Posts by Kalosyni

Cassius brought up a good question tonight (if I can remember it correctly):

-- Does trying too hard for happiness get in the way of happiness?

And to respond, I would say it depends on how you go about it. You need to put effort into doing the things that are the causes of happiness, and effort into doing the things that result in happiness. So you aren't chasing some amorphous idea of happiness. It could be more like a science experiment where you chose certain compounds and mix them together to see what the result will be -- so you will have trial and error, but you keep trying and observe, and once you know what works for you then you can repeat that in the future. And, if you are stumped on what to do then, you might need to seek out some friends who tend toward being happy to see how they do it.

Happiness isn't a non-stop feeling - it will naturally rise and fall as an indicator of:

1) an feeling in response to a need being met or a pleasure being experienced

2) a sense of contentment and satisfaction (a quieter feeling of happiness)

You will still feel all the other emotions in life but hopefully will spend less time having feelings such as over-whelm, hopelessness, or sadness.

So there is really a need for both subtractive and additive practices.

Here is a very rough draft of some ideas about Epicurean Therapuetic Principles (hope these are readable):

Hi Charles, we are starting tonight at 8pm ET.

(Which is sort of late for happy hour, but in case anyone on the west coast wants to join, and also this was a good time for Martin)

Quote from Cassius

One thing I personally would like to see too would be an expansion of the chart in post 13 above with so we could add sample "therapies" that fit under each category.

In other words I see the basic organization of a chart as divided up into sort of "areas of life" where the columns list (1) the area of life, then (2) a description of healthy functioning in that area, then (3) a description of misfires or less healthy functioning / pitfalls, then (4) references to texts cites that deal with the issue, and then (5) a final column for suggested "techniques" or "therapies" that apply to that area of functioning.

Thank you Cassius posting the reminder for tonight's happy hour!

I will have an simple outline, yet it will be a slightly different format than the above.

I do want to keep this very informal, and also I want bring in an option of interpersonal exploration of practical therapeutics, if anyone wants to try a kind of talking through of a therapeutic method as it would apply to real life.

And I want to move in the direction of "happy" hour -- so focusing on additive choices (and can explain more on that).

Post here or message me if you have any further questions

Welcome to the forum!

Okay, so even though everyone has the Wikipedia calculations (and I must be clearly wrong) -- I made a graphic to explain (the colored text is only to make it more readable).

What I am saying is that you only count the increase or the decrease of the shape of the moon.

Quote

The Noumenia was marked when the first sliver of moon was visible and was held in honor of Selene, Apollon Noumenios,^[1] Hestia and the other Hellenic household Gods. The Noumenia was also the second day in a three-day household celebration held each lunar month; Hekate's Deipnon is on the last day before the first slice of visible moon and is the last day in a lunar month, then the Noumenia which marks the first day in a lunar month, followed by the Agathos Daimon (Good Spirits) on the second day of the Lunar month.

Actually this confirms my idea:

If you read carefully it says: "when the first sliver of moon was visible" -- by my method that would 1st day waxing and it would look like December 24/25th. And it says that the last day of the lunar month is the day before the first sliver is visible.

But I am unclear as to when to say that the first sliver is visible...for our naked eyes do we need to have it be enough of a sliver to register the presence of light?... and so moon would need to be like on December 25th (even though the picture shows the beginning of a sliver on the 24th, but may not yet be visible to the naked eye).

Also the same problem with waning moon...at what point can we see with our eyes that the moon is waning? I am coming from a very intuitive (and primitive) way of seeing the moon and judging the changing of the shape to determine what day of the month it is.

I wanted to make a dedicated post regarding the calendar used in ancient times. It is such a very different way to measure time for each month (according to the moon), compared to how we keep our time now. Late yesterday afternoon looking up at the moon (a waxing crescent) had me pondering that ancient way of keeping time.

Based on Wikipedia we can deduce that is is very likely that Epicurus would have used the Attic calendar since he was living in Athens. But before he lived in Athens, he may have used different calendars, since it also says this:

Quote

The Attic calendar or Athenian calendar is the lunisolar calendar beginning in midsummer with the lunar month of Hekatombaion, in use in ancient Attica, the ancestral territory of the Athenian polis. It is sometimes called the Greek calendar because of Athens's cultural importance, but it is only one of many ancient Greek calendars.

