New Acropolis The art of living, according to Epictetus Professor Lúcia Helena Galvão Not sure if you are aware about the order of what is going to happen today. Now we have this little lecture, in a little while a panel with several participants, and later, at 7pm our director's talk about coexistence. The idea was that before we approach this theme which is the central theme of our philosophy meeting this year, of our philosophy day, we deal with a theme that is almost a prerequisite. Because coexisting, clearly, I don't have to go into a lot of Latin
etymologies for you to know that it comes from living. It's hard for us to make one without first having a concern for this aspect of living Which is a form of coexistence, with ourselves. So we'll have a little approach where we are going to talk about this art of living, as a presupposition, as a precondition for well-coexisting. I mean, first of all you live with yourself and for that it is necessary that you have some knowledge of yourself. Establish a relationship. Do not be empty. Related to this subject, just to illustrate, because, of course, there
is vast material on this subject within philosophy; there is nothing more related to philosophy than life, they both serve each other. So, I made a selection based on a book. Obviously, some of you who already know me will say: Here she comes recommending out-of-print book. This one is out of print too. It's not my fault. It is "The art of Living", by Epictetus, a stoic philosopher. A wonderful book! It seems there is a direct relationship between wonderful books and books that don't get reissued. It has been out of print for some time maybe you can
find it in a secondhand bookstore but it's a gem. At some point, we will be able to bring this book back into bookstores. It is one of the most interesting works that we have on this subject, and we're going to cover some topics from that book. And I also took images, as you can see here, there is nobody in front of the slide, it's just an image. It's a Renaissance image from Raphael so I'll illustrate these Epitetus' thoughts with Renaissance images. Because both Epictetus - the school he belonged, called Stoicism, and the Renaissance, are very
humanistic, and we are talking about the human being. The way the human being works. And that's what the art for living is - how the human being works. Remember, many of you here were once my students, and I used to joke in class: You buy a blender with only two volumes - click and click; and it comes with a manual in five languages teaching you how to do click and click. When it comes to human life, nobody teaches us or tells us how it is! The art of living is complex, and is more difficult than
handling any other device. As Jung said, it is easier to start from scratch and take man to the moon, Than to start from scratch and take man to the interior of himself. So it's a complex art and we don't include it, unfortunately, in our training, in our modern education. It's a rather technicist, utilitarian training, that teaches know-how. Not knowing why, or for what, or where, which would be the proper object of philosophy. So we start talking about this aspect of living and living together, loneliness and isolation. These are two concepts that people get confused. You
will realize that solitude is something absolutely healthy and necessary. Isolation is evil. And isolation has absolutely nothing to do with the number of people around you. It has to do with how unaccompanied you are by yourself. Isolation is a great dumbing down of yourself. Lack of self-knowledge, lack of internal dialogue. I also quote it a lot, that if you take a city like São Paulo and a small town of 10 thousand inhabitants, it's easier to find people suffering from loneliness in big São Paulo than in the little one. It's not lack of people around you,
it's not lack of life outside, it's lack of life inside! And establish an inner dialogue, get to know yourself, is the only effective element to break the loneliness - loneliness in the bad sense. Because loneliness in the positive sense, you will not see a single school of philosophy that would not recommend its practice. Plato said of his Divine Idleness: make an appointment with your soul. Pythagoras said in his Museum: make a diary every day. You have to take the time to dialogue with yourself, nothing "for the English to see", nothing outside, but inside, with yourself,
to find yourself. And that would be healthy solitude. Remember "I want a house in the country where I can be as big as peace"? This is also quite philosophical. Meaning, inward, to have some time to myself. And then, when friends come, I have something to share. Because if I am shallow about myself, I will be shallow in relation to everyone and everything around me. It turns out that we live in a time, and it is even commonplace to say this. It is very common place: since we have a very materialistic tone in the world, we
live for the object, man has turned himself into an object, And turned the other into an object too, and everything became a thing, and as a thing, we come down to this. As if there were nothing inside, as if we don't have an identity, an essence that needs to be heard, that needs to have a say in our lives, that needs to manifest itself. And if that doesn't happen, it's unfortunate, because it's like a terrible repression of oneself. So let's talk a little bit about this inside and outside. There is a phrase that I found
curious the first time I heard it... what does this person mean by this? The more inside, the more outside. What does this mean? The more you are with yourself, the more you can be with the other. If you're not with yourself, you won't be with anyone. Then the other is utilitarian! It serves your need it serves your need for a witness to your personal life so that it doesn't pass anonymously. It serves somehow... we are not very conscious about this manipulation, but we end up doing it. Because a shallow person cannot have deep feelings. That
wouldn't be logical! So the more inside, the more outside. We always arrive at the heart of things starting from our own heart, our own center. Let's go, then, to our renascentists! That's basically the book! Arrian of Nicomedia was a pupil of Epictetus. Epictetus was a slave, I won't go into details here. He was a Roman philosopher who spent the first part of his life in slavery. Arrian first writes a book called Discourses. Then he extracts, summarizes the Discourses and writes the Manual. The manual of the Philosopher Epictetus - the Enchiridion I have already told you
