Often it is like this. He is not admirable; it is your unadmirable propensity to admire that confers upon him a quality he does not possess. She is not contemptible; it is your contemptible tendency to contemn that makes of her what she is not.
One ideal is to so apportion admiration and contempt that it is only the intrinsically admirable and contemptible that become the objects of these attitudes. An ideal Stoic and stricter is to regard nothing as admirable or the opposite, not even the propensities to admire and contemn. Is this what Horace meant by nil admirari?
How far should we take the mortification of desire and aversion? You could take it all the way into a world-denying asceticism. But I suspect the Sage is a man of balance. Able to control desire and aversion, he has no need to extirpate them. Why uproot a tree that you can trim and manage? You say it is messy when its blossoms fall. But before they fell were they not beautiful and fragrant? The leaves are a bother to rake, but is not the shade they afford agreeable?
The Sage can enjoy the transient in its transiency without clinging and without hankering after the absent transient. He can oppose the bad and the disagreeable without losing his equanimity or exaggerating their negativity. He neither idolizes nor demonizes.
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