Although relatively abundant, the evidence for the Attic calendar is still patchy and often contested. As it was well known in Athens and of little use outside Attica, no contemporary source set out to describe the system as a whole. Further, even during the well-sourced 5th and 4th centuries BC, the calendar underwent changes, not all perfectly understood. As such, any account given of it must be a tentative reconstruction.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic_calendar

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The Greeks, as early as the time of Homer, appear to have been familiar with the division of the year into the twelve lunar months but no intercalary month Embolimos or day is then mentioned, with twelve months of 354 days.^[1] Independent of the division of a month into days, it was divided into periods according to the increase and decrease of the moon. Each of the city-states in ancient Greece had their own calendar that was based on the cycle of the moon, but also the various religious festivals that occurred throughout the year.^[2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_calendars

Wikipedia goes on with this:

Quote

Monthly and annual festivals were not usually allowed to fall on the same days so every festival month had an opening phase with exactly recurrent practices and celebrations while in the body of each month was a unique schedule of festival days.

A parallel function of this calendar was the positioning of the perhaps 15 or so forbidden days on which business should not be transacted.

Rather than considering the month as a simple duration of thirty days, the three-part numbering scheme focuses on the moon itself. In particular the waning days 10–2 and the waxing days 2–10 frame the crucial moment where the moon vanishes and then reappears.

A date under this scheme might be "the third (day) of Thargelion waning", meaning the 28th day of Thargelion.

Names of the days of the month

new moon	11th	later 10th
2nd waxing	12th	9th waning
3rd waxing	13th	8th waning
4th waxing	14th	7th waning
5th waxing	15th	6th waning
6th waxing	16th	5th waning
7th waxing	17th	4th waning
8th waxing	18th	3rd waning
9th waxing	19th	2nd waning
10th waxing	earlier 10th	old and new [moon]

To summarise the days with special names.

• The first day: noumenia, or new moon.
• The last day: henē kai nea, the "old and the new".
• The 21st day: "the later tenth". The Attic month had three days named "tenth" (equivalent in a straight sequence to the 10th, 20th, and 21st days). These were distinguished as
  • 10th: "the tenth (of the month) waxing"
  • 20th: "the earlier tenth" (i.e. waning)
  • 21st: "the later tenth" (i.e. waning)

This strange juxtapositioning of the two days called the tenth, the earlier and the later, further highlighted the shift into the moon's waning phase.

When a month was to last 29 instead of 30 days (a "hollow" month), the last day of the month ("the old and new") was pulled back by one day. That is to say, the "second day of the waning month" (the 29th in straight sequence) was renamed as month's end.

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Now I want to say that as I was looking at a moon chart, and remembering past times of gazing at the moon, it came to me that it is difficult to know exactly when the moon is completely full by the ordinary eyes -- so then this counting would only apply to days when you can descern clear changes in the size of the moon.

Moongiant - Moon Phase Calendar

Current, past and future Moon Phase Calendar. Click on Moon Phase Calendar to get complete moon phase details for that day.

www.moongiant.com

And I would like to go on to suggest a way of counting which may or may not make sense (but is different than the Wikipedia article) and this way of counting is according to what a human eye can see happening with the moon. My idea would be that you start counting on the day that you see a large enough crescent -- that would be waxing day 1, waxing day 2, etc. and then you continue to count to waxing day 10 (which would be called the "earlier 10th", the following day would be considered full moon of which there would be several days (as you can see from the chart above, that the moon is nearly full both before and after the actual full moon). Then on the day when you can descern that the moon is waning you begin counting waning day 1, waning day 2, etc. and continue counting up (not down) and so this would give you the "later 10th".

But this is just my own idea, my own imagination of trying to make sense of things.

Although now thinking further, we do actually know when the moon is full because it rises opposite of the sun setting. So not sure than if my idea makes any sense to count the way I suggest.

@Nate what do you think?

