Posts by Kalosyni

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I am currently thinking about how every person both understands (comprehends) and implements, Epicurean philosophy uniquely. Some people put most of their focus onto the ethics, and others really prefer contemplating "the nature of things".

We each understand the telos uniquely and we each have our own reasons for why we continue to implement the philosophy in our own lives. Our choices and avoidances are also unique to our given situations.

I've been thinking about why that is, and have been thinking about how individual temperaments and individual formative childhood experiences influence how we make sense of Epicurean philosophy, and the kinds of evaluations we each make regarding pleasure, pain, and formulation of guessing future outcomes and consequences when we make choices.

I made this chart as a way to think about how we individually move through choices. Of course this uses a rather primitive understanding of temperament (based on the four humors). In modern times we have the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator.

So here on the forum, the different ways of interpreting the Epicurean philosophy arise out of individual differences in temperaments.

With an in-person group we would have quite a task of determining what activities to do as a group, and would likely have to split up into smaller groups... for example: those that are seeking quiet and therapeutic aspects, and those that are seeking ambitious goals of spreading the words of Epicurus.

I've been pondering in my mind what would be the most succinct way to state the Epicurean canon, and I see this thread with the title: "Making Epicurean Canonics Understandable" which seems like a good place to post (but I have not read the posts here yet, as I wanted to make my statement while it was still fresh in my mind.)

So here it goes:

1. What is "true and false" is known through the physical senses

2. What is "good and bad" is known by feelings of pleasure or pain

3. What is "right or wrong" is known through the mental anticipations

I don't have any particular text source for these statements in mind, and they may be wrong especially the third one. But I am hoping that people can correct me and hopefully make equally short statements that summarize the canon, such that the mind can comprehend them easily and they can be remembered easily.

-- Cassius  Don  Joshua  Bryan  Eikadistes (and anyone else).

Coming up on November 3rd...we are especially inviting our new forum members, and any forum members who haven't previously attended a Zoom meeting, to a "Meet and Greet" where there will be time to meet fellow forum members and to ask questions about the forum and Epicurean philosophy.

Cassius will be on hand to facilitate the meeting. Established members are also invited to come and meet new members!

We hold this meeting on an "as needed basis," so we ask that all members please RSVP. The meeting will only be held if at least one new member indicates they are available.

Level 02 and 03: please RSVP here in this thread.

Level 01 members: please post in your Welcome thread that you would like to attend or message Cassius using the "conversations" feature.

Hope to see you there!

Happy Birthday Joshua! Wishing you everything cozy and nice for your birthday!

Excerpt adapted from Torquatus section:

"...the earliest meetings and associations and tendencies towards the establishment of familiarity do arise on account of pleasure, yet when experience has gradually produced intimacy, then affection ripens to such a degree...that...friends are loved in themselves and for their own sake."

-- and for the sense of mental pleasure that arises when thinking of the friend.

Quote from DaveT

You might be amazed at the absolute craziness of the tourism there from the beginning of September all the way through October every year. They claim over a million people visit Salem, and Halloween is the epitome of their tourism season.

I had no idea that this was happening, and this is definitely an indicator of the current cultural "zietgeist" (lol...zietgeist).

Quote from Adrastus

I am pretty 'bah, humbug' about Halloween as it is celebrated around here and find it deeply unpleasant. I think it trains for painful anticipations and painful attitudes towards death. There is no exchange of wisdom about death or the ancestors. There is no learning about the nature of death, but showing off unrealistic and grotesque forms...

...

Culturally it's just devolving into an extension of the increasingly distubing and pornographic horror and survival media that is getting created these days that has basically dropped the pretense of being about entertainment, and truly we become the stories we keep telling.

It seems pretty unnatural to "glorify" decay and ugliness (ugly witches, goblins, monsters, and bloodied faces/bodies) and it seems that on some level this is an expression of anger and hopelessness.

It is like an expression of a "thanatos drive," or a kind of death instinct (Sigmund Freud's theory of a fundamental human drive toward death and destruction) which stands in opposition to the life instinct of Eros (that which drives creation and survival).