Epictetus was a slave in the first part of his life, and it seems that his master was not, let's say, a peaceful person, he was irascible, so he had a very difficult part of his life. And he has thoughts that let a man be prepared for any circumstance in life. And knows how to equate his life very well. Well, this book, Enchiridion, was translated by an American writer, Sharon Lebell, and was given the name The Art of Living. Which is the same content. I have both of them. It's the same content. Simply with a more
palatable vocabulary for the 20th, 21st century. So it's a very enjoyable and interesting book, that can be read at random, Opened at any page and which has some maxims that are quite beautiful... To me, and I will show it to you in a moment... Scenes from the next chapters will follow. The most beautiful concept of happiness that I know is there. It's a beautiful concept of happiness. It's complete. It practically defines to you in a way that is enough for you to achieve your own happiness. This is the book that you will look for and
won't find, but try, it costs nothing! Check it out! I even added the page, so you'd be more upset, with all the pages noted down, and not finding the book. That happiness quote is on page 24: "Happiness is a verb. "It is the continuous, dynamic, permanent performance of acts of value. "Our life is built every moment, and has utility for us and for the people we touch." It's an impact because it's beautiful! It's a very aesthetic thought! But at the same time, it has a lot of meanders! First, it seems Epictetus didn't know linguistics very
well, because happiness is a noun. How is happiness a verb? It should be! Because this idea of happiness as a noun seems like it's a thing that someone will give us, or that we will achieve. Either it is here, at this moment, or it will be nowhere. And how is it? In this verb, in this continuous action. What verb could we create for that? To generate happiness? To felicitate? I don't know, something That wouldn't be to congratulate the other, but to conquer at every moment, in a continuous war To conquer inch by inch your own
happiness, at every gesture you have when you act humanely. That's where the big question is! Because all beings were made to be happy according to their own identity. Nobody will be happy doing what does not correspond to him. So, an old example I always give: The plant is happy as a plant the stone as a stone, the animal as an animal. There is nothing that makes the plant, don't offer it a program that will make it happier than photosynthesis. Because it really was born for that. It is an absolute vocation. It is fulfilled doing that,
that makes it a plant! Animals with their instinct of survival, of perpetuation of the species, are happy that way. They are fulfilled as animals and do what nature expects of them. Man is happy when he exercises values, virtues and wisdom. When he brings these things into the world. He is not only happy, he also benefits as many beings around him as possible. If you stop to observe, this is what we lack most in the world today. Human beings playing the role of human beings. Because what we need most are values, virtues, and wisdom. And as
the Biblical tradition says, everything else will be given in addition. An old example that I always give and that is a very practical, simple observation that sometimes escapes us: The cause of the world's misery is not lack of material goods, it is lack of fraternity; The cause of hunger is lack of honesty; What is lacking is always on top. What is lacking are human beings. So how is the human being fulfilled? With each step he takes being human. So it's a verb. I have now done my duty, I have now done what nature expected of
me, I have now acted as a human being, I am even with life. I gave meaning to my life, I put myself in the place that is expected of me as a human being. So that's a verb, that's an inch-by-inch realization. It's an interesting thing, because there is a thinker, that I guarantee you all usually read since it's a very easy one, which is Immanuel Kant. Those who know it see what I'm talking about. Especially just after lunch, it's quite... interesting. Immanuel Kant he had the habit... What? Don't you read Kant? I don't know what's
so funny. Immanuel Kant used to say that human happiness Is something you conquer only when you're not seeking it. You pursue human duty and it comes as a by-product. Do you get it? Because if you seek happiness as an end, the happiness you will get won't be human. You will want to be happy at any price, and there are certain prices that you can't pay. Because they take away your dignity, your honor! So you, let's see, are fair. As a by-product, you're happy as a human being. Now, if I want to have fun at any
price, I can have fun at the expense of another's pain, and that is not human. Then it has even more emphasis on happiness as an achievement inch by inch, moment by moment, when we take our place, When we transform our life into a myth, because we bring myth to life, we sacralize our life, we take it out of its banal context, we escape banality. We enter a territory, that as the Greeks said: Man's greatest art is to steal moments from time into eternity. When he takes his behavior out of banality, when he takes his place
in the universe. When he gives meaning to his existence as a human being, he leaves a footprint whoever came through here was a human being, it makes a difference! Continuing, he says: it's a continuous performance of acts of value. In other words, human life is built when man seeks his place in the universe. Human life. All things depend on it. Because when a single being leaves its place, this vacuum he leaves has a systemic effect. The universe is harmony, it is cosmos so the whole universe expects man to take his place. Meaning, that he seeks
