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In the Stoic tradition, Marcus Aurelius reminds us in Meditations that the soul finds balance not by bending the world to its desires, but by living in harmony with the rational order that shapes it. Both essays—The Scales of Society and The Horseshoe’s Convergence—speak powerfully to this truth. When we trade reality for utopian dreams, we don’t advance; we regress. Realism, seen through a Stoic lens, is the practice of knowing what’s within our control—our judgments, our virtues—and what isn’t: the stubborn facts of nature and history. To pursue idealism as if the world must yield to our will is to fight against nature itself. Epictetus would call this a form of slavery to externals—an endless, exhausting battle to remake what cannot be remade. The metaphors of the scale and the curve become lessons in humility, urging us to weigh our convictions not by how righteous they feel, but by how true they are.
The danger of extremes, as both essays show, comes from losing that grounding in reality. The far left and far right don’t meet by coincidence; they curve toward each other under the same gravitational pull of unchecked passion over reason. Stoicism teaches that the will, when misdirected, can turn virtue into vice. The search for purity—whether egalitarian or hierarchical—often becomes self-righteousness, and self-righteousness turns easily into cruelty. Seneca warned that anger devours its host first, and here we see that on a societal scale: politics consumed by outrage, discourse replaced by denunciation, and myth elevated over evidence. The “horseshoe” is more than a metaphor—it’s a mirror reflecting our inner collapse when moral certainty replaces humility. The more we cling to our certitudes, the less we see of truth. In that blindness, we reproduce the very coercion we claim to oppose. Stoicism reminds us that true power is never about conquering others—it’s about mastering our own thoughts and reactions.
Yet the Stoic path is not one of despair but of quiet renewal. We can rebuild the crossbar of realism through daily discipline—by anchoring ourselves in what is, not what we wish would be. As the essays conclude, tolerance doesn’t survive through ideological victory but through shared respect for evidence and for limits. That’s a civic form of amor fati—a love of fate—that turns polarization into friction that sharpens rather than burns. When we learn to accept what’s beyond our control and focus on the integrity of our own actions, the scales find balance again, the horseshoe stays open, and reason’s republic endures. Not by force, and not by fury, but by quiet fidelity to the logos that connects us all.
“Imagine this: after a blistering hot day marching up and down mud slicked hills, or tramping wide open fields, or steamy jungle, imagine setting out booby traps on enemy trails, laying in wait, then ever so carefully, breaking them down.
At dusk, after planting trips and claymores round the NDP, after finding a spot for your pack and gear, after eating tinned c-rations of beans and franks, imagine curling up on the cold wet ground.
Now, fast asleep, being woken twice in the night by a man gently tapping your resting arm. “Your guard,” he whispers, for the first of two one hour shifts.
Leaving that foxhole the second time, grenades, machine gun, claymore detonators all in place, imagine two hours sleep, rising at dawn, shrugging off bugs and wet bamboo, rubbing rheumy eyes, brushing sticky teeth.
Before the grueling day begins, there is the welcoming taste of GI coffee. Here is how to make it:
Seated crossed legged, take a chunk of C4 the size of a thumbnail, shape it into a ball, set it carefully down.
Tear open the packet of instant coffee saved from last nights c-ration meal. Pour it into a canteen cup half filled with water.
Tap the brown powder over the cup, stir with a c-ration white plastic spoon.
Strike a GI match and light the C4. Do not breathe in the white smoke; the fumes, it is said, are harmful.
Hold the canteen cup over the burning explosive until the water boils, about thirty seconds.
Remove the cup from the bright yellow flames. Let the C4 burn itself out. Those who step on it risk losing a foot.
Tear open and pour in one or two packets of non dairy creamer. Repeat with sugar. Use the white plastic spoon to mix and stir. With eyes closed, inhale the savory vapours; cup to your lips, feel the hot inky brew flood your mouth, scourge your tongue, roll down your willing gullet. The taste is awful, but it will do.
Grunts savor this quiet time, before every inch of our bodies are salty with sweat. This quiet time before seething mosquitoes, snapping ants, creeping leeches bite or sting or drink our blood.
This quiet time before sudden shots fill us with dread that is always new. This quiet time before the shrieking air sings of the wounded, smells of the dead.
It is the all too fleeting quiet time, which ends with the softly echoed ‘zero two,’ followed by the dim rustling of one hundred packs, helmets, weapons reluctantly lifted, slung, shifted to place.
See how the flock of helmeted cranes slouch against their rifles, feel how the sweat drips down narrow cheeks, collects at the chin, free falls, forming small dark spots on half bent knees.
Listen, as moments after the hushed command, one hundred grudging soldiers, one by one, reluctantly trudge forward, into the grim unwinnable jaws of Vietnam.”
I value my quiet time, I think everyone does. Because silence time can mean peace and stillness, a time to be away from the thoughts that drive us.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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