To borrow from Robert Heinlein’s title, in 2020, amid competing COVID concerns and fears, rioting and mayhem in our streets, and complete animus and inertia among our political leaders and parties, we all seem to be Strangers in a Strange Land. It appears to many that the societal bonds that ensure our very survival are crumbling foundationally.
Pestilence, rancor and revolution are not unique to our current time. To students of history, events such as these are akin to a ever repeating film reel. That is why the preservation of our past is so vital to the maintenance of our sanity through our todays and tomorrows. Understanding nurtures hopefulness.
As somewhat of an amateur historian, in times such as these, I am enticed to delve into the realities of our past in an effort to better comprehend their similarities with what appears to be the novelty of our now. This week I found refuge in the words of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106BCE – 43BCE), Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar and writer. Cicero unsuccessfully attempted to uphold republican principles in the final civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic. His writings include books of rhetoric, orations, philosophical and political treatises and letters.
Cicero was not involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, but was outspoken in his disapproval of Caesar’s dictatorship. In the bloody aftermath for power following Caesar’s death, Cicero was ultimately sought for execution, captured and killed.
Cicero’s importance in the history of philosophy is as a transmitter of Greek thought. In the course of this role he gave Rome and the western world its philosophical vocabulary.
In his last book De Officiis (On Duties/Moral Obligations) he explains why societies join together in bonds to ensure their own survival. He sets forth an early social contract theory on the natural tendency of people to fight for survival by organizing into public assemblies to provide for themselves and the common good and asserts that “we are not born for ourselves alone.” I find much comfort in the relevancy and infallibility of Cicero’s words as an embraceable ideal for today’s society; more than two thousand years after their fashioning they ring with the ageless truth that we are more alike than we are different.
First of all, Nature has endowed every species of living creature with the instinct of self-preservation, of avoiding what seems likely to cause injury to life or limb, and of procuring and providing everything needful of life – food, shelter, and the like. A common property of all creatures is also the reproductive instinct (the purpose of which is the propagation of the species) and also a certain amount of concern for their offspring. But the most marked difference between man and beast is this: the beast, just as far as it is moved by senses and with little perception of past or future, adapts itself to that alone which is present at the moment; while man – because he is endowed with reason, by which he comprehends the chain of consequences, perceives the cause of things, understands the relation of cause to effect and of effect to cause, draws analogies, and connects and associates the present and the future—easily surveys the course of his whole life and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct of the strangely tender love for his offspring. She also prompts men to meet in companies, to form public assemblies and to take part in them themselves; and she further dictates, as a consequence of this, the effort on man’s part to provide a store of things that minister to his comforts and his wants–and not for himself alone, but for his wife and children and the others whom he holds dear and for whom he ought to provide; and this responsibility also stimulates his courage and makes it stronger for the active duties of life. Above all, the search after truth and its eager pursuit are peculiar to man. And so, when we have leisure from the demands of business cares, we are eager to see, to hear, to learn something new, and we esteem a desire to know the secrets or wonders of creation as indispensable to a happy life. Thus we come to understand that what is true, simple, and genuine appeals most strongly to a man’s nature. To this passion for discovering truth there is added a hungering, as it were, for independence, so that a mind well-molded by Nature is unwilling to be subject to anybody save one who give rules of conduct or is a teacher of truth or who, for the general good, rules according to justice and law. From this attitude come greatness of soul and a sense of superiority to worldly conditions.
But since, as Plato has admirably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims a share of our being, and our friends a share; and since, as the Stoics hold, everything that the earth produced is created for man’s use; and as men, too are born for the sake of men, that they may be able mutually to help one another; in this direction we ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry, and our talents to cement human society more closely together, man to man. (person to person.)
Let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.
–John F. Kennedy
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque