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.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6611967/not-google-plus

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

“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?)

http://www.facebook.com/stressfreedomguide

The Epicurean communities, on the other hand, have always been based on a cooperative, non-competitive attitude and behavior.

How could such as subspecies not only survive for 2300 years but also positively thrive and flourish for almost 800 years?

Had they followed the laws propagated by evolutionary biologists they must have died out long time ago – just like many small religious communities, including Christian ones, based on non-competitive cooperation. The Scandinavian type of socialist economy based on cooperation could never function, either, according to mainstream economists. But, in fact, it not only does, but makes its “players” happier, more content and less stressed than the people forced to “play” by the rules of a competitive system based on greed. And numerous religious sects (like the Amish in the US), cults, fraternities and sororities, based on non-competitive sharing are still up and running.

I am not sure about the future of anything in general and Epicureanism in particular, but I can imagine that it might continue as a narrow or broad alternative anabranch or backwater, a tolerated or persecuted minority for another few hundreds or thousands of years. It might turn into mainstream only if and when the present mainstream lifestyle based on competitiveness and greed will prove to be a dead end  …and leaves enough survivors for an Epicurean revival experiment.

s

This is no easy enterprise since my children are no different from other children of their age (9 and 12) structuring time around the present-laden knots of Christmas, Easter, Birthday, Halloween. Luckily I do not have to start from zero. My daughter is taken to bed alternatively by my wife and by me each evening and part of the ritual is her remembering what the best thing that happened to her on each day was. We have extended the topic range now to mentioning all the good things that happened. If there are “not so good” things mentioned we talk about the chance of them happening again and whether she can do anything about it.

This  little “spiritual exercise” is very far from the Ignatian Examination of Conscience I was taught by Catholic priests and nuns or the other Christian soul-searching practices that teach the children how sinful they are. It teaches them (or so I hope)  the Epicurean joy of adding to our happiness account the mental pleasure of remembering pleasurable events and teaches them that there is something good  to be experienced each day.

The part about “what was not so good and what can I do about it in the future?” might seem to be more in the Stoic and modern motives analysis culture tradition but we know that the Epicurean communities spent  considerable time trying to improve themselves and each other by practicing how to speak honestly even when telling your mind might imply the risk of retaliation by someone stronger (parrhesia) and this practice must have been very much like what we do today in self-improvement life coaching or stress-communication training.

Now all I have to do is to extend the practice also to my prepubescent son…

I asked Epicurean experts about their views on suicide and euthanasia but they are either discussing more important issues for them (like “ways to dispense with singularities and other oddities of General Relativity” on the Epicurean Philosophy List) or just keep silent (on Facebook’s Epicurus discussions site).

My Epicurean friend, Victor Kioulaphides, on the other hand, took about 27 minutes to state his relevant opinion in his usual (brilliant and elegant) way on the Epicurean Group of Yahoo. He allowed me to reproduce it in my blog and share it with those who might be interested in this topic. So here it is:

Much of the historical polemic regarding suicide in Hellenistic philosophy is basically a tug-of-war between Stoics and Epicureans. The former advocated suicide rather readily: since life, in their view, wasn’t worth all that much after all, giving it up was also no great loss or sacrifice. In plain terms, either having it or losing it was no big deal.

Epicurus, however, advocated a view that is both more palatable and more humane. He believed that “He is entirely small-minded, who finds many reasons for suicide” (if secondary sources are to be trusted). So one could construct such hypothetical scenarios as these:

I. If, while at work one day, you watch your investment portfolio head south on the computer screen, then promptly rush home and shoot yourself to death, you are small-minded in Epicurean terms, because you obviously valued the money that you lost more than, say, the friends that you still have– or else, if they left you along with your wealth, they wouldn’t have been truefriends, anyway. In this case, suicide is based on a fatal misjudgment of the desires, natural, necessary, etc. You attached excessive value to things that did not deserve it, while depreciating those that truly do.

II. If, as in your own scenario, you are in the terminal stage of some grave illness, and further treatment –while futile– would also be more invasive, more painful, and more uncomfortable than simply letting yourself go, you may argue more strongly that a passive, palliative approach is more “pleasant”, or at least less UNpleasant– in Epicurean terms, these two are of course synonymous. In this case, you would have measured rationally the pleasure and/or pain involved and, in truly Epicurean fashion, reached the conclusion that’s right for you. The less the pain, the better.

