“From Pain to Pleasure : Your Pathway to Happiness” http://stressfreedomguide.com/ has been hijacked by hackers and forwards viewers to an ad page on most browsers.

But you can still download and read the fist chapter from

http://stressfreedomguide.com/free/1/freechapter.html

http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2010/07/10/is-there-a-already-a-rational-alternative-on-offer-for-the-modern-theistic-religions-8950770/

My reponse was:

Christianity (as Buddhism and Islam, too) started out with dropping out into alternative communities and has continued to satisfy the fundamental human need for belonging. Epicureans did have their small communities for 800 years (300 BCE-500 CE) but 21st century Epicureans do not have functioning (NON-virtual) communities, the minimum necessary condition to fulfill the role (=satisfy the need) of a religion. (Democratic/meritocratic egalitarianism does work very well WITHIN closed communities and I do not think that Eism would ever aim at establishing itself as a state religion.)
How about starting a NON-virtual Epicurean community, gather experience, share its learnings?

The discussion on Facebook might produce new insights:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Epicurus/79493658728

Female chacma baboons that maintain close, lasting friendships live considerably longer than their peers who switch companions more frequently, a new study finds in ScienceNews

Or have you started noticing “nature barking out her one demand, that pain be kept away, divorced from body, so that, free from care, free from fear, she may derive enjoyment in her mind from a sense of pleasure?”

Lucretius: On the Nature of of Things, Translated by Ian Johnston, 2010, Book II, lines 8-19 and 23-27

or

do you prefer to satisfy your needs in ways that are congruent with your value system?

Like,  for instance,  a consequently practicing Christian, Buddhist or Humanist or … Epicurean?

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”   said Stephen Hawking in an interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News.

Hawking used the words “because it works”, rather than “because it is true”.  Determination of “truth” in any other way would require an ultimate authority, and ultimate authority is religion’s game.

In this context Epicureanism is more like science than religion: it did work for the decent, rational and reasonable middle class of the Roman Empire for 800 years just as well as it does for us today.

satisfy your needs in ways that are congruent with your values.

In practice, however,  it is not so simple at all.

‘I can grasp why the fact that my values and the way I satisfy my needs reduce the causes of stress and add to my well being’,  said one of my coachees. (To protect his identity I will call him Peter.) He went on:  ’My problem is that I just don’t know how to harmonize one of my cherished values with my actions. ‘

It turned out that the value he cherished so much was one of humanity’s core values: honesty. And his dilemma was also one of the the most common ones: how to be honest without hurting the feelings of his friend.

How to strike a viable balance between tactfulness and honesty? We are confronted almost daily with this problem in out interactions with our friends, family, coworkers. The need to belong is one of our other basic needs while to be honest is another one.

Peter’s problem was how to tell his friend that he did not feel like playing chess with him every Thursday afternoon any more. His friend was disabled and could not leave his house and the weekly chess parties were a very important element of his social life.

We all tend to use a “white lie” in such cases and we often do, since we do not have the knowledge and/or the skills to do any better. Peter’s first thought was to say that he had to work on a new project and that he was too busy  at other times with his family. But at the same time he felt that he respected his friend too much to tell him a lie.

I told Peter openly and honestly that there were no simple answers and no quick fixes but it would be a good start is to ask himself how he could express his respect for his friend and only then tackle the thorny issue.

After only two coaching sessions he had both the knowledge and the skills to navigate safely between the rock of honesty and the hard place of tactfulness and save both his self-respect and his friendship. We also worked out another way to satisfy his own and his friend’s needs for belonging and honesty.

He said that it was well worth to  work on himself for something very valuable to him: friendship.

]]> http://stress-freedom.net/2010/06/how-to-satisfy-your-needs-in-ways-that-are-congruent-with-your-values/feed/ 0 http://stress-freedom.net/2010/05/fearing-death-is-often-fear-of-meaninglessness/ http://stress-freedom.net/2010/05/fearing-death-is-often-fear-of-meaninglessness/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 11:46:52 +0000 Galenios http://stress-freedom.net/?p=357 fearing death is often fear of meaninglessness

For some people it is not so much  the moment of death that is daunting . Their  agony is born of the realization that “at some point all that we are is as if it never was and we are helpless to change that. More than that is knowing the same is true for those we love and worse yet for those died suddenly or tragically. “

Is it possible that the fact that we come from nothingness and then disappear into nothingness makes  them feel that this life is meaningless? Some of my clients used to gripe with this issue.

During the coaching session they  realize that we are the only persons that can give meaning to our lives by living it to the fullest. “Vivamus dum vivimus” is an old Epicurean advice. It means something like “let’s live our lives to the fullest as long as we are alive”.

If we taste the pleasure of contributing something to the  happiness of our children, spouses, friends or community we can feel that our life is not meaningless.

1.Is Epicureanism, in fact, a closed system, and if it is, is this to its disadvantage?

My answer: Yes, it is a closed system of dogmatic philosophy and lifestyle and I see no disadvantage in this. Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy stated that the Epicureans “served a useful purpose by their protest against the increasing devotion of the later pagans to magic, astrology, and divination; but they remained, like their founder, dogmatic, limited, and without genuine interest in anything outside individual happiness. They learnt by heart the creed of Epicurus, and added nothing to it throughout the centuries during which the school survived.”
If you find a philosophy leading to happiness why should you change it or look further?
2.Further, to what extent do you think it is possible to disagree with historical Epicurean teaching and yet still realistically consider yourself “an Epicurean”?
My answer:I believe that if you accept and follow Epicurus’s core ethical teachings and practice them in your daily life you may call yourself an Epicurean, even if you disregard his physics and theology.
3.If you identify as an Epicurean, why do you do so in preference to, say, identifying as a Stoic, given that both traditions have effective techniques for achieving ataraxia/apatheia?
My answers:
Ataraxia does NOT equal apatheia – but this would be a topic for a new discussion.
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius borrowed generously from Epicurus and some of the psychagogical techniques and educational exercises of both schools were very similar, as pointed out by Hadot, Rabbow and others.
Besides the few similarities and the many important and very pertinent differences enumerated above by Bob we should also keep in mind that
- Stoicism changed a lot from Zeno’s materialism to Marcus Aurelius’s quasi-platonism
- Stoics never managed to make their determinism consistent with their belief in beneficent providence.
- Stoics never had anything like the Epicurean school-communities
- Stoics actively participated in power games whereas with Epicureans it was the exception
- Stoics always preached reason, virtue, and duty but seldom walked their own talk
- Stoicism was the philosophy of Greek aristocrats and Roman patricians whereas the followers of Epicurus were mostly higher middle class with no political ambitions.
In DeWitt’s words:” Epicureanism presented two fronts to the world, the one as repellent as the other was attractive. Its discouragement of the political career was repellent to the ambitious, its denial of divine providence to pious orthodoxy, and its hedonism to timorous respectability. Its candor, charity, courtesy, and friendliness were attractive to multitudes of the honest and unambitious folk.” (Epicurus and His Philosophy)

“My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important. He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to notice it.

“He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery, or fishing and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.

“Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’ “

quoted from Kurt Vonnegut: Timequake, chapter 4, p. 14