contention

The prevalence of a spirit of contention amongst a people is a certain sign of deadness with respect to the things of religion. When men's spirits are hot with contention, they are cold to religion. - Jonathan Edwards “The Book of Mormon does not supplant the Bible. It expands, extends, clarifies, and amplifies our knowledge of the Savior. Surely, this second witness should be cause for great rejoicing by all Christians.” - Joseph B. Wirthlin

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Life is long enough

 

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested...Life is long if you know how to use it.”

-Seneca, "On the Shortness of Life (De Brevitate Vitae)"

https://archive.org/details/SenecaOnTheShortnessOfLife

Seneca by Reubens

On the Shortness of Life LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA TRANSLATED BY GARETH D. WILLIAMS 

(1.1) Most of mankind, Paulinus, complains about nature's meanness, because our allotted span of life is so short, and because this stretch of time that is given to us runs its course so quickly, so rapidly-so much so that, with very few exceptions, life leaves the rest of us in the lurch just when we're getting ready to live. And it's not just the masses and the unthinking crowd that complain at what they perceive as this universal evil; the same feeling draws complaints even from men of distinction. Hence that famous dictum of the greatest of physicians: "Life is short, art long."1 

(2) Hence also Aristotle's grievance, 2 most unbecoming a philosopher, when he called nature to account for bestowing so much time on animals that they can live for five or ten human life spans, while so much shorter a limit is set for humans, even though they are born to do so many great things. 

(3) It's not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it's been given to us in generous measure for accomplishing the greatest things, if the whole of it is well invested. But when life is squandered through soft and careless living, and when it's spent on no worthwhile pursuit, death finally presses and we realize that the life which we didn't notice passing has passed away. 

(4) So it is: the life we are given isn't short but we make it so; we're not ill provided but we are wasteful of life. Just as impressive and princely wealth is squandered in an instant when it passes into the hands of a poor manager, but wealth however modest grows through careful deployment if it is entrusted to a responsible guardian, just so our lifetime offers ample scope to the person who maps it out well. 

I. From the first Aphorism of Hippocrates of Cos, probably Socrates' contemporary in the later fifth century BCE
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MrBeast@MrBeast
It’s kind of crazy the amount of good we’ve been able to do thru a YouTube channel

23,000,000 Trees planted
33,000,000 Pounds of trash from ocean
10,000,000+ Meals to people in need
500,000 People getting water from our wells we built
$3,000,000 To war refugees for supplies
$1,000,000+ Clothes to people in need
20,000 Shoes to kids in Africa
3,000 People helped walk again
1,000 Deaf people helped hear
1,000 Blind people helped see
100+ Houses for homeless people
100+ Cars given away
100s Of Dogs rescued 
3 Islands given away 
1 Orphanage/School/Hospital/Town/Gym/Village Powered/etc
1 Chocolate brand that pays farmers fairly and audits child labor.

And over $50,000,000 given to people NOT including the stuff listed above. All while still in my 20s 🥰

Imagine if Elon revolutionizes politics the way he’s revolutionized cars, space travel, brain chips, satellite based WiFi and tunnel digging.

> Tesla will never succeed > Elon can't start a space company > Neuralink will never work > SpaceX will never reuse a rocket > Elon can't run a social media -- > Elon can't do politics > SpaceX won't occupy Mars > Tesla won't solve autonomy How many times will people fall for this?



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