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.
how the pleasure principle shapes our world
THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE in the New Yorker: Stephen Greenblatt explains how Lucretius and his poem “On the Nature of Things” shaped the modern world.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/08/08/110808on_audio_greenblatt
Parallels between Epicureanism and Confucianism
The parallels between Epicureanism and Buddhism have been seen and shown, discussed and understood during the last years but its parallels with Confucianism, at least to my knowledge, not yet. I was not aware of any parallelism myself before reading Bertrand Russell’s ‘Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness’.
I was sometimes musing about the pros and cons of how the Western world might have evolved if Epicureanism and not Christianism had been installed as state religion by the Romans. Would the creed and conduct of life of the middle classes have been able to influence the cruel fanaticism if the lower classes or the cruel cynicism of the ruling classes?
Such speculations are of course mote but after reading Russell’s essay I tend to see more positive than negative possibilities of a practicable system of ethics imposed by the ( a quasi ‘state-religion’)based on an understanding of human nature, and the cultivation of humanity such as Confucianism had been in China for2400 years.
The following quotations might enlighten the parallelisms that I discovered for myself (emphasis mine):
The civilisation of China, as every one knows, is based upon the teaching of Confucius, who flourished five hundred years before Christ. […] His personality has been stamped on Chinese civilisation from his day to our own. […]
During his lifetime the Chinese occupied only a small part of present-day China, and were divided into a number of warring states. During the next three hundred years they established themselves throughout what is now China proper, and founded an empire exceeding in territory and population any other that existed until the last fifty years. In spite of barbarian invasions, Mongol and Manchu dynasties, and occasional longer or shorter periods of chaos and civil war, the Confucian system survived,
bringing with it art and literature and a civilised way of life. It is only in our own day, through contact with the West and with the Westernised Japanese, that this system has begun to break down.
A system which has had this extraordinary power of survival must have great merits, and certainly deserves our respect and consideration. It is not a religion, as we understand the word,
because it is not associated with the supernatural or with mystical beliefs. It is a purely ethical system, but its ethics, unlike those of Christianity, are not too exalted for ordinary men to practise.
He […] never exacts anything contrary to nature and the natural affections.
Confucius was in all things moderate, even in virtue. He did not believe that we ought to return good for evil. […]
The principle of returning good for evil was being taught in his day in China by the Taoists, whose teaching is much more akin to that of Christianity than is the teaching of Confucius. […]
It is characteristic of China that it was not Lao-Tze but Confucius who became the recognised national sage. Taoism has survived, but chiefly as magic and among the uneducated. Its doctrines have appeared visionary to the practical men who administered the Empire, while the doctrines of Confucius were eminently calculated to avoid friction. […]
Chinese governors naturally preferred the Confucian maxims of self-control, benevolence and courtesy, combined, as they were, with a great emphasis upon the good that could be done by wise government.
It never occurred to the Chinese, as it has to all modern white nations, to have one system of ethics in theory and another in practice. I do not mean that they always live up to their own theories, but that they attempt to do so and are expected to do so, whereas there are large parts of the Christian ethic which are universally admitted to be too good for this wicked world.
We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach. […] In practice, our effective morality is that of material success achieved by means of a struggle; and this applies to nations as well as to individuals. Anything else seems to us soft and foolish.
The Chinese do not adopt either our theoretical or our practical ethic. They admit in theory that there are occasions when it is proper to fight, and in practice that these occasions are rare; whereas we hold in theory that there are no occasions when it is proper to fight and in practice that such occasions are very frequent. […]
Young China—that is to say, the students who have been educated on European lines—recognise modern needs, and have perhaps hardly enough respect for the old tradition. Nevertheless, even the most modern, with few exceptions, retain the traditional virtues of moderation, politeness and a pacific temper. […]
If I were to try to sum up in a phrase the main difference between the Chinese and ourselves, I should say that they, in the main, aim at enjoyment, while we, in the main, aim at power. We like power over our fellow-men, and we like power over Nature. For the sake of the former we have built up strong states, and for the sake of the latter we have built up Science.
The Chinese […] will not work, as Americans and Western Europeans do simply because they would be bored if they did not work, nor do they love hustle for its own sake. When they have enough to live on, they live on it, instead of trying to augment it by hard work. They have an infinite capacity for leisurely amusements—going to the theatre, talking while they drink tea, admiring the Chinese art of earlier times, or walking in beautiful scenery. To our way of thinking, there is something unduly mild about such a way of spending one’s life; we respect more a man who goes to his office every day, even if all that he does in his office is harmful.
Living in the East has, perhaps a corrupting influence upon a white man, but I must confess that, since I came to know China, I have regarded laziness as one of the best qualities of which men in the mass are capable. We achieve certain things by being energetic, but it may be questioned whether, on the balance, the things that we achieve are of any value. We develop wonderful skill in manufacture, part of which we devote to making ships, automobiles, telephones and other means of living luxuriously
at high pressure, while another part is devoted to making guns, poison gases and aeroplanes for the purpose of killing each other wholesale. We have a first-class system of administration and taxation, part of which is devoted to education, sanitation and such useful objects, while the rest is devoted to war. In England at the present day most of the national revenue is spent on past and future wars and only the residue on useful objects. On the Continent, in most countries, the proportion is even worse. We have a police system of unexampled efficiency, part of which is devoted to the detection and prevention of crime and part to imprisoning anybody who has any new constructive political ideas. In China, until recently, they had none of these things. […] The result was that in China, as compared to any white man’s country, there was freedom for all, and a degree of diffused happiness which was amazing in view of the poverty of all but a tiny minority.
Comparing the actual outlook of the average Chinese with that of the average Western, two differences strike one: first, that the Chinese do not admire activity unless it serves some useful purpose; secondly, that they do not regard morality as consisting in checking our own impulses and interfering with those of others.
Confucius taught that men are born good, and that if they become wicked, that is through the force of evil example or corrupting manners. This difference from traditional Western orthodoxy has a profound influence on the outlook of the Chinese. […]
Among ourselves, the people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