Randall's Personal Outline

    I observe that my senses of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing constitute my comprehension of the infinite universe of swerving atoms. The natural universe is observable and relevant to me, the unnatural is unobservable and therefore irrelevant to me.

    I observe that newborns and animals seek pleasure and avoid pain. We at least need water, food, shelter, friends, and wisdom. Nature provides water, food, shelter, friends, and wisdom.

    I observe that by using my senses, remembering past pleasures, and consulting frankly with my friends, I can make wise decisions to cultivate my happiness. This is a natural and good way to live.

    Quote from Randall Moose

    Nature provides water, food, shelter, friends, and wisdom.

    Consistent with some of the other thoughts you have been expressing about friendship, this sentence causes me to reflect about the general point. More generally, the point that seems to go with this is that nature generally "makes available relatively easily" these things, but that for each of them we do still have to act to go after them. Also important would seem to be that success in obtaining them is not guaranteed (at least not in the sense that death is guaranteed).


    The passage that goes with this is apparently:


    U469 Johannes Stobaeus, Anthology, XVII.23: “Thanks be to blessed Nature because she has made what is necessary easy to supply, and what is not easy unnecessary.”