George Hammond

Stoic Attitudes combined with Light-Hearted Passion for Life Marcus Aurelius Updated, by Kelvin Chin, adds light-hearted passion to the Stoic attitudes about human life that characterized that Emperor’s private, but recorded, thoughts about how to be the best leader possible. By egging himself on to ever greater excellence, Marcus Aurelius gave all of us insights into how he made crucial decisions in his life. Kelvin Chin seems to have ripped a page from the Emperor’s book, as one clearly feels the incentives Chin is laying down for himself as he delineates the advantages of friendship dominating all relationships, and as he parses through the details of what he calls demystifying the mystical. Perhaps the most daunting of all, and yet the most clearly in his, and our, self-interest, is his understanding of the Transcending Cruelty concept, a deceptively simple explanation of why “evil” exists, and of how our own penchants for cruelty can first be dialed down and then eliminated from our pursuit of happiness, since cruelty is merely a counterproductive maladaptation. Caveat for those who are fond of the diaphanous ideal of Oneness: after reading Chin’s essays, you may have a hard time thinking of that illusion as anything other than as Onemess.