| There was corruption everywhere. Dishonesty was endemic. Excess and venality were widely accepted. Cato's Rome was a messed up place. So was Marcus Aurelius's. Then, like now, it would have been disorienting and disillusioning. People who cheated, people who lied, people who did horrible things to get ahead…were getting ahead. It was enough to make one question, Maybe I'm the one who is thinking about this all wrong. Maybe I'm the crazy one. David Brooks, writing of our moment, recently talked about the "moral inversion" of contemporary politics. Instead of scandals ending someone's career in today's world, it's almost a badge of honor. Lawsuits, convictions, divorces, affairs, sexual harassment, damning on the record comments—these things swirl around our public figures who shamelessly shrug them off. Not just in politics, but business and tech and entertainment all have their share of unrepentant cheaters and monsters. Is this what it takes to get ahead these days? We have to remind ourselves, as Marcus Aurelius did, that no matter what other people do (or what other people get away with), our job is to be good. Our job is to resist this moral inversion, to not fall prey to what psychologists have called the "What The Hell" Effect–tossing up our hands and going along with something because everyone else is, because nothing matters anymore. Like Cato, we might be living in the dredges of Romulus, but we don't have to be bottom feeders. We don't have to be corrupted or degraded by the moment we are living in. Marcus Aurelius didn't. He rose above it. He shone through it. He stayed true. And so must we. *** | 
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