Episode #221 - Burn the Capitol

In the ancient Roman days, burning the capitol and killing one's father were considered the worst of crimes. Oddly, many Western countries are being faced with a similar criticism: is our culture and society a good one, or should we just rip everything to the ground? Some seem to think so. However, where does this motivation come from to burn one's own culture down? And why was it considered the most heinous crime? And should it still be considered so?

Episode Links

Episode Notes

·        Introduction

o   I was skimming through Epictetus’ discourses, as one does on a Friday night, and I found one of the foot notes very interesting

o   It was a comment that Epictetus made about burning the capitol

o   It was something like: if you are negligent in something, you just as well burn the capitol down and kill your father

o   Meaning: if you mess up the one thing that you have agency over, then that is the worst thing possible

o   You see, part of accepting that if you maximise your agency on the things within your control and detaching yourself from the outcome means is also the opposite

o   That is, if you DON’T maximise your agency, you must attach yourself to the most terrible outcome

o   Clearly, perfection isn’t real and it’s rare to ENTIRELY maximise your agency

o   So I slightly disagree with Epictetus’ absolutism on this, though he raises a very Stoic point

o   But that’s actually not what I wanted to talk about today

o   What I wanted to go over today is why burning the capitol and killing your father is the most heinous crimes

o   As it was back in the Roman days

o   This is a very relevant question today because in the West our society is very self-critical

o   Many saying that we should, in fact, burn down the West because we’re all inherently racists, bigots, usurpers, and just terrible people

o   So bear with me, there may be some triggering elements in this episode and as ever I’ll ask you to listen openly assuming that at the least I mean well