What Ancient Romans Understood About FAILURE That We've Forgotten
The ancient Romans worshiped a goddess named Fortuna who ruled over everything in life that was beyond human control. She was blind, indifferent, and enormously powerful, and the Romans built some of the largest temples in the ancient world in her honor. When someone failed despite genuine effort, they were called "infortunatus" (without fortune) and met with pity rather than contempt. But over centuries, Christianity's Divine Providence, the Protestant work ethic, and Enlightenment rationalism slowly replaced blind luck with moral judgment, until we arrived at the modern meritocracy, a system that insists outcomes are earned and failure is deserved. In this video, we trace how Fortuna was forgotten and why that forgetting has made us more anxious, more burned out, and quietly crueler to people who struggle, from the Stoic philosophy of Seneca to the prison cell of Boethius, from Calvin's doctrine of predestination to the just-world hypothesis studied by modern psychology. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎶 Music used in the video: 'Orchestral Strings' by CO.AG @co.agmusic 'Angevin - Thatched Villagers' by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com) 'Thunderbird' by Kevin MacLeod 'A Dragon's Lullaby' by Scott Buckley (www.scottbuckley.com.au) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎓 Recommended Reading: ▶'The Consolation of Philosophy' by Boethius ▶'Letters from a Stoic' by Seneca ▶'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' by Max Weber ▶'The Tyranny of Merit' by Michael Sandel ▶'Success and Luck' by Robert H. Frank ▶'The Belief in a Just World' by Melvin Lerner ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌛ Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:33 Fortuna: The Goddess of the Uncontrollable 5:08 The Psychology of Roman Success (and Failure) 10:25 Boethius and the Wheel: Fortuna's Last Stand 14:17 The Death of Fortuna: How We Got Here 21:07 Conclusion: Bringing Fortuna Back 22:39 Outro - Thank you! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ DISCLAIMER: All materials in these videos are used for entertainment purposes and fall within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement is intended. If you are, or represent the copyright owner of materials used in this video, and have an issue with the use of said material, please email us at the address below. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🤝 Contact Information: [email protected] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #ancientrome #romanhistory #philosophy #stoicism
Your Doomscrolling Was Diagnosed 1,700 Years Ago
Why Life in Ancient Rome Puts Ours to Shame
CHOSEN ONES: Your Exhaustion Is a Sign Sophia Is Activating Your GOD STATE
The Ancient Greeks Wouldn't Recognize What We Call Love
A Medieval Peasant Would Never Survive Today's Information Overload
The Medici Invented Modern Banking — Then Used It to Buy the Papacy
The 3 elements of stupidity, according to philosophy | Jonny Thomson: Full Interview
Why Ancients Treasured Sadness and Modernity Forbids It
The Death of Honor: The Warrior Code We Left Behind
Why You Wake Up at 3 AM Every Night | History of The Watch
What Was Arabia Like Before Islam? | DOCUMENTARY
Did Ancient Humans Really Marry Very Young?
We Have Made Evil Too Sexy
You Are Inheriting a Falling Empire — Here's What History Shows You Should Do
The Psychology of a Medieval Peasant
How Medieval Society SOLVED The Billionaire Problem
The Terrifying Theory of Stupidity You Were Never Meant to Hear – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
You've Been Lied to About Cavewomen.
This Is The Last Video You'll EVER Need About Gnosticism - no bs
