Tag Archives: philosophy

Conversations With the Dead

Posted on by

“To attain wisdom, you must converse with the dead.” ~Pythia at the Oracle of Delphi to Zeno of Citium

On the surface, that’s a strange statement. It’s downright weird and completely impossible if taken literally. But I don’t think the Pythia at the Oracle meant this as anything but a metaphor or aphorism. I think she simply advised Zeno to gain knowledge by reading the words of long-gone writers.

Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC) was the founder of stoic philosophy. A literate man of his time, Zeno was a Cypriot merchant who suffered a shipwreck, lost everything, and washed up on the Greek shores near Athens. He found his way to the Agora (market) and into a bookshop where he discovered the recordings of Socrates.

Zeno was deeply moved by Socratic logic and critical thinking skills. This led him to start a school of wisdom and teach his ideas to students in the Stoia Poikile (Painted Porch) in the center of the market. Zeno’s followers were called the Stoicoi, now known as Stoics.

One of Zeno’s fact-finding trips was to the Grecian city of Delphi on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Here was the Temple of Apollo where the Pythia at the Oracle of Delphi—a revered and sacred high priestess—channeled messages from the gods to mortal humans. Ancient Greeks believed the Oracle, hosting the Pythia, was the very navel (omphalos) of the world and a spiritual axis through which mortals could consult the divine.

The Oracle’s historic visitors included kings, generals, and philosophers covering hundreds of years. Thought leaders from across the Mediterranean pilgrimaged to Delphi where the Pythia rambled trance-like riddles to be interpreted by the truth seekers. According to a National Geographic special, the Oracle was a rock fissure that emitted psychoactive vapors and that the Pythia was, in fact, quite stoned when she uttered inspirations.

Regardless of the truth of the trance, it’s well recorded that Zeno was at the Oracle of Delphi around 300 BC and received his cryptic message, “To attain wisdom, you must converse with the dead.”

There is profound wisdom in this message when you consider it objectively. Learning from those who’ve gone before us is a powerful life tool. Take the inscriptions (translated into English) in the architrave of the Temple of Apollo entrance:

“Know Thyself” — a call to self-knowledge and humility.

“Nothing in Excess” — a warning about hubris.

“Surety Brings Ruin” — a caution about overconfidence.

The Oracle of Delphi symbolized a truth that transcends time. Wisdom doesn’t come from answers alone. Wisdom arises from the questions we dare to ask and the honesty with which we face ourselves. Such as having conversations with the dead.

Personally, I’m thinking of two deceased men I can gain wisdom from. I have, but have never read, the memoirs of Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower that I inherited from my father. This post motivates me to dig in.

Kill Zoners — What books do you recommend we read that are wise conversations with the dead?

Attitude

Posted on by

Attitude. It’s the one thing you have total control over. Your own mental attitude.

That’s your attitude toward your writing. Your attitude toward your writing community. Your attitude toward society at large. And your attitude toward life overall.

This post is short. Recently, I was told I write encyclopedic posts (not mentioning names, Steve) but that was meant in a positive way, just like I try to keep my attitude – positive.

I’m a life-long Napoleon Hill student. If you don’t know of Napoleon Hill and his classic self-development treasure Think and Grow Rich, go read it. The core of Napoleon Hill’s Science of Personal Achievement is “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve with positive mental attitude.” PMA, for short. Here’s a clip from T&GR:

“Your own mental attitude is your real boss. While your time and your labor may be subject to the demands of your employer and others, your mind is the one thing that cannot be controlled by anyone but you. The thoughts you think, your attitude toward your job, and what you are willing to give in exchange for the compensation you are paid are entirely up to you. It is up to you to determine whether you will be a slave to a negative attitude or the master of a positive one. Your attitude, your only master in life, is entirely within your control. When you control your attitude toward events, you control the eventual implication of those events.”

Attitude. You can have a negative mental attitude. Or, you can decide to have a positive mental attitude. I won’t go into all the pros and cons of good vs bad mental attitudes because I don’t want to write an encyclopedic post. So, I’ll keep this short at 382 words.

