“Hour by hour resolve firmly, like a Roman and a man, to do what comes to hand with correct and natural dignity, and with humanity, independence, and justice.” This advice has value today just as it did 2000 years ago which is not surprising, considering we are biologically the same as the Romans were and our natural reactions to things are consequently the same even if our experiences seem very different on their face.

Welcome Freedom Troopers, to another installment of What Your Father Should Have Taught You. You loyalty and continued participation in our community is appreciated. There are things of value in our past that we need to hang on to in order to build a stable future in which we can boldly go where no one has gone before. Whether you are conservative or a traditional liberal you are welcome here. I have been accused of being both in my life and I still am. As we say here, NEITHER LEFT nor RIGHT, RED nor BLUE, but the TRUTH in RED, WHITE, and BLUE.

I welcome your comments below, or you may send me an email at Daniel.Saber@sabersedge.online

If you are new here and don’t get the cavalry stuff I explain it here: Ride to the Sound of the Guns – Why We Are Here – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth . “Ride to the Sound of the Guns” is a quote from Napoleon’s Cavalry Commander Marshal Joachim Murat (nicknamed: The Lightning,) who, when asked how he was always where he needed to be and at the right time on every battlefield. In response he said, “I don’t wait for orders. I ride to the sound of the guns.” Cavalry troopers don’t need to await orders. They take initiative. Throughout history the best leaders have done so, both combat and real life change too fast for us to sit on our thumbs and wait for someone to tell us what to do or to come and save us.

Again, I apologize for slow production. I am alone here and, at present, provides no income and I don’t have all the skills to change that easily. Trying to create a new format that makes this site easier for you to navigate takes time and money and both are subject to what is left after caring for my family. In addition, I need to do the reading and research on topics to see if they can be brought to print satisfactorily. When we change format some of my more poorly done or written essays may disappear entirely but after 3 years we have enough essays that I need a system that makes things easier for my readers to navigate and find. Remember, the only computers I grew up with were on the TV in the original Star Trek with Captain Kirk (unless you count my Dad’s slide rule.) In the meantime, you can search for topics of interest using the search function. If you have any questions, suggestions, criticisms, or encouragements email me at the address above.

But now, Freedom Troopers, lets mount up, draw sabers, and ride to the sound of the guns and listen to what the emperor would have no doubt said to his general Maximus (both seen in Gladiator,) on the frontier of Germania. Too bad his ideas weren’t passed down effectively to his son Commodus. Let’s now look at the full paragraph from Meditations. Marcus Aurelius didn’t just tell us what to do, he shared insight as to how we can train ourselves to act with resolve, honesty, and justice as a matter of habit in our daily life.

“Hour by hour resolve firmly, like a Roman and a man, to do what comes to hand with correct and natural dignity, and with humanity, independence, and justice. Allow your mind freedom from all other considerations. This you can do, if you will approach each action as though it were your last, dismissing the wayward thought, the emotional recoil from the commands of reason the desire to create an impression, the admiration of self, the discontent with your lot. See how little a man needs to master, for his days to flow on in quietness and piety: he has but to observe these few counsels, and the gods will ask nothing more.”

Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, his book Meditations, Book II, Para. V.

I want to start with the last sentence first. The emperor tells us that we actually only need to master a few simple and correct truths in order to live steadily, truly, and with Roman Piety. Although Aurelius doesn’t use the word Piety here it would have been assumed by him to be relevant because the idea of Pietas was integral to the Roman concept of virtue. Although, he was Emporer in the later period he was well educated and often wrote and spoke of the classical Roman virtues. We know he was successful because he is one of four consecutive Emperors that we don’t know a great deal about because their reigns were marked by stability and peace so history doesn’t have too much to say; as it focuses often on the mistakes and failings of humanity when things go wrong in human and national relations.

