"We are all bad men living among bad men; and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another."

In April of 1865 the American Civil War was coming to an end. General Ulysses S. Grant met General Robert E. Lee at the Appomattox Court House to discuss the surrender of the Confederate army. The war had been brutal and bloody. Hundreds of thousands of men were dead. Many people in the North wanted vengeance. They wanted the rebel leaders hanged and the Southern soldiers punished severely.

General Grant took a different path. He looked at the starving and ragged soldiers across the line. He did not see them as monsters to be crushed. He saw them as fellow countrymen who had made a terrible mistake.

Grant offered terms that were surprisingly generous. He allowed the Confederate officers to keep their sidearms and horses. He ordered his own supply officers to feed the hungry Confederate troops. When the Union soldiers began to cheer to celebrate their victory Grant silenced them immediately. He told them, "The war is over. The rebels are our countrymen again."

Grant understood that strict punishment would only cause more hatred. To heal the nation he had to "go easy" on the men who had spent four years trying to kill him. This act of mercy helped prevent the war from turning into decades of guerrilla violence. This illustrates Seneca's point. Grant realized that everyone involved in the war had blood on their hands. There were no perfect angels on the battlefield.

Seneca argues that we are often too arrogant in our judgment of others. We act like we are judges sitting on a high bench looking down at criminals. But the truth is that we are criminals too. We have all lied. We have all been selfish. We have all lost our temper.

The world is not divided into "good people" and "bad people." It is a crowded room full of flawed people who keep bumping into each other. If we demand perfection from everyone we meet we will spend our lives in a rage. The only way to live in peace is to sign a mutual peace treaty. We must agree to overlook the small faults of others because we need them to overlook our own faults.

Errors & Corrections

• Don't view the world as a battle between "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys." Recognize that every human being including yourself is capable of virtue and vice.
• Don't demand an apology before you offer forgiveness. Forgive for your own peace of mind regardless of whether the other person admits they were wrong.
• Don't keep a mental scorecard of wrongs. If you track every mistake someone makes you will never be able to trust them or love them.

Applications to Modern Life

Interpersonal Relationships

Marriage and long-term friendships often fail because people refuse to let things go. Your partner will forget to do the dishes. They will say something insensitive. If you attack them every time they slip up the relationship will become a war zone. You must agree that you are both imperfect partners who are trying your best.

Work

Team projects often go wrong. Deadlines are missed and code has bugs. It is easy to point fingers and find a scapegoat. A Stoic leader realizes that mistakes are inevitable. Instead of punishing the "bad" employee you should focus on fixing the system. Treat the error as a learning opportunity rather than a moral failure.

Politics

Political polarization happens when we view the other side as evil. We think that we are the only ones who care about the country. Seneca reminds us that our political opponents are just as human as we are. They are flawed and they have biases just like we do. If we stop demonizing them we might be able to find common ground.

Social Media

Cancel culture is the opposite of this quote. It is a mob of people pretending they have never made a mistake hunting down someone who has. Do not join the mob. If someone posted something stupid ten years ago remember the stupid things you said ten years ago. Offer them the grace that you would hope to receive.

Maxims

• We are all patients in the same hospital.
• Forgive them for you will need forgiveness soon.
• Peace requires a pardon.

In-depth Concepts

Clementia (Clemency)

This is a specific virtue related to justice. It is the self-control of the superior toward the inferior. It is the power to punish combined with the choice to spare. Seneca wrote an entire book on this topic for the Emperor Nero. He argued that mercy makes a leader more powerful than terror does. When you spare an enemy you create a loyal subject. When you kill an enemy you just create a martyr.

Peccability

This is the philosophical admission that human beings are prone to sin or error by nature. The Stoics believed that until a person becomes a Sage (which is incredibly rare) they will inevitably make mistakes. Recognizing our shared peccability destroys the foundation of arrogance. You cannot look down on a sinner if you realize you are standing in the mud right next to him.