What does a work of philosophy published in 523 AD have in common with the game show The Wheel of Fortune?
Subject: Fortune - Wheel of Fortune Gameshow
Event: Wheel of Fortune debuts, 1975
On January 6, 1975, one of the most popular game shows in the history of television made its debut: The Wheel of Fortune. The show was created by Merv Griffin, who also created the game show Jeopardy as well as its famous theme song, called “Think.” The Wheel of Fortune is basically an adaptation of the game Hangman, where contestants guess letters in an attempt to solve word puzzles. The show gets its name from the large carnival wheel that contestants spin. Each spin determines how much money or prizes they can earn for each guess; contestants can also lose all their winnings if the wheel falls on “Bankrupt” or “Lose Turn.”
Image by G Lopez from Pixabay
Hundreds of years before the invention of television, the image of the wheel of Fortune served as a powerful symbol of the capriciousness of human fate. Long before Vanna White turned the lighted titles to reveal letters of the alphabet, Fortuna, the Roman Goddess of Fortune, turned her wheel to determine the fate of mortals. Those at the top achieve happiness through acquired wealth and career success. The wheel, however, spins on its axis, and even kings who were at the top of the wheel one minute can find themselves at the bottom in the next. There at the bottom is the pain and agony of lost fortune: failure, poverty, and loss. As Shakespeare says in Sonnet 29 being at the bottom of Fortune’s wheel is not pleasant:
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
In addition to her wheel, Fortuna was frequently depicted with two contrasting objects: in one hand she holds a cornucopia, symbolizing abundance and luxury; in the other hand, she holds a tiller, symbolizing her control over people’s destinies.
There is a long tradition in philosophy that seeks to find an antidote to the fickleness of fate. The Stoics recognized the need to determine some method of hacking Fortune’s wheel, refusing to surrender individual destiny to capricious fate.
Probably the best example of this comes from Boethius (475-525 AD), the Roman philosopher who wrote the classic work The Consolation of Philosophy (523 AD). Boethius began his career with success, achieving the position as Consul for the Roman ruler King Theodoric. Poised at the top of Fortune’s wheel, Boethius fell to the bottom when he was accused of plotting against Theodoric and imprisoned. In his Consolation, Boethius tells the story of how he was visited in his prison cell by Lady Philosophy. She advised him to remember and resist the whims of Fortuna. She challenged Boethius to not base his happiness on what was out of his control -- those things that may be snatched away at any moment by a spin of the fickle wheel. Instead, she instructed Boethius to meditate on what he could control -- that is his powers of reason. Only by controlling his own mind and his own powers of perception could he free himself from the chains of fate. As Hamlet said, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
If the sky is full of dark clouds that block the sun, and the rain is falling, you can choose to let it affect your mood; the more philosophical approach, however, is to accept those things that you have no power to change and to focus instead on what you can change -- your mind and attitude. The Stoics remind us that we have power over what we think and what we feel. We are mere mortals, but we have a super power called reason.
Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am”; the Stoics said, “I think, therefore, I am immune to the fickle and frigid finger of fate.”
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What is the Stoic’s antidote for overcoming the fickleness of Fortune’s wheel?
Challenge: Respond to the following quotation: ‘Two men look out through the same bars; One sees the mud, and one the stars.” -Frederick Langridge
ALSO ON THIS DAY:
January 6: Today is the birthday of the literary detective Sherlock Holmes, not because his birth is recorded in any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories but because one of Doyle’s fans set the date to coincide with Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. The logic? It’s a play that is mentioned twice in the Holmes canon. As Holmes once said, “Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell” (2).
January 6, 1878: Today is the birthday of American writer and poem Carl Sandburg. After serving in the Spanish-American War, he briefly attended the United States Military Academy at West Point; he dropped out after just two weeks after failing a mathematics and grammar exam. He later enrolled at Lombard College in Illinois. After completing his education, he worked in advertising and as a journalist. Sandburg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his writing on three separate occasions: 1919, 1940, and 1951.
In the following poem entitled “Grass,” notice he employs personification:
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Source:
1-Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy. The School of Life.
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