emotional well-being taught in schools? AGAIN?!
Jules Evans informs us that the London Philosophy Club has scheduled a special event on this topic Should we teach emotional well-being in schools?
Emotional well-being (aka happiness / eudaimonia) was the only subject taught in the Epicurean garden schools. For 800 years: from 300 BE to 500 CE. The Christian Emperors changed the topic for the next 1500 years: unhappiness has been taught in school ever since the cultural takeover by Church(es) and Platonic Academia.
Are we contemplating an eudaimonistic revolution?
Who can be an Epicurean today and why not
To my mind being “Epicurean” today may mean many thins to many people. We cannot simply pretend to ignore that the word “epicurean” is being used to describe at least three semantically different categories:
1. fond of or adapted to luxury or indulgence in sensual pleasures; having luxurious tastes or habits, especially in eating and drinking.
2. fit for an epicure: epicurean delicacies.
3. ( initial capital letter ) of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Epicurus or Epicureanism.
We might, of course agree to exclude the foodies but the rest of the world might ignore our decision. But even after the arbitrary exclusion of the first two established meanings of the word we would have at one end of the remaining wide spectrum the people who have heard that it is not the same as being a foodie , plus, on reading Lactantius’s “if god is willing to prevent evil, but not able?…then he is not omnipotent..” they feel they like it and repost it on Facebook’s Epicurus wall (every month or so). At the other end might stand those people who would live in an Epicurean community an Epicurean way of life, communally practicing the teachings. We could agree, of course, that by barely subscribing to a set of principles, like for instance the Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, and the Letter to Menoeceus, or maybe even just the Tetrapharmakos, one should be entitled to describe oneself as a n“ Epicurean”. Or maybe as a “non-practicing Epicurean” or “principled Epicurean” or “philosophical Epicurean” etc.. The above mentioned general principles are general enough to be acceptable for the vast majority of those people who value a minimum level of rationality and honesty, even though they might have been baptized/incorporated/engulfed into some vast and vague and abstract worldview ‘community’ like Christianity, or Buddhism, or the Islam – or any of their local branches.
Without practicing the teachings the subscribers to a set of Epicurean principles might be no more ‘Epicureans’ as the majority of Christians and other members of the established mass-religions are. (I never stop being astonished by seeing the word “Christian” describe an honest Amish craftsman and Ken Lay, the Christian Extraordinaire. )What is the meaning of the word Christian then? And what should be the meaning of the word “Epicurean”? Or what word or combination of words should more or less appropriately describe the non-foodie branch of practicing Epicureans?
Maybe we should start by agreeing on whether being a member of an Epicurean community is a necessary element of designating someone or oneself as Epicurean. The freemasons decided that there is no such thing as a freemason outside of a lodge. Can or should this principle be applied to self-proclaimed Epicureans? Or shall we try to develop a more precise terminology?
As you see, we have two problems to deal with
1. define what we mean by the word “Epicurean”
2. then find a better word for it
We can, of course eschew the challenge and go on messing up the terms further describing our own personal mixture of philosophical and/or psychological and/or sociological ingredients as “Epicureanism” or even “Neo-Epicureanism”.
CHREMOLATRY: a new word for an old disease
Every December I spent in Western Europe or North America I was trying to find a diagnostic word that would describe the epidemic disease that befalls the inhabitants of these regions. They start buying things in unimaginably enormous quantities, wrap them up and give them each other, or keep them for themselves. Things they do not need. The average West European owns 10 000 things, the average North American even 20 000 things. They don’t know how many of these things they really need. But they keep on multiplying them.
What are we experiencing each December? A wild rush fore more things. Back in 1998 I was almost crushed by the shopping multitudes in the center of the Westphalian city of Münster. The next advent Sunday the crowd managed to really stomp a person to death there. Here in the US I saw the same stampede for more things on TV as ‘Black Friday’.
I remember Georges Perec’s first novel, ‘Les Choses’ that describes how a young couple explores “happiness” in a consumer society by surrounding and burying themselves under an increasing number of objects. The English title ‘Things: A Story of the Sixties’ pretends the phenomenon was limited to the Sixties of the previous century.
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necesitate” is a statement known as Occam’s razor, or Ockham’s razor, and word for word it means that “entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” It is sometimes expressed in Latin as ‘lex parsimoniae’ (the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle that generally recommends from among competing hypotheses selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.
If we were to translate this recommendation from the realm of epistemology into the realm of everyday life we might say: do not multiply things beyond necessity. I could also say: ‘stop reifying!’ (from Latin ‘res’ thing + ‘facere’to make, reification can be loosely translated as thing-making; ) or ‘stop making more things than needed!’
