A Darker Shade of Rant

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”—Seneca

The Rantosphere has been abuzz¹ with the notion that The Rant might have grown a wee bit too dark of late. We don’t know what you’re talking about. Just because our government is trying to destroy the entire world and ruin The Rant’s chance to retire² for reasons so arbitrary even the conspiracy hordes are stumped, we remain happy as a lark. Fine. Happy-ish and lark adjacent.

The Rant has been thinking about Seneca of late, a Stoic philosopher that lived during another period of random acts of madness, the reign of the emperor Nero. Seneca once served as Nero’s trusted mentor and tutor, writing some of his early speeches. But Nero believed the only genius in Rome was Nero and indulged his every impulse to create a whirlwind of chaos. Hobbies included having members of his family killed, including his mother and wife, forcing a slave boy to be castrated and then presented as his empress after a marriage ceremony, allowing despised minorities to be torn to shreds by wild animals, and building a new palace on the charred property of other landowners after the fire of Rome, a sassy use of eminent domain.³ Finally he turned on Seneca as well, accusing him of an assassination conspiracy (dubious), and sentenced him to death.⁴

As a Stoic, Seneca encouraged people to live each day humbly and gratefully, to let go of the notion of being able to control events and fortune, and to accept the outcomes of life with dignity. He did not rage against the injustice of Nero; he accepted the sentence and committed suicide. Nero would finally alienate Rome, flee into exile, and commit suicide himself.

“A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is,” Seneca wrote. During the current circus, we are reminded yet again how little power we have to shape our own lives against the forces of the cruel strivers constantly convincing themselves of their unhappiness and making others suffer in impotent acts of retribution.

Perhaps if we look away from the center ring, we can find a small corner of joy, a loving embrace, a spark of beauty to enchant us. The Rant divines that any hope we will ever be anything but mauled by the lions of ignorance is an eternal delusion. But they’re just misunderstood, some historian will earnestly argue someday.

1. Yes, the Rantosphere exists, yes you are in it, now pipe down and start buzzing.
2. Here’s a preview when we still have to do this in our 90s, presumably after buying a dozen eggs for $8,000: 1) A rant on the mouthfeel of our applesauce being off 2) Catheters, catheters, catheters 3) A 15,00 word screed on our inability to find reruns of Matlock anywhere (either iteration) even though the tv remote has been implanted in our brain (Because we’re in the future. Try to keep us). Mark your calendars.
3. The Rant finds recent efforts to rehab Nero’s image quite amusing. Historians are often like people forever dating people that are bad for them (But you don’t understand them the way we do!) Are tales of Nero exaggerated? Of course. Nero couldn’t have fiddled while Rome was burning because the violin hadn’t been invented yet. Having his mother stabbed (what really happened) instead of purposely shipwrecked (apocryphal account) does not suddenly make it youthful hijinks.
4. To Grumpus Alotus (Latin. Language of Rome) that would complain Seneca failed to set Nero on the right path, we offer the Dorothy Parker dictum that “You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.” Parker had been asked to use the word “horticulture” correctly in a sentence.