To counter-act this, in Epicurean philosophy we have a Principal Doctrines/Vatican Sayings which point toward using cognitive re-appraisal, and a good example is Vatican Saying 35.

This wikipedia article:

Quote

There is varied experimental evidence that illustrates the properties of appraisal theories. A meta analysis found that 75% of studies showed statistically significant relationships between appraisal and emotions.^[8] This encapsulates the core of appraisal theories that interpretations of experiences is what gives rise to emotions.

Source

But will probably need to start a new thread on this topic. Since having a certain level of external goods is also necessary for happiness (not just internal focus).

Happy Birthday Rolf!

Happy Twentieth Everyone!

Just one idea for an alternative to Halloween...

...dress up as a blissful and immortal being...and eat cake and ice-cream!

I just found this video, by Gregory Sadler, "Mortality of Mind and Spirit" gives a good introductory overview:

Looks like he has done a whole series on Lucretius.

I'll add this quote by Cassius which was posted over in another thread:

Quote

My own view of employing the psychological hedonism argument in this context is that while there is a lot of merit depending on how it is presented (as Twain does), I don't find it particularly useful on the deeper and more important point of decided what the word "pleasure' really should be held to mean. it's one thing to say that every in truth acts for what they think will bring them the best result, but how that result correlates to "pleasure" is really the issue, and saying that "everyone does it" doesn't really help with that, at least from my point of view. All the other lemmings may be jumping off the cliff, but observing that everyone is doing it doesn't really help me decide that I should follow that path myself.

But I see the point being, just because everyone else is doing something doesn't mean that I should choose to do something.

fyi ... I found this old thread:

Post

Epicurean Philosophy vs. Objectivism (Ayn Rand)

At the moment there is no subforum devoted to this, so here's a thread with a very pointed starting point:

Ayn Rand / Objectivism	Epicurus
Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips, and guns— or dollars. Take your choice— there is no other— and your time is running out. (Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged)	And for

…

Cassius

March 1, 2021 at 9:08 AM

Quote from SillyApe

what else can I and other people do to deal with anger, resentment, and especially anxiety in scenarios like this?

Whether or not (and why) western society is currently having an uptick of increasing criminal violent behavior, is hard to know. Consider that perhaps anger and resentment are a kind of fuel for those who are the perpetrators of crime and violence, and which causes them to justify their actions. But those who cause violence are are not happy people. And there are multifaceted causes that fuel the problem of violent crimes.

If things seem too unsafe, then we (as students of the philosophy of Epicurus) need to take heed and make safer choices such as not riding public transportation, or not going to crowded venues in cities.

And perhaps consider moving to a small town or rural area.

Quote from Don

The trick or treating and parties are just having fun, so if they provide pleasure with a minimum of pain, why not participate in the popular civic festival.

It is up to each person to decide if and how to engage with popular modern day festivals... however... I want people to open their eyes and realize that they are participating in something that in many aspects elevates ideas that insist that there is a spirit that survives death and that there are spirits around that "enjoy causing pain and trouble for others". In many aspects the "dark spirit of Halloween" is about a disassociated aspect of human beings and their subconconsciously supressed potential for violence. Also, it is not taking into account that violent acts are often done by psychotic people who have uncontrolled schizophrenia or severe brain injuries.

As for ancient Epicureans, I would guess that there were some civic events that they participated in and others which they drew the line and said nope, not going to.

I think that the Epicurean philosophy is still in a "rebirth" phase and so we haven't really sorted out these issues.

Also, western civilization is so individualized (as is this forum) that we don't have group practices or alternative celebrations established.

Another excerpt from that article:

Quote

“The real benefit of Halloween is for adults, not children,” Cindy Dell Clark, a professor emeritus of anthropology and author of "All Together Now: American Holiday Symbolism Among Children and Adults," tells TODAY.com. “It’s one day where (adults) can have the catharsis of just mocking death in its face, lampooning it, pinning it up on their house. But ... for children it’s serious. At age 6 or 7, when adults take them to a haunted house, they are truly frightened.”