Today the legendary light bulb went up in my head and I found the diagnostic name of the disease that takes epidemic proportions every year in December:
CHREMOLATRY. I made it up from the Greek words
chrema = a thing,(also: business, spec. money, riches)
+ -latry = worship
I waive the copyright on it and send it out to my friends and acquaintances as a diagnostic name they can also use as a diagnostic tool by asking themselves the question:
“How deep am I affected by CHREMOLATRY? How deep am I worshipping things and how much do I contribute to their multiplication beyond necessity?”
Would our merry race go on multiplying the things on the face of the earth, polluting also the air, the water, even our brains if we asked us this question? Would the cult of multiplying things beyond necessity reach its paroxysm at the end of each year?
I doubt it. No appeal to reason has led to more reasonable conduct of life on a mass level in the long run.
On an individual level, however, the question might lead to the question “what are the things that I really need?” and might even mark the starting point of a wonderful journey of self-knowledge, purification, simplification, stress elimination. Or even peace of mind that is happiness.
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
Epicurean Desire Therapists
The Epicureans would not recommend that we be “Epicures”, as we understand the term today. Why not?
Jennifer Baker published an enlightening article on real Epicureanism in the online blog of “Psychology Today”:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-love-wisdom/201105/the-real-epicures/comments
which I commented as follows:
The real Epicureans walked their talk – for 800 years. No other philosophical school has kept its tenets unchanged for such an impressively long span of time. The ancient Epicureans had their own education system and sustainable communities. As do today’s body-builders, they built their chosen attitudes through daily exercise. Many of their ‘spiritual exercises’ were shared by the other character builder guild, the Stoics. Although the systematic communal and individual practice was interrupted when the Roman emperor Justinian closed the four still-existing philosophy schools in Athens, many of their tenets and attitudes were later studied and cultivated by philosophers, statesmen and psychologists. Their habit-forming practices of self-scrutiny are at the very basis of ‘modern’ behavior therapies . Martha Nussbaum’s “The Therapy of Desire” is an excellent illustration of the ancient desire therapies.
Alain de Botton gives a visually palatable introduction to Epicurus’s original philosophy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LTTRQcZ8c
I am proud of my friends
I don’t believe pride is an emotion anybody should be proud of experiencing if
“pride is an inward directed emotion that exemplifies either a high sense of one’s personal status or ego (i.e., leading to judgments of personality and character) or the specific mostly positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection.” (Wikipedia)
Especially Epicureans should be ashamed of it and work hard at getting rid of it as soon as possible since its ugly head indicates an over-inflated ego or a dangerous vulnerability to praise. If independent self-reflection should lead to pride one ought to improve one’s self-reflective skills. Urgently.
I can’t help feeling proud of my friends, though.
It took me over forty years to understand that I don’t understand the correlation between my needs, my desires and the way I satisfy those desires, resulting in stressing myself, my friends and family, my coworkers and supervisors, clients and suppliers. It took me another five years to read all the relevant books on Epicurean life techniques and happiness studies to work my way out of the jungle and another five years to hone my tools by using them to set people free of their self-defeating beliefs and unhealthy habits and help them dismantle the walls they build between themselves and their pathway to happiness through congruence and stress-FREEDOM. It took me another year and the invaluable support of my wife to write a wise AND funny book for those who are interested in spending the rest of their lives walking toward their own happiness instead of working for their own or someone else’s greed.
My friends, however, must have been born wise and don’t seem to need the distilled fruits of hard-earned practical wisdom packed in nicely wrapped palatable pieces of advice. They must be champions in analyzing their desires, in satisfying their natural needs through synergistic satisfiers, in keeping their lifestyle and behavior patterns in line with their values and attitudes, serenely threading down their own proven pathways from pain to pleasure, producing their own happiness though congruence and stress-FREEDOM.
I must assume they do all this judging from the absence of their comments on the excerpts of my book that I have been publishing in sequels in my blog. The only topic they mildly reacted to was sequel 15: “How Is It Possible To Find Romantic Love? “
Complete strangers ask me when will my book be available in print and on kindl, when will I start training and coaching sessions on the Galenian Epicurean Conduct of Life, or at least publicly speak about it. (Which I don’t’ know yet. I still have to take care of my health and the happiness of my family.)
But it’s a relief that my friends are doing well, confidently threading their own pathways toward happiness.( Or what they believe is happiness?)
It’s a shame to feel proud but who could help not being proud of them? (Maybe Epicurus?)
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