Posts by Adrastus

Hmm... Duly noted with the critiques though I think Cassius 's comment I will take as a mischaracterization which is totally fair as I am not ordered or disciplined in the way I express myself, especially when it comes to exploratory thoughts and my meaning is anything but clear; and Don 's being the nature of the culture I live in and the sort of folks I am wanting to bring to Epicurean philosophy that makes me want to make that choice. I don't think it's welcome to explain my history with this community in radically egalitarian contexts like communal housing, worker collectives and so forth, and the problems that arose around gender and my lack of desire to have those sorts of conversations with people in real life while trying to defend a way of life that I love. The men I am interested in "organizing" are not ideologically egalitarian and probably have a more or less degree of sexism. I would love to have a big party and everyone's invited, but the pursuit of philosophy in the workplaces I am in... where a month ago a man stabbed another and the police had to shoot him... to speak frankly; are the sort of places I am going to try to gently pluck the goodly men from. Cultivating pleasure in loving and wanting to support the working life of a stranger could be a good starting point to build off those men that may lean into mentor and training roles in the work place; or are just good natured but hardened from the workplace or from unpleasant men.

Maybe we take the Boy Scouts course... gather men under the banner and 'philosophize them', and then move from there once a promising "male" culture is established.

Thank you both for your comments and allowing me to refine my thoughts around this.

Thanks for your reply.

Might be some parallels, I suppose, to older fraternal societies; but then it wouldn't be anything that is about my feelings or initative and joy in starting, or my friendships and goals I have with friends and intentions. I also have very little trust or faith in my community, men in particular, or its institutions to take the time to explore them.

Also many older fraternals vet people for belief in a transcendental God or vet people for their values which would likely be opposed to mine and Epicurean values; and at the end of the day are they friends in any real sense or friends based on obligation and form rather than feeling; if even that? I am skeptical such things can happen given my experience in trying Church communities.

Taking another swing at starting an Epicurean group, this time steering well clear of the philosophical and religious angle I was pursing before and instead focusing on developing a unique form of working men's organization. Personally I am building off the question. "What do I personally want?" and "What kind of person do I want in this group?"

I knew I didn't want 'philosophy' people to come and debate or talk about other philosophers or for me to have to give presentations on philosophy. I know I don't get on well with 'professionals' in middle class milieus, as a rather eccentric bumpkin. Nor do I want people like me that reeeeallly needed Epicurean philosophy to get their minds sorted out as that is such an enormously risky prospect.

What I want is working people, defined as people like me who like to do physical work but are also interested in community and have at least a bit of intellectual pull. I like going to taverns, bring some cards or a light board game, meals, conversation, laughing and joking in crass as well as more high brow ways. I like the sort of guys I am currently working with honestly; lots of African Americans, Latinos and White guys without some inflated sense of "entitlement".

So why even start a group instead of cultivating friendships with my work buds? Why should Epicureans generally organize much at all beyond Friendships? To answer this I am leaning on the organizing "prinicipal" or rather distinct feeling of "philoxenia", or love of strangers. I feel love for strangers and people working hard. I am not aiming for "solutions to society's problems", "solving the mens lonliness problem", or overturning the social order, or taking part in labor disputes or whatever Unions do; nor is this aimed squarely at teaching Epicurean Philosophy; but rather living Epicurean attitudes. I want to solve that guy's problem, particularly of finding diginified or even pleasant work; or sussing out ways to make work and lesiure more pleasurable. I love the feeling of comraderie I sometimes get in workplaces that make the cultivation of work pleasant, even fun like my current job even if I might go home with a few bruises and a sore muscle or two. I want to set people up, if possible for the Epicurean idea of autarkia where we can bask in the feeling of self-sufficiency and security of friendship without having to rely on it unless we must.

Anyway, so it will be a "mutual aid organization" that is a group of friends cultivating within themselves the love of the stranger and of friendship that they already feel, aimed at networking with other folks in the community-like business owners to set people up with work and meeting to socialize. Perhaps it can elevate to answering "spiritual", communal or other philosophical needs at some point through their friendly interest in my passion for Epicrean Philosophy, but it needn't be the end in itself. I am imagining some hand-made sign at a hang-out at community or otherwise large table at a restaurant that says, "Take a seat Friend or Stranger".

