Posts by Joshua

This thread turned out to be quite a lot of fun!

Two years ago I was working 12+ hours a day in two different restaurants. Now I spend 8-10 hours a day on the road, listen to books or podcasts, pay nothing in rent, and live well within my means (for the first time since college). So while I sometimes miss the little comforts of a settled life, I have a MUCH healthier mind-space day to day.

Today I listed to A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, for the 5th or sixth time. Elayne, you should look into it before your spring hiking!

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Wow no wonder it sounded so good if you did all that! I am still only learning myself

Ha! Yeah I saw it on a youtube video. I don't really understand any of it, but it does sound better afterwards.

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Audacity picks up on a ton of background noise.

Yep.

I used a desktop Yeti microphone, a pop filter, Bose over-ear headphones, and Audacity on a no-frills laptop. Recorded on the kitchen table in the narrow intervals when the furnace blower wasn't running.

I ran the audio through several filters; from memory, I think it was equalize, amplify, compress, amplify. I tried noise reduction as well—I think I did that at the end.

Today I have a cold, so unfortunately it may be some time before you see anything else from me! I think I still have the unfiltered, untampered audio file if you'd like to play around with that, Cassius. I've certainly gained a new appreciation for content creators!

Lot to digest there!

We've discussed many of these subjects, but the forum is broader than it is deep right now. It'll take some poking through the sub-forums to find them.

I was a vegetarian for a little over a year, until I started driving truck. Something I'd like to explore again.

Welcome to the forum!

Interesting find! This is another one that hasn't crossed my path.

As for the compulsion of sitting in church, it brings to mind this passage from Civil Disobedience, on the night they locked him in jail.

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In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous.

I suspect that you, likewise, are clever enough to use the time pleasantly and profitably

I am 31, and end up in churches occasionally with my family when I go to visit them. As Garden Dweller suggests, you'll have to decide for yourself one day whether you want them in your life. For my part, I can unhesitatingly answer 'yes' to that question. With time and distance come perspective.

And you have time!

Good morning, Kyle. And with apologies to Cassius—for I've never read Ayn Rand. (Life is full of these little blessings!)

But I do notice in a thousand unremarkable ways every day that the word reason is at once so universally lauded, and so vacuous, that it gives cover to every silly assumption and base instinct in the minds and hearts of men. Reason was with the French Catholics who erected a temple to God in the comely and well-proportioned Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and reason was on the lips of the Jacobins who drove the Catholics out of that esteemed pile and claimed it for atheism and themselves.

Reason was the English Parliament and King George III levying a tax on the American colonies to pay for their protection in the French and Indian War, and reason was the reason those same colonists colored their harbor with tea in reply.

Reason justifies the lifestyle of the wealthy businessman sitting in the church pew, whatever the words in red might say; and reason is why that man does not and cannot understand the inner heart of the gay kid sitting next to him.

Well I'll tell you what—if hypocrisy is what they mean by reason (and it very generally is), and the status quo what they mean by civilization (and what else could it be?), then it has no lack of defenders; they don't need me, and the man in the pew has his reward already. As for my heart, it belongs to the kid next to him; the youth whose trembling soul remains unstultified by the sourness of his elders—the boy whose only crime is heavier breathing and a quickened pulse at the sight of a handsome classmate.

May he follow forever the promptings of his heart! When it needs correction, may he correct it with wisdom and an eye to the good of pleasure; not with shame and the fear of hellfire. May he find good friends, and be one. May he find a guide and support in himself, when others fail. And may he learn the proper use of reason—a tool, equal among other tools, and limited by nature.

The school of Epicurus is open to all. Man or woman, gay or straight, slave or free, native or foreign-born. You don't have to be a producer™, an ubermensch, or one of the elect. The road is broad and pleasant, and every step a pleasure in itself. Not many are found to have the courage to walk it.

As always, I am happy to defer to Elli in all things Greek

A word for καλῶς that I see elsewhere is "commendably". It gets me close to what I'm looking for here; a word that straddles the meaning of the two words in the dominant translations. "Commendable" suggests something at once honorable and wholesomely beautiful.

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This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air/ Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself/ Unto our gentle senses.

-Macbeth

And it wasn't until Cassius posted the side by side translations that another problem occured to me; I remembered that in "quote images" across the internet of this passage, it is translated simply as "wisely and well and justly". Of course the translator is never cited, so I don't know which version it is. "Living well" does seem to carry aesthetic undertones.

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/90368 (<example)

Wilson (Catherine) - "The Pleasure Principle"

I'd guess it's the same table we've discussed here, right?

I used to get the Economist, but it tended to pile up unread. Excellent journalism, but too much copy every week! I'll be interested in seeing this as well if we can get it.

Ha! Delightful.

The Talmud holds that Epicureans will be denied a share in "the world to come".

Dante's Sado-Masochism takes a subdued turn with Epicurus (Canto X), and finds us with our teachers lying in unlidded tombs. On the day of judgment our souls will awaken to the lids of the tombs sliding shut, and our souls will be trapped with our bodies—we've chosen materialism, don't forget—for all eternity.

