The Smiths, Seneca, and the Corrosion of the Soul is my new essay is at The Listening Room HQ The Listening Room HQ – my men’s practice – site
In Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius) Seneca warned Lucilius that busyness, ambition and external success can quietly erode the inner life.
The Smiths, Seneca, and the Corrosion of the Soul starts from a line in The Smiths’ Frankly, Mr. Shankly: “It pays my way, and it corrodes my soul”.
The post explores Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius, the modern cult of busyness, creativity, masculinity, and the hidden cost of lives lived in perpetual motion.
Through The Smiths, Seneca, Stoicism, Mal Evans, creativity, grief and modern life, this essay explores the hidden cost of endless activity asking if the things that pay our way may also corrode our souls.
What happens when productivity, success and endless projects begin to erode the very instrument through which we experience life: the soul?
Read The Smiths, Seneca, and the Corrosion of the Soul: https://www.thelisteningroomhq.com/2026/07/the-smiths-seneca-and-corrosion-of-soul.html
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