Over the years, I’ve noticed an incongruity in the way we think and the way the world works. We like to put things in categories, even if the nature of those things doesn’t call for such groupings or accept them readily. Consider race: a simplistic,...
In 195 BC, Titus Maccius Plautus wrote Asinaria, generally regarded as one of the great Roman comedies. It is renowned for containing the phrase: Homo homini lupus est – “Man is a wolf to his fellow man” It is a statement that is generally...
Virtue seems elusive, if it can be considered a reality, at all. There are so many ways to err at work, in relationships, for your clients, in life; but it’s hard to always do the virtuous thing. If you’re fortunate, you’ve had the opportunity to...
In my last post, I mentioned the Greek maxims Know yourself and Seek the mean in all things. Today, I’d like to touch on the latter and one of its implications. While I prefer the above translation, usually MHDEN AGAN is translated “Nothing in...
When Pausanias, the traveler and geographer, visited the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in the second century A.D., the inscriptions in the forecourt were nearly a thousand years old. They read ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ and ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ: “Seek the mean in all things”...