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?

Joe Heller

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22′
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!”

–Kurt Vonnegut

The New Yorker, May 16^th, 2005

I am really thankful to Bob Sutton for reprinting the poem in his book and also in his blog: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/kurt_vonnegut_a.html

And I am, of course, thankful to Kurt Vonnegut for outing Joe Heller as a true Epicurean.

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”.

Dear Friends of the Epicurean Philosophy, I am happy that you make Epicurus’s voice heard again.

His is the only Gospel that has been valid unchanged for 2300 years.

He has taught us how to break free from our fears and from the slavery of unnecessary and unnatural desires by finding out what we really need.

Epicurus has shown us the proven pathway from pain to pleasure and how we can lead a happy life by cultivating mental peace (ataraxia) and companionate love (philia).

His teachings will never lose their liberating relevance because they are based on the study of the nature of things.

The more people follow in his footsteps the better place our world will be to live in.

Stefan Streitferdt

author of the Epicurean happiness guidance

“From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness”

To encapsulate a felling or a thought in as few words as possible: this endeavor engendered the literary genre of the Japanese haiku. It also produced the famous four-fold cure (tetrapharmakos) of Epicurean practical wisdom :

• There is nothing to fear from God
• There is nothing to feel from death
• Good things can be acquired
• Bad things can be endured

It sounds simple. It shows the state of mind you can reach after consciously practicing the Epicurean conduct of life by daily reflections and mental exercises under the guidance of an Epicurean coach as Epicurean self-educating communities were practicing it unchanged in 800 years (300 BCE – 500 CE). It has been boiled down to this concentrated formula by the Epicurean community in the famous Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, maybe by their in-house instructor, the philosopher  and poet  Philodemus of Gadara, or his disciples, but more  probably obtained collectively, as happiness itself is obtained.

Today I tried to boil it down further, the way cooks keep on reducing their stock. What I found at the bottom of my mental saucepan was this:

You can dissolve all your fears when you realize how little you really need to lead a blissful life.

My goal was to show not only the end-result but also indicate that it takes your individual decision and efforts to reach that state. The three-letter word ‘can’ must hint not only at the individual’s responsibility in making choices that further his own happiness but also at the fact that it might take the assistance of like-minded friends and experienced guides and coaches to reach that goal. And maybe long years of dedicated practice.

My friends can buy the little funny Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” I wrote with my wife as a paperback either form Amazon or directly from my own eStore, also powered by Amazon through CreateSpace.

I encourage my friends to buy from my eStore, as the royalties paid by Amazon are less than one dollar per sold copy and will not contribute substantially toward paying my huge hospital bills.

I have also reminded my friends that life is too short to spend any minute of it worrying or stressing out ourselves and others and that stress can be deadly. (If they want to have the facts, they can read my stress report – downloadable for free here.)

The one question most people stress out over every year in December is “What presents to make whom?” Those of my friends who have not made a decision yet should seriously consider buying my little funny Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” as it it is the ideal present they can give anybody you love and care for, including their precious selves.

If they are on a lower budget this year, they can still get the downloadable eBook version for half of the price of the paperback here

In addition, they can still download the first chapter for free here

The most precious present I received came from my oncologist: as per last medical checkup: I am still cancer-FREE, no recurrence so far.

I gave a talk on Epicurus’s life, teachings, and influence in August this year in Madison, Wisconsin. The professional young man who made the video recording lost most of it. My son edited the footage I recorded myself from a silly angle and he uploaded the first two parts – Epicurus’s life and teachings –  to his ownYouTube channel as it is 34 minutes long and I cannot upload to my own channel anything longer than 15 minutes.

As for the third part, Epicurus’s influence, I still have the slides and the sound recording and I plan to make more slides and record a presentation at home.

My recommendation to my friends was this year to enjoy every single day of their remaining lives in leisurely stress-FREEDOM, quoting Epicurus: “We have been born once and cannot be born a second time; for all eternity we shall no longer exist. But you, although you are not in control of tomorrow, are postponing your happiness. Life is wasted by delaying, and each one of us dies without enjoying leisure.”

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 become an email every time I post or on  the link, or RSS FEEDS if you want to read my new postings in your web-based news reader

the full interview (23 min):  http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11977

a 5 minutes cut:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DOv4KPkUDY

In the broad sense there are millions, and maybe billions, of part time unwitting  Epicureans spread all over the world.

I call part time unwitting Epicureans all those who don’t know much or anything about Epicurus and his teachings but share, for the most part, the Epicurean belief system and behave most of the time as you’d expect an Epicurean to behave, i.e. they

• think, talk and work honestly
• manage their households rationally
• tend to communal self-sufficiency
• contribute to the sustenance of their smaller or larger communities
• try to make the best out of their lives without harming others
• refuse the use of force and coercion in spreading their ideas
• are tolerant with others’ world views and lifestyles
• do not believe in the force of destiny or supernatural powers
• accept the validity of scientific methods and results
• are reliable and committed friends, partners, parents, coworkers
• are friendly with their friends and polite with everyone else
• respect the written and unwritten  laws  of the country where they live
• base their interactions on the principles of mutuality and contractuality

In the narrow sense, however, there are no full time practicing Epicureans that I know of, as of 2011. There are no Epicurean schools, no Epicurean education system  and no Epicurean communities to teach, practice and cultivate a communal  Epicurean conduct of life.

As a member of a long time dormant Italian Epicurean mailing list I was pleasantly surprised these days to see that the members started naming the places where they live and whether they are able and/or willing to host Epicureans so that they can get to know each other personally.

This initiative could even develop one day into something like the Pasporta Servo (Passport Service, the hospitality service for Esperantists) as soon as the Epicureans develop something like a consciously practiced common culture (and choose a common language to interact with Epicureans coming from another linguistic background.)

http://www.politicsofwellbeing.com/2011/06/kalle-lasn-founder-of-adbusters-on.html?spref=fb

Ancient Epicureans had up to 30 “buy nothing days” a month. Even wealthy Roman Epicureans reserved 3-7 days a month for austerity: they slept on the hard floor and ate only bread and drank only water. The sense of this exercise was to keep up their faith in the doctrine that what [is thought by most people as] hard is in fact easy to put up with. It showed them that they can be happy without their belongings, supplies and services – a state pretty often achieved in cases when the emperor wanted their property for his friends and exiled them.

I had periods in my life when I had to live on extremely meager resources and I can say that this fact never affected my mental well being. Even if I don’t need to convince myself of this fact I still keep a bread-and-water day every now and then, just as a reminder of one of the techniques of stress-FREEDOM.

“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?)