Why I adore Matthew Stover, part 3713305
From Seneca's To Lucilius on Providence, in which he explains why the "bad" things that happen to good people aren't really bad:
God, I say, is showing favour to those whom he wills shall achieve the highest possible virtue whenever he gives them the means of doing a courageous and brave deed, and to this end they must encounter some difficulty in life. You learn to know a pilot in a storm, a soldier in the battle-line. How can I know with what spirit you will face poverty, if you wallow in wealth? How can I know with what firmness you will face disgrace, ill fame, and public hatred, if you attain to old age amidst rounds of applause, - if a popularity attends you that is irresistible, and flows to you from a certain leaning of men's minds? How do I know with what equanimity you would bear the loss of children, if you see around you all that you have fathered? I have heard you offering consolation to others. If you had been offering it to yourself, if you had been telling yourself not to grieve, then I might have seen your true character. Do not, I beg of you, shrink in fear from those things which the immortal gods apply like spurs, as it were, to, our souls. Disaster is Virtue's opportunity.
From Stover's Traitor, in which Vergere explains to Jacen why the Embrace of Pain isn't really "torturing" him:
"What is pain for?" she murmured after a time. "Do you ever think about that, Jacen Solo? What is its function? Many of our more devout masters believe that pain is the lash of the True Gods: that suffering is how the True Gods teach us to disdain comfort, our bodies, even life itself. For myself, I say that pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. The most basic instinct of life is to retreat from pain. To hide from it. If going here hurts, even a granite slug will go over there; to live is to be a slave to pain. To be 'beyond pain' is to be dead, yes?"
Again from Seneca:
Therefore of all things that I have deemed necessary for you, I have made nothing easier than dying. I have set life on a downward slope: if it is prolonged, only observe and you will see what a short and easy path leads to liberty. I have not imposed upon you at your exit the wearisome delay you had at entrance. Otherwise, if death came to a man as slowly as his birth, Fortune would have kept her great dominion over you.
And again from Traitor:
"... But the Greatest Gift of the Gods is Death: it is Their Release from the Burden of Pain and the Curse of Life. It is their reward, their grace, their mercy, granted liberally even to the unjust and the infidel."
And y'know what? Correlating the Yuuzhan Vong to Seneca works. When Seneca wrote most of his stuff, he was under a death sentence from Nero for... I dunno, sneezing at the wrong time or something. (This was Nero, after all.) Seneca had several years under house arrest to put his affairs in order and write down his teachings, and then he was under orders to kill himself. (Which he did.) Take a philosopher steeped in Greek and Roman ethical/metaphysical theories, give him several years essentially on death row, and he produces thoughts on why pain, suffering, and death are a gift. A perfect philosophy for a race whose religion teaches the worship--through pain, suffering, and death--of gods who created the universe by mutilating themselves, imbuing the nature of reality with the necessity of suffering.
It's not unusual to find vague philosophical notions in Star Wars. (Taoism, anyone?) What is unusual--and wonderfully geeky--is such direct translation, not just from general systems, but from specific philosophers.
Wish more SW authors did stuff like this.
God, I say, is showing favour to those whom he wills shall achieve the highest possible virtue whenever he gives them the means of doing a courageous and brave deed, and to this end they must encounter some difficulty in life. You learn to know a pilot in a storm, a soldier in the battle-line. How can I know with what spirit you will face poverty, if you wallow in wealth? How can I know with what firmness you will face disgrace, ill fame, and public hatred, if you attain to old age amidst rounds of applause, - if a popularity attends you that is irresistible, and flows to you from a certain leaning of men's minds? How do I know with what equanimity you would bear the loss of children, if you see around you all that you have fathered? I have heard you offering consolation to others. If you had been offering it to yourself, if you had been telling yourself not to grieve, then I might have seen your true character. Do not, I beg of you, shrink in fear from those things which the immortal gods apply like spurs, as it were, to, our souls. Disaster is Virtue's opportunity.
From Stover's Traitor, in which Vergere explains to Jacen why the Embrace of Pain isn't really "torturing" him:
"What is pain for?" she murmured after a time. "Do you ever think about that, Jacen Solo? What is its function? Many of our more devout masters believe that pain is the lash of the True Gods: that suffering is how the True Gods teach us to disdain comfort, our bodies, even life itself. For myself, I say that pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. The most basic instinct of life is to retreat from pain. To hide from it. If going here hurts, even a granite slug will go over there; to live is to be a slave to pain. To be 'beyond pain' is to be dead, yes?"
Again from Seneca:
Therefore of all things that I have deemed necessary for you, I have made nothing easier than dying. I have set life on a downward slope: if it is prolonged, only observe and you will see what a short and easy path leads to liberty. I have not imposed upon you at your exit the wearisome delay you had at entrance. Otherwise, if death came to a man as slowly as his birth, Fortune would have kept her great dominion over you.
And again from Traitor:
"... But the Greatest Gift of the Gods is Death: it is Their Release from the Burden of Pain and the Curse of Life. It is their reward, their grace, their mercy, granted liberally even to the unjust and the infidel."
And y'know what? Correlating the Yuuzhan Vong to Seneca works. When Seneca wrote most of his stuff, he was under a death sentence from Nero for... I dunno, sneezing at the wrong time or something. (This was Nero, after all.) Seneca had several years under house arrest to put his affairs in order and write down his teachings, and then he was under orders to kill himself. (Which he did.) Take a philosopher steeped in Greek and Roman ethical/metaphysical theories, give him several years essentially on death row, and he produces thoughts on why pain, suffering, and death are a gift. A perfect philosophy for a race whose religion teaches the worship--through pain, suffering, and death--of gods who created the universe by mutilating themselves, imbuing the nature of reality with the necessity of suffering.
It's not unusual to find vague philosophical notions in Star Wars. (Taoism, anyone?) What is unusual--and wonderfully geeky--is such direct translation, not just from general systems, but from specific philosophers.
Wish more SW authors did stuff like this.