Thinking on Friendship, Wrong Roads, and Frogs

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Aesop, ancient greek, fable, friendship, frogs, love, Roads, wrong roads

Good Monday to all of you, my friends. It is fable day, and Aesop takes us to a pond where two frogs are friends.

One frog is on the road, on a pretty big pothole filled with water. The other is away from the road, in a small marsh with little space. The frog on the marsh beckons the one on the road to come to it, for the road is filled with danger. The frog on the road said it was too lazy to move, for it had found a good place to be plus, it was small, what could possibly happen? Suddenly, a carriage passed by and run over the small frog sitting in its waterhole on the road. Aesop writers the moral:

Μὴ μέλλετε, ὦ ἄνθρωποι, ἐπει ἔχετε τρέπειν τὰ κακὰ εἰς καλὰ.
Do not pretend, ō men, while able to move, [that] the bad [is] good.
No pretendais, ō humanos, mientras que podáis moveros, que lo malo es bueno.

I think this fable, as most by Aesop, is absolutely hilarious. Clearly, the frog on the marsh can tell its buddy on the road is on a bad position, thus wants it to come over. However, the frog on the road is too lazy and too comfortable to even make the attempt. “μέλλετε” here is quite telling as it is an imperative (as is usual with Aesop’s morals) and a plural. “Do not you all,” says the writer “plan, pretend, intend;” the choice of the frog is a conscious one, that is why the verb for wishing while planning is used here. We are our own worst enemies, that much is clear, and we may find that we are in a precarious position but, unable to see the full picture, we remain unaware of danger. We must depend on our friends to help us see, as they stand outside of our circumstances, what possible danger we may encounter while in our current positions.

That is the beauty of friends, as Aesop would say; for they have the capability of seeing what we cannot. Sometimes, even as the frog saw the danger but thought itself too small to be squished, we think ourselves immune to the problems others have faced. It is at this moment that we must listen to those beyond our circumstances the most. In the end, despite our not being able to see beyond our nose, we will discover that those who are admonishing us are only trying to protect us from what they know is a danger to our physical of spiritual well-being.

As Aesop puts it, sometimes we have the capability to move and we still choose not to because we turn the bad into good. Let us remember the little frog and the road. We may one day realize that the voice inside our head is not that of a god far of or the nagging of a stranger up close, but the loving warning of a friend who, caring for us, is trying to lead us away from a dangerous road and into friendly marshes.

Thinking on Love, Plato, and Blindness

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Aristotle, blindness, friendship, love, Plato, The Laws, the symposium, true love

‘Love is blind’ is an anonymous proverb which, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, stems from the 14th century. Easy enough, right? Well, not quite. Let us consider Plato; he wrote: “The lover is blinded about the beloved, and prefers his own interests to truth and right.” (Laws 731e); that’s the Benjamin Jowett translation. However, the Greek is ambivalent. Trevor Saunders, whose translation is in the Hackett Complete Works, has Plato’s comment on blind love referring explicitly to the dangers of self-love. So perhaps the 14th century anonymous proverb is a generalization of Plato, if not a mere footnote. Let us see the original. I defer to Sounders’ translation for the sake of time.

[731e] It is the evil indicated in the saying that every man is by nature a lover of self, and that it is right that he should be such. But the truth is that the cause of all sins in every case lies in the person’s excessive love of self. For the lover is blind in his view of the object loved, so that he is a bad judge of things just and good and noble, in that he deems himself [732a] bound always to value what is his own more than what is true; for the man who is to attain the title of “Great” must be devoted neither to himself nor to his own belongings, but to things just, whether they happen to be actions of his own or rather those of another man. And it is from this same sin that every man has derived the further notion that his own folly is wisdom; whence it comes about that though we know practically nothing, we fancy that we know everything; and since we will not entrust to others the doing of things we do not understand, [732b] we necessarily go wrong in doing them ourselves. Wherefore every man must shun excessive self-love, and ever follow after him that is better than himself, allowing no shame to prevent him from so doing. Plato, Laws (731e-732b)

Plato condemns φιλια (bonding love – more like friendship) because it blinds; especially narcissistic love. Why? A friend is another self, according to Aristotle, and if we love our friend it is only out of love for our own narcissistic constructions. Narcissism drowns us all in the end. However, on the other hand, true love teaches us to grow by looking upon another person who is greater than ourselves, allowing us to become greater still. True love (‘agape’ in ancient Greece) is the putting aside of one’s own conscience and needs to favor that of another. We make our universe about the other person, and that person makes their universe about us. We create synergy, and we have love. True Love, thus, is not blind to the faults of someone else, but rather accepts them as part of that someone, making even their flaws strengths which we learn to come to appreciate, making our lives together all the more beneficial.

Love then, friends, and open your eyes to the faults of your lover; for in making yourselves blind to them, you only exacerbate them. Love of self may be blind, but true love is all-seeing.