I discuss Pietas here: Pietas, Key to Good Government and Good Living – SabersEdge.Online Take a look at it when you are done here because it is different than modern ideas. I find great value in this Roman concept and what we think of today as “piety” is, like so many things, merely a shadow of what the Romans meant by the Latin word PIETAS.

In short, until you have a chance to read the essay on Pietas to get the full picture of why it is still relevant today for our prospering and survival as both a nation and a people, I will give you a quick synopsis. The Roman concept of PIETAS included virtue, faith, patriotism, and duty.

To quote my own essay on Pietas:

“There were several aspects to virtue and piety and they were all interwoven. Piety [today] has been described as religious behavior but for the Romans it was not such a narrow concept. Piety included a concept which we seem to have largely forgotten today, duty. They recognized that no one could truly be a patriot without piety. Because piety included a love of family and ancestors, a love of country that those ancestors built, a respect and duty toward the community in which we lived, and the country in which we were born, and all of this had to be grounded in faith that God, or the gods, were behind it all… the Ground of All Being. Above all, pietas included a confidence that the gods under-girded the daily life of the Republic and of history. If any one of these aspects were removed none of the others would be able to stand.”

Pietas, the Key to Good Government and Good Living, by Daniel Saber

The above is a paraphrase of Hegel and Spengler but the ideas would have been familiar to Marcus Aurelius.

As you know, Freedom Troopers, I believe that there is a Ground of All Being in which we live, move, and have our being. I believe, far from a “prime mover unmoved” who started everything and backed off, that the Eternal is real and interactive. If we choose to interact with it. At the same time, you know that I am cautious of organized religions as being constructions of humans with human faults and failings. Hegel said that religions may be humanities best effort to be faithful to the God they have encountered but nevertheless they are human efforts, and he preferred to go directly to The Source. I have Catholic and Protestant friends that insist on the importance of these institutions and, lest I be misunderstood, I agree. In fact, life is so hard if we choose to go through it without the support of a close-knit religious community, I believe that you place yourself at a serious disadvantage. Still, too often I saw the hierarchy of the United Methodist Church make decisions that seemed to me more based in modern culture or the preservation of property than based in guidance by the Holy Spirit. Still, I have been Pastor in some wonderful churches filled with wonderful people and they are out there. As a bit of a character myself, I tended to grow closest to those who had a bit of rebelliousness and independence in them.

But, from encounters I have had with the unseen and witnessing what appears to me as a Divine Presence or action in unexplained activities, as well as my near-death experience. I have no doubts what-so-ever that there is a great Something (I call it God and believe he manifested in the person of Jesus Christ,) and I believe there is great benefit this faith for yourself. There is an imminent post on ofNaturesGod.com that talks about how to get started in a faith walk so check it out when you can if you feel drawn that direction.

As I said above and in this Roman concept of Pietas includes a sense of the Divine and faith as essential and the basis of the very virtues we embrace as a society.

The reason this faith is so essential to us today is because so much of the foundations of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the very basis of Western Civilization is built on this Roman concept of Pietas and includes so many assumptions from Christianity that most do not even realize that’s where our ideas came from. Ideas such as equality whether “slave or free,” “man or woman,” and the idea that we should treat others as we want to be treated, to act with justice and fairness in our day-to-day dealings. These, including the ideas of the Ten Commandments form the very fabric of our society and similar truths are found in the basic wisdom of most successful societies. These include a respect of personal religious beliefs, property, injunctions not to steal, murder, disrespect parents, betray your wedding vows, or covet your neighbor’s stuff.

These are all underlying beliefs that are so ingrained in Western Society that we cannot survive without them as a free Republic. Indeed the founders were clear on that. [You can see more here: Founders’ Vision of Virtuous Citizenry – U.S. Constitution.net (usconstitution.net) .]

Now you understand what was encompassed by Marcus Aurelius injunction to the above “virtue” and how the Roman mind inseparably connected them with Pietas. Let us move on.

Marcus Aurelius told us to proceed not with pride or arrogance but with “a correct and natural dignity” and to act with “humanity, independence, and justice.”

