Happiness – schooled?
The Greek philosophers defined “happiness” as “the consequence of a deed and they drew two conclusions from this insight:
- first: if happiness consists of the fulfilling of human possibilities then there must be broadly applicable rules for attaining it.
- second: in this case we can “learn happiness” by following these rules.
They stressed rather the process and not one or the other event. A happy life meant for them a contented life a life lived in harmony with their values and tastes. The core elements of happiness were:
- inner peace and freedom (in the sense of not being disturbed by passions)
- physical and psychological independence
How did they achieve this state?
The ancient Greeks strongly believed in practice: “everything is practice” – they used to say. Philosophers ran in fact “happiness schools” to train the mind of their students. They believed that insight helped only when people were trained to apply it. Their goal was to form the student’s character so that he would live a happier and more balanced life. The key was the purposeful repetition of certain experiences.
The central thought of classical philosophy about happiness is today still valid and corroborated by modern science, especially neurobiology: positive feelings are not a matter of destiny. We can and must strive for them.
Do not confuse this concept of happiness with the modern – and unrealistic – idea interpreting it as a pleasure without a history and without costs.
You can find the results of modern scientific research on happiness in Stefan Klein’s book: The science of happiness. http://www.stefanklein.info/en/index_en.html
See also: http://www.gluecksformel.de/links.html – lots of relevant links, most of them in German but some also in English
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
atypical molestation
Naked mole rats are atypical moles (or rats?): they live in a eusociety like bees, feel no pain and have such a high resistance to cancer that cancer has never been observed in them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole_rat
My atypical moles were no rats but “dysplastic nevi”: benign moles that may resemble melanoma. People who have them are at increased risk of developing single or multiple melanomas, one of the deadliest forms of skin cancer: http://www.skincancer.org/dysplastic-nevi-atypical-moles.html
Fortunately, melanoma can be one of the easiest cancers to find, and one of the easiest to cure if found and removed early. (If allowed to progress to the point where it spreads to other sites, the forecast is very poor. More than 8,000 melanoma deaths now occur per year, which is five times less than the number of fatal car accidents in the US.)
My atypical moles were found, identified and excised before they could turn from benign to malign.
The cute little buggers can’t even dream of molesting my fair skin any more: their atypical mole stations have been irreversibly removed.
electronic village?
Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford and the author of “How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks.” states in the New York Times that “You’ve Got to Have (150) Friends” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26dunbar.html?_r=1
and ends his theory with the words: „welcome to the electronic village”.
What kind of a village may he have envisaged, with no commitments, and no accountability?
Friendship reduces stress and prolongs life
Science proves Epicureans to be right about the immense value of friendship: some baboons groom their buddies for long lives.
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
Epicureanism is more like science than religion
“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.
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