This last imagined punishment must be a disappointment to Tertullian, who believed in the 3rd century that gloating over the torture of the damned would be one of the keenest pleasures of paradise;

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What a panorama of spectacle on that day! Which sight shall excite my wonder? Which, my laughter? Where shall I rejoice, where exult [...] those wise philosophers blushing before their followers as they burn together, the followers whom they taught that the world is no concern of God's whom they assured that either they had no souls at all or that what souls they had would never return to their former bodies?

from On Spectacles.

That is a great find, Godfrey! I've tried many times to be the kind of person who keeps a journal, but just can't keep at it. Her illustrations are lovely!

Well my own leaning here, Cassius, is that the negative formulation ("will not marry [...] unless [...]) is more close tonally to what Epicurus probably did mean. Whether this applies to a 'sage' or to everyone is to me the more difficult question. It's true that Metrodorus married; but it's also true that neither Hermarchus nor Epicurus himself are known to have done so.

I'm on the outside looking in with this question, but it seems to me that child-rearing in particular may be a profound pleasure—but it can also be a doorway to the deepest and blackest grief imaginable. Well, it would be unpleasant to dwell on such a point...

If I were scanning my own heart, and found there love and a desire to marry, I would wade with all my senses into the restless erotic energy of the Hymn to Venus, and hear from far centuries the echo of my own trembling soul. Cor Cordium; heart of hearts—what could even the very wisest have to tell me about that? And if I stop to wait for that counsel—am I even worthy?

Upon her breast repose came dropping sweet—

Her heart's rumor, her breath in swelling waves—

Ah! And her eyes—brown, deeper than the peat

That numbs my tongue¹, and lies on poets' graves.

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¹(...yes. I used to drink Scotch and write bad love-poetry )

I laid out my interpretation of this passage at length in a previous thread, which I suppose I can summarize quickly;

1. The confusion stems from the system of Greek conjunctions.

2. Whichever translation you choose, the meaning doesn't really change; whether or not the wise should marry is contingent on circumstances.

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Horace's "herd" and the funeral inscription "choic" are both clearly by Epicureans, but could perhaps be "tongue in cheek."

"Epicuri De Grege Porcum" is a lovely Latin self-description

As for Garden;

"[...] they shall place the garden and all that pertain to it at the disposal of Hermarchus [...]" -Last Will, via Diogenes Laertius

Related but not quite the same; in the Rabbinic literature of the time "Apikoros (אפיקורוס)" was the word for heretic or infidel.

St. Augustine; "fit only for swine".

Diogenes the Cynic, unless I am mistaken; in response to Aristotle. Aristotle made the first serious effort to catalogue and categorize animals.

Edit; oops! Hadn't refreshed.

I think probably when we talk about mental images between people being the "same", what we really have to mean is "same enough to a first approximation". If you and I are talking about dogs, it doesn't really matter if I picture a spaniel and you a labrador. But if I picture a spaniel and you picture Dog the Bounty Hunter—well, we're going to encounter some confusion!

Hahaha....

Godfrey, I read both words at once, and so I "saw" a door ajar with light shining through.

For "door", I suppose a wooden object hanging on hinges to seal a man-sized opening. For "light", sunlight streaming through clouds or trees.

Perhaps it will be helpful to look at examples where his advice is explicitly ignored. There are a number of ways in which our common use of language intentionally relies NOT on the "first mental image", but on some other aspect or quality for aesthetic, poetic, or rhetorical effect. For example;

Synechdoche: a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (such as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (such as society for high society), the species for the genus (such as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (such as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (such as boards for stage)

Metonymy: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (such as "crown" in "lands belonging to the crown")

Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money)

Epicurus seems to greatly dislike these devices; certainly with regards to Philosophy, and possibly in general. Lucretius, as a masterful poet, is guilty of using all of them! In the very second line of the poem, for example, he refers to the stars or constellations as the "sliding signs of heaven". He's a materialist; he doesn't actually believe that the random clusters of stars are meaningful signs or representations. But the line reads beautifully, and the phrase serves the meter of the poem, so he uses it.

Here's a good example of why this can be a huge problem: in the Gospel of Matthew, 19:24, it is said, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Well, it turns out that Christians have a strong material interest in denying the plain reading of everything Jesus ever said about wealth. This passage is no different; and so they have invented out of wholecloth a theory that the "Eye of the Needle" is a figure of speech for a pedestrian portal or doorway through a wall, adjacent to the main large gate. This usage is completely unattested in classical literature. It might turn out to be correct, but we have absolutely no way of knowing. If Jesus wished to be understood, he might have taken Epicurus' advice!

Another problem relates to how we define words—how we describe language using language. In one amusing story, Diogenes the Cynic elbows his way into the Academy with a plucked chicken under his arm. Aristotle had defined "Man" as a "featherless biped"; Diogenes lifted the chicken, and proclaimed his discovery of Aristotle's Man. As an Epicurean, I think there were two errors on display here; one was to define a word so broadly so as to be meaningless (Aristotle's mistake). The other was to mock the original effort without furnishing a constructive alternative, and to poison the well for everyone with ridicule (Diogenes' mistake).