Seneca Moral essays
Seneca: Would to heaven that such savagery had contented…
Would to heaven that such savagery had contented itself with foreign examples, and that barbarity in anger and punishment had not been imported with other outlandish vices into our Roman manners!
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Seneca’s moral essays. The reading beside it is ours.
Cruelty is not made respectable by being common, traditional, or imported from somewhere impressive. People are very good at borrowing the worst habits of their age and calling them realism, toughness, or the way things work. A workplace can normalize public shaming. A family can normalize sarcasm. An online community can normalize dehumanizing strangers. The fact that you see it everywhere is not a defense of joining in. We each have a small responsibility for the moral customs around us. Do not repeat a joke that depends on someone else's humiliation. Do not accept harshness as the price of belonging. Do not confuse punishment with justice just because others do. You may not control the culture at large, but you control what crosses your own lips and what becomes normal in your immediate circle.
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