It was late, and I was out for a post-shift drink with a bunch of waiters in San Francisco. They had all been toiling under the tyrannical toque of some French despot. It was the 90s, before the tantruming chef became a staple of reality television, but I\u2019d already worked for a satanic chocolatier who\u2019d harangued every food critic in town, so I knew the routine.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hearing the tales of the evening\u2019s melodramas grated on me, because I was currently working in the corporate world and interacting with polite and approachable CEOs and CFOs. No one<\/em> gets away with talking to people the way that chefs do \u2014 or did, back then. Drill sergeants and dictators were probably more personable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That night, this particular prima donna<\/em> of grub plating had been cruel to someone close to me. I\u2019d had a few and I was on a rant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho does he think he is? What is he really<\/em> anyway? He\u2019s just a fucking cook<\/em>!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n A clever waiter responded, \u201cEverybody\u2019s just a fucking something.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m sure I probably glared at him and continued. But that stuck with me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He was right. Everyone is<\/em> \u201cjust a fucking something.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone is reducible. No matter what someone has accomplished in their lives, it\u2019s easy to recategorize them in some banal way to humble or insult them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m just some fucking blogger. A \u201cself-published\u201d author. Thousands of hours of careful thought and hard work can be handily dismissed by any of the slurs that occasionally pepper my inbox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It works for everyone. Professional athletes are just trained seals, and Navy SEALs are just fucking pawns. World class powerlifters are just glorified beasts of burden. Notre Dame is, after all, just a fucking building. Da Vinci was just a dreaming doodler. Nietzsche was crazy. George Washington was, after all, just some fucking guy who put his breeches on one leg at a time just like everyone else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And this French fellow who had worked his whole life to become an internationally respected chef and was at that moment a major player in the San Francisco culinary scene was\u2026just some fucking cook<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was reminded of all this while reading through Meditations<\/em> recently.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow base and putrid, every common matter is! Water, dust, and from the mixture of these bones, and all that loathsome stuff that our bodies do consist of: so subject to be infected, and corrupted. And again those other things that are so much prized and admired, as marble stones, what are they, but as it were the kernels of the earth? gold and silver, what are they, but as the more gross f\u00e6ces of the earth? Thy most royal apparel, for matter, it is but as it were the hair of a silly sheep, and for colour, the very blood of a shell-fish; of this nature are all other things. Thy life itself, is some such thing too; a mere exhalation of blood: and it also, apt to be changed into some other common thing.\u201d<\/p>\u2014 Marcus Aurelius. Meditations<\/em> (Book 9, 34.)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Marcus fucking<\/em> Aurelius. What a spoiled self-important brat! <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLook at me, I write my precious little journal in Greek instead of Latin because I\u2019m a fussy intellectual philhellene.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s so easy.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking a step back, this reductiveness could be useful in keeping one grounded and to help avoid being swayed too easily by the influence of fame and titles and men\u2019s high estimations of themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Maintaining a disciplined humility and a careful distance from the seduction of power and titles is probably a very good idea when you are the Emperor of Rome. You don\u2019t want to go full Caligula. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To meditate, as Marcus Aurelius did, on the baseness of all things, is a useful thought experiment. It could be a tool for putting problems in perspective, and for remembering the humanity of men who have been elevated to a godlike status. Remembering that all great men were merely<\/em> men can actually make them more inspiring. It renders their achievements more accessible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While it is true that everything is reducible, and sometimes this reduction may be useful, this leveling of all things can also get out of hand. Reduction can be untruthful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Gold may be the shit of the earth, as Marcus Aurelius suggested, but truthfully I\u2019d rather be covered in gold than shit. Wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Returning to that chef\u2026 truth is that I was mad about the chef\u2019s behavior and I was lashing out. While I would contend that the achievements of chefs are somewhat overvalued simply because fine dining is associated with wealth, status and luxury, I have some level of respect for any man who has mastered a craft and risen to the top of his profession. He may have been a dick, but he actually wasn\u2019t<\/em> \u201cjust some fucking cook,\u201d even to me. That was an intellectually dishonest remark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I have gotten older, I\u2019ve developed a habit of acknowledging the talents, accomplishments and expertise of men with whom I disagree, or who have wronged me personally. Some have found it surprising. It would be easy to completely dismiss a man based on a flaw of character that I exposed or of which our friendship was simply another casualty. But it wouldn\u2019t be truthful, and I don\u2019t think speaking that way demonstrates wisdom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had close friends lie to me, or panic and lie to others while throwing me under the bus. I\u2019ve caught men who I trusted playing games and angles behind my back. After discovering this, I\u2019ll have nothing to do with them personally, and if asked, I\u2019ll tell you why we\u2019re no longer friends. However, I refuse to dismiss their positive qualities and insist that they are given credit where it is due. I\u2019ve even occasionally sent them business. I don\u2019t want them in my circle of trust, but it would be petty and vindictive of me to obsess about whether or not they make a few bucks doing what they actually do well. I\u2019m proud of this habit, and I encourage it in others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Either you want to maintain an ordered, hierarchical reality where you value achievement, or you don\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a prevailing bitchiness in the Zeitgeist, motivated by ressentiment<\/em>, that wants to dismantle the statuary of greatness as a comfort to mediocrity, weakness and sloth. You can feed into that by finding a way to reduce everything (and everyone) to some lowest common denominator. You can gossip and snipe and trade in clever insults.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or you can defiantly choose to acknowledge and honor strength and achievement and a measuring stick of good, better, best \u2014 even when it\u2019s inconvenient. Even when you\u2019re mad. Even when you\u2019re not the best, or maybe not even good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because if you refuse to acknowledge an ideal \u2014 there is no \u201cgood.\u201d No \u201cbetter\u201d or \u201cbest.\u201d Nothing to reach for. No direction. No orientation. Only fleeting comfort and sensation. Randomness and chaos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Only the voluptuous horror of multi-dimensional nothingness<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I think I\u2019ll stop there for now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That sounds like a good title for a future essay.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: “What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;” he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values. Everything (and everyone) can be cut down \u2014 but do you really want to accept a reality in which nothing is held up? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[122,119,120,118,96,78,124,123,121],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journal","tag-horizontal","tag-marcus-aurelius","tag-meaning","tag-meditations","tag-nietzsche","tag-philosophy","tag-valuation","tag-values","tag-vertical"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"