In “neo-Epicurean” terms, we also have the further refinement (or complication, perhaps) of palliative care in terminal cases (as the laws provide for in the US, or the UK), or medically assisted suicide (as the laws provide for in Switzerland, or the Netherlands). The Social Libertarian in me casts his vote for the latter legal/medical framework, but that of course becomes largely a political discussion, not a philosophical one. In practical terms, DNR (“Do Not Resuscitate”) sign-offs are common in the US, and an integral part of any treatment of cases that might prove terminal.

In philosophical, specifically Epicurean terms, I am fairly certain that letting go, when pain and displeasure in hanging on would have far exceeded any of the pleasures of life, is quite appropriate.

I hope I have answered your question in as strict an Epicurean context as I could, while also flavoring my reply inevitably with my own, personal views on the matter.

Above all, of course, it is always essential to bear in mind that Epicureanism is a philosophy of life, NOT of death. The morbid fascination of the ancients (and, alas, many moderns, too) with “dying well” is foreign to the sunny, optimistic, nonchalant world-view of Epicureanism. Suicide is a very minor point, IMHO, in the overall philosophical framework of Epicureanism. Epicurus missed no opportunity to tease and mock those who, as a matter of philosophical predisposition, ranted and raved about how oh-so-awful life was. His reply, in disarming frankness, was basically “Love it or leave it”. If it’s such a huge burden to you, he implied, then keep your mouth shut and go jump off a cliff. Talking about the alleged misery of life incessantly, while clinging on to life all the same, is simply hypocritical. He clearly had no patience with the death-loving Romantic…

Our translation:

“You’re not the only Epi wanna-be. What the guy writes in his blog is dead on about people’s right to be happy without the feds getting in their faces. Even the oldest of the old smart guys in Athens and Rome would agree, if you look at the lesson plans they used to come up with. Give my love to the family.” 2084-2167 After Epicurus Pathway, Edge Hill, VA, USA

And who can quote the original text and give the author’s name?

As a child I was always scared to death when the doctor was preparing to give me a shot because I anticipated the pain it would cause. I remember once the family physician saw my tears and asked me ironically whether the shot he was only preparing already hurt. I said: “No, it doesn’t hurt YET, but it’s surely going to…”

Stoics prepare for the adversities by imagining every morning all the possible and probable inconveniences they might encounter so in case something unpleasant really does happen they would be prepared.

The Epicureans do not deem it necessary to spoil half of the forenoon by just imagining all kinds of unpleasant experiences. They just tell themselves something like: “Yes, the sh*t does hit the fan every now and again but I will deal with it when it will actually happen and won’t spoil my day by imagining now how I would deal with it when and if it happened.”

I know now what Epicurus and his followers knew before me:  that our “bad experiences” are never sooooooo bad as we imagine them in anticipation.

Therefore I stopped the habit of anticipating pains.

(But of course there is nothing wrong in anticipating future pleasures, like for instance a great sleep under sedation:)

Barely escaping death is mentioned by Epicurus as an extreme and I can confirm his observation. One motorbike and two car accidents left me with intensive feelings of katasematic (i.e. “static”, as opposed to ‘kinetic’, i.e. “in movement”) pleasure produced by a heightened activity of the senses: time in slow motion, the olfactive (smells), auditive (sounds)  and visual (shape, color, texture) perception details extremely sharp.

But you need not endanger your life to sharpen your senses, it can be done by a simple act of will. Artists do this systematically. They not only live intensively in the present but are able to create something that enables you to live in the present, too. Descriptions of details can literally drag you into their world which you may “perceive” as intensively as if you were there, almost as if you were THEM. Reading Proust’s description of a cake called madeleine stimulates all your senses and a piece by Mozart can melt you down to dancing sound waves. 17 syllables of a good haiku can storm your senses to re-create an intensive experience.

Walking alone, with a dog or a child can produce the same effects described by Vonnegut in these terms:

[…]when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, ”If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ”If this isn’t isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

With some determination you can train yourself to get these katastematic pleasures out of almost any experience, including some which, at first sight, would not invite the association of pleasurability.

You can imagine for instance that today is your last day. A Stoic would probably concentrate on getting his last will formulated as preceisely as possible while a Kyrenaic hedonist might want to eat, drink, dance and make love all day.

An Epicurean might go on with his “normal” life with the difference that he would touch the surface of the plaster on his suture more gently, inhale the coffee aroma deeper, watch a leaf struggle with the wind for a while and then accept the laws of gravitation and slowly descend to the frosty ground, write his last will and also something like Epicurus wrote on his deathbed:

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/epicurus05.htm

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

You can subscribe to my blog if you click in the top right corner of the site

http://stress-freedom.net/

either on the link FEEDS BY EMAIL

if you want to get an email every time I post

or

if you want to read my new postings in your web-based news reader

by clicking on

RSS FEEDS