“What is most important in human life? Not filling the seas with fleets, nor setting up standards on the shore of the Red Sea, nor, when the earth runs out of sources of harm, wandering the ocean to seek the unknown; rather it is seeing everything with one’s mind, and conquering one’s faults, which is the greatest victory possible. There are countless people who have been in control of nations and cities, very few who have been in control of themselves. What is most important? Raising your mind above the threats and promises of fortune, thinking that nothing is worth hoping for. For what have you to desire? Whenever you sink back from engagement with the divine to the human level, your sight will go dim, just like the eyes of those who return from bright sunlight to dense shadow. What is most important? Being able to endure adversity with a glad mind, to experience whatever happens as though you wanted it to happen to you. For you ought to have wanted it to, if you had known that everything happen according to god’s decree. Crying, complaining, and moaning are rebellion. What is most important? A mind that is brave and defiant in the face of calamity, not just opposed but hostile to luxury, neither courting nor fleeing danger; one that knows not to wait for fortune but to create it, to go to face both forms unafraid and undismayed, unshaken either by the turmoil of the one or the glitter of the other. What is most important? Refusing to let bad intentions enter your mind; raising pure hands to heaven; not seeking any good thing if someone else must give it or must lose it so that it may pass to you; wishing for a sound mind (something that can be wished for without competition); regarding the other things rated highly by mortals, even if some chance brings them into your home, as likely to exit by the door they entered. What is most important? Raising your spirits high above chance events; remembering your human status, so that if you are fortunate, you know that will not last long, and if you are unfortunate, you know you are not so if you do not think so. What is most important? Having your soul on your lips. This makes you free not according to the law of the Quirites, but according to the law of nature”.
- Seneca, Natural Questions, 3 praef 10-16
The idea that we should be highly suspicious of anything most human beings desire - wealth, success, fame etc - is at the very heart of Seneca’s Stoicism. This can lead to the impression that he believes we should be hostile to preferred indifferents - which would obviously make it hard to prefer them in the first place. However, the point is, of course, that we should never “prefer” more than we need. Luxury is not a preferred indifferent. Food and clothes are.
John Malkovich as Seneca in the upcoming movie “SENECA or: on the Creation of Earthquakes”
This quote says everything about preferred indifferents - we should never strive for more than what is necessary for living honorably.
"What is freedom, you ask? To fear no human being and no god, to want neither what is base nor what is excessive, to have absolute power over oneself. Just being one’s own person is wealth beyond measure."
A follow up to this post:
https://janniklindquist.substack.com/p/why-luxury-is-bad-for-us/comments
This quote says everything about preferred indifferents - we should never strive for more than what is necessary for living honorably.
"What is freedom, you ask? To fear no human being and no god, to want neither what is base nor what is excessive, to have absolute power over oneself. Just being one’s own person is wealth beyond measure."
- Seneca, Letters 75.18