values, virtues, and wisdom. Our life is built every moment and has utility for us and for the people we touch. It must be among my top ten phrases, a phrase by Cicero. Where he says, "Make sure you are a factor in the lives of the people you participate in" Do you get that? I went through the world, came out a little bit better than I was, and I added up so that people could become a little bit better. Done. You did your part! A little bit that is. You played your part, it made difference! You
have added to your growth as a human being, and through your example, others will also grow. Because whether we like it or not, what we do inspires and is a reference for what others will do, for better or for worse. And the more technical qualities we have, the more people tend to follow us, and if that quality is not coupled with a moral life, a life of values, we have a responsibility for the influences we generate. Anyway, living, as I told you, it is not doing click, click in a blender. It's complicated, human life is
very complex! If a person mistakes inspired by your action, in a way the responsibility for that is yours. By your example in the world, some of that responsibility is yours. I posted a little summary, because who know me know my tendency to summarize everything. I take the opportunity to advertise: this is study technique, we'll have open registration, etc, etc. This is study technique. Everything you read, make it a summary. Because in the end, at the end of your life, you will look back and you will have to make a summary, a synthesis: What I have
learned here, what I have taught, what I have done. A synthesis. Everything that passes through our hand, we have to have a focus. To know what I have learned from it, from what this person said, from what I read. The lack of focus, of center, is lack of center within as well. We don't know the synthesis of our existence, so we are scattered in everything. We pass through things and do not see their heart. Because we are not looking from our heart. So, the main ideas I took from it were: a human ideal. This is
important to understand. For Epictetus to think the way he thinks about happiness, he contemplates a universe that goes from ignorance to wisdom. Man necessarily has to go through this trajectory. At some point he will have to pass. he will leave ignorance and walk towards wisdom. The love of wisdom, that helps him make this journey, is called philosophy, philo + sophos: love of wisdom; And man is happy when he does what is proper to him, he walks towards wisdom. All beings are happy when they go towards their ideal that thing that justifies them in the world.
So when you tell someone - I know some of you here are our students at New Acropolis. "I take a philosophy course." You're going to hear things like: "what a load of crap! Why don't you go take a computer course?" Or Mandarin, which is in vogue, something else. "Philosophy is a waste of time!" Maybe you don't answer to be polite, but for yourself, you must have an answer! You have to know that philosophy is not a little school, a little course in a corner! Philosophy is love of wisdom that helps you walk there, and you
will have to go anyway, with course or without it. Sooner or later, you will have to walk there! A Philosophy course helps you make this path in a more conscious and less painful way, that's why philosophy schools have always existed. But don't think that any human being is exempt from the obligation, for what he is, to walk towards wisdom, of leaving here a little better than he arrived, and helping others to grow. This is inexorable! Philosophy is an inexorable partner in life. Whether you want someone to help you or not! But you will not give
up philosophy! Sum factor, we have already talked about. It should be a concern of last resort in our lives, one of the main virtues is Fraternity. It's interesting how simple people sometimes know this: my life is justified when I add up to make someone else better. The Buddhist tradition says: more than a thousand meaningless words, is worth a word that brings comfort to those who hear it. Have you ever said your word? Have you made a difference in someone's life? Because there, in the end, when you look back, what will have been worth in your
life is this. If you grew and helped someone else grow, if you were a sum factor. If I was today, if I was tomorrow, it will add up and this will be my life. When I pass by a human being, I make contact with him today, now, there on the street, does he leave better or worse than he was before he met me? With higher or lower consciousness? With more nobility or less? The result of these encounters will be my role in my life, will be the function that I fulfilled in the world. And it
is good to evaluate, because life is not that long. Moving on... He will talk about faithfulness: Fides, which has the same root as the word trust - Confides. He will define fidelity very beautifully. "Faithfulness is the right attitude. "It is believing in life as an ordered whole, according to Laws. "It is not wanting to control what doesn't depend on us. "Faithfulness is the antidote to bitterness and perplexity." Faithfulness, guys, is to believe in life as an ordered whole I mean, life is not Chaos, it is Cosmos. There is no point in doing philosophy for those
who believe that life is Chaos. If everything I teach you today or tomorrow is random, why will you study all this? Let's enjoy! Not that partying is bad, come on, partying is good, but that we know that our actions generate a corresponding reaction. This is inexorable! Life is not Chaos! In fact, if life were Chaos, my thinking, which is part of life, would also be Chaos, and we wouldn't be getting along here. If there is cosmos in my mind, there is cosmos in the world, there is order. Life is like an ordered whole; you don't
know how much difference it makes to believe this! Do you know why? Because if life has a meaning, and it is ordered, the things that happen to you are not for nothing. They have a meaning. Symbolic, they are trying to teach you something, there is a pedagogy in life. Or not? Why would it happen? There is no chaos in the world! Believing that life is ordered redeems the arbitrariness of your life. Do you know what that beautiful sentence means? It means that you can interpret each fact and know why I came here. It is as
