Old wisdom that hits hard
Hello. Good morning, everyone. Back with another voice of today, the moral saint Piblios Cyrus. You won't believe him. You won't know who he is.
Speaker 1:He's a he's a Roman, hold on. He was a Roman Latin writer. Cyrille actually. But apparently he was one of the best and the wisest man to live in Rome. So I'm gonna share some of his sayings with you and see if they if they land basically.
Speaker 1:First one, to dispute with a drunkard is to debate with an empty house. That's true, ain't it? No point debating with people who are drunk. Just walk away. No point fighting.
Speaker 1:No point arguing. Next one. A trifling rumor may cause a great calamity. That's true. Chinese whispers job.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is a good one. This is a, this is all of you trying to do this. To do two things at once is to do neither. Some of you are trying to lose fat at the same time and get super strong. You know, some of you are trying to do, you know, be able to run a marathon, but also like lift loads of weights.
Speaker 1:Like, you're trying to do optimize two things. So you might as well optimize for one main thing, primary goal, get focused on that, then move on after that. Don't try and do two things. A hasty judgment is the first step in recantation. Even when we get what we wish, it's not ours.
Speaker 1:Oh. Even when we get what we wish, it is not ours. What do you think about that one? We are interested in others when we they are interested in us. We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
Speaker 1:Maybe that goes with dating. If you're interested in that you're interested in them, if they're interested in you. Something now you can use there. Do not find your happiness in another sorrow. That's a good one.
Speaker 1:A lot of people do this, compare themselves and look at someone doing worse off and go, yeah, at least I'm not them. I think it's called golden Freud in German. Be not blind to a friend's faults nor hate them for them. This important one, because when you judge people for their faults, that's actually something I've been thinking about recently as well. If you judge someone for one of the two things you think is a fault in them and then you just basically ruin their character because they're like they do one or two things you don't agree with, that's not good because if you look at your own fault you've got loads.
Speaker 1:You should never hate someone for their faults but if you just point them out in the right way you probably can help them. And if they're willing to see them and work on it, that's the best thing you can get out of someone. So definitely don't hate someone for some one or two faults, everyone's got a fault. Even you listening, mad at it. Adversity shows whether we have friends or only the shadows of friends.
Speaker 1:Very true, Pibilus. So what is it, a friend in need is a friend indeed. Do your friends show up for you when you need them the most is the question. That's probably the way, the only way to find out if you're true friends isn't it? Because friendship is basically helping someone out for no gain of yourself.
Speaker 1:Just because you purely just like them, you love them. There can be no alliance between love and fear. There is no love and fear. Fear destroys love 100%. Love is the source of an idle anxiety.
Speaker 1:Love is the source of an idle anxiety. I don't know. Time not the will can put an end to love. Yeah, maybe. We all seek to know whether we shall be rich but no one asks whether he shall be good.
Speaker 1:Everyone's fame, not Piblius, he's a good man. The plainer the table, the more wholesome the food. Stick to the basics like boiled eggs. We should not credit the utterances of an angry spirit. Yeah, a wise man rules his passions, a fool obeys them.
Speaker 1:So passion would be like an emotional or impression or, some kind of desire. So if you're just ruled by your desires, which aren't yours by the way, your desires are picked off by others. You desire stuff others desire, and if you just rule by them, then you're a fool. Basically, you're not even not even got you don't got free will. You're basically just a machine.
Speaker 1:To receive a favor is to pawn your freedom. Robert Greene speaks of this in laws of 48 laws of power. Always despise the free lunch. Someone gives something to you for free, expect something back from it. You don't think about it.
Speaker 1:There's something has to be back for it. You lose freedom accepting favors, freebies. Money is worth something when good sense disperses it. Damn right it's worth something when good sense disperses it. Helps a lot, actually does good, actually does productive stuff.
Speaker 1:Money today is bollocks. It's not it's not productive. It goes into the financial markets and sucked out. Back in the day in the Germans Bank, there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons why Germany is more of an industrial nation, but a lot of the German money is lend is lended out by their banks, like small banks, and they blended businesses for production. So the money's being used to produce something.
Speaker 1:I think something ridiculous like 70% of bank lending in The UK goes to mortgages. So that's not really productive because the price goes up and up and up. It's not really going back in the economy's been sucked out. In the presence of a good man anger is speedily cooled. In the presence of a good man or human anger is speedily cooled.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe. Make your beloved angry if you wish him to love you. Pibulus, you player. Probably true as well. You think it's loveable but it's not.
Speaker 1:Consult your conscience rather than popular opinion. Yep. Consider what you ought to say and not you think. That's gonna keep you out trouble. You can think differently to people but you probably want to say the status quo in your job and all I knew, obviously.
