Ancient Philosophy, Modern Perspectives
“Look at the stars at daybreak. To remind ourselves how they complete the tasks assigned them—always the same tasks, the same way...stars wear no concealment.”
- Meditations, 11.27
Orion Perspectives is not just a “side project.” It’s a “soul project.” What I do and how I do it is driven in large part by my study of the philosophy of Stoicism.
My deeper dive into Stoicism started in March 2020, the earliest weeks of COVID in America. I was lost, confused, and rudderless. Seemingly without control. Throughout my life, I have found comfort and guidance in books, and so, looking for direction, I again turned to pages to understand this new world. I remembered one title that people I’d admired, like General James Mattis and President Clinton, had referenced in the past: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a personal journal of discovery and philosophy by the last of Rome’s “Five Good Emperors.”
I’d heard of Stoicism decades prior, back in college. I also had an early lesson in its teachings after Admiral James Stockdale’s infamous opening in the 1992 vice-presidential debate: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
I was 22 at the time, and like many, I laughed at him, believing him to be senile and out of touch. I later learned that, in reality, he was a devoted Stoic, so well-versed in the principles that he muttered them hanging in his parachute over Vietnam, shot down and on his way to years of torture as a POW. Those questions he’d asked weren’t based in confusion, but in profound self-awareness.
Determining to learn, I bought a copy of Meditations that COVID spring and dug in. Its words from 2,000 years ago seemed amazingly current. I read more on Stoicism, then more still...Seneca, Epictetus, and later Ryan Holiday, a young, brash marketer (an identity I identified with) turned philosopher, who is more responsible for the recent growth of Stoicism than anyone else, and I connected with his work.
Today, I begin each morning—before the phone, before the news, before the noise—with a reading from Meditations and an entry from Holiday’s The Daily Stoic. I read, then I write in my own personal journal of discovery and philosophy. I’ve been doing that part a long time. I ground myself.
Orion Perspectives provides more grounding, while its actual work involves nothing but looking up. I have tried to align how I run it with the four cardinal virtues, central to Stoicism and many other faiths and philosophies. Each finds its way into my work in some way, and when I fail short, I use them to re-calibrate.
Courage. Do I have the ability to stand outside in the dark, in the cold, alone in front of a crowd that seems uninterested in astronomy, or at the controls of a drone that can injure people and damage property?
Wisdom. Do I have the knowledge to teach people about the heavens? Do I know how best to capture images that reveal both truth and beauty?
Justice. Am I doing work for the greater good, for the love of humanity by exposing them to greater perspectives than they had before we met?
Temperance. Am I careful in my flying? Am I judicious in my enthusiasm and restrained in my actions?
Key tenets of Stoicism are otherwise sprinkled throughout. I use them as guiding lights, which I may not often reach, but aim toward.
Accepting the limits of my own control, evident when clouds disrupt plans for astronomy.
Doing the right thing, like abiding by a few commonly ignored rules for drone flying.
Living in accordance with nature, surely evident under the dark of night, gazing in wonder at the heavens. The Stoics themselves looked to nature and the sky for wisdom, wrote about it often and deeply, and asked themselves to align with the logic of the universe.
“Watch the course of the stars as if you revolved with them,” Aurelius writes in Meditations. “Keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.”
Not merely enduring, but loving, my fate. In times when no one is interested in the astronomy I'm offering, and when drone jobs are difficult to find.
Understanding perception shapes reality. In other words, the perspective at the core of this project.
The classical Stoics disliked a philosophy of only the mind, not of the body. They believed their principles were not just to be read, but put to work. I try to honor that with every astronomy event and every flight of my drone.
If my approach to running this business limits its potential success, I can live with that. Orion Perspectives remains what it was always meant to be: an extension of my soul, allowing me to deeply connect with others through shared exploration of the universe around us.