if you came to life with a cipher card: I came to life so that I could grow in such and such aspects. So this cipher card attracts to me all the factors that will provide me with these experience I need to live, in order to grow. Then these factors will come through people, circumstances. And why did they come? Because I called them! Do you get that? Why did I go through a certain circumstance? Because I needed it. If it wasn't that person, it would be someone else. If it wasn't at this place, it would be
at another. But I called these things into my life. Why? Because I needed to go through them to grow. This is called trials! You wouldn't like to enroll your child in a school that has no exams, Because you know that the child wouldn't learn anything. Human pedagogy is a copy of the pedagogy of life. Trials and obstacles come because a magnetism exists within us, that is our need for experience and growth, which attracts the factors. There was a student of mine, some years ago, that told me: "Teacher, I work in a sui generis place; "it's
me and ten other people, ten annoying people!" How can there be so many annoying people in just one place? Then I told him: Here's the thing, You had a public contest for annoying people, and those are the approved ones! Evidently, you called these crabs into your life, Maybe to realize you are one of them! I don't know, I won't judge! But somehow you called this into your life; they were there, loose, and they came because there was a need for mutual experience. So, it is an attraction that we could call magnetic, forcing it, but an
attraction of things that need to generate mutual experience, one to the other, so that both can grow from that. And that is what we call difficulties, problems. If we understand where this is taking us, we will have the ability to face it successfully, with much higher winning chances. Understand it well, we are philosophers. New Acropolis is an institution present today all over the world, more than fifty countries, we are philosophers, We are lovers of wisdom, not wise men. So I'm not telling you that I can face all my problems that way, but I say: "I
am trying and I won't give up!" Philosophy means striving for perfection, not perfection, It means that we do not give up redeeming our life from arbitrariness, That is, of making sense of it all, of facing difficulties as trials and overcoming them. We don't give up on giving an upward meaning to life, but not that we have achieved it yet. He who thinks he has already achieved something, said Socrates, or he really has and is a wise man, Or he doesn't even know what he has to achieve and is an ignoramus; in both cases, he is
not a philosopher. A philosopher is the one who knows what he is seeking and does not give it up. That is what we are proposing: let's go seeking! And not to give up, because there's no way we can give up on ourselves. That's what we're here for. Then Faithfulness is the antidote to bitterness and perplexity. Every time we find life chaotic, we think that things are unfair to us, that life gives us things that do not correspond to us. Professor Jorge Angel Livraga, founder of New Acropolis, says: If one thing was not for you, let's
say, I throw a ball at you, If it wasn't for you, it would go over, it wouldn't be your height; if it hit you, it's because it's on your level, height, and it's for you. The things that hit us are those that we need to live. There is no chaos, there is an upward direction in overcoming trials. As in everything. Like in your child's school. So, the idea of stoicism was to get man situated consciously and harmoniously in life. It was a time of crisis, that's why I think Stoicism so suitable for our present day,
because we live in a moment of crisis. Values crisis, a materialistic crisis. All other crisis come from this one. The crisis of making life too concrete in merely material things. The crisis of lack of self-knowledge, of alienation. They lived in a time of crisis, that's why it's a philosophy that sounds so useful and familiar to us. Continuing. Kindness. "Kindness is the practice and the reward itself. It is enough for us to be happy. "We must tune our character as if it were the strings of an instrument. "Kindness is the subtle readjustment of our character during
the whole life." Another beautiful thing, how beautiful it is! But, in practice, how does it work? Can I change myself? Not only can you, you must! That's the thing. As we have an identity too much fixed in our psyche, that is our emotions and our thoughts, we think that we are that. And therefore it's unchangeable, otherwise I lose my identity. Your identity is far above that. The psyche is conditioned, just as the body. It suffers conditioning from the environment. The things you like and reject, if you had been born on the other side of the
world, would be different. If you had been born on the other side of time, too. And it wouldn't stop being you! There are social conditioning, you didn't choose it. Look within yourself, and see which of your thoughts and affinities have been chosen by you. Consciously chosen: I thought about the situation, reflected, devised a response, and created this way of looking at life. There are very few of them! Most things are a social cloning, It's a life software that you just press play and it runs. We don't have much authenticity, we practically copy social patterns. So
if these things that I like or reject are things that don't contribute to my growth, I can change them! It' s flexible! The human being is a plastic being, under construction! To form your character is to learn to catch your tendencies to like certain things and reject others, and learning to like the good and reject the bad. In such a way that automatically by doing what you like, you also do what makes you grow. And it can be done! And you are not mutilating yourself, because even in ten years, you will have changed your taste
completely. This is superficial, this is not you! You are something that is far above: You are your discernment, your love for what is good, your values. He speaks clearly about this, Epictetus, that we need to have an identity that is above thoughts and emotions, otherwise they will rule over us. It sounds a little bit like what Victor Hugo said: Every once in a while we have to put our things in front of us to know who owns who, who is in charge of whom. Our emotions, our thoughts are things too, they are vehicles, not us.
