From Facebook in Response to Anthony Adams
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Cicero all of his life was following his teacher Platos' first principles who said that a) A perfect being (god) was the demiurge who knew "geometry", felt lonely and one day decided to create the one and only this world of ours that is a reflection of his perfect world b) There is an idea of an absolute justice that exists in the god's world and it is reflected in the world of ours, and the more we will try to implement that absolute justice, in our world, so much more we become virtuous men c) Senses and feelings are not criteria of truth to judge all the things around since only the mind and the soul of that perfect being (god) knows the absolute truth and has his representatives that give all the oracles in Delphi and Asclepiia c) Pleasure is not a good, because it has no limits and can't be never fullfilled so, it has to be thrown in the fifth and the last category d) Our soul is immortal and with reincarnation we will born again in a new body with a mind and soul that have “oblivion”, but in the meantime we will remember again – with the teachings in Plato’s Academy - some of the ideas-virtues - of our past lives. And alas if your soul will be reincarnating again in the body of a woman. It would be better to be reincarnating again in the body of a dog "speaking with woof – woof”!
Thus, if you would follow Plato’s' first principles and connected them with ethics you fall into the trap of becoming, in the end, a miserable stoic who measures all the things in the basis of virtue, duty, and apathy. And when we say virtue, duty and apathy means to not measure all the things with senses and feelings and for this you are doubting continuously for any established Knowledge, and of course the most important is to not accept "the atoms and the void" by Democritus and Epicurus. Thus, with these three cores of the Stoa - that is the miserable branch of the teachings by Plato - with the virtue, duty and apathy in the end, you will accept easily your fate-destiny of a violent and dishonorable death same as Socrates, Seneca and Cicero and with this death you become a martyr and a hero… and hooray, for that “great” man! Because for the evolution of our species there must be and some “useful idiots” that they should always be glorified. Since the “posthumus reputation” is a "great pleasure" for the dead martyr. Since, the dead have "feelings" and "feel the pleasure" of their deeds as they would be alive!
We are talking about for so much of an ambiguity and empty-vague ideas, and as Epicurus said: these are all the false opinions that is the source of most of the turmoil that seizes upon the souls-minds of men!