I am likely going to take a non-democractic, non-autocratic approach to organizing and found it on the relationships and hospitality I am giving to the group until we are on a similar page that others can pursue their intentions more specifically... in the absense of money exchanged, monetizing any part of the organizing, never institutionalizing with legal form.... then Hospitality and Friendship will be how things are maintained and there will be nothing worth taking over plundering or destroying as there is no gain in participation beyond feeling like we ought to be there, others feeling like we ought to as well and feeling like we are pursuing the shared telos of friendship and hospitality.

I also want to make the aesthetic choice to have it be a "Men's" group explicitly in the title in the same way the Boy Scouts allows girls if they really want to be there and fit in. Mainly to turn off people that would likely be too ideologically indoctrinated to accept the distinctly Epicurean way I am designing the organizing "principals." But I am not opposed to changing this depending on who shows up and what works well. Anyway, I'll stop there.

I just started a new job that I absolutely love and worked over the Holidays. I always get unsettled by Holidays since my Dad died back in 2019 and I more or less lost my extended family which was on the way out for me anyway. Also with seperation in my own nuclear family, I really didn't miss Christmas at all.

I'm throwing all my chips in for a robust celebration of Epicurus' birthday probably February 8th perhaps, or maybe January 20th... Not sure yet. But I am gonna go big and make it the new cool awaited Holiday for my kids and myself going forward. I will be getting them some custom made Epicurean gifts, other meaningful things and a fun thing or two they may want.

Growing evidence of the plausibility of life like and perhaps unlike our own on other worlds.

Emotions are also just one piece of our Canon. Society is often quick to fill our anticipations with things we could be afraid of and our emotions might well follow suit if we believe such sources of information to be trustworthy; yet using our sense of sight of instance can help us determine whether any of these fears are actually indicating threats to our happiness and safety anywhere at all around us. A whole wild storm can rage in our minds and cause our bodies to painfully react; whilst outside in the world might be a pleasant, breezy, sunny day or a gentle shower that you could be enjoying if only your mind wasn't clouded by what are most likely false anticipations you really shouldn't be adding into any sort of caluclation about how to live.

When we have these painful anticipations and disposition whether from thoughts or painful social and material conditions, it is not so much our bodies cravings for indulgences like booze, drugs or sweets or excesses of other food and drink that we need to be worrying about; but our trying to satiate or calm other cravings for safety, for happiness brought by friendly relations, for less worry and less stress by experiencing perhaps less abuse by others or the rigors our social systems put us through in these unhealthful ways that don't actually satiate those cravings. In this way, arranging our circumstances and environments and meeting the true, honestly discerned needs we have that our emotions and body sensations are actually asking for is the way forward. Sometimes waking up to the needs our sensations are telling us is painful or perhaps saddening (which may actually be healthful) work in itself as we realize perhaps that we have a lot of painful relations in our life that caused us to be dour, self (i.e. body)- denying in the first place. The lineage of these painful approaches to life can go back to our earliest memories and closest relationships and that can be extremely difficult to honestly recognize and address when all along we've been taught we mustn't reason from our anger, sadness, distress and such...

In these ways, it is more often false ideas that hurt us rather than our goodly emotions and bodily desires that become twisted by our false ideas and painful approaches to living.

Depends entirely on the nature of the technology as well as the future state of the world and anyone I care to have in my life going forward, but I don't think about life extension nor would I ever willingly choose it. I distrust human society and it's motivations even in these relative good times enough to make the decision that anything that can artificially extend my life through augmentation or alteration of my body can most assuredly be used to keep me artificially alive for who knows how long, and persist in whatever manner of pain and discomfort anyone who assumes control so chooses. It's already hard enough for me to clear out and banish the wealth of horrid thoughts and images society presents me with, let alone giving it an inch more.

Maybe some point humanity may become more Godlike, in our Epicurean sense, and true societies as extensions of Blessedness among true Friends could flourish; but that is so far and remote from humanity as it exists now to ever consider trusting my entire body-soul with these ya-hoos. As I reason, Death far outweighs whatever benefit that could be garnered by potentially having more life and potentially losing that control over being able to choose pleasurable things and avoid pain.

I agree that using "unnatural" versus "natural" is a superior framework precisely because of what Cassius has quoted. The "Unnatural-ness" of Unnatural desires is that they lack limits and boundaries. They are "vain ideas" or ideals that stretch into infinity as we see in Principal Doctrine 15. Ideas unhinged and more often defying concern for Natural and Material things. I think equating this lack of boundaries for hedonistic, security and transcendental desires or fears being given the impious or unvirtuous label of "unnatural", while the "natural" being equated with satiation, satisfaction, limits, suavity, pleasant living seen as virtuous; is a powerful tool for the therapeutic quality of the philosophy that aids in achieving the states of mind and being like ataraxia and aponia, and ethical reasoning generally, within an Epicurean worldview.