We have an essence behind all this. The one that sees life go by. Emotions change throughout life, thoughts change throughout life, but there is a deep look, that is there. Watching this movie go by. And it is always the same, and it gives us continuity. I know that in childhood, adolescence, youth, and today, I am the same, because something continued. What was this something? If my thoughts all have changed? If my feelings have changed? If my body have changed? What was it that continued and gave me this sense of identity and continuity? I have an
essence that watches life go by, I have an essence behind it all; to find it and make these tools serve it, that is, to give a greater meaning to life. That's character formation! So it's curious, because, nowadays, when you say that a person has a poorly formed character, it's offensive, it's pejorative. If you put it, from the Platonic or Stoic point of view, that malformed character is liking things that are not good, and reject good things, who among us has a well-formed character? Do you get it? Who among us doesn't need a good rebuilding, a
good reformation? "Be the architect of your own destiny" this is also a beautiful sentence, that we see a lot, but understand little. It means that you can be anything you set your mind to be. Hence, I have a certain caution, when people start running too much after definitions of their personality. My horoscope, my Chinese horoscope, this, or that, Physiognomy, and I don't know what. All the features... I'm like that because I'm a Capricorn... Look, it's okay. But I happen to be a human being. And an old saying goes that "upon men the stars tilt but
do not determine." I can have all the astrology pointing this way, but if by an act of will and conscience I want to go there, I will! Once again, our founder Professor Jorge Ángel Livraga, said that the difference between a log and a boat made of the same wood, is that the latter has an oar and can sail against the current. The human being is a being endowed with will and can build himself. Sometimes we want to settle down and put the blame on Capricorn. Good. Okay. But if we want to change, don't think that
it will limit you. This is only a shallow feature. Goodness is character formation to come closer to molding the good in your life, of materializing the good in your life. Know thyself and master thyself. It is the continuation of the Delphi maxim. Know yourself, master yourself, transform yourself. Which are also the stages of medieval alchemy - nigredo, albedo and rubedo. To know oneself, to purify and elevate consciousness to the apex of the human condition, that is humanism. "Clearly define the person you want to be: write it down in your journal. "Imitate a valuable model. "Seeds
of greatness in us need an image to focus on and germinate." What does it mean? It means: imagination x fantasy. Imitate a valuable model, that is, choose within the field of your imagination what you will want to build of your life. Nature leaves no voids; if you don't build where you want to go, consciously, society will infiltrate a model there, through fantasy, and in a short time you will be following a social model that is not always what you would like to be. There will be no vacuum! Do you get that? When I say I
love wisdom. Loving wisdom is a beautiful sentence. But what does it mean to love wisdom? What is wisdom? I love the life of a wise man! What wise man? I need to imagine what the wise man is like. What does a wise man do when he wakes up late in the morning? When the alarm clock doesn't ring? What does the wise man do when he gets stuck in a traffic jam on the Bragueto bridge? What does the wise man do when the boss wakes up grumpy The wise man, concretely, I want to see him walking
here in front of me, how he responds to life, because I need to model my life having some image, you need an image. If we do not reflect on wisdom throughout history, on those wise men that humanity has had, about those maxims of wisdom and we don't build our own model, do you know what will happen? In a little while, unconsciously, you will be modeling yourself after the 8pm sitcom star. Because some model you will have. Don't you like him? From the 9 pm sitcom, then! You'll definitely have a model! Where will you get it
from? You'll get a model from the collective, when you see it, you will be, as the biblical saying goes, serving two masters at the same time, or, as the Koran says, riding two camels at the same time. I have ridden one, and I will tell you, it is a hard work. On two, I can't imagine what that would be like! Meaning, it won't work! - I have a project to be a more righteous person... But are you observing, managing your life? Do you have an image of how you're going to do that? If you don't,
you may be building a popular persona, a person who wants fame, wants recognition, wants possessions, which is what everybody wants. Who wants success at the expense of others. That space in your imagination has to be occupied with a concrete model! There was a time, my students think this is a joke, but it is a fact. Every time I picked up some book that talked about the life of a wise man, what he did, I'd write it down on some cards and stick them on my closet door. It was a beautiful contemporary work of art, in
all colors. It wasn't pretty, but it was quite inspiring! I needed to visualize what a wise man does, because it couldn't stay an elusive thing; how would I shape myself? It's like an artist: he looks at the model and sculpts the stone. Otherwise, it won't work. So, imitate valuable models. It is what Plato called the hero. He who is one step ahead of you, because if he's two, you no longer reach him. The one who is a model that can give answers to things that you can' t. Society should cultivate the memory of heroes. Because
it gives men a reminder of how great he can become, and occupies that space in the imagination. Nature does not leave a vacuum. If you don't occupy it, some social model is doing it, seek and you will find. Continuing, "Philosophy exposes the false premises of our lives, "which are the causes of evil; it requires courage." Of course, you will then need the will to change, but philosophy will not let you have the benefit of the omission; it will show you, if you are honest with yourself, it will show you! "Oh, I talked to that person
