Nature demands little, opinion a great deal.

In my reading this morning, I switch between two books and particular passages in each which seem serendipitously to reinforce one another.  First there is It's Greek to Me! by Michael Macrone.  

Epicurus also said: “If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; but if according to opinions, you will never be rich.” Nature demands little, opinion a great deal.

Seneca the Younger, Moral Epistles, epistle 16

[snip]

According to the fragmentary evidence, confirmed by Seneca’s report, Epicurus held that one should “live according to nature.” He did not mean, as we do, that you should retire to the country, eat roots, and cooperate with the ecosystem. Rather, he meant that you should listen when your body says “stop.” ‘True Epicureanism is learning the natural limits of pleasure [see p. 59]. But opinion, by which Epicurus meant “the lessons of the crowd,” leads you to always seek more than is natural. For example, says Seneca, what do riches teach the average man but to seek more riches? Opinion has it that you can never be too wealthy, but immoderate desire for gain is unnatural and ultimately painful, since it can never be satisfied.

Another way to put Epicurus is that there is a reality we need to acknowledge and with which we need to live in harmony.  Knowing that reality is a challenge but a goal which can be pursued and achieved.  In contrast, the opinion of the mob is evanescent, changing, and ungrounded.  To sate opinion is a fool's errand.  It cannot be done.  In that regard, Nature demands little (mere acknowledgement), while Opinion requires a great deal (obeisance to a chimera.)

Ten minutes later I am reading The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam and come across a real world example.  It is November 2, 1950.  The Americans and Republic of Korea have repulsed the North Korean invasion and are racing north.  Victory appears to be at hand both to the abstract planners on McCarthy's staff in Tokyo and to the front line soldiers.  But for officers and commanders in the field, there was much suspicion as to what was actually happening in the field with many suggestive clues and ominous signs.  Major General Hap Gay was one of those in Korea seeing a different reality than the hopes and dreams emanating from McArthur's headquarters.  Emphasis added.

He was bothered as well by all the talk about being home by Christmas. “Which Christmas—this year or next?” he would say. “That’s stupid talk. All it does is get the troops too excited about going home, and they get careless.” Now, fearing the possibility that one of his regiments might soon be encircled, he was pushing hard to pull it back and consolidate the division. But his superior, First Corps commander Frank Milburn, was reluctant to do it. The Army did not like to use the word “retreat” unless it had to; the proper phrase was “retrograde movement”—and Milburn did not want to make a retrograde movement, not after almost six weeks of steady advances and, above all, not with the mounting pressure coming in from MacArthur’s headquarters to go all the way to the Yalu as quickly as possible. Gay, West knew, was becoming more and more fearful about losing a regiment to an enemy that Tokyo still insisted did not exist. There was a fault line in this war. On one side was the battlefield reality and the dangers facing the troops themselves, and, on the other side, the world of illusion that existed in Tokyo and from which all these euphoric orders emanated. The fault line often fell between Corps and Division, with Corps feeling the heat from the general in Tokyo, and Division sensing the vulnerability of a regiment of badly exposed troops. More than once when there was still time to move the Eighth Regiment back, Milburn refused to give the order.

 That Epicurean notion of the tension between knowing reality (Nature) and distinguishing it from Opinion (the mob's obsession with fads and fancies) remains as true today as 2,500 years ago.  There is hardly a headline which does not echo the tension between reality and ideological obsession.  AGW, DEI, ESG, Covid-19, Disparate Impact, Campus Rape Culture, Gender Pay Gap, etc.  All are manifestations of opinions weakly grounded in reality.

Regardless of how weakly grounded are the opinions, reality, in the form of the Gods of the Copybook Headings (by Rudyard Kipling) is always waiting to reassert itself.  

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, 

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, 

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!