Cav's Place

Counting this as an actual book read feels even more like cheating than the one received when I volunteered in the same place last year, since it’s just a collection of quotes with an overly inflated page count, each page containing one to three quotes, at most four in a few very rare cases, even when plenty of those quotes have no more than a few lines, so there are even pages only containing a couple of printed lines.
As for the quotes themselves, the first chapter may do so slightly less, but the next few clearly focus on those main tenets of Stoicism that I was saying a year ago I find infuriating, also being so similar to the crap pushed by the modern professional mental health field, not stopping at reining in excesses but demanding that all must maintain that inner happiness and grin and bear whatever happens, blaming victims and the less fortunate who do not do so and discouraging and even condemning demands for improvement… Which is also hypocritical from someone pushing for the widespread adoption of a certain style of thinking and living. And the chapter about teaching is another I made a particular note of in a negative way, going well past the idea that unnecessary knowledge is forced onto pupils and heavily criticizing seeking knowledge and studying in itself, past what this school of thought deems necessary.
But other chapters are more of a mixed bag, a few even focusing in large part on concepts I can get behind, though there are major contradictions between those about friendship and companionship and those about self-sufficiency. And the title and what’s printed at the back are invitations to make up your own mind and argue for your own views, so I’ll leave it at that. As I also said a year ago, proper comments about philosophy require far more time and attention than I’m willing to offer this at the moment… Though I will add that reading things from over 2000 years ago certainly shows how little people and society ever really change.

Rating: 2/5