I can't quite remember the argument given for using "corrosive" over "Unnatural" in the book but corrosive seems to hint at eating away at a "Good Form" (that is likely artifical rather than something coming "from nature"); rather than a type of transgression against Nature that limitless desires/fears drive us to and that drives bad Politics. I'm sure one could deconstruct away at "Natural" until it's rendered useless; but if we are interested in constructing a sense and definition of what is Natural equated with what should be pursued ethically and therapeutically, then I think Natural/Unnatural is a useful and historic term to build an ethical and soulful sense around.

Thank you Cassius... I suppose at face value this is indeed a failure, but I see it as a rare species of victory. Long ago struck covenants made in the darkness of poor reason, blindness and rejection of the self and other states of poor reasoning are doomed to either pain or dissolution, or both. To let go of them, to let them flow as they may is a liberation; plucking the softness and surrendering the bitter. I see much of my life as having made many, many smaller failures of philosophy, self-forgetting and self-denying in the name of some supposed greater victory of virtue and now I have finally made a course correction even in a much later hour due to finding true philosophy and right practice. Now, I am finding all desires and all sensations are pursuing creative and discerning fullfillment without the weight of maintaining a virtuous form even if we tried to make it as light as feather. I am writing, reciting, teaching and reading poetry - engaging with beauty for the first time since primary school. Clarity and love abound in the soul for we humans. Practical philosophy of aesthetics and pursuit of beautiful action are let loose, and loving and admiring people in novel, consensual and discerning ways are cropping up... rare forms of friendship and intimacy are in bloom and even desires repressed are being driven towards delicacy and new and exotic virtuous forms.

Verily, all Virtue rests and is built on the foundation of Hēdonē.

Yet another turn in the road of life and I find Epicurus and the Sages have already been here and offer a salve.

"I spit upon the beautiful and those who vainly admire it, when it does not produce any pleasure"

As I navigate a very amicable separation and co-parenting arrangement with my ex-partner this oracle has presented itself from my memory as the correct approach. Even a beautiful form like a generally pleasant and peaceful marriage and family lifemust not get in the way of the Pleasant Life if it no longer offers it. In this moment I read it is a way to manage the loss of a pleasant form that became untenable and unpleasant over time. I need not mourn long but even reason towards shunning what was to dodge falling into an unpleasant state again. Beautiful forms, however beautiful and virtuous, must face the measuring stick of the Canon.

Note: Given how damned awkward this subject can be I will simply say I am actually pretty unburdened by dourness and flying high emotionally from this among other emotions and the ex-partner and I are fully committed to Friendship and partnering in raising the children. So no need for any sort of expression of condolences if you, gentle soul, are so inclined. I just wanted to share a new perspective I had on what might be a baffling oracle from Epicurus or original Epicureans.

I generally don't discuss hedonism with adults, but my children are wonderful little hedonistic philosophers, especially with the sort of body-focused ethics that they are taught in their school.

My daughter (7 years old) came up with an interesting insight I had not yet considered on the usual subject of sweets. I was describing that the belly gets a bad rapport because people associate it with overeating or eating too many unhealthy things; BUT our stomach can guide us in all sorts of other things besides being hungry, such as moral conundrums, intuitions, danger and perhaps more; besides just whether or not we experience hunger. So therefore we should listen to our bellies about a lot of things. To which my daughter replied that it's actually our tastebuds we need to watch out for. This impressive (to me at least) technique or process of seperating out into various parts of the body the health and ill-health of eating lead us on an exploration of how the mouth can salivate and how that is a sign, often, that we are about to eat something that is both delicious and good for us as we don't seem to salivate when we are going to eat a treat (at least I don't). And that sometimes our minds are fickle things and that they too can be in cohoots with our taste buds in wanting to eat unhealthy treats all the time; but we've established our belly usually stays true to what we more often should choose and avoid.

All of this is to illustrate that a discussion of hedonism that is not discussing the range and diversity of sensations coming from various parts of the body isn't really a worthwhile approach to hedonistic thinking to me. One that gets stuck in neurochemical reductionism is tough to suss out as we do not experience this chemical bifurcation of object and subject in reasoning hedonistically from sensations, rather we experience everything embodied. Therefore a child trained in listening to their bodies has been, for me at least, a most worthy philosophical partner when it comes to the subject of hedonism as they have not been incultured to ignore their bodies.

