Philosophy

Seneca on Aging Death and Suicide
Aging

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca on Aging, Death, and Suicide

09/17/2025 Bruce Strom 5

Seneca reminds us: “There is indeed a limit fixed to us,” “but none of us knows how near he is to this limit. Therefore, let us so order our minds as if we had come to the very end. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day.” “Let us begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” What is important is “not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often living nobly means that you cannot live long.” […]

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca on Aging, Retirement, and Death
Aging

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca on Old Age and Retirement

09/07/2025 Bruce Strom 4

Seneca faces old age and death as only a Stoic could. “Old age is a time of life that is weary rather than crushed.” Nevertheless, I am thankful, “for age has not damaged my mind, though I feel its effects on my constitution. Only my vices” “have reached senility; my mind is strong,” “it is alert,” “it declares that old age is when it blooms.” “My mind bids me to consider how much this peace of mind and moderation of character I owe to wisdom and how much to my time of life; it bids me to distinguish carefully what I cannot do and what I do not want to do.” “There is only one chain that binds us to life, and that is the love of life.” […]

Classical Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier on Old Age, Death, and Faith
Aging

Classical Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier on Old Age, Death, and Faith

08/26/2025 Bruce Strom 2

Tournier reminds us that we may experience many successes, but as we grow older, “success retreats, and escapes us, it is limited, unfulfilled.” “When one comes to the end, a man’s life is nothing much.” “Professional life is over, and it finishes unfinished. This is a prefiguration of death, in which the whole of life will finish it, too, being unfinished. That is the dramatic contradiction of death.” Quoting Robert Mehl: “An end, but not a fulfilment, that is the face of death.” […]

Paul Tournier on Aging and Retirement
Aging

Classical Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier on Old Age and Retirement

08/20/2025 Bruce Strom 4

Paul Tournier notes: “Freud defined psychological health under the double heading of aptitude for love and for work.” But Paul Tournier cautions that “the superficial relationships of working life and of sexual attraction must lead to a deeper personal commitment. And I believe that no commitment can be truly personal unless it takes on a transcendent dimension and become love, in the biblical meaning of the word.”
Paul Tournier is grateful: “As an intellectual, I am specially privileged. It is true that the better educated people are, the more chance they have to enjoy their retirement. First, intellectual work” is not physically taxing. “Second, the capacity for intellectual work is retained longer than physical ability. It can even increase in old age as long as disease does not affect the mental faculties. But most of all, the more one exercises one’s mind, the more pleasure it gives to exercise it. The more one learns, the more one wants to learn, and the easier study becomes.” […]

St John Chrysostom, Voltaire, and Leibniz Ask: Why Would a Loving God Permit Earthquakes?
Early Church Writing

St John Chrysostom, Voltaire, and Leibniz Ask: Why Would a Loving God Permit Earthquakes?

04/18/2025 Bruce Strom 2

Theodicy is the term that Gottfried Leibniz coined in 1710 to describe this so-called problem of how an Almighty God permits suffering in the world.[1] The famed textual critic Bart Ehrman describes how he lost his faith over his concern about Theodicy in his book, On God’s Problem: Why We Suffer. As he points out, different books of the Bible answer this question differently. Many of the prophets, like St John Chrysostom, proclaim that natural disasters are often punishment meted out because we do not take care of the widows, orphans, and the poor.
On the other hand, in the Book of Job God does not give a reason for Job’s suffering, instead asking if Job can fathom the purposes of any of God’s inscrutable actions. why God permits the actions of God.  Although I often do not agree with Bart Ehrman’s conclusions, I rarely disagree with the evidence he cites in his works. Another recent best seller is by Rabbi Harold Kushner: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. We plan to reflect on both these works sometime in 2025. […]

Michael J Fox and Parkinsons: Symptoms and Struggles
Philosophy

Michael J Fox and Parkinson’s Disease: His Symptoms and Struggles

04/01/2025 Bruce Strom 2

Where does Parkinson’s disease fall on the spectrum of neurological diseases? On one extreme, dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, degrades the patient’s cognition, including memory and reasoning. Their motor functions decline only as their overall health declines. On the other extreme, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease degrades the patient’s motor functions, often starting with the legs, then the arms, then they have trouble breathing. […]

Tamara Dawes, On Sex Trafficking and Homelessness, Rotary Club of Sunrise FL Speaker
Philosophy

Tamara Dawes, On Human Trafficking and Homelessness, Rotary Club of Sunrise FL Speaker

02/27/2025 Bruce Strom 0

I’m just a mom that has seen families sleeping in cars, on plazas, and numerous other places with nowhere to turn. Recently, I had a brief encounter with a single mother and her sixteen-year-old son; they were on a plaza with two small black bags containing all their possession asking for money to buy food. The security guard approached and asked them to vacate the premises, because people were complaining about their presence, and she didn’t want to call the police. The kind security guard allowed me to get some personal information from this mother whom I tried to help. The desperate mother related how frustrated she was in her hopeless attempts of trying to find accommodations, as the shelters are unable to accept them because of the Covid-19 mandate that limits their capacity. I informed her that I too have made numerous calls, so I can attest to the information she shared. […]

What are the Ten Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer's?
Dementia and Alzheimers Disease

What are the Ten Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer’s?

02/12/2025 Bruce Strom 0

What are the Ten Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer’s? We repeat these ten warning signs from the Alzheimer’s Association website in our book review of Kim Campbell’s biography of the celebrity country music star Glen Campbell from before his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease through his passing. We reflected on […]

Did Pythagoras Influence Plato? How Mathematics and Music Reveal the Divine Order
Greek Philosophy

Did Pythagoras Influence Plato? How Mathematics and Music Reveal the Divine Order

01/10/2025 Bruce Strom 0

Diogenes concludes that “the most important aspect of human life, according to Pythagoras, is the power to persuade the soul towards good or evil. Men who acquire a good soul are blessed,” while evil men “are never at rest,” nor can they keep to the narrow path. “Justice has the force of an oath, which is why Zeus is called the God of Oaths. Virtue is harmony and health and goodness in its entirety and god itself.” The universe is governed by “the laws of harmony. Friendship is harmonious equality.”
Diogenes then shares Pythagoras’ instructions for purification, some of which resemble the ancient Jewish laws. “Purity is attained by cleansing, ablution, and sprinkling with lustral water, and by avoiding all contact with cadavers, women in childbirth, and that defiles,” and beans and eggs and other forbidden foods. […]

Meno, a Platonic Dialogue. Why did Xenophon Despise Meno?
Philosophy

Meno, a Socratic Dialogue. Why Did Xenophon and Plato Despise Meno? How Did Meno Die?

12/21/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Xenophon, in Robin Waterfield’s translation, remembers:
“It was obvious that Meno longed to be rich; he wanted military command because it would bring him a greater share of the spoils, he wanted prestige because it would help him increase his wealth, and he wanted to be on good terms with the most powerful men because then he could avoid being punished for his crimes.”
Xenophon continues, “Meno thought that the quickest way for him to achieve his goals was to use perjury, lies, and deceit. In his opinion, openness and truthfulness were synonyms for stupidity. He evidently felt no affection for anyone, and if he claimed to be somebody’s friend it soon became clear that he was trying to sabotage him.”
Xenophon said that “Meno was frightened of people he found breaking promises and committing crimes, because he regarded them as well protected, and he tried to exploit people who were moral and honest because he regarded them as weak.” […]