the culture of stress-FREEDOM is optional
I used to make an analogy to illustrate the difference between an egalitarian social group pursuing stress-freedom versus a highly hierarchical one that cultivates dominance through aggression by comparing the two groups to bonobos vs. chimpanzees as we know them from studies and articles which all insist that the differences are hardwired in the animals’ brains, like the article published in the Washington Post.
Watching ‘Stress, Portrait of a Killer – Full Doc 2008 by National Geographic’ ( a 15 minutes version is also available) I’m not so sure about the hard wiring. If baboons can change their culture so radically from aggressive into peaceful why could humans not do it, too?
True, for the baboons the cultural change was only possible after the aggressive stressor jerks of the community were killed by their own damaged immune systems (and some infected meat stolen from humans)…
Epicurus and his friends did not wait for all the aggressive human bullies to kill themselves but formed intentional alternative communities for the cultivation of human flourishing through stress-FREEDOM and friendship.
In fact, in our own days, too, more and more human groups are opting out from the majority’s aggressive hierarchical competitive structures and build alternative communities with different structures, like the 200 year old ordered anarchy on Tristan da Cunha or the hundreds of intentional communities in the US and West Europe.
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
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