at my job, "I wanted to be honest with her, I wanted to help her!" When you dive and do some reflection, you see: I was jealous. I wanted to pin her. She had some triumph that I hadn't, or something that I didn't share; something I didn't think was right, I wanted to pin her, behind it there was envy. How painful it is to stand in front of the mirror and say: I was jealous, I was competitive, I was weak, I was a coward, but from the awareness comes transformation. Otherwise, you keep trying to work on
something you are not. It doesn't work, there's no model for that! Imagine if I got lost and don't know where the Museum of the Republic is. And I call someone. I call John. - John, how do I get there? The first thing he's going to ask me is: - Where are you, Lucia? I don't know, I'm in a strange place. It won't work. He has no way to instruct me. Because he needs two points: Where I want to get to and where I am. If I imagine that I am here, the references he is going
to give me are all wrong, I can't move. So this realization of looking at our engines and seeing, well here it was envy, here it was competition, here it was weakness, there it was laziness, That one, then, people die but they don't say they are lazy, and often they are! And it's a curious thing, because without seeing it there is no possibility of work! So philosophy requires that you assume the false premises of your life, and that requires courage. But from there, the transformation begins! "Evil is a by-product of negligence, laziness, distraction from the goals
of our life. "Happiness is born from striving for our personal improvement." Do you know what it is to sleep "the sleep of the righteous"? It means: today I gave my battle to respond to life as a human being. Every time life has demanded me something, I've tried to respond as a human being should respond. I sought a valuable model, a myth that would inspire me, I brought that myth to life. Today I gave my battle, today I was human; therefore I won my day, I deserve the human sleep. The sleep of the righteous. How many
days are we entitled to the sleep of the righteous? How many days have we given our battle to answer life humanely? Or how many days have we lost this battle, but at least realized it and were willing to keep fighting the next day? Because defeat isn't so important If you learn from it, it can be extremely useful, if you are aware and extract from it the lesson to, at that point, not be defeated again. So evil is a byproduct of negligence; sometimes it is negligence and sometimes it is unconsciousness. I don't know where I want
to go as a human being, So I can't evaluate whether it's right or wrong. If I know and neglect it is one thing, but sometimes I don't even set a goal, precisely so that nobody charges me, so that my own conscience doesn't charge me. Let me tell you an old story, from when I got into New Acropolis, This one is very old... I called a philosophy student of mine and asked: Why haven't you been coming to class? Is the day not good for you? Shall we try another class? And this person gave me an answer...
I couldn't get him to come back, but his answer was worthwhile. He said this: - I'm not going to do philosophy anymore, do you know why? The things you are telling me will force me to change And I don't want to change at all, that's a lot of work. So I'd rather not know! I don't know, I don't want to know, and I am mad at those who know! It takes a lot of work! I won't go anymore because you are telling me things that will compromise me! So I had no answer then, and I
don't know if I would have one today! It's a complex situation; if you don't want to change, there's no way! So, not just neglecting our goals, but, sometimes, not even having goals, to not commit to them, then you're left with a life absolutely without references. And this life without references, we think that by including in it material benefits it really is perfecting itself in something. Today there is a certain radicalism about material benefits. There are those who think that the problem in today's world is the computers, the cell phones. Look honestly, as a philosopher, I
think this story is mis-explained. Material things are good, as means, they are not enough to be ends in our life. I keep imagining if Plato had WhatsApp, this would be a blast! Can you imagine? The whole world receiving the The Cave Myth! These things are good, the problem is that man has no purpose, because they are not enough to justify human life. Don't blame things! It's the user's fault, as my computer's technical support sometimes says. It's the user's fault!! We don't have a reference. If we don't have a reference, then yes, The things, the technical
apparatus that we build can sometimes be questionable. If you are going into an abyss, if you go by Porsche you get there much faster, it would be better to go on foot, or by bicycle. If you don't have a purpose in life, if you're going to the abyss, don't go by Porsche, it's too fast! It falls fast! A slower way is better! So things become worthless when man doesn't have a greater meaning to his life. Gears and motivations. We have already talked a little about it. The gears that are behind, do you know what that
means? What are the mental forms and beliefs that really rule my life? What are my true motivations? Because that is what bears fruit in the world. If you see for example Egypt. It has great cities and ruins, It's hard to believe that so many people and time have passed through there. There is even a sentence that says: Everyone fears time, but time fears the pyramids. How they defy time, it is impressive! A lot of people have built a lot of things in the world, including in Egypt itself, but it seems that those who had a
purer intention, their work runs after eternity. In Egypt itself, Aquenaton attempted to build a capital, Tel el-Amarna, which is nothing today, except desert. A tiny little town like Bubastis is there. But Tel el-Amarna that Aquenaton tried to build, which was probably a vanity act on his part, time has not forgiven. Our motivations are impregnated in the quality of the fruits that we leave in the world. In other words, material things will never be eternal, but the purer the motivations, The more the works run after eternity. Thus the classic is born. The classic things are from
