Utopian Anarchy

I came across this passage from Isaiah Berlin commenting on Zeno of Citium while posting a comment on another blog. It accurately sums up my personal beliefs regarding people.

"Men are rational, they do not need control; rational beings have no need of a state, or of money, or of law-courts, or of any organised, institutional life."

Of all the philosophical schools, I like Stoicism the best - since it tends to be quite in tune with my own beliefs and ideas.

"Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away." - Marcus Aurelius, 'Meditations'

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect." - Marcus Aurelius

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." - Marcus Aurelius


Bust of Marcus Aurelius