Speaker 1:You will gain your point better by moderation and anger 100%. Many receive advice through profit from it. That's brilliant. Even back two thousand years ago. Everybody can give you the best advice in the world.
Speaker 1:You can have all the advice. You can get it direct in your face every single day. But how many people actually action good advice? For Chertler, I can give you all the best advice in the world. Dean can, all coaches Kern, I think I've had really good advice.
Speaker 1:But if you don't action from it, never profit from it. So maybe we don't lack advice in this world or from our friends and family, we just don't take action from it. I think we're beyond it. The gain acquired at the expense of reputation should be counted a loss. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. The gain acquired at the expense of reputation should be counted as a loss. Yeah. So if you gain something by ruining your character, count as a loss.
Speaker 1:If you lose fat at the expense of your own reputation to yourself, really, body, your rep your respect for yourself, that's a loss. You you might lost weight, but you've done it in an aggressive extreme way, you know it's not good mental health, you're gonna rebound. That's a loss. You don't gain that. You've got a big loss.
Speaker 1:The god the gods methinks must laugh when a prosperous man puts up a prayer. Oh, fuck. If any religious people listening, you can ignore that one. It's probably true though. Thoughts and prayers to the NHS, that didn't do much to it.
Speaker 1:Mental pain is harder to bear than corporeal. I suppose corporeal means physical pain. Mental pain is definitely harder. Even Edith Eager said that, you know, when she was in Auschwitz. So the mental prison is worse than the physical prison.
Speaker 1:That's nuts. The courage of the soul is depends upon the wisdom of the general. Yeah. The less immoral the less immortal desires the less he needs. Yeah, obviously.
Speaker 1:But I suppose we're always needing something, aren't we? We're always desiring more and more, then you're on a treadmill. Hedonic treadmill never stops. And you think, why am I not happy? Because every time you achieve something or gain something you wanted before, you want more.
Speaker 1:And you never stop. You think it's cool to say it. You think it's cool to be like, yeah, what's the next thing? Next thing. Next thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've done good, Deb, but what's next? Yeah, yeah, I've achieved this, but what's next? What's next? Never sitting on it going, you know, I've achieved something really good. Let me sit in there for a bit.
Speaker 1:No. So I was, what's next? You're thinking it's a cool thing to say. It's not stupid. How sad his fear to grows old through anxiety.
Speaker 1:No. Anxiety, know, the stoics and back in this day, they say anxiety is really, really pointless to have. I mean, of something in the future has not happened yet and most of the times it never plays out as bad as you think. They're like, what are you doing? The master is a slave when he fears whom he rules.
Speaker 1:The master is a slave when he fears whom he rules. Yeah. And man's life is a loan not a gift. That's true as well. Probably both.
Speaker 1:A gifted loan. Nice. That's it really. That's some sayings from a guy called Piblios Cyrus Apani. He was like a really, you probably heard of Cicero maybe, but he was a guy of wisdom aphorisms back in Roman times.
Speaker 1:This is probably the condensed version of all the wisdom from Rome at the time when he was born eighty five BC and died forty three BC. So this is kind of, if you think about it, the accumulation of wisdom through that time and it's, it, the nuts thing is, it's this it hits home because these types of these types of wisdoms and truths are timeless. We think we're different. We think we're so different. We're not.
Speaker 1:Why do these make sense? These were written two thousand years ago. Why do they hit you hard and go yes, bang on. Because human nature doesn't really change, if anything will get worse. But like he says, many receive advice, few profit from it.
Speaker 1:Many receive the same advice century after century after century through the families and nothing gets passed down, gets passed on written, no one actually takes it, gets worse. So take some of the advice from her and the main one the moderation one as well, take that advice. And if you live a moderate lifestyle, you will have you will know like so Epictetus is quote, it's my favorite quote of all time. Fortify yourself with moderation, it's an impenetrable fortress. So fortify yourself with moderation, it's an impenetrable fortress.
Speaker 1:Imagine, everything you did was in moderation, your desires for stuff, even going up doing stuff for too much fun, and then, you know, eat in moderation and even in like negative thinking, all this stuff. If you're just moderate and all this stuff, that is a fortress. Nothing is taking you too far left or too far right. You're just a solid central fortress and moderation is that. So that advice, if you could actually just take that on today, you live a much still you'll a much stiller day and overall much still life.
Speaker 1:Hope you enjoyed it. Some of you don't care who Piblius is. He's long gone, but he's a good man, it seems. And he looks a bit nuts though from his paintings. They're all curly beards as well.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's just for show. But live one day at a time, obviously. Get you one big thing done, and I'll speak to you all tomorrow.
