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How to deal with stuff and people you don’t like

So in each case you need to say: “This is due to God.” Or: “This is due to the interweavings and intertwinings of fate, to coincidence or chance.” Or: “This is due to a human being. Someone of the same race, the same birth, the same society, but who doesn’t know what nature requires of him. But I do. And so I’ll treat them as the law that binds us—the law of nature—requires. With kindness and with justice. And in inconsequential things? I’ll do my best to treat them as they deserve.

Meditations, 3:11.

That’s how Marcus Aurelius responds: know what the law of nature, the logos, demands, and treat people wound me with kindness and justice.

And ignore the bullshit.

Important: personal knowledge, principles, integrity. Not your own, but eternal. Natural. Externally true, not internally constructed. My idea of right is not what matters. The laws of nature are what matter.

You can only operate from that base.

How do I distinguish between my own deep brilliance 🙂 and timeless principles? Take Nassim Taleb’s idea of time as a filter. If an idea has survived a long time, it’s probably a law of nature. Otherwise it would have been disproved a long time ago, and discarded.