. He does use strategy void of any morality or ethics in advising how to lead and/or move up the ladder. Out of curiosity I googled “Machiavellian Business” and found an amazing amount of ideas and concepts that incorporates his strategy and/or makes comparisons. For instance it is quite common for the third generation of any family business to make decisions which results in the folding of the company. Machiavelli states something very similar when discussing hereditary principalities, “From cobbler to cobbler it is success that kills the family business. The more successful each generation is, the less each one will want to work”. It may be the 3rd generation is spoiled, pampered and weak thus lacks the fortitude to work and succeed. In order to get a business loan one is required to formulate a business plan which requires product and consumer knowledge. In chapter 14 of his discourse, Machiavelli recommends preparation by “thinking and doing”, “spare no effort to become acquainted” with your territory (product).
In regard to moving up the ladder in the corporate world, Machiavelli mentions hard work in chapter 8, “If you consider Agathocles’s bold achievements, you will not find much that can be attributed to luck; for as I have said, he did not come to power because he had help from above, but because he worked his way up from below, climbing rank to rank…." Modern businesses do not engage themselves with the moral or ethic values of employees or customers nor do they focus on the general well-being of the community. And they usually pass on the unpleasant duties to insubordinates such as Machiavelli suggests in Chapter 19: Rulers should delegate responsibility for unpopular actions, while taking personal responsibility for those that will win favor.
Truly, there are many quotes and ideas that Machiavelli discussed that could be used in initiating a business plan or in operating a modern day business. For that matter, I wonder if this discourse is required reading for military officers in training, sort of like the “Art of War” by an Asian author that fellow students were talking about yesterday.

Morals, Reason and Ayn Rand

I spent a portion of this last weekend thinking about Epictetus and Epicurus and how they attempted (& succeeded) in engaging their peers and later generations in pondering life, morality, death, reason etc. While they are of no fault, I believe that societies have used the idea of a moral code to provide a checklist of “you ought not do” or “shall nots”. Like so many other things, teaching morality has been taught using negative concepts. As long as you don’t commit any of the acts on the list, then you’re okay. Anything else goes. For true success, a means needs to be readily available in order to choose the best course of action and this requires a positive concept in regard to morality. To teach and practice good moral conduct/values should be a positive way of being and of living a life. A moral code shouldn’t be a heavy weight on one’s shoulders but an affirming, guiding principle that assists in showing the way; it should be like a beacon of light. And one should form a habit of referring to his/her moral code in present tense. I believe to keep in all current and present in one’s mind as in “I am honorable” is in itself a meditative practice of sorts.
Once the concept of moral conduct becomes ingrained it sets forth a pattern of ethical conduct. While there are indeed some ethical and moral concepts common to all people, it may be that still other ways and means of conduct are particular to each individual in each time and place. By careful examination of one’s nature and experiences, one can ultimately recognize and cultivates an ethical goal which suits his needs.
The following quote by Ayn Rand is applies:
Man’s essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—his only means of gaining knowledge---
In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.
Further on she writes:
The virtue of rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action…It means a commitment to the principle that all of one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought.
It’s true that one either act on reason or whim. Personally, I’ve done both and do believe that the times I acted on whim and everything turned out okay was a struck of luck on my part. Most of the time the action based on whim took up a lot of valuable time and put me off my planned path. Unfortunately, it sometimes took years to get back to what I believe matters.
One important example of using your own rationale, wisdom or whatever you want to call it concerns medical advice and/or decisions. Logic told me a few years ago that my thyroid was malfunctioning even though my doctor told me everything was fine. It was not. I had a diseased thyroid and it really needed to come out. How did I find this out? By reading medical books and paying attention to what my body was telling me. So although a physician stated one thing, I used my own mind and reason to figure out what was wrong. It went to another doctor who valued my intuitiveness and persistence.

After my Dad died I did a lot of reading. One of the books that I found was by Helen Keller, titled "Bereaved". In it she wrote a lot of inspirational quotes, entries etc about coping with lose. I found two especially moving and seemed to fit in with AOL. They are as follows:

From Bereaved by Helen Keller (1929), “We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world—the company of those who have know suffering. When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance, and, inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy, their understanding.”
“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the
world, So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”

According to Seneca, it is in serving others that we find our deepest satisfaction and fulfillment. Perhaps it is while we serve others that we discover our truest self. However you look at it, one does have a tendency to forget their own heartache and worries, when concentration is on others.

This from Plutarch: “Diogenes, the cynic, when a little before death, he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asking whether anything ailed him, answered: ‘Nothing, sir, only one brother anticipates another: Sleep before ‘death’”. It is well to look upon Death in this friendly, everyday way. Sleep we welcome every night, knowing from experience that there is nothing to fear. Then why should we fear the coming our other Brother—Death?”

While I am still contemplating my personal AOL I know that the gift of books will be included somehow. Personally, I love to read and I would encourage anyone and everyone to take up the book for entertainment, self-education, and it's a great stress-reliever.

I really enjoyed reading about Seneca in The Practice of Virtue, by Jennifer Welchman and The Stoic Art of Living by Tom Morris. That's what I did this weekend.

While the Epicureans considered “pleasures or the pleasant life” the goal of life, the Stoics took a considerably different view. The work it took to cultivate oneself to live in line with nature and the acceptance of things as they are was considered a character building pursuit. For this reason, I have selected the first quote, “Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor what they seem to be. They are what they are”. Not only does it mean to see things at face value but also advises not to read into life, people, and situations anything that isn’t there. In order to achieve this one would need to cultivate mastery over emotions and thoughts in order to discipline the mind. To sharpen and practice one’s reasoning skill is to a Stoic one of his greatest freedoms.
The second quote, “Don’t try to make your own rules. Conduct yourself in all matters, grand and public or small and domestic, in accordance with the laws of nature…When you carry out your tasks…do so—to the best of your ability—in harmony with nature…” This shows that it is useless to worry about what cannot be controlled. The best that can be done is to strive to live at peace with one’s environment and not worry about what cannot be controlled but concentrate on what can be controlled. For instance, death to a Stoic holds nothing to fear. Simply put, it cannot be controlled and it is inevitable. It would be best to relinquish this fear as a smaller insignificant aspect of life and concentrate on matters related to honor, duty and lifting up one’s self to a higher quality.
While in present day, someone who is labeled Stoic is usually thought of as someone unaffected by emotion (a stiff upper lip); a truer definition would be one who finds true happiness by cultivating “goodness” in one’s life.