Still part of that strange race?
Are you still “part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress people they dislike.” (Emile Gauvreau)
or
do you prefer to satisfy your needs in ways that are congruent with your value system?
Like, for instance, a consequently practicing Christian, Buddhist or Humanist or … Epicurean?
secular humanist wedding readings
As I wanted to compose an Epicurean wedding reading I have come across a site with very good secular humanist “raw material”:
Find a Proven Orientation System for Living the Good Life Stress-Free
Where do we get the orientation we all need to guide us from pain to pleasure, from stress to happiness, from confusion to clarity? Who gives us what kind of orientation today in which form with what intent?
We learn very early which way to turn our face to get milk from mother’s breast or avoid a slap from mother’s hand, where to go for food, comfort, company and when to stop touching a hot stove. Our senses and our physical environment teach us what is good and healthy for us by producing a feeling of pleasure. What is bad for our health produces disgust. Pleasure and pain are the basic stop-and-go signals for our individual survival.
This would be enough if we weren’t so very social. But humans cannot survive on their own and therefore the social group will also teach us what is good and bad for the survival of the group. The group’s teachings might differ from what we learned through our direct sense feedback. Your senses tell you to devour all the food but if you don’t share it with (some of) your group members they might punish you and not share with you their food the next time.
So you learn to work out your survival strategies balancing your individual needs as felt by your drives and tastes with the group values as experienced through daily practice, learning conflict and expectation management. This is hard enough and it takes years to find your place in the group in such a way that you can still live also according to your personal drives and tastes.
Your job to find orientation will get even more difficult or even impossible if your social environment keeps on sending you ambiguous messages by, e.g., commanding you not to lie but at the same time everybody lying to you about a life after death.
As a consequence you will be disoriented and will try to work out strategies to get along within this system. You can choose to conform to the system and pretend to follow its rules, being incongruent with your own inner beliefs. Or you can choose “to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing” become incongruent with the value system and acceptable behavior patterns of your social environment. In both cases you will ruin your mental and possibly also your physical health. You will perceive the most widespread incongruities mostly as conscience conflicts and stress.
What can you do if you don’t wish stress to ruin your health and happiness? What other options can you have?
You could find a value system linked to behavior patterns and corresponding lifestyles in a congruent manner. In other words you might seek and find people who walk their talk and their thoughts, words and acts are congruent not only among themselves but they resonate with your own deepest needs as well.
I have good news for you: There is such a proven and viable model of pragmatic and easy to follow values system. It is the 2300-years-old practical Epicurean philosophy. It makes it easy to be honest and happy at the same time. It has been hushed up and defamed by the competing philosophies and worldviews of the Platonist, Stoic, Skeptic as well as Christian theoreticians and theologians but it never stopped giving simple practical orientation to reasonable, rational and honest people. For an enormously long period of 800 years, from 300 BCE till 500 CE (almost four times longer than the whole history of the US!), it was even the most widespread worldview and lifestyle of the non-fanatical, pragmatic middle class of the Greek and Roman world.
Professional philosophers mostly know how relevant Epicurean attitudes, worldview and life conduct are today and how many of our stress-related and ecological problems would be solved if we only adopted and applied them. Unfortunately they don’t know how to say all this in simple language that is understandable also for everybody. The overwhelming majority of psychologists and sociologists, educators and life coaches has either never heard about Epicureanism or if they did, they erroneously believe that it is about eating and drinking. On the other hand they are churning out ever “new” happiness recipes, as if re-inventing the wheel every week.
Epicurean happiness guidance is available for everyone who needs orientation but cannot accept childish myths or spiritual hocus-pocus supplied by organizations, groups or individuals with the aim of turning you into a docile instrument for their profit/power increasing machinery. Re-discovering the Epicurean system of values, attitudes and behaviour patterns will make you feel reborn in a friendly and sustainable world, enabling you to live in harmony with yourself and with your social and natural environment.
stressFREEDOM vs. career
Epicurus considered that it was a true opinion to believe that happiness was to be found in the simple life and retirement, a false opinion to think it lay in wealth, power, or glory – so it is normal for us Epicureans to be unambitious in money- and power-related issues.
Other cultures are less congruent: they preach e.g. that “The love of money is the root of all evil.” [1. Tim. 6, 10] and that “It is as easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle as it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” [Matthew 19:23]. And yet they are surprised if somebody takes their moral rules seriously and tries to follow them.
I grew up in another hypocritical culture under the so called communist state religion. Money was less of an issue there than “power and glory”. They preached the equality of all but in practice they produced a new privileged class for the few.
At 16 I wanted to become a journalist and started working for a youth weekly. It soon turned out that the censors can turn an article or a report to the contrary of what I wanted to say. They also expected me to join the communist party and follow 2 or 4 year courses of ideological “studies”. So at 17 I gave up this career plan of mine.
At the University they proposed that I do postgraduate studies and join the faculty. This could have implied an obligatory communist party membership and being an informant of the secret police (giving them information about my friends, neighbors, colleagues, even family members) so I chose to go to a village and teach there. As long as you did not aspire to a leading position you could get along and stay honest at the same time.
We meet at class reunions and those who chose to collaborate with a régime they actually hated do not seem to be happy or satisfied. Many of them turned to alcohol, some of them committed suicide. Some are simply ostracized.
Some of us managed to flee to West Europe or America or Israel. The majority of these ex school mates fell victim to the rat race and now they are either burned out (if they were “financially successful”) or consider themselves losers and feel ashamed of it.
A minority of 5-10% refused to bargain their tranquility for money resp. status and power - no matter whether they went on living under the communist state religion or opted to follow the capitalist state religion. They are artists or craftspeople or small entrepreneurs.
I wonder if the decision is any easier today for those young people who are aware of the option to choose stressFREEDOM instead of career.
the cheapest vaccine against swine flu panic
I have just received an email from one of my German friends about the connections between the swine flu “pandemic” and the persons and companies that profit from it. I never pass on emails of common interest without googling the topic a bit and in this case I could not find convincing evidence pro or contra the claims that the “pandemic” panic has been propagated out of financial interest of a certain circle of persons and their companies.
Therefore I will just stick to my 2300 year old Epicurean principle: “mens sana in corpora sano”, i.e. to strive for “a healthy mind in a healthy body.”
As I have never taken vaccine against any kind of flu (that kills about 10,000 people in Germany every year, i.e. roughly twice as many as killed in raod accidents) so far and I will not make an exception for the swine flu either. The statistics do not support any call for action that would justify the loss in MH-ROI (mental health return on investment): my peace of mind, tranquility, stress-FREEDOM, ataraxia.
The vaccine against the swine flu is expensive, it may have unpleasant or even dangerous side effects. The vaccine against the swine flu or any other panic generated by the media industry is cheap, pleasant and available for each and all: good, old, proven practical Epicurean philosophy.
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