Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Epictetus for entrepreneurial engineers

As part of the course I'm taking on the Greco-Roman moralists, I've been reading some Epictetus's Discourses. He hits the hammer on the head in book 1, discourse 1 Of the things which are under our control and not under our control:
But now, although it is in our power to care for one thing only and devote ourselves to but one, we choose rather to care for many things, and to be tied fast to many, even to our body and our estate and brother and friend and child and slave. Wherefore, being tied fast to many things, we are burdened and dragged down by them. . . We must make the best of what is under our control, and take the rest as its nature is.
Nuggests of wisdom of the ages are found on almost every page.

1 comment:

Andrew Fox said...

I hear what Epictetus says about trying oneself fast to things we care about. I touched upon this in my latest blog "Engineering, Change and Identity". It seems we are destined to perpetually fall into this condition - it seems every generation must experience the same to be convinced of its virtue. We progress materially, technologically but are we stuck fast intellectually? Andrew Fox