Simple Stoic Advice
Fleeting fame
Fleeting fame
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.6:
Quote
“So many who were remembered already forgotten, and those who remembered them long gone.”
Advice
Today’s culture populates the desire to be famous whether it be on film and television or on Youtube and social media. And many will do whatever it takes to attain such fame.
But the Stoics knew better than to fall into this trap of desire. Of all the Stoics, none was more powerful politically than Marcus Aurelius, who had been Roman Emperor from 161 to 180.
Throughout the Meditations, rather than embrace the fame and power that comes with being an emperor, Marcus often restrains himself. He was the antithesis of emperors like Nero and Caligula. He has been referred to as the Philosopher-King, a reference to Plato’s Republic of the ultimate ruler being a philosopher first and foremost.
Marcus reminds himself often that fame, remembrance, desire to be powerful, these are all just things that are bestowed upon people, but they’re not worth having our character corrupted by them.
How often have we seen individuals attain a position of power and allow it to corrupt them? Or rather, bring out the worst in them?
Marcus attempts to reframe his perspective in Meditations away from fame by reminding himself that life itself is fleeting:
People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gurters and goes out.
Time is a forward marching construct that is never to be recovered. Marcus embraces this as a way to defer the fame and praise that came with the title of emperor.
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