By my counting then, the 20th (which would be the 2nd 10th) would fall on the last day of a visible waning crescent. (And this is different than what Nate calculated on another thread).

Waning crescent:

moon_day_WanC_10.jpg

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Edit note: Dec.1, 2022 -- I have now resigned myself to the Wikipedia version of the counting of the days of the month (and I found nothing to support my own idea). The rest of this thread goes on with a little bit of a back and forth between this and the Wikipedia counting. And also contains Nate's nice graphic design, in multiple colors.

This is slightly off topic, but wondering ...since they used a lunar calendar...what phase of the moon would it be on the evening of the Twentieth, on each month?

Quote from Cassius

stay on the generic level of how we detect imposition in gernal and how we deal with who should be trusted and who not, and related issues of bias and prejudice, at a general level.

Is there a thread on that already?

Some ideas to summarize:

--We must understand the physical nature of the world as built on atoms which have always been in existence and were not created by a god.

--On the earth everything exists from previous physical causes and follows the laws of physics -- no supernatural explanations (and when a child can grasp this then they will understand there is no Santa Claus because Santa violates the natural laws of physics).

--The God Myth has something parallel, in that how could God keep track of every human being's prayers ( Joshua did you recently say something about this and that some writer or philospher said this?)

--We observe to see that things follow from the physical causes and follow the laws of physics. We have to judge other people's claims to these same standards.

***

A further question: How to deal with fake news? We have people who make claims but we can't observe with our senses, so then we have to find out for whom do they work for to see if they can be trusted -- which is why now there is this phrase: "trusted source". Also the people who are doing the "fact checking" -- we have to see who they are working for. So then the scientific method and its correct application is very important also -- but there are studies that show one thing, and then a year later another study says oh that was wrong. So then we will have to emphasize that certain things can't be taken to be absolutely true. And even the news that we read, it seems that we can't always take it to be absolutely true -- but this could be the beginning of the downfall of democracy, when you can't trust the news or the leaders who might be basing their statements on fake news.

The following is a copy of a text dialog, which I wanted to share so as to bring in others.

Cassius: Well unless you get rid of the fear of death and fear of gods then you by definition are always going to be anxious, and if you are anxious about those things you can't be completely happy. Therefore the mental understanding through philosophy is required for the most happy life possible. And this is why I keep stressing nothing from nothing. This is the self contained example of the analysis.

Kalosyni: Oh nothing from nothing is important and a different angle to the same problem.

Cassius: "agnosticism" about these things does not resolve anxiety. The issue is using your mind confidently to expel doubt.

Kalosyni: I think Buddhism is trying to get to the same goal of "fearlessness", but is going about it from a Pyrrho/skeptic practice. Which is much more difficult, nearly impossible.

Cassius: Which Epicurus' would say is crazy yes.

Kalosyni: Because then you throw out the things that are needed. That is said in canonics. PD 23.

Cassius: Lot of this comes back to trusting the senses as a solid ground for reasoning.

Kalosyni: So trusting the senses, that is also unclear to me, since we know there are optical illusions, and we make mistakes in perception as well

Cassius: Meaning that yes illusions are possible and you find them and get accuracy by more observations. There is nothing ELSE to trust because you have no other faculties.

Plato said they cannot be trusted so you must use mind to do geometry and stuff that he could not explain because he made it up. And skeptics said forget about accuracy all is illusion so give up.

Kalosyni: So that means we have to collect a certain number of data sets before we can be certain

Cassius: Yes til you get consistent results, until then you have to "wait". You can consistently see that nothing comes from nothing and therefore no further waiting is necessary. And it is not legitimate to say "maybe it will tomorrow!" Because there is no evidentiary reason to support that possibility.

Kalosyni: This is pretty complex

Cassius: If you mean nothing from nothing, any average first century Roman was presumed smart enough to understand it

Kalosyni: No I mean the basis of trusting the senses

Cassius: Yes that too

Kalosyni: You have to still apply reason

Cassius: That is Lucretius book 4. Apply reason to what? Answer: observations of the senses. There is no other basis for observing.

