Awesome! All this mention of honey takes me back to my homebrewing days where I made a lot of mead (as well as beer).
Posts by Root304
Listen to the latest Lucretius Today Podcast! Episode 224 is now available. To mark the 20th of April, here is a special episode - a reading of the 1429 letter of Cosma Raimondi.
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So many great suggestions! Thanks everyone!
Joshua Spinoza keeps coming up every time I get into philosophical conversations with people and I bring up my affections for Epicurus. I definitely need to read him, after I've knocked out my Epicurean reading list.
Cassius Thanks so much for these suggestions! Sounds right up my alley with this question.
Don Yes! It's a practical, Epicurean approach to the Christian cultural Gods that I am wanting to develop. I have a lot of mixed and troubled feelings about the atheist sub-culture and the sort of bitterness and righteousness I feel when engaging with that line of thought. That is matched only by the uneasiness and queasiness I feel when engaging with Christianity. A lot of displeasure all around. It seems prudent to me to avoid the psychological, and perhaps social, effects of transgression of the psycho-social phenomena of gods, and I think changing my perceptions and emotions I have about these concepts (gods) and the thought is that it will affect me positively in an unconscious sort of way. I'm probably wrong, but I sort of see this as one part of the move Epicurus was making in viewing the Gods in a state of ataraxia. Putting out the fury of an angry god in the students/patients mind. -
I've been mulling over questions around how to approach Christianity with my children and wanting to lighten my own ill-feelings about the religion, and I am wondering if there is any sort of Essays on an Epicurean re-envisioning of the Christian God(s) in the same way Epicurus did to the Greek Gods (tranquil, unconcerned and beings to model in these respects). Thanks for any replies!
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My sense is that anything that truly and honestly makes us more aware of our bodies, our reactions to stimuli, and our feelings of pleasure and pain will make us more able to apply the faculty of choice and rejection. That's a good thing. I get the impression that we all try to lie to ourselves and try to make ourselves believe and/or behave in ways counter to our well-being (eudaimonia) all too often. That's what I believe one of the benefits of the practice of frank speech and correction in the ancient Epicurean community was. You may fool yourself, but you can't necessarily fool your friends or your teacher. You have to be open to correction and direction. Being able to do this yourself would be a boon.
Ahhh... You've expressed precisely what I was reaching for. Marvelously put! *chef's kiss*
And also thanks for posting the wikipedia articles! And I'll have to check out Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett! -
I've been engaging with Epicurean literature at the same time as undergoing psychotherapy and somatic therapy - entertaining the idea of the soul being equated with the material systems of the body - and it's got me wondering if Epicureanism encourages the idea of deeping our understanding and conception of ourselves to refine our sense of pleasure though not at all at the expense of disparaging "normal" everyday pleasures. I've mainly been intrigued with the ideas in Internal Family Systems therapy, where the mind is seen as having a multiplicity of personalities that we engage with in a social way in the therapeutic space (the inner critics, the inner children, ect). The angry inner voices are "entities" we should engage with. Also what has come up for me while doing structure integration and body mapping with Hellerwork. I got a lot of pleasure and a settled mind in doing the work, as well as a sort of moralizing effect on me as once I understood and knew the various dimensions of myself and the delicacy it took to perform the therapy I grew in empathy for the depth of being in other people and other forms of life. So I guess the word that I formulated for this was "sensitivity" in that I am able to sense better and interact these different aspects of my being, and it sort of pulls me more toward "religious naturalist" takes on Epicureanism where I set aside ritual space to interact with these parts of myself. Anyway, just looking for some outside perspectives on these ideas.
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Thanks for the encouragement, Cassius!
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After reading some of the other interactions on the forum, I think I would categorize myself more as an eclectic with my current philosophizing and will take the prevailing wisdom to read DeWitt and other Epicurean works before engaging too much on this forum with the ideas I've been mulling over.
However, I want to say that I am excited to be here and I've been experiencing a lot of zeal and exuberance since really engaging with Epicurean content from this group as well as Hiram's work over the past 10 months or so. Putting pleasurable sensation at the forefront of my life has really opened me up to all the nuances and fullness of being human, has made me a better father and husband, and has been incredibly therapeutic for some deeply disturbed states of mind I've experienced in the recent past. Cheers! -
I had a really draining day at work followed up by a really intense zoom meeting afterwards, so I'm thinking I need some time to decompress. I'll try posting an item or two that has been on my mind on the forum later this evening before bed. Cheers!
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Thanks for the greetings! I was the new guy at last weeks Wednesday zoom.