And I'll end with this enormous statement by our Sage:

“The beginning and root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture must be referred to this”

I am pretty 'bah, humbug' about Halloween as it is celebrated around here and find it deeply unpleasant. I think it trains for painful anticipations and painful attitudes towards death. There is no exchange of wisdom about death or the ancestors. There is no learning about the nature of death, but showing off unrealistic and grotesque forms. We don't even walk from house to house anymore and instead grab candy out of a trunk as if we must streamline everything and the candy is all that matters in what has become a gross, empty holiday. Also the weird classist discourse of going only to the rich and gentrified neighborhoods to get the "good candy" rather than trying to build anything real in our own communities. Probably get arrested if we tried public-facing "tricks". Halloween is everywhere as people leave their jarring skeleton and ghost displays up all year which is I suppose is slightly better than a Neighborhood Association and perfectly maintained lawns. People have little social sense, or people's standards are rock bottom for propriety or we have just come to expect public displays of inward expression just everywhere. Culturally it's just devolving into an extension of the increasingly distubing and pornographic horror and survival media that is getting created these days that has basically dropped the pretense of being about entertainment, and truly we become the stories we keep telling.

Pagans eat it up, but willingly and religiously taking on the role of achetypal, unredeemable evil forms is not particularly prudent; but hey it's not my thing.

Welcome!

I was wondering if there was any connection between Diogenes of Oinoanda believing we ought to depict the Gods as smiling, with the Archaic Smile.

I vaguely remember reading some scholarship that perhaps Epicurean Philosophy was a kind of pre-Socratic resurgence though I admit that I am not sure where I picked up that idea, and I remember reading in Bernard Frischer's book The Sculpted Word where Fischer paints a picture of Epicurean Philosophy not concerned with returning the world to some bygone Golden Age, but living in the present as if one were in the past Golden Age. I admit to not knowing much about the greater expanses of Greek history, but was curious if a more learned scholar here could speak to this sort of idea and if the idea of smiling statuary for Diogenes has anything to do with some kind of aesthetic sign from Greece in the Archaic age.

Thanks for any insights or commentary.

Anti-Natalism is largely irrelevant to me as I have children. As a Dad who tries and has tried to share the tasks of raising children and with a partner who thinks outside of the cultural box on the solutions to problems of contemporary motherhood, I honestly fail to see many downsides to children as having children has not hindered any area of my life. It has only greatly enhanced it by making the task of philosophy even more urgent and palpable, as well as, allowing me to experience a whole variety of pleasures of the mind and pleasant emotions that I would have otherwise never known.

I suppose there are all sorts of maladies a child my be physically or mentally afflicted with, or the child may not live long or not be set upon by great violence due to environmental or social factors like conflict and disease to not reach an age of understanding for there to have been any form of consolation. One might make a resoundingly anti-natalist argument given the chances of this, though you never quite know what Nature informs the body of unless one were in that situation. But if our pleasant disposition is not overly reliant on notions of anyone and everyone reaching some sort of perfected state, the achievement of all of ones potential and the heights of human attainment, or necessarily having to persist for any particularly long period of time in order for any one life to be worth living; or to come at it from a different direction - to otherwise conquer the fear of the death of others, then you can seek to offer a child the most joyful of times now and not delay in the instruction in right philosophy, while still reasonably preparing a future for the child like one would their own life given their own uncertain fate. Principal Doctrine 19 helps alleviate that sort of fear and provides consolatory salvation, and we should expect nothing less in a sober pursuit of philosophy than to be sobered now and again by correct reasoning.

Thank you so much, Kalosyni and Cassius!

I believe it shall be a very good day.

Thank you very much for this discussion on an extremely important issue in Epicurean Philosophy, and another well elucidated debate within this episode.

Maybe this belongs more in a highly practical, or religious practice area of the forum; but I use this list a friend of mine but together, to realize the "why not hundreds of emotional states?" and drill back down to whats standing in the way of the ataraxic, unmixed, unalloyed Pleasure of which I feel like katastematic pleasure, as a concept, is avoiding in the issue of "neutrality" in emotion.