Kalosyni: These signs were put up all around the park in downtown Evans -- "Santa Facts". And if kids visit Santa at the park for pictures, then they think Santa is real. For example: Peter's niece was told that Santa is real.

Cassius: Yes and Peter's niece will wake up and find there is no Santa clause. One day when she has enough observations away from tricksters. The senses do not guarantee you will not be fooled by illusions.

You have to test and test till you get consistent results. But the only kind of testing possible is through the senses.

Kalosyni: Santa is a good parallel to God, At least for children.

Cassius: Yes maybe so and Santa is disproven the same way God is. Yes children are an example of being under illusions.

And not knowing how to test the senses. You learn that over time. That is why you must understand how the senses work. And Lucretius spends a lot of time on that.

Kalosyni: Did you read Santa Fact number 7 (picture above)? This was her reason for still believing in Santa...as a teenager.

Also, I didn't get a picture of the sign that explained why Santa puts coal in children's stockings. Parents use the Santa myth as a punishment/reward motivator for correct behaviour and say to their kids: If you're not good then Santa will put coal in your stocking instead of presents.

Cassius: Those signs are the equivalent of religious deception and you cannot simply accept what they say about God or Christianity or anything else. There are people out there who just want to manipulate you. That is why you need to understand philosophy and how the world works. This is exactly what Lucretius says in book one.

102] You yourself sometime vanquished by the fearsome threats of the seer’s sayings, will seek to desert from us. Nay indeed, how many a dream may they even now conjure up before you, which might avail to overthrow your schemes of life, and confound in fear all your fortunes.

And justly so: for if men could see that there is a fixed limit to their sorrows, then with some reason they might have the strength to stand against the scruples of religion, and the threats of seers. As it is there is no means, no power to withstand, since everlasting is the punishment they must fear in death

And you go directly from that to nothing comes from nothing as proof

127] Therefore we must both give good account of the things on high, in what way the courses of sun and moon come to be, and by what force all things are governed on earth, and also before all else we must see by keen reasoning, whence comes the soul and the nature of the mind, and what thing it is that meets us and affrights our minds in waking life, when we are touched with disease, or again when buried in sleep, so that we seem to see and hear hard by us those who have met death, and whose bones are held in the embrace of earth.

Kalosyni: So it is the senses, and also "by keen reasoning"

Cassius:

146] This terror then, this darkness of the mind, must needs be scattered not by the rays of the sun and the gleaming shafts of day, but by the outer view and the inner law of nature; whose first rule shall take its start for us from this, that nothing is ever begotten of nothing by divine will.

Fear forsooth so constrains all mortal men, because they behold many things come to pass on earth and in the sky, the cause of whose working they can by no means see, and think that a divine power brings them about. Therefore, when we have seen that nothing can be created out of nothing, then more rightly after that shall we discern that for which we search, both whence each thing can be created, and in what way all things come to be without the aid of gods.

By keen reasoning based on the evidence of the senses, which is the only kind of evidence there is

Which does not mean that you have to see or touch atoms, but that the things you can see and touch are only explainable by atoms

Kalosyni: So what is "keen reasoning"?

Cassius: There are a couple of rules preserved such as PD25 and some references in Torquatus about reasoning through analogy, and some references also in Philodemus

But it's nothing magic - it's just comparing observations and deducing only what is consistent with the evidence. And not accepting things without evidence.

Actually, it just came to me that would be really nice to have a panel presentation by various people, just short segments where everyone explains a little about special projects:

Nate -- the compelation, etc/birthday calculations

Don -- on the Letter to Menoeceus translation/Wise man sayings

Cassius -- explaining about the forum, it's development and how it functions as well as the hopes for developing the Epicurus College

It could be just voice only, and then we post it onto Youtube. (just an idea)

It is not far off till January 20th -- just under 2 months away and it falls on a Friday.

Are we going to plan anything special on the forum? A special youtube presentation? A panel discussion which we record? An "unveiling" of the Epicurus College?

I wonder if this might have any bearing on the timing in ancient times:

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Between the Rural and City Dionysia, other two lesser festivals took place in honour of Dionysus: The Lenaia and the Anthesteria. The first took place in Athens in Gameliōn, roughly corresponding to January, while the latter was held each year from the 11th to the 13th of the month of Anthesteriōn, which was named after the festival.

