Everything Is Opinion — Including This
Marcus Aurelius wrote that life is opinion. Jimmy explores what that means through colorblindness, the sun problem, and Meditation IV.3 — the most radical…
Ethics
Five Ways You Are Doing Violence to Your Own Soul
Marcus Aurelius listed five ways the soul harms itself in Meditation II.16. Not what others do to you — what you do to yourself.…
Kiss Your Child Like It’s the Last Time
Epictetus wrote: when you kiss your child, remind yourself they are mortal. A BBC professor called it stupid. She missed the point. Jimmy’s analysis…
The Man on the Corner Said One Word
A homeless man in San Francisco said one word: Amnesty. Marcus Aurelius wrote about it eighteen hundred years earlier. Jimmy's analysis of cooperation, kinship,…
The Monk in the Margins
Odin. Thor. Freyr. Freyja. Loki. A rich, complex mythology full of competing powers, supernatural drama, and very specific ideas about how a warrior should…
What the Most Powerful Man in the World Said to Himself Every Morning
Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world — and every morning he wrote himself a warning. Jimmy's analysis of Meditation II.1:…
Good Is Not a Feeling — It’s a Fight
This is not a story with a complicated moral ambiguity at its core. The lines are drawn clearly. And that clarity is not a…
A Complex Plot, Two Grudging Men, and Aristotle: Character in The Piece of String
Jimmy tells you this in every analysis: Aristotle identified six elements of tragedy in his Poetics — plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song…
Why Is She Telling Us This? The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
Jimmy's analysis of the Wife of Bath's Prologue explores why Alison tells the pilgrims about her five marriages — and what Chaucer's layered narration…
Claudius Didn’t Just Kill His Brother — He Killed Everyone Who Trusted Him
There is a moment in Act Four where Claudius takes a grieving son whose father has just been murdered and turns that grief into…
The Art of War Is Not About Winning — It’s About Whether You Should Fight at All
This second essay argues that The Art of War is not a manual for domination. It is a sustained argument about cost — and…
A Duel Is Not About War — It’s About the Moment You Cannot Turn Back
In this first essay, we examine the beginning of the conflict — not the duel itself, but the psychological spark that makes it inevitable.…