I think that there are more questions coming up regarding the idea of the "catharsis" of Halloween for adults. And does it end up mocking death in such a manner so that a person doesn't really have to think deeply about mortality?

Of course, Epicurean philosophy addresses the concept of death in such a very different manner. There isn't anything there for us to mock!

Here is a current news write-up on Halloween. I think that adults aren't exactly "immune" to mental concepts of things or their correlate actions -- they do affect us in some way...as evidence shows in this news article about a fake house fire, and other unintelligent things.

Quote

Halloween has gotten more intense over time, from horror enthusiasts decorating their homes with fake bloodstains to animatronic ghouls in costume stores scaring the daylights out of kids. Some parents are worried — is Halloween too scary for kids?

Family visits to Spirit Halloween stores have become “a seasonal tradition,” a company spokesperson tells TODAY.com, adding, “Our animatronics offer varying levels of scare.”

On TikTok, parents are sharing videos of their children shrieking and falling to the floor in abject terror as towering mechanical monsters pop out at them.

Sometimes, people get so carried away with Halloween decorations that the authories get involved.

A South Carolina family has installed special effects that looks like a “house fire,” with smoke and flames bursting from windows. ...

Is Halloween getting too scary for kids?

If your kid is freaked out, they're not alone. Here's how to handle it.

www.today.com

"First of all believe that god is a being immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a god is engraved on men’s minds, and do not assign to him anything alien to his immortality or ill-suited to his blessedness: but believe about him everything that can uphold his blessedness and immortality. For gods there are, since the knowledge of them is by clear vision. But they are not such as the many believe them to be: for indeed they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be. And the impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many.

[124] For the statements of the many about the gods are not conceptions derived from sensation, but false suppositions, according to which the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked and the greatest blessings (the good) by the gift of the gods. For men being accustomed always to their own virtues welcome those like themselves, but regard all that is not of their nature as alien.

*****

What other textual evidence do we have, from Lucretius etc.?

PD 01 doesn't use the word "gods".

Also, we'll need to cross-reference anything on the prolepsis of the gods (I'll see what I can dig up and post here soon).

Thinking that this coud be a thread for discussion of Halloween, and how modern Epicureans can make sense of it. I am noticing that the popularity of Halloween seems to increase more and more, (in area of the US that I live in). There are Halloween type public events occuring even now (the first I saw just happened on this past Thursday night), which is crazy because Halloween is not till October 31st. And there are numerous events happening on the two weekends coming up (the weekend before Halloween and then on Halloween which is on a Friday).

Many downtown shopping city areas put on events...and it looks like over 20 churchs or more (throughout the area of where my sister lives and some also in my area) are holding events called "Trunk-or-Treat" for children to dress up and get candy (people decorate the trunk of their cars and hand out candy to children as they walk around the parking lot).

I can't help but think that perhaps the Christian religion is "needing" to promote Halloween since anything that represents "supernatural" (and promoting the idea that the spirit of humans exists separately from the body...and therefore there are ghosts and "life after death") ...is just the other side of the same coin (where would Christians be without the devil?).

I think that modern Epicureans should consider how to apply PD 01 to our current situation with Halloween.

PD01: "The blessed and immortal nature knows no trouble itself, nor causes trouble to any other, so that it is never constrained by anger or favor. For all such things exist only in the weak."

Of course there are many aspects to Halloween, and children have a different and much more simple understanding of it, compared to teenagers and adults.

For adults who succumb to or have "supernatural belief tendencies", Halloween ends up reproducing a somewhat similar supernatural mythos as compared to ancient Greek mythology, but with a twist -- there are powerful forces, and some people (like in the "Harry Potter mythology") know how to harness the powers or subdue the evil powers - in the end you have powers that do your bidding if you know how to interact with them. But this modern mythology ends up reinforcing both ideas of the existence of a "supernatural realm" and also "supernatural good and evil".

Welcome to the forum Zarathustra

You might like to watch this overview video created by Cassius (if you haven't already).