The Lenaia was mostly an agrarian festival, believed to have included a procession, chanting, sacrifices, nocturnal rites and, possibly, special rituals for women. Beginning in the second half of the 5th century BCE, plays were performed, as in the City Dionysia, and awards were given, initially only for comedies, and later also for tragedies.

The Anthesteria were held for three days; the first one was called Pithoigia ("Jar Opening"), where libations were offered to Dionysus from the newly opened casks; the second one, called Choes ("Wine Jugs"), included wine-drinking contests while on the third day –Chytroi ("Pots")– pots of seed or bran were offered to honour the dead.

https://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/topics/culture…attic-festivals

Quote from Nate

I note that while the Panhellenic Symposium of Epicurean Philosophy (PSEP) is held in February, it occurs on different days every year. For example, this year it was held on the 19-20th. In 2017, it was the 10-11th. In 2016, it was the 6-7th. In 2015, it was the 7-8th. These dates do not correspond with a consistent date on the Attic calendar.

Oh wow, thank you for pointing that out. So those dates don't corellate with the Attic calculations?

Quote from Nate

I think celebrating Epicurus' Ceremonial Birthday (Gamelion 20) on January 20th is the way to go for anyone using the Julian calendar. Furthermore, it is the case that in 1987, 1998, 2006, 2017, 2025, 2036, and 2063, Gamelion 20 actually did/does fall on January the 20th, so there are a handful of days when Greeks who practiced according to the Attic calendar, and modern Twentiers who practice with the Julian calendar would have simultaneous celebrations.

So then it rarely fell on or near February 20th?

They didn't have dictionaries back in hellenistic Greece... but we do

friendship, a state of enduring affection, esteem, intimacy, and trust between two people. In all cultures, friendships are important relationships throughout a person’s life span.

source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/friendship

(This site has an interesting write-up about friendship development across the lifespan).

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Friendship is generally characterized by five defining features:

• 1. It is a dyadic relationship, meaning that it involves a series of interactions between two individuals known to each other.
• 2. It is recognized by both members of the relationship and is characterized by a bond or tie of reciprocated affection.
• 3. It is not obligatory; two individuals choose to form a friendship with each other. In Western societies, friendships are one of the least prescribed close relationships, with no formal duties or legal obligations to one another.
• 4. It is typically egalitarian in nature. Unlike parent-child relationships, for instance, each individual in a friendship has about the same amount of power or authority in the relationship.
• 5. It is almost always characterized by companionship and shared activities. In fact, one of the primary goals and motivations of friendship is companionship. In addition, adolescent and adult friendships often perform other functions, such as serving as sources of emotional support and providing opportunities for self-disclosure and intimacy.

Are you all saying it should be January 20th?

Is anyone else concerned that we might end up creating a special "American" Epicurean annual celebration which would be on a very different date than what is currently happening in Athens?

Quote from Kalosyni

Panhellenic Symposium of Epicurean Philosophy

The Symposium is a tribute to our master Epicurus. The Symposium is organized, with free entrance, every year in February by the Friends of Epicurean Philosophy, because Epicurus was born in that month, and always in Pallini, because that particular municipality of modern Athens metropolitan area includes the ancient Athenian demos of Gargettus, from which Epicurus originated.

It would be interesting to know how they determined the birthday of Epicurus.

Also, is it possible in Greece that they have a belief that birthdays should not be observed earlier than the true date of birth? ( Martin mentioned that is the case in either Thailand or in Germany.

See this thread for more on friendship:

Thread

Importance of Cultivating Friendships and Further Advice

Principle Doctrine 27:

27.	Of all the things that wisdom provides for the complete happiness of one's entire life, by far the greatest is friendship.

Principle Doctrine 27 is very important for a happy life. Modern life is busy with work and family, and yet we all still need friends. So it is very important to take the time and put the effort into making friends and maintaining friendships. Some people might be satisfied with the number and kind of friendships in their lives, but others…

Kalosyni

January 16, 2022 at 8:54 PM