stress-FREE cuisine: cat-food system adapted for humans?
Adapting the cat-food system for humans might make the preparation of daily 3-5 meals really stress-FREE and sustainable – was my first thought while reading the last issue of the German TEST magazine’s cat-food test results. The German language link:
http://www.test.de/themen/haus-garten/test/-Katzenfutter/1708060/1708060/1709973/
Everybody would know how many calories they need of which nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, fiber, minerals, proteins, vitamins, and water) and we could buy our breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack and dessert cans for weeks ahead. Cooking would not be a burden any more: you could do it only when you really felt like. (Well it could not be an excuse, either…)
hedonist environmentalists
Hank Morgan, Mark Twain’s fictional Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, managed to produce electricity from the movement of praying monks.
An Italian inventor, Lucien Gambarota, helped design gym equipment that captures human energy to power lights and TVs for Hong Kong workout center California Fitness.
A next-generation nightclub wants to use that energy to keep the strobes lit and the bass bumping:
A new technology developed by the environmental innovation lab Enviu takes advantage of the vast amount of energy expended by revellers as they throw themselves around the dance floor. And its debut is right around the corner. On September 2, Iggy Pop will be performing at Club Watt in Rotterdam, Holland. And those on the dance floor will play their part in keeping the lights lit and the bass thumping:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,570869,00.html
In twenty years my kids might dance up all the energy they will need.
whose reading?
“Galenian” Epicureanism is my reading of Epicurus and his interpreters.
My own (mis-?)understandings and (mis-?)interpretations of the Epicurean texts differ from Cicero’s, Porphyrius’s and others’ (mis-?)understandings and (mis-?)interpretations
I agree with almost all of Norman Wentworth DeWitt’s interpretations of the Epicurean texts (in his “Epicurus and His Philosophy”) and Martha Nussbaum’s interpretations of Epicurean psychological procedures (in her “The Therapy of Desire” ). In some specific issues I accept the pertinent interpretation of one or the other expert’s, like Vincent Cook, Tim O’Keefe, D.S. Hutchinson, Victor Kioulaphides, Steven Ikier, Robert Hanrott, Tom Merle and some others.
For this reason I cannot speak of “Epicureanism” as such.
For me the Epicurean texts are less a raw material for interpretation or explanation than a source of inspiration and practical roadmap for a stress-FREE, truly happy life together with like-minded friends, using all the resources of modern science I have access to, especially pedagogy, psycho-sociology, organizational development and project management. I will go into details in my book “…live stress-FREE and happily ever after“.
Epicurean texts and some of their interpretations – like e.g. Michel Foucault’s interpretation of Epicurean “parrhesia” ( a special form of giving feedback, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhesia ), or Christoph Horn or Paul Rabbow’s or Pierre Hadot’s reconstructions and interpretations of Hellenistic philosophical exercises and practices, or the strong ecological interpretation of Stephanie Mills’s ”Epicurean Simplicity” -serve as foundation and ingredients for my personal stress-FREEDOM guidance and are part of my reading of Epicurean stress-FREEDOM practice and stress-FREE lifestyle – as described in more detail in my book under construction “Epicurus reloaded”
For this reason it would be incorrect – and in my value scale: dishonest – to call my stress-FREEDOM guidance “Epicurean”. It is much more correct and modest to call it “mine”, i.e. “Galenian”, i.e. Galenios’s reading of Epicurus and of the world.
stress-FREEDOM action plans and projects for a truly happy life
The most important element of stress freedom guidance is enabling the guidees to work out their stress-FREEDOM action plans and designing their own projects for a truly happy life.
All the theory of the world will not suffice to produce one single happy life. This is why stress-FREEDOM guidees are trained to become the project managers of their own lives. They learn to set goals and milestones, identify resources and develop strategies for creating their own authentically happy lives. They also learn to organize themselves and their support teams. They learn the basics of team building and organizational development so they are equipped to step into the circle of like-minded friends following the same road towards happiness through stress-FREEDOM guiding each other as well as those seekers who are further back somewhere at the beginning of the road.
integrating the happiness ingredients
Having reached stress-freedom the guidees are ready and prepared to integrate the happiness ingredients identified by scientific research into their own individual lives.
800 years of continuous Epicurean communal life in friendship furnished the stress-freedom seekers with the ingredients for happiness as identified by 20th and 21st century scientific research:
In “The formula for Happiness” Stefan Klein resumes the results of scientific research as follows
Happiness ingredients
1. Quality of relationship with partner
2. sex/exercise/sport/dance
3. friendship
4. self-determination, autonomy, FREEDOM
5. civic sense, responsibility
6. social equality
7. voluntary work for others
Epicurean learning communities furnished their members with the social environment necessary for the creation and perfection of the happiness ingredients they needed. At the same time they learned to use the think-tools of reflection and the communication-improvement-tool of giving and receiving feedback to be able to eliminate the happiness blockers as identified by Epicurus and reconfirmed by scientific research: stress based on fears resulting from self-deception, false expectations, competition, envy, jealousy, the rat race.
At this stage the guidees are encouraged to develop communities based on identical intentions, value systems and strategies. By this time they are equipped with the necessary tools to shape the synergic satisfiers described by Max-Neef that will enable them and empower them to lead authentically happy lives with like-minded friends.
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