Some thoughts on these things: in an interview with Richard Marshall.

Marshall has had to migrate his interviews with philosophers to this new site, owing to a hecklers’ veto of 3:AM magazine (as it then was). I’m glad to see he is keeping up his work, and not grovelling to the Twitter mobs.

‘[W]henever you see someone groveling to another person or flattering him insincerely, you can confidently say that this man also is not free, and not only if he is doing it for the sake of a meager meal but even if he is hoping for a governorship or a consulship. Call people who act like this for small things petty slaves, and call the others, as they deserve, slaves on the grand scale.’

Epictetus, Discourses, 3 (trans A.A. Long)