Philosphy vs. Human Nature: Handbook part 2

The philosophical text, Handbook of Epictetus has very descriptive segments that talk about human nature, just as it is. This text reflects in many ways, how human beings are and what most of them seek to achieve in life.

In this second part of my reading, I found the following quote “Let death and exile and everything that is terrible, appear before your eyes every day, especially death; and you will never have anything contemptible in your thoughts or crave anything excessively.”(21) This segment is closely related to Slaughter House-Five. Billy saw many time what how his death would be, as well as many painful experiences that he would live in his “future” Because he know all of this things so well, he wasn’t as scared as a normal person would be, and he wasn’t also as needy as the people around him. He was an independent being, and he knew that someday it would all be over, so he didn’t wish for anything else of what he had. For me, this is the one of the secrets of life. Being able to know that the only thing you really need is your present, you will never crave for the future. And, for what do you want the future? You are never sure of the future and you never know where it will lead you. That is people should enjoy each moment as if it were the last one, so that they live life by what it is and not by what it will be.

The next citation that stood out to me was this one, “Then what place, will I have in the city? – The one you can have by preserving your own trustworthiness and self respect.”(24) Humanity is always striving for power and recognition. When they find an opportunity to become important, they will never let it pass bye. Billy Pilgrim never lost his self respect, and stood up for his beliefs, even though society scolded him for it and treated him as insane. This quote also reminded me of the novel, Clockwork Orange. In this book, the utopia that is trying to be implemented by the government, wants a perfect society without criminals. The government leaves Alex, completely defend less, destroying his self respect, so that he can be an exemplary citizen of their society. He becomes a public figure and the media is after everything he does, but he has no dignity whatsoever.

Finally, I found the following citation, “Just you consider, as a human being, what sort of thing it is; then inspect your own nature and weather you can bear it.”(29) In this segment, what I saw was clearly a deep relation with Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver despites his own race, which is the human race, and he prefers to be a slave to horses than being at the top of human society. Gulliver can’t bear humans and he is one. In a way, he is right, because humanity can be pretty awful with each other and we have harmed the world in many ways. In a sense its better to live with horses than to live with humans.