Episode 284 - TD14 - In Dealing With Pain, Does Practice Make Perfect? Or Does Practice Make For A Happy Life?

Welcome to Episode 284 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.

Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

This week we continue our series covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean viewpoint. This series addresses five of the greatest questions in human life (Death, Pain, Grief/Fear, Joy/Desire, and Virtue) with Cicero speaking for the majority and Epicurus the main opponent:

Today we continue in Part 2 - "Is Pain An Evil?," picking up with Section XIII, where Cicero continues his assertion that infamy is a greater evil than any pain.

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Our general discussion guide for Tusculun Disputations is here: https://epicureanfriends.github.io/tusculundisput…lish/section:12

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Episode 284 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today we continue Part Two of Cicero's treatment of the nature of evil in Tusculan Disputations, and our episode is entitled: "In Dealing With Pain, Does Practice Make Perfect, Or Does Practice Make For A Happy Life?"

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As to the value of practice and the perils of insufficient practice, I just posted a thread here:

Thread

Adage: In A Crisis, We Don't Rise To The Occasion As Much As We Fall To Our Level of Practice

In Lucretius Today Podcast Episode 284 we discussed the issue of "practice" in dealing with pain and other challenges, and I found the adage which is the subject of this thread and wanted to pass it on, with its source, as part of that discussion.

The backstory is that as a result of a series of recent accidents I became aware of a genre of Youtube videos by people in the airline industry who make videos on the causes of airplane crashes. It's interesting on a variety of levels, especially as to…

Cassius

June 10, 2025 at 7:24 PM