Attitude. The word is eight letters long. Our English alphabet has 26 letters, and each has a numeric value as they progress along the alphabetic table.

Attitude

A =    1
T =  20
T =  20
I =     9
T =  20
U =  21
D =    4
E =    5
      100

Kill Zoners? On a scale of 1 to 100, from negative to positive, how’s your attitude today? Mine usually runs in the 90s, and I have a safety net built into the system if it drops below 80. That’s my positive wife of 38 years, Rita, who keeps me in check and makes my life wonderful.

How I Developed My Series Hero

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I’m happy to announce the release of my new Mike Romeo thriller, Romeo’s Hammer. It begins on a posh beach at Malibu, and ends just up the coast at Paradise Cove. In between a lot of stuff happens. (This is called a plot summary).

Today, I thought I’d say a little bit about how I came up with Romeo as my series hero.

I’d long wanted to write about a lone-wolf, hard-boiled seeker of justice. I’ve always loved this famous Raymond Chandler quote about the classic PI:

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.

The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

But I did not want to do another PI character. I love ’em, but we have enough of them. So I conceived a backstory that would cause a man to be on the run and off the grid. With a changed name. And who spent a number of years as a cage fighter.

What else could I add to make him more interesting for me? I decided to include my love of philosophy. I was nearly a philosophy major in college. But freshman year I was in a big philosophy class, with the smaller classroom discussions taught by a TA. This guy wore sandals and smoked Camels (you could smoke in the classrooms back then). He would take out a fresh cig as he spoke, hold it between two fingers, then strike a match, all while talking. He’d get a faraway look in his eyes as he went off on a metaphysical tangent. We students would watch the match burn down, waiting until it hit his fingers, which it inevitably did, and he’d shake the match vigorously to put it out—still talking! He’d drop the dead match on the floor and begin the process all over again. It always took him 2 – 4 matches to light up.

And I thought, if that’s what I might become as a philosophy major, maybe I ought to try something else.

But I digress. I’ve always loved philosophy and theology and thinking about deep things, especially in times of crisis. Give me Epictetus when things aren’t going my way, or Pascal when reflecting on ultimate truth. I wanted my series hero to be like that. So I made him a genius, a kid who was accepted to Yale at age fourteen. But then bad things happened … and we begin with Mike Romeo in Romeo’s Rules, in the present, with a tattoo on his forearm: Vincit Omnia Veritas. Truth Conquers All Things.

Plus, he likes flowers.

Most of all, though, he has that code Chandler wrote about. And at some point it struck me that I had a model for him in the back of my mind all along.

I was a mere pup when the TV series Have Gun, Will Travel was popular. But the character, Paladin (played by Richard Boone) was cool. (A paladin was a knight known for heroic deeds and the code of chivalry).

Paladin lived in the luxurious Carleton Hotel in San Francisco. There he ate the finest foods, sipped the finest brandy, and escorted the finest women to the opera. He could speak on virtually any subject.

But he was also a gun for hire. He’d go out on jobs, donning his all-black duds and six guns. His holster had a chess knight on it. Ditto his card.

The great thing about this western, unlike, say, Gunsmoke, was that Paladin very rarely shot anyone! Instead, he used his wits to outfox bad guys, or get good guys to do the right thing.

Most of all he lived by his code. One part of that code, which Mike Romeo shares, is that if someone is being bullied, justice demands the paladin step in and stop it. Here’s a clip from an episode of Have Gun, Will Travel. Paladin has just arrived in a town to meet his employer for the first time.

That’s Paladin. And that’s the sort of hero I had in mind when I conceived Mike Romeo.

Which makes writing the series fun for me. Maybe that’s the biggest key of all. You can put your hero through all sorts of tests. You can have him suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But if he’s not someone you’d like to hang out with, the series can turn into a slog.

Fortunately, Mike Romeo is bringing me joy.

The Romeo’s Hammer is available here:

AMAZON

AMAZON INTERNATIONAL STORES

So….let’s talk series characters. Do you have one? How did you come up with him or her?

OR

Who is your favorite series hero, and why?