Greenblatt on the Epicurean Lucretius and the Epicurean Jefferson
Stephen Greenblatt, the author of “The Swerve” talking about the Epicurean attitude to pleasure, about Lucretius’s poem and about the Epicurean Thomas Jefferson in an interview with Charlie Rose:
the full interview (23 min): http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11977
a 5 minutes cut:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DOv4KPkUDY
Want bit more stress-FREEDOM in your life?
Here’s an idea for a bit more stress-FREEDOM in your life:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6611967/not-google-plus
how the pleasure principle shapes our world
THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE in the New Yorker: Stephen Greenblatt explains how Lucretius and his poem “On the Nature of Things” shaped the modern world.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/08/08/110808on_audio_greenblatt
buy nothing days as exercise for freedom
I have just read an interesting interview Jules Evans did way back in 2002 with Kalle Lasn, the founder of Adbusters, which is a Vancouver-based collective of ‘culture jammers’, and the inventors of Buy Nothing Day:
http://www.politicsofwellbeing.com/2011/06/kalle-lasn-founder-of-adbusters-on.html?spref=fb
Ancient Epicureans had up to 30 “buy nothing days” a month. Even wealthy Roman Epicureans reserved 3-7 days a month for austerity: they slept on the hard floor and ate only bread and drank only water. The sense of this exercise was to keep up their faith in the doctrine that what [is thought by most people as] hard is in fact easy to put up with. It showed them that they can be happy without their belongings, supplies and services – a state pretty often achieved in cases when the emperor wanted their property for his friends and exiled them.
I had periods in my life when I had to live on extremely meager resources and I can say that this fact never affected my mental well being. Even if I don’t need to convince myself of this fact I still keep a bread-and-water day every now and then, just as a reminder of one of the techniques of stress-FREEDOM.
thinky AND crafty
Tomorrow one of my Australian cousins will come to see us for a few days.
While munching our English muffins on the back porch my daughter told me about the present she is going to make for my cousin. I told her that I admired her rare capacity to think up the kind of present that would make a person happy and then manufacturing it.
“I am a thnky and crafty person” said she “and I like to see the happy faces people make when they get a present from me”.
Details with photo about the typically Wisconsinite present will follow as soon it will be confectioned. I will have to find a toilet paper roll, though, so she can get started on the crafty part.
My Daily Birthday Cake Today
Since I started celebrating my re-birthday every day I developed a kind of private birthday party. I usually get up between 5 and 6 and get hungry around 7 in the morning while most of my family is still asleep. I get out a deep frozen blueberry bagel, thaw it and toast it. Then I put little pieces of unsalted butter on the halves and watch them melt.
Today the ritual was specially rewarding due to the sunrays falling on the butter. It looked like it was the sunrays that melted the butter.
The warmth of the bagels, its color and texture, the sight and the smell of the melting butter formed a complex sensual symphony, a hymn to the new morning.
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