This is, to be sure a tall order, but he tells us that we can do it if we develop the good habits he so often talks about in his writings and if we cling to the basic truths of life. As we go through life practicing these things they will become our very nature and we will continue to live them when we are under stress. The Army did this in training and had the saying, “You fight as you train.” Meaning you can’t take short cuts. Repetition promotes not only the muscle memory you need in a crisis but the behaviors that will keep you steady in a crisis. He tells us not to be too concerned with what others think or what the consequences will be of acting with humanity, independence, and justice” in an inhumane, domineering, and unjust world. Instead he tells us to free ourselves from the fears that come with “what will others think?” Or other vain, self-centered, cautions our mind might bring up. He tells us to take the right action “as though it were your last.”

Indeed fear, I think, probably keeps more people from doing what is right in a world of wrong than any other emotion. Too often we are more concerned with how others will take what we say whether than if what we have to say is truth or falsehood, right or wrong.

Marcus Aurelius is right that life would be better for all of us if we acted with:

Natural Dignity

Humanity

Justice

Independence, and

Without fear of negative consequences doing or standing for right

I first read Marcus Aurelius Meditations in college. I became interested in the various philosophers of Western Thought by a High School class I had taught by Dr. Donald Darnell, at Lincoln Southeast High School in Philosophy. It was an honors class and not part of any requirement so only those who actually wanted to take it took it. It was in this overview that I began reading many of the classics of Western thought just as later Dr. Schmidt in Asian Martial Culture opened my eyes to Japanese Martial Arts philosophy and how I saw similarities between the martial cultures of the world. I was saddened when the Lincoln Southeast my youngest son went to was but an empty shell compared to the Southeast I had gone to. No more did instructors like Stan Sibley, R. Michael Troester, Judy Bogle, Gunnar Overgard, Oscar Bretthorst, Mr. Hall, and Frau Printz walk the halls and open the minds of our youth. In fact, to my dismay, his German teacher was barely able to speak German. While in Jr. High my Spanish teacher had lived in Mexico and Frau Printz was from Germany and a naturalized US citizen. I looked forward to my son’s parent teacher conferences but, unfortunately, I found his High School teachers mediocre at best.

What can we expect as a society when we no longer revere or respect those who teach our children? And how can we get the best to teach our young if besides poverty we offer them scorn and disrespect. When we have sayings like: “Those who can… do and those who can’t teach” we relegate the losers to teach future generations. I suppose that works for elite corporate robber barons who already have what they want and are not interested in breeding or training up competition to their company but is it in our best interests as a people. Farmers know they plant the best seed for next year’s crops not the seconds or leftovers. Each of the teachers I mentioned were capable with an active mind and there are good teachers today as well. But you need to get to know your kids’ teachers and not simply trust that they are capable and worthy of shaping your children into responsible adults.

In your child’s education, as well as your own you should act with natural dignity, humanity, independence, and justice and take an active role in the education of your children whether you home school or trust the government with training your kids you need to be active and involved to ensure they get the training and start they need in society. Without a doubt, our children will face trials that most people did not have to face in our generation of plenty and security and they will need every advantage you can give them. That is, after all why I started What Your Father Should Have Taught You and SabersEdge.Online.

As Marcus Aurelius said, you will be surprised how applying to yourself simple and honest disciplines can carry you through life and allow you to weather the storms of life steadily and without drowning. I am including a link to a YouTube presentation from The Warrior Poet Society on how to start these disciplines without discouraging yourself or starting trying to change everything at once. For that is a recipe doomed to failure.

John Lovell, a veteran and competent professional operator who leads The Warrior Poet Society. He provides here excellent advice on how to build good habits and change our behavior for the better. I don’t want to just repeat what he had to say so I will leave him to tell you himself in the video I have included at the end of this essay. When you are done here I hope you take the time to give it a watch and perhaps subscribe to his channel.