Your resolution is very hardy.
My resolution is to read the writers before Socrates (in the Greek tradition) more carefully.
And get this old frame to perform better.

My resolution is to read the writers before Socrates (in the Greek tradition) more carefully. — Paine

Do you mean the pre-Socratics? or rather Homer and Herodotus and the play-writes?...or both? and do you mean in translation or in the original?

And get this old frame to perform better. — Paine

Do you mean physically, through therapy and/or exercise?

My resolution is to find something that interests me.

I am referring to the writers who ventured to speak of the fundamental elements of the world. So, starting with Thales up to the contemporaries of Socrates.
The primary writing is sparse and influenced and or preserved by later writers. I don't have the chops to have an opinion about competing translations. The reading is more dependent upon the efforts of scholars than many other works. I have started reading a collection of essays by Alexander P.D. Mourelatos that deal with a number of changes with the use of key words and expectations during this period. I know that many other arguments take other points of view. With that said, I still look at the project as chance to have a more direct relation to those texts.

As regards the physical effort, I mean exercise and therapy. Use it or lose it.

My resolution is to find something that interests me. — john27

What has interested you in the past, John? Yet it apparently fails to interest you now: do you have any idea why?

How do you intend on going about finding a new interest? Do you have a plan of attack?

The primary writing is sparse and influenced and or preserved by later writers. — Paine

I am very familiar with this from Seneca: his quotes of Epicurus are sometimes the earliest examples known, for no work of Epicurus has survived to the present—they were all lost in antiquity—though he is said to have written over 80 books; yet the works presumably lay in their entirety before the eyes of that late Roman author.

I would be more than happy to literally translate any fragmentary passages from either Greek or Latin literature you encounter in your reading. I’m no scholar, but I’m pretty smart, and I have applied years to learning to read these languages—Latin especially.

What has interested you in the past, John? Yet it apparently fails to interest you now: do you have any idea why? — Leghorn

I don't know; I think that's part of the question i'm trying to answer.

Well, I'm sure it'll come to me someday.

***

Do any of y’all make and try to keep New Years resolutions? If so, what are they? — Leghorn

I would like to be a less cowardly person. I have always done what was expected of me, not what I thought was fair. I did it for legitimate reasons, but there are always legitimate reasons pressing and I get shorty. News shows you how badly those who don't shrink end up. It is enough to remember Anna Politkovskaya or Julian Assange. However, at the same time they remind you that there are people who took the decision to do something to try to make life better. Most of us are within a step or two of ending up homeless. That already makes you a coward. Every day you have less time and opportunities to be otherwise, and yet you remain paralyzed. I don't want to acquire more skills, or have more money, or buy more things. I just wish to live in peace with myself. I see that I am going to leave the world as bad and silly as I found it and that I have contributed to making nothing change. Every year I propose to be less of a coward and at the end of the year I am still the same. This dislike me.

@Primperan

I would have included Navalny among the brave dissidents you mentioned; a true patriot, willing to risk his very life for a free Russia. But there have been very many such brave souls down through history: Socrates, and the Gracchi, and Cato the Younger spring to mind.

I just wish to live in peace with myself. — Primperan

But if I understand what you are saying, the acquisition of this personal “peace” will be bought with the sacrifice of your peaceful—yet cowardly—existence for one of political activism, turmoil and fear, and perhaps even danger of losing the very life you wished to live peacefully.

You seem to have forced us into recognizing an ambiguity in the concept or notion of what peace is: is peace a placid existence, without fear of pain or strife, knowing we will always have a roof over our heads and plenty of good food, etc.? Or is peace the inward knowledge, the conscience, that we lived correctly and did the right thing always, even if it entailed sacrificing a tranquil life for one of turmoil, danger, anxiety and pain?

Just a few more remarks, concerning the homeless...

...Those whom we call “homeless” aren’t always lacking a home: their home is oftentimes the outside world they choose to live in, for various reasons. I myself have never been homeless, but I have lived among many that have been themselves, and they proved to be a very colorful and entertaining bunch, full of illustrative tales...

...one fellow, a native of St. Augustine Florida, told me a story of how he witnessed a homeless man down there pull shrimp linguini out of the dumpster of the poshest restaurant in town, hold it up for all to behold, and cry, “Now I have found a trove of treasure up in here!” I doubt the original consumer of that dish felt the same way about it...

...another fellow, who had camped out in the woods behind a Food Lion, told me how he waited there every Tuesday for them to throw out the expired meat: then he would fish it out, take it to his camping site, and cook up the “best fillet mignon you ever tasted” over a can of Sterno.

I don’t doubt that many who end up homeless do so out of necessity, and suffer the greatest shame for having come into those straits; nevertheless, I know that many others find that homelessness is their natural home, and would not choose to live in any other way—especially in the approved way of “earning a decent living,” etc.

A resolution is a wish. Analyzing a desire destroys its purpose. Leave the analysis to Descartes or the lab.

A resolution is a wish. — Primperan

.

A resolution is a decision to do something, not just a wish or desire. Indeed, more than just that, it is a FIRM decision: when one says, “I am resolved” to do this or that, he means that he has made up his mind to do it despite any obstacles.

Analyzing a desire destroys its purpose. — Primperan

If a desire can be said to have a purpose, I suppose it would be to motivate us to acquire what it wants. If my desire to become wealthier takes command of my reason, I might resolve to make more money, and try to come up with the best plan to do that; if, on the other hand, reason fights off the demands of avarice and maintains her highest place in my soul, she might analyze this desire and conclude that pursuit of wealth is not the best way to conduct my life, reject the will of desire, and find wiser counsel to guide me in my actions and living.

I see that I am going to leave the world as bad and silly as I found it and that I have contributed to making nothing change. Every year I propose to be less of a coward and at the end of the year I am still the same. — Primperan

You appear to be averse to analysis, but tell me: how else besides by analyzing and reasoning about your life are you going to extract yourself from perpetual cowardice? Maybe you are content or even happy to be a hopeless existentially tragic character, somebody out of Camus or Sartre—but maybe this is just a guise you can cloak yourself with in order to stomach your own existence—an excuse for your own lack of resolve...

...That you describe the world as “bad and silly” reveals that you have already judged it: that you have exercised your faculty of judgement, which presumes reason and analysis. The clues you have offered as to why you judge the world this way suggest you judge it so because 1) governments are corrupt and need to be changed or replaced by revolutionaries or activists who are willing to risk their lives in this effort, and 2) societies are plutocracies that condemn the masses to a life of poverty and elevate a very few billionaires to a position of ultimate power...

...but these sorts of things have been going on in the world for millennia—and they are not the only things that characterize humanity: if the world is bad and silly, it is also good and noble. My advice to you is to make this year different from all the others and dedicate your life to making the world better and more noble. Since I don’t know you, I can’t advise you on the particulars—but I bet you can advise yourself.

Fuck. I don't believe what I'm going to say: I agree with you.

I resolve to make everyone happy! :grin:

A resolution is a wish. Analyzing a desire destroys its purpose. Leave the analysis to Descartes or the lab. — Primperan

:smile: Good one.