men who somehow ran after shaping the good through their works, who had coherent motivations. This is imprinted in their works. These are all prescriptions from the Art of Living, according to Epictetus! "Be wary of social conventions; the new is not necessarily good. "Support only that which has a sense of justice, humanity, goodness, etc." That's also a tremendous act of courage! It has crossed you: What is that really? I wonder if it is real. Let me reflect! Sometimes they will think you are boring, no problem! Maybe you really are! The fact is, we can't automatically pass
on things we do not necessarily agree with. And that do not necessarily contribute to human growth. It takes work, but everything that is presented in front of you must be sifted by your principles. I'm going to give a rather silly example that maybe some of you don't like, but it is a fact. Every day we see the media telling us to read more, to support reading. The other day I was at a book fair, and I averaged over, that it must have been one worthwhile title for two hundred that were worth absolutely nothing. It shouldn't
be much different from that, so I wondered: Instead of saying read more, shouldn't we say read better? Because some things are more pollution than actual construction. But if I post something like that on Facebook, they massacre me, because it is a fashionable motto. Individuality is not accepted! We are so democratic, but individuality is an unforgivable sin. I don't say this because people don't want to hear it; but that I think, I think! And I will act in coherence with it! That is, if a person is going to read something very vulgar, I tell him to
plant lettuce in his vegetable garden, because it's more useful. And I really do! I'm not fashionable, sorry! And it may even be that at some point fashion coincides with me. But I have an obligation to build my life consciously. "To discover our role and be faithful to it, regardless of others being faithful to theirs. "We depend not on others, but on our personal high principles." As I told you, not stopping the scene at any moment. Have you ever seen those Saint John square dances, that sometimes they stop everything to take pictures? Stop the scene of
your life and say: Now, what am I really living for? Where am I going with this? Remember ISO 9000 motto: Local action with global vision. Where am I going with all this? And knowing the answer and continuing the movie. This here is placed in my life because I want to get there, and so this is a goal that is coherent with that, it contributes, it is coherent with my principles: play the movie! Any moment of life is justified before my conscience. There is nothing in the world that you can trade for this! We are not
"against", nobody is against. If the crowd is going in the right direction, we go with the crowd! It's good to walk in company! But if the crowd is going to the abyss, go to the other side alone, and try to gather some to go with you. Don't be so needy that you would rather go to the abyss accompanied than save yourself alone. Because if you save yourself, you can carry some people with you. And in the abyss there is no solidarity, everybody dies. So this courage to build your identity, to know yourself, to dive inside
yourself and say: who am I? How do I realize myself? What are the things that manifest me in the world? The things that I enjoy doing and that are useful to me and to humanity, the tastes that I have built up myself. Who am I? Inner life, inner dialogue, building principles, an increasing lucidity, this is maturity! Medieval alchemy often says, If you don't like it, it's their fault, it wasn't me, it was them, they said the following: That some human beings age like certain fruits: They go from the green phase to the rotten phase, they
don't ripen! I told you you wouldn't like it! I warned you. Because maturity is not a question of time. It is a question of human merit. Human consciousness matures when man has merit for it. Maturity, which they called Citrinites, is not a matter of simply, automatically, passing chronological time, it's a matter of internal time and this one only passes if you want it to pass. Maturity is very rare and fundamental to our realization! "Identity", which is exactly what we were talking about, where it comes from, from within our essence, from above, as John the Baptist
said. "Free your heart from ambition and fear "and aspire to be nothing but the best of yourself." "An exceptional life is one that responds to what is incumbent upon us "in the best possible way." Meaning, the old biblical sentence, "By your works you shall be known." When you see the trail, a human being has passed through here. How wonderful! A human being passed through the world, I played my part! I've done what nature expected of me! Mircea Eliade, an anthropologist from the last century, said that the sacred is the function of giving meaning. You sacralize
your life when it has meaning, that is, when you do that which corresponds to you as a human being. Values, virtue and wisdom, cool! I gave my message to the world, I did not pass in vain! All men die, but not all men live; some only survive. This is a line from the movie Braveheart. Cinema is also philosophy! There's someone here I know who knows it very well. Cinema is also philosophy! Sometimes, not always! "Right Action", the action that seeks to manifest human identity in the world. "There is no good or bad event: there is
a good person, who always inquires: "what is the right thing to do now?" "Name things right. Find out and not judge." Was what happened to me positive or was it negative? It depends! Another person living this same situation perhaps would summarize it in a very positive way, that is, the evil is not in the thing itself, but in a certain attachment, or in a certain desire that this thing went against, and reached me in a particular way. If I put myself before life... in fact one of the fundamental things is not to set anything as
personal. If I placed myself before life as something that plots for my evolution, I wouldn't think that life is chasing me, or that it is unfair, which we constantly do. If a person has a defect, I don't know, a physical one, and passes you by, you say: oh my, this person lives with great dignity, how nice! You don't think that the person has this physical defect to get to you. Now, if it's a moral defect, you say: she's doing this just to spite me! A moral defect is much worse than a physical defect! She does
