Seneca on internet rage
/Seneca was a Stoic philosopher and teacher most famous, in the former role, for his Letters on Stoic philosophy and, in his latter role, as the personal tutor to Nero. Talk about wayward pupils. The following comes from Book III of his treatise De Ira (On Anger) in James Romm’s translation for Princeton UP, published as How to Keep Your Cool:
“[Y]our anger is a kind of madness: because you set a huge price on worthless things.”
Look now! Let’s examine other slights: food, and drink, and the elegance people work at for the sake of these; insulting words; gestures that don’t convey enough honor; stubborn beasts of burden and tardy slaves; suspicions and dark interpretations of someone else’s words, which make the gift of human speech into one of nature’s many injuries—believe me, these things are not serious, though we get seriously heated over them. They’re the sort of things that send young boys into fights and brawls. We pursue them so gravely, yet they hold nothing weighty or great. That’s why I tell you that your anger is a kind of madness: because you set a huge price on worthless things.
Years ago, in the early days of this blog, I shared a passage from another great ancient thinker, St Augustine of Hippo, that seemed to describe internet trolls 1600 years before the fact. Let us add this bit of Stoic insight to that file. As an acquaintance wrote to me after I rediscovered and shared this line yesterday, it’s remarkable how much of people’s behavior and reasoning on the internet can be explained by Stoic teaching on how unchecked passions over piddling things warp one’s reason.
James Romm, by the way, is also the author of Dying Every Day, an excellent book on Seneca, his relationship with his most famous student, and the way that relationship and the seeming failure of Seneca to decisively shape Nero has dogged his posthumous reputation.
