#@seneca

[resqectable]

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

[philosophybits]

If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.

Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius

[arabdoll]

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

Seneca

[perfectfeelings]

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

[stay-close]

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

[emptyjunior]

Still in hunger games analysis mode, do you guys ever think about what Seneca did Wrong. About where he failed at the job he was given.

Because I think what his true fatal flaw was, was he believed it. He believed in the game and all of the propoganda surrounding it.

And this was something that was bound to happen in Snow's kingdom eventually! He made citizens that were clueless and lost in his little cloud nine. You can't make killers out of your arrogant, privileged sheep population!

Seneca Crane believed that the games were about the great show, about making stars and entertaining the masses.

The cold truth that you and I and Snow are aware of, is that the games are one part of the great oppression machine. They're a good political tool to be in control of, they can be used as a punishment to target whoever you need to, you can manipulate the big show on screen in a crude mockery of what's going on in real life! You can crush the spirit of certain districts, you can keep other ones loyal to you. And the victors are an extremely valuable Product that you are endlessly creating, idols and mouthpieces for your horrible propaganda machine.

So that's what the games do! A good tool for a dictator to have, and if you're aware of all the context, then being in charge of them gives you a lot of power.

But Seneca?? Seemed to genuinely believe he was there to put on a big fancy show😭 He was so excited about it, he chatted to sponsors, he did the interviews, he picked themes😭

Like of course he gave Katniss a 12 after her stunt, he wasn't worried about the fire outfits or her popularity at All. Because he thought it'd be good ratings, and it was! That's what he thought the goal was: Get the best, most entertaining story possible.

All those talks in the Rose garden?

This was not Seneca checkin in with the boss, that was the boss saying Hey what the Fuck are You Doing.

Because Seneca truly did not understand at all! How dangerous it would look for someone from district 12 to rise up that fast! (And Snow most definitely understood Very Quickly because he has been dunked on before by a black haired girl from district 12😭)

But even after that Very explicitly clear talk, Seneca kept allowing Katniss chances to tell the Mockingjay story. Because he is a fool, who thought he was there to make tv😭 And did not realise that the silly story they tell in the games, has very real effects on the districts.

Like the metaphor for it could be you hire someone to make you maybe pro-military, pro-war, propaganda films, and that goes great for years until they get a few generations in and the new guys are like "oh we're just making popular films here right?" And let your direct rebel enemy, star in a touching depiction of how great rebellion is😭 And then your movie guy goes "how was that boss? Lots of people watched!" ☠️

[agir1ukn0w]

sorry but snow is such a well written iconic villain and donald sutherland performs him so fucking good it's almost hilarious how i start practically foaming at the mouth every time the man opens his mouth to say something deplorable in those movies, like he's so utterly and despicably wrong about almost every crucial thing from katniss and peeta's relationship to human nature as a whole and yet the second he starts talking about how hope is the only thing stronger than fear and how you have to allow a little hope but control it so its spark doesn't grow into revolution and how it's the things we love the most that destroy us you bet your ass i am on the floor screaming crying throwing up because that is my psychotic mustache-twirling villain RIGHT THERE

[fragbot]

NURSE: You'll die. MEDEA: I long to. NURSE: Run away. MEDEA: Running has grieved me. NURSE: Medea— MEDEA: I'll become her. NVTRIX. Moriere. MEDEA. Cupio. NVTRIX. Profuge. MEDEA. Paenituit fugae. NVTRIX. Medea— MEDEA. Fiam.

- Seneca, Medea 170-171; my translation

[travel-with-kat]

Watkins Glen State Park

New York

[rhcenyra]

THE HUNGER GAMES (2012) | THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES (2023)

[tomcriuse]

The Hunger Games (2012) dir. Gary Ross

[quotefeeling]

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

[philosophybits]

People lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

[thoughtkick]

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Antidote to Anxiety

Anxiety is “the dizziness of freedom” and believed that it serves to power rather than hinder creativity. (Kierkegaard)

Anxiety was a paralyzing lifelong struggle — he accomplished his breakthroughs not because of anxiety but despite it. (Darwin)

“Anxiety makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you.” (Anaïs Nin)

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” (Kurt Vonnegut)

The great first-century Roman philosopher Seneca examined anxiety, and its only real antidote, with uncommon insight in his correspondence with his friend Lucilius Junior, later published as "Letters from a Stoic". Seneca:

There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes; since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you; they certainly have not yet come.

Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all.

We are in the habit of exaggerating, or imagining, or anticipating, sorrow.

You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives; so look forward meanwhile to better things.

What shall you gain by doing this? Time.

There will be many happenings meanwhile which will serve to postpone, or end, or pass on to another person, the trials which are near or even in your very presence.

A fire has opened the way to flight.

Men have been let down softly by a catastrophe.

Sometimes the sword has been checked even at the victim’s throat. Men have survived their own executioners.

Even bad fortune is fickle. Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime it is not.

The mind at times fashions for itself false shapes of evil when there are no signs that point to any evil; it twists into the worst construction some word of doubtful meaning; or it fancies some personal grudge to be more serious than it really is, considering not how angry the enemy is, but to what lengths he may go if he is angry.

But life is not worth living, and there is no limit to our sorrows, if we indulge our fears to the greatest possible extent; in this matter, let prudence help you, and contemn with a resolute spirit even when it is in plain sight.

If you cannot do this, counter one weakness with another, and temper your fear with hope.

There is nothing so certain among these objects of fear that it is not more certain still that things we dread sink into nothing and that things we hope for mock us.

Accordingly, weigh carefully your hopes as well as your fears, and whenever all the elements are in doubt, decide in your own favour; believe what you prefer.

And if fear wins a majority of the votes, incline in the other direction anyhow, and cease to harass your soul, reflecting continually that most mortals, even when no troubles are actually at hand or are certainly to be expected in the future, become excited and disquieted.

He ends the letter with a quote from Epicurus illustrating this sobering point:

The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.

Sources: 1 2 More: On Psychology

[rootlessly]

grey days ⋇ 10 feb