not have a moral defect to contradict or strike you, she has because it is the best she has managed to be so far. Now, she is passing through your life because you called! Do you get it? But what is she? The best she has managed to be so far. She doesn't do it for personal reasons. If we personalize the problems, then we begin to feel victims, which is the most practiced sport in today's society, victimization! To name things right, to observe, and not to judge! "Contemplate the world with freshness without previous schemes. "We all know
too little; arrogance is the mask of cowardice." Contemplating the world with freshness means absence of preconceptions, care of memory. Imagine the following: you drink an orange juice. This orange juice or ascorbic acid makes up a greater defense in your body As they say... that makes up for you getting less flu. That's good. Let's say it's true. I get a greater resistance to the flu. But after I made the orange juice, the debris, the orange peels, I throw away, of course! The essence of the orange juice remained in me, like a greater resistance to life. Imagine
if you, out of gratitude or for some other reason, were to drag these orange peels through life. That's more or less what we do with events. Wow, you are such a patient person! Then you say to me: "Ahh, let me tell you how much I suffered, to be like this!" Do you know what she is doing? Dragging the orange peels! We should learn from life, but forget how much we pay for it; That would be the right thing to do! Otherwise, memory contaminates us in such a way that we can't take another step. And sometimes,
it's even worse: we drag the peels and don't drink the orange juice, In other words, we don't learn anything. That is possible! And then, we start to have a prejudice: we judge the future and the present from this burden of the past. There comes a certain moment when we can't take another step! The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thodol, says the following: When you carry such a great weight, that you can no longer grow, You have chosen to die. Life just comes and executes it. Because there is no purpose to a life that
does not give you the opportunity to grow. Do you get that? Life plays according to the customer's taste: no more opportunity to grow, what life for? It is kind of hard! But it's something to think about, because it seems pretty sensible. "Combat negative habits: space them out, 'win' each day without them." That's a pretty interesting thing because one of the elements that is most against the process of self-improvement is to think that we will have easy victories. Nothing changes very easily! If I space myself between one criticism and another, between one weakness and another, between
one acute crisis of laziness and another, I have already won something. Addictions are hard, they're very ingrained. If you space out the symptoms, you gain time! Don't give up on yourself! We can't give up on ourselves! It's the diet's joke. You know it, don't you? When do we always start a diet? Mondays! On Monday itself, I eat a big bar of chocolate. Then I say: "No, now I give up, now I'll eat two, three... Because I've already spoiled everything." No! You have suffered a defeat, don't give up, keep fighting! I weakened, so let it go!
Don't give up, there's no giving up. Life is not something that can be given up! We cannot give up the fight against our defects. We cannot have the illusion that we will be victorious at first, that we will win easily; it is not easy! That's what it's all about: We came into the world to be victorious over ourselves and to conquer a purer identity, and to give our message to the world and sleep the great sleep of the righteous, and that's the end of it! We can't give this up! "One must be willing to pay
the price to know how to live, which is an art." It's an art, it's a science, it requires a refinement, a precision. Observe your thoughts, observe your feelings, see your true motivations; create a climate for your consciousness to rise, I mean, always stir up elevated thoughts, good reading, good music, have reflections. A deep reflection you do sometimes gives you a week of elevated consciousness. Just this week I was talking about it. There is a very beautiful sentence, in my opinion, that says: discipline is doing what is necessary to keep your consciousness high. Do what is
necessary: listen to good music, Have a good conversation, have a good reflection. Do what is necessary to keep your consciousness elevated, give your battle every day to the conquest of yourself. "Put your principles into practice now. "Determine your principles and subject yourself to them as laws." "No more excuses and postponement. "From this moment on, swear that you will stop disappointing yourself. "Decide to be an extraordinary person, and do whatever it takes to be one, now!" Epictetus really puts us up against the wall. He says: - "Go on, it's not possible! "You have all the tools,
"you have a good motivation, better than any other being, "which is the human motivation par excellence, to build yourself." Making a world a little better because you existed. Go now, don't miss the opportunity! Finally I brought a sentence, not Epictetus', but that had particular meaning in my life. By an Irish writer named George Bernard Shaw, that says: "Life is a whetstone: "it wears us down or sharpens us, according to the metal of which we are made." If it sharpens us, it is because our metal, our steel, is not well tempered. Well, with the time we
have, this is the little message I would like to bring to you. We are even a little past schedule. I hope that it will at least be an object of reflection, that it will bring you a feeling of power, that I can, should, and have good reasons to build a more humane life. That from there, I can coexist. Otherwise it's an illusion. I create a facade, a social training, where we are all very gentle, but don't give a damn about each other. Facade does not transform, does not bring happiness, does not solve social problems, because
with any tremor, the facade goes to the ground. Man is not a trainable being. You are what you do when the last door closes behind you. Either you build yourself more human or no one will make you a man Who gets along better with another human being. You live in a bubble of isolation and selfishness, you have no human sense of life, there is no way to change something like this. That is the starting point of any change, for any problem that you set out to address. Know yourself, transform yourself! [Music]