Thinking on Friendship

Tags

Aesop, danger, fable, fables, friendship

How about a little Ancient Greek? We all know of Aesop’s fables; the great original storyteller who used his stories about nature to convey tropes we still use today. Here is one of his puns or, morals:

Ὁ φίλος ἐπεὶ ἐν τοῖς κινδύνοις τὸν φίλον λεὶπει, οὐ τᾖ ἀληθείᾳ φίλος.
The friend that when in danger forsakes a friend, [is] not a true friend at all.
El amigo que estando en peligro abandona un amigo, no es un verdadero amigo.
Amicus ubi in periculum amico relinquit, verus amicus non est.

Notice the friends are in danger together, making the ‘leaving’ that much more important. Both in Greek and Latin ‘leaving’ had a huge importance. The Ancient Greek protected the man next to him with his shield in the phalanx formation; thus if you left, you quite literally caused the death of the man next to you and the breaking of the phalanx. Further, the person next to you in formation was, more than likely, a very close friend, if not a father, uncle, or someone in your family, since the phalanx was formed by house, district, and neighborhood. Also, ‘philo’ was another word for love, love that grew out of common goals and experiences (think philadelphia – the city of ‘Brotherly Love’), so whoever you left behind to die was much more than just a buddy.

Although not tied by family, Romans thought of abandoning the line just as badly; a concept shared with the new brotherhoods of today, such as those created out of the military, aka Brothers at Arms who ‘leave no one behind.’ We could just as easily say ‘the lover (out from shared experiences) who, when in danger, leaves the beloved behind is no true lover at all.’

Thinking on the Ego, Friendship, and Friends.

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ancient greek, Aristotle, Cicero, Ego, friends, friendship

It is time for some Ancient Greek. There was a post in Latin which had Cicero saying “A friend is another self.” Remember that? Let’s do the Greek version, which predates Cicero by at least 400 years:

Ἕτερος γὰρ αὐτος ὁ φίλος ἐστι. (Aristotle)
Thus, a friend is another self.
Por lo tanto, un amigo es otro ‘yo.’

Here, Aristotle is far more detailed than Cicero was, for while Cicero was using ‘idem’ for ‘another self,’ Aristotle used two distinctive words, a Noun and a Reflexive Pronoun in order to indicate the reflexive nature of the self. Interesting viewpoints none the less. Since Cicero thinks a true friend is an exact copy of oneself, while Aristotle thought of a friend as a version of ourselves that didn’t, necessarily, had to be exactly like us.

Food for thought, Thinkers.

Χαίρετε!

Thinking on Cicero, Friendship, and Love.

Tags

Cicero, friendship, latin, love, self, self-love

Posting issues prevented us from getting you some Latin yesterday; let us make amends for our lack of ‘studium’ (zeal).

Vērus amīcus est alter īdem (Cicero)
A true friend is another self.
Un verdadero amigo es otro ‘yo.’

Of course; it is our Cicero that returns with a quote on friendship. What does he mean by ‘self?’ He, quite literally, says that a true friend is īdem, that is, ‘a third person outside of one self but equal in all things to one self.’ Have you ever had a buddy so close to you that you felt you could read each other minds? That is what Cicero equates to true friendship.

Also, if you ever watched “Ghost,” with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and wondered what they meant when one said “I love you” and the other replied “idem,” now you know the answer. They meant to say “the same thing,” quite the neuter way to say ‘I love you back’ while practicing some Latin.

Salvete!

Thinking of People, Friendships, and Enemies

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Aesop, classical greek, enemies, fable, friendship, people

Let’s do a little A. Greek to brighten up your Monday morning! We will probably end up naming this the Aesop Series, so let’s take a look.

After a wolf convinces (weird word, from the Latin con-vicere – to win together by multiple things) a sheep to ditch her guarding dog because of some rumors, finally becoming lunch for the wolves, Aesop gives us the following moral:

Μὴ ἀποπέμπετε, ὦ ἄνθρωποι, τοὺς φἰλους διὰ τοὺς λὸγους τῶν πολεμίων.
Do not [you all] send away, O men [and women], your friends on account of words from your enemies.
No os deshagais, hombres [y mujeres], de vuestros amigos debido a palabras de vuestros enemigos.
Propter verba hostes, viri, amici non relinquitis.

Aesop is trying to tell us here that no matter how good our enemy’s arguments/rumors, we should always consider our friends first. After all, our friends have our well-being in mind, while we may easily think our enemies are just trying to get that friendship.

Notice the use of ‘ἄνθρωποι’ in the Greek and ‘viri’ in the Latin. They are both denoting men and women by virtue of language. Just like many writers in our time would say ‘Men’ and actually mean ‘mankind;’ or write ‘mankind’ as meaning both men an women. Despite arguments to the contrary, which are valid for other reasons, Aesop’s meaning includes men and women in it.

So, remember your friends, friends.