Yesterday I was out having dinner with some friends. Every time I am with people whom I trust I always take the opportunity to share the good and the bad things that happen in my life.
Somehow, sharing the bad things or, better, the things that left scars in my life (aka the bigger lessons), causes people to either judge me or give me recommendations. I always expected that opening up would generate empathy and a mutual willingness to open up on the other side, but this is not the case: I have such naive expectations.
The "life quote" I received yesterday was "homo faber fortunae suae", wrongly attributed by one of my friends to Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor (Wikipedia attributes it to Appio Claudio Cieco). Leaving aside that this implies that you, and your choices, are the cause of your problems, it made me realize how dangerous it might be to blindly refer today to old philosophical beliefs, when philosophy, just like any other aspect of our lives, has evolved.
I am not a philosopher - although I feel this text could fall into a "modern philosophy" bucket - nor can I cite people who researched and published in this field. The only thing that sparked into my mind was that such a "life quote", in the way it was conveyed, would completely disregard any knowledge advancement that has been done, just as one example, in systems thinking. Unless you are fully isolated from other people - in which case, the environment would still influence you - how can one ignore that your decisions are yours only but are heavily affected by the context you live in?
I am on a path of inner search but I just wanted to leave this brain dump here.
Picture created by the author using GenAI