I bring in some degree of taxonomy using the breath of language, like in this chart, to name and resolve the personal, desire-based reasons and social reasons for such seemingly complex feelings and resolutions to those feelings. Is feeling 'restless' bodily and/or categorically different than feeling "contemptous"? If we can categorize them as pains, then perhaps the taxonomy can help us understand what to do about the mental displeasure to make moves to alleviate it.

I ultimately come down on that side that Doctrinally, it makes more sense to just consider the Pleasure of the katastematic state, and the kenetic pleasures that help us tend to our reasonable human needs, set against the various psychic and more apparant physical Pains; makes a great deal of sense from a constructive, rather than other deconstructive, dialectical or highly analytical and divorced from the body, philosophical perspectives. The pleasurability brought about by clearing the mind and setting the Epicurean student on the reasonable approach to life using the Doctrine and other sources of Epicurean philosophy, ought to be, philosophically and teleologically, a distinct state of affairs from the myriad of ideas one could bring to the table about Pleasure and Pain and pathos in general.

A.I. has some deep "intelligence" problems when it literally cited my own stranger, exploratory comment concerning Epicurean prolepsis on this forum back to me... I wouldn't trust what I have to say on such subjects, but I would trust whatever is going on with this Google search A.I. even less.

I'm generally trying to "revolt" against having to use the internet for organizing events and projects. The lack of eventbrite sign-ups, and QR codes and other ways for people to gain rapid access to information or for things to be neatly arranged. If I weren't so terrible with handwriting and drawing, I would make my fliers by hand; but I should work on doing things with pen and pencil more from now on where I can. Life is going to just be messier for me outside of my work life and I have the luxury right now with my current projects to not need mass appeal or for very many people to be able to connect with what I want to get up to.

I also wonder, per Martin 's excellent comment, how and in what way a physicist or anyone achieving something grand intellectually, experiences pleasure. I have had obviously much lesser experiences of pride and fame and more distinct understanding of what I did as not particularly laudable; but I personally dismissed most of that mild 'lauding' of "achievement" unless it came from specific people I actually yearned for other deeper emotional needs from. An attaboy coming from a stranger or an acquaintance or even Friend means less to me than that coming from the family member I always wanted to feel connected to or wanted approval from.

Can we truly recommend pleasures of "self-actualizing" or "achievement" if we do not have some model such as Maslow's Hierachy of Needs, where lower levels of needs are already deeply felt and secured? I generally tend to associate the sentiments towards even mild fame and notoriety with a distinctly lesser quality than more "basely" human needs and desires; like a well prepared meal, perhaps even given the time to be foraged, grown or hunted, with the best of Friendly company. And I think that bears out well in Epicurean thought and other ancient "hedonic" thought like in Yang Chu who speaks ill even of grand funerary rites.

Excellent thread.

I just wanted to comment on another aspect of what I think is meant by the Nature of "contemplation" "meditation" and so forth.

Lucretius' Ode to Epicurus in Book 1, gives me a stark reminder of how the ancients thought about the Nature of mind and allowing ones mind to wander or imagine in ones 'mind's eye', at least in dramatic form.

Quote

"When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth crushed down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to withstand her to her face.

Him neither story of gods nor thunderbolts nor heaven with threatening roar could quell: they only chafed the more the eager courage of his soul, filling him with desire to be the first to burst the fast bars of nature’s portals.

Therefore the living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe; whence he returns a conqueror to tell us what can, what cannot come into being; in short on what principle each thing has its powers defined, its deep-set boundary mark.

Therefore religion is put underfoot and trampled upon in turn; us his victory brings level with heaven." - Lucretius, De Rereum Natura, Book 1 62-78

So I think about Epicurus' physics and his view of infinite space and time, and infinite atoms and void, as something in which we can 'contemplate/meditate' on when fears about the Gods, primal terror at enormous thoughts or fears about humans overwhelm us. The physics may or may not be 'true' when we consider physics as we know them today, but the whole view of the universe to Epicurus is calming - at least I've found as an object of contemplation - and helps induce the loss of overwhelming fears associated with letting ones imagination run off billions of light years away or into fictive ideas about Gods or other unseeable things ready to strike at us.

I suppose in this way the physics are still immensely useful as, for the contemporary moment, we do not have a scientific view or a scientific cultural discourse that also does not incessantly hound us with thoughts of "other dimensions" or "simulations" that could leave us disconcerted and uneasy. Science isn't supposed to take into account the health of the soul when off discovering or theorizing in the same way Ancient Philosophical systems needed to more or less wrap everything up nice and tidy as to be a system of psychological health or attainment.