(the Voyager Golden Record with the sounds and music of humanity’s/civilization’s best.)
“The quality of your happiness depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
–Marcus Aurelius
(my italics)
Life, for me, is very much about living life on a higher plane of regard. This definitely affects mind, and lifts spirits and soul.
What else Aurelius said:
-Reason would let us choose that which was more in line with our higher nature and less in line with mere, ‘easy’ animal instincts. (Obviously people these daze prefer the latter, by and large, doncha think?).
-Virtue is the main good along with other ancient Greek excellences: wisdom, truth, justice, true courage, and common sense moderation. (Would you use any of these words to describe Trump, Trudeau, or Kenney? In short, we are living in largely spiritually and morally impoverished times, especially as signalled by leaders. We need far more of Marcus Aurelius models and less of those that William Faulkner called “glandular” in his famous “Nobel Peace Acceptance Prize Speech”.)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”–Matthew Arnold
(Unfortunately, today we are witnessing the nasty, mindless gutting of Western culture and civilization these days and those things that raise the human spirit and human aspiration, thanks to reckless tyrants, socially irresponsible ‘leaders’, and negligent losers like those mentioned above.)