Daily Interactions With The Non-Epicurean World

I have a long-time friend who calls me almost daily to report his latest observation of the "insanity" of the religious world around us. His specialty is pointing out the obvious contradictions and maddening trivialities we see on church signs.

Today's call was about a public statement that a person who was killed in a senseless shooting is already now enjoying heaven so we have no need to mourn his death. Well if so why don't we all commit suicide today?

Another of his favorites: "If god is your co-pilot your in the wrong seat."

I suspect that people who enthusiastic enough about Epicurus to come to a forum like this probably have similar frustrations where there would like to just "blow off steam" about things like that. And I think there are plenty of things like that to discuss without veering off into the "politics" which would be destructive to our general purpose.

Sometimes I get the impression that the title "General Discussion" and the fairly intellectual tone of the board may discourage some people from posting that kind of thing, but I think it would be helpful for us to share experiences in order to build community.

Would it be useful to set up a separate forum (such as "Daily Interactions With the Non-Epicurean World" to emphasize that that kind of post is welcome?

Quote from Godfrey

This choosing is an intuitive and hard to describe process, and of course it's different for everybody so it may not even be useful to try to describe it. But my opinion is that working with this process is far more important than any life hack, unless you want to think of it as a life hack. At any rate, this is giving me more confidence in my choices and, as a natural consequence, more focus in my daily activities.

At risk of going way off topic, this passage on on the issue of being able to understand yourself, reminded me of the "know thyself" phrase and issue, and that called to my mind a passage from a book I like very much and have talked about a little - "Dialogue on Innate Principles" by Jackson Barwis. I think the attitude he takes toward this issue is something with which Epicurus would agree, given Epicurus' view of the "canon of truth" and what it is it can and can not reveal to us:

Here is the key line: " ... the knowledge we may attain of our own nature and principles is more clear and more certain, comes to us easier and with better evidence, then we can possibly acquire concerning the nature and principles of any other creatures."

More context:

Quote

It has long been an applauded fashion to make collections and to roam abroad in search of rarities and monsters for others to gaze at, indulging a sort of idle industry in vain curiosity concerning things but little relative, or perhaps quite foreign, to our nature: and such trifling is dignified with the honorable names of learning and knowledge. So much engaged without doors, however, it cannot be but our affairs at home must suffer, and our most interesting concerns lie neglected. For though I do by no means agree with those who think the most difficult of all knowledge is the knowledge of ourselves, yet I am very certain that men whose minds are continually employed in extraneous subjects of science, or in those amusing external arts which are irrelative to moral life, are but very rarely even tolerable proficients in the home-science. Indeed, it is not to be expected that a man should be skillful in an art which he has never allowed himself time to think of or leisure to attend to.

-- I am very sensible of the fashionable folly, said I, and know very well and have cheap a rate literary distinctions are purchased; and I must agree with you that a mind much addicted to extraneous researches is not likely to be very well-informed at home: but I should be glad to know why you think the attainment of a knowledge of ourselves is less difficult than commonly imagined?

I do not think, replied he, that any kind of knowledge can be acquired without attention and study: but the knowledge we may attain of our own nature and principles is more clear and more certain, comes to us easier and with better evidence, then we can possibly acquire concerning the nature and principles of any other creatures. What man can doubt that it is more easy for him to know himself than it is for him to know any other man, or than it is for any other man to know him? If a man be incapable of knowing himself, a subject with which he is so intimately, so sensibly united; whose principles, sentiments, perceptions, thoughts, and designs he can always inspect and know without disguise whenever he pleases to view them impartially, I say if he be incapable of knowing himself with the aid of so much previous, clear, intelligence, how much more incapable must he be of knowing any other man whose thoughts and designs he cannot be so sure of, or any other creature whose nature and true principles can never with certainty be known to him? In short, the truth is this, that unless a man be a tolerable adept in the knowledge of himself, and can perceive all the various turnings and windings of the human affections and passions and their effects in his own heart, he can have no rule or measure by which he may form and regulate his judgment concerning the actions and intentions of others.

I think you are right, said I.

-- It is probably, therefore, a truer maxim, continued he, to say that it is easier for a man to know himself than to know any other man or any other creature; and that a man's knowledge of other men and of other creatures will very much increase as he advances in the knowledge of himself and of his own nature. For his most rational conjectures concerning the natures of other animals are principally founded on what he is conscious of in himself as an animal.

Display More

So as Godfrey says, I think this attitude that we are capable of understanding that which is really important to us "....is giving me more confidence in my choices and, as a natural consequence, more focus in my daily activities."

Yes that was the point of my going off on the tangent. It seems very Epicurean to me to take the position that surely off all the things we have information about, the thing we have the MOST information about is "us" -- so we need to start with understanding ourselves and not considering ourselves to be mystical black boxes that only a god or a magician could figure out.

This eternal return from Nietzsche is very deep and we'd have to go into it pretty far to do it justice. I don't profess to understand it all myself. But two points to consider is that there is an aspect of the atoms coming back together into the same form listed in Lucretius, and rather than being dark Nietzsche was advocating the view as an antidote to nihilism, which is far darker. Maybe we already have a thread on this, or need one, but I don't know that we currently have any Nietzsche aficionados competent to deal with it.

I see I did a (poor) graphic a long time ago to cite the Lucretian text, but I don't see that we have a thread. Now we do.

Thread

Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence (Eternal Return) In Relation To Lucretius

I hesitate to open this thread at the moment because I don't have time to continue it, but we'll now have this here in case someone searches for "Eternal Recurrence" or "Eternal Return" and wants to talk about how it may relate to Lucretius Book 3:

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/gallery/image/206/

Cassius

Jul 20th 2022