Hi everyone! Our Epicurean Philosophy Happy Hour Zoom is one week from today, on July 3rd, at 8pm ET. We'll start with a "meet and greet". And I'll give a short (5 min) presentation on Epicurean Philosophy to help jump start the evening. Then we'll open it up for discussion. Feel free to bring beverages and snacks to eat while we Zoom.
Please RSVP here in this thread if you are interested in attending.
Join our next Epicurean Happy Hour! Open to forum members -- Please RSVP here in this thread, to be added to a private message list and receive further link info for joining the meeting.
Level 3 members - let me know if you would like to do a short (5 minute or so) presentation - this could be anything Epicurean-themed, such a presenting some teachings, research, poetry, or music.
020 - "Love Friendship"
023 - "Long for wisdom"
048 - "Be a seeker of wisdom"
121 - "Do not tire of learning"
Don, these are very interesting an no doubt they influenced all ancient philosophers, including Epicurus. What is surprising is the shortness of each one. Possibly thinking to take some time to read through the 147 and see if some of them are parallel to any of the Principal Doctrines or the Letter to Menoeceus.
I was surprised to learn about the ineffectiveness of CPR, and that the CPR process during an old age death is a very damaging and unpeaceful situation. This entire article is very eye opening and more people need to know this (especially older folks). And this brings up the importance of planning ahead and creating a Do Not Resuscitate Order (DNR).
QuoteBut the true odds are grim. In 2010 a review of 79 studies, involving almost 150,000 patients, found that the overall rate of survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest had barely changed in thirty years. It was 7.6%.
Bystander-initiated CPR may increase those odds to 10%. Survival after CPR for in-hospital cardiac arrest is slightly better, but still only about 17%. The numbers get even worse with age. A study in Sweden found that survival after out-of-hospital CPR dropped from 6.7% for patients in their 70s to just 2.4% for those over 90. Chronic illness matters too. One study found that less than 2% of patients with cancer or heart, lung, or liver disease were resuscitated with CPR and survived for six months.
But this is life or death — even if the odds are grim, what's the harm in trying if some will live? The harm, as it turns out, can be considerable. Chest compressions are often physically, literally harmful. "Fractured or cracked ribs are the most common complication," wrote the original Hopkins researchers, but the procedure can also cause pulmonary hemorrhage, liver lacerations, and broken sternums. If your heart is resuscitated, you must contend with the potential injuries.
This is interesting regarding the nature of consciousness and near-death experience:
QuoteThe brain is both sophisticated and delicate. For instance, if oxygen is reduced by even a small amount, the brain will react almost immediately. As a result, many scientists suggest that near-death experiences are the result of physical changes in the brain, like the lack of oxygen, that takes place when the brain is stressed or dying.
QuoteDuring the study, which was referred to as AWARE (awareness during resuscitation), the researchers studied a broad range of awareness and mental experiences associated with cardiac arrest. Of the 2,060 patients enrolled in the study, 330 survived and 140 we able to complete structured interviews about their memories of the event.
What the researchers discovered is that nearly 40 percent of these individuals described some awareness of the time prior to resuscitation, or when their hearts stopped beating. The majority of these patients did not have any specific memories of the event though. What this suggests is that many people do have mental activity during cardiac arrest, but often lose their memories of that activity after recovery. According to the doctors conducting the study, this could be due to brain injury or sedative-like drugs.
It occurred to me today that it would be possible to use some basic statistical analysis to evaluate which translations are, on the whole, more literal and which are idiosyncratic.
Joshua maybe you saw this thread?
This next Tuesday evening is our 20th meeting - open to all Level 3 forum members. As usual, we will commemorate the 20th with greetings, a short reading, and then discussion on the latest forum threads.
If you are interested in attending but not yet a Level 3 member, please message me to find out how you can become one.
And then remember to ask yourself: "What will happen to me if I get this or do this?, and what will happen to me if I don't get this or don't do this?"
Just wanted to add... when you ask this of yourself, also consider the wider circle of people around you, remembering that what you do will bring consequences for others as well, and any harm done to them will evoke some kind of reaction, breakdown of friendship, or retribution. (Ultimately the best way of functioning would be "post-conventional moral reasoning").
My problem is I really can't escape Catholic guilt. I wish I could.
I was raised Protestant, and wrestled with some guilt. Guilt in some situations can be good, such as if you say or do something by mistake to harm a friend, neighbor, or community member, then your conscience kicks in to help you think of how you can restore your inter-connection and the relationships.
But the unnecessary guilt you were brought up with is a by-product of an ethical system which takes there to be hard and firm rules of conduct across the board, without any way to judge things according to unique situations. This kind of strict ethical thinking is what brought about the Prohibition in the US. It is a simplified way of determining what one should and shouldn't do, but is not the most wise way of functioning in the world because some entity (or religious authority) is deciding for everyone, rather than letting each person decide for themselves. And this would fall into Kohlberg's level of Conventional Moral Reasoning.
Here are some ideas of how to deal with guilt...Perhaps the practice of noticing the guilt but then replacing it with positive thoughts, such as talking to it and saying that you are free to choose what is good for you. And you may benefit from contemplating a personalized list of what you consider "natural and necessary" for the health of the body, and "natural and necessary for happiness" (on this list of necessary for happiness remembering that you won't die if you can't have everything, but that it is perfectly natural to desire it) and third catagory of "natural but potentially harmful" (this would be things like sugar and alcohol so you want to close pay attention to the outcomes in this category) and a fouth catagory "unnatural and unnecessary" (grandiose desires for money and status). --Notice here that I have redefined the categories (and made 4 of them). And then remember to ask yourself: "What will happen to me if I get this or do this?, and what will happen to me if I don't get this or don't do this?"
Does the philosophy change you? Or perhaps it is better posed as "does the philosophy change your experience of being"?
I realize that since studying Epicureanism, I am thinking more of myself as a "human/animal" -- with the emphasis on "animal" and so now I am more integrated with this Earth and not something "above" it. (Perhaps Epicurus wouldn't have taken on that attitude? Since an Epicurean goal is to live as blissfully as the gods). So this sort of the meaning I give to my desire to sit near a sunny window or that inner pull toward sunshine (just one of many pleasurable things) which are the natural desires of an animal. So then the task at hand is to take good care of the human animal that I am, to accept that task without begrudging it, and to make wise decisions.
Here is an very good article:
Some excerpts, and link follows:
QuotePeople need friends. They are literally lifeblood in terms of physical, cognitive and emotional wellbeing. And work is an important place to make friends and feel a sense of connection and community. Dunbar says it best, “We forget that at our peril, and businesses forget it at their peril.” With loneliness on the rise and wellbeing on the decline, the opportunity today is significant—to reinvent the experience of work so it’s a venue for meaning, community and friendship.
QuoteThe Fisherman’s Friend study found it takes about 34 hours of investment to shift from a more superficial acquaintance to a true friendship. In addition, the average friendship requires about 11 interactions and each one should last about three hours—clearly longer than a cup of tea. With this investment of time, making a friend takes about five and a half months. And this is no small thing in a fast-paced, over-scheduled, time-impoverished world.
QuotePeople also tend to build the strongest friendships with those they believe to be most similar to themselves. Dunbar says it takes so long to create a true friendship because you’re looking for seven pillars of friendship—similarities in the following dimensions: the way you speak (dialect), hobbies and interests, religious views, moral views, sense of humor, musical taste and career trajectory.
This is an interesting read about symposiums and courtesans in ancient Greece:
We will be going through these rather quickly (will be skipping some) and so will announce before each meeting which ones we will focus on. I won't be posting the weekly focus here, but instead will give updates before each meeting over on another forum thread.
This meeting is open to all forum members. If you are interested and you haven't already attended a Wednesday night meeting in the past, please let us here know here in thread if you are interested in attending so we can add you into the group.
Here are some sources for the Vatican Sayings:
-- On our forum:
-- epicurus.net (unknown as to the source of translation)
(this version shows which ones are the same as the PD's)
--Saint-Andre:
(this is my personal favorite translation, and only shows the ones which are not part of the PD's)
Free Online Book: Epicurus The Extant Remains - Bailey - link to the Vatican Saying section
Book to Purchase:
Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia
(Epicurus Translated by Brad Inwood and Lloyd P. Gerson)
(not sure how this translation compares to the others)
This discussion group is open to LEVEL 03+ members, or by approval by the moderator panel.
If you have previously attended a Wednesday night Zoom, then you can simply join in with the same link as previous Wednesday night meetings.
For LEVEL 03 forum members who haven't yet attended a Wednesday night meeting, please let us know here in this thread or send me a private message, if you are interested in attending and we will give you the Zoom link by private message.
Cassius' post 27 above mentions the New Epicurean website (which was created by Cassius before the forum, if I am right on that?) and there is a lot of good stuff on there. I think that it also could be developed even further as a resource for people who want more "linear" reading on Epicureanism, rather than the "spiral" approach to study which the forum provides (reading the forum is a bit like going on a treasure hunt).
What is good about the New Epicurean website is that you can read the material without having to "raft through the rapids" of the forum. On the forum you often need to read a thread from start to finish, because a question (or an incorrect reflection) is presented in the first post, and it contains an incorrect understanding which is then corrected through the posting system...so that 20 or more posts later you get the full picture 
Here is the home page, imagine this could be developed further with an improved table of contents. Right now there is a table of key pages, but you need to scroll down to get to it:
NewEpicurean – NewEpicurean.com – Promoting the Study of the Philosophy of Epicurus
Preliminary and somewhat poetic modification: I think I'll change "the enjoyment of sleep" to "lying in a bed of desire", which echoes the roundabout wording in the original Greek.
Thanks to Kalosyni for raising this issue!
stpeter thank you for coming on to the forum to help us out. You can see we have had quite a bit of discussion going on here over the past week, stemming from this particular passage.
I greatly appreciate your translations of Epicurean texts and how easy they are to access on the internet. I use your translations from your website all the time in my study and referencing. And when I first started studying I actually printed them out for reading off-line as well. So I have been referring to your translations for several years now because they are my favorite.
Thanks again for coming onto the forum...and as it was said that on the sign above the ancient Epicurean Garden door, it was written: "Here you will do well to tarry. Here our highest good is Pleasure!"
Hope you decide to hang out here awhile 
stpeter Welcome to the forum!
I just created this new post in my blog, and I start out with points 1 - 3 (and will add another post soon on points 4 - 8).
(Click on the image below to visit my blog and read further):
