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I have been thinking again about how to prioritize time among projects. Charles made a comment in the most recent Lucretius Today podcast that 98% of the people who come into his Discord or Reddit groups, or the Facebook group, are essentially "NeoEpicurean" in their thinking. They have little interest in the physics or the epistemology, and they think that they have captured Epicurus fully in a couple of remarks about "absence of pain" or "tranquility." We have much better percentages here at E…

Good thoughts. What word would you suggest as more appropriate than "activism"? I think most of the issues here revolve around the limited time that those of us who are here have, but there is also an underlying issue of what " activism" should mean. We can write torrents of words here, and definitely gain some pleasure from that, but unless we have "real-life" friends of the type Epicurus was referring to, and nor just "virtual" friends, then the pleasure we gain will not be as full as it could…

1 - My how times have changed. There was a time when I was convinced that Don would never cite anything that DeWitt said about the christian analogy approvingly! 2 - Yes "Evangelism" and synonyms for it are the obvious word choices, although the "collaboration" aspect is also clearly what we are offering. 3 - Yes I started a wiki earlier but have not had time to expand it; I use it mainly for the Lucretius texts: http://www.epicrueanfriends.com/wiki 4 - Yes I do want to comment that after a lot …

Also: In the past we always ran into the reefs when we tried to come up with a statement of principles or other list of priorities that we could use as a point of agreement on what we are promoting. I think over the last year (almost two now) we've done a lot of work on that with the "Not NeoEpicurean" list and assorted articles elaborating on its points. So I think while there will certainly be lots of adjustment, we're further along now than we've ever been in the past. We don't have a huge nu…

Note: "Collaboration" is such and obvious and innocent word that I re-titled the thread to include it. "Evangelization" or synonyms probably need emphasis too, but probably more discussion first. Maybe it seems to me that "evangelization" is a term that is most frequently combined with something that clearly sets out the principles being evangelized, and I am not sure the thread title is ready for that.

OK yes it was the "angelos" that made me think of a religious connotation. That is all good to know. Also in this thread on collaboration / evangelization, it's of course a major issue that every step forward we have to be constantly on the lookout for a particular land mine: modern/partisan politics. It's natural that in wanting to take action with our friends that we're going to find discussions bleeding over into "politics" in which those of us from different backgrounds/locations/etc have di…

1- One would think I could spell Epicurean by now -- apparently not! 2 - Camotero I may be missing some of the subtlety of your question and maybe Don or Godfrey or others will answer better, but my first response is that you have to be clear what it means to label someone "bad" (or "good"). I think you're on the right track to see how relative and contextual everything is, and terms like "good" and "bad" as ordinarily viewed are often thought of as absolute, so they are outside the contextual /…

One more thing, as to the wiki -- Like so many other things here I took the bull by the horns and got things started on the wiki, with the idea and hope of collaboration in the future, but not much available help at the time. Anytime anyone would like to engage further and collaborate on any aspect of the wiki or most anything else please let me know and I would be happy to extend those privileges (to people like those in the thread so far, or who come later, who've shown their good faith and in…

(Quote from Don) Yes I agree, that formulation is certainly a problem. I don't think enough is known about the development of Jefferson's thought to know how much he was into Epicurus at the time he was involved in the Declaration, but I haven't tried to figure it out. The only way I could consider that reconcilable with Epicurus would be if he were referring to "inalienable" in the sense of the Epicurean/Lucretius doctrine of properties and qualities of bodies, as in the part of Book 1 of Lucre…

Thanks for your comments Philia. Each of those concerns have answers to them which (as you say) you apparently have not studied the philosophy long enough to understand. At the level you are discussing what you are talking about is not Epicurean philosophy at all, so it probably does not make sense to call it that for the sake of avoiding misunderstanding all around. Unfortunately there is really no way to avoid the "work" (pleasant though it may be) of studying the philosophy so as to understan…

(Quote from Don) LOL he's probably referring mainly to me! (Quote from Philia) I think the deeper you read into the philosophy the more you'll feel that this formulation (maybe or maybe not by Philodemus) is dramatically inadequate as a full statement of the philosophy, just as you find a statement like "pleasure is the greatest good" to be inadequate. On the other hand, both the tetrapharmakon and the "greatest good" formulation are very useful as starting points for discussion and focusing on …

Philia has raised some very good points that we regularly have run into in the past and we'll run into as long as we're associated with Epicurean philosophy. I hope several of us will comment on these points as talking through them is good for everyone, not just for Philia, and I hope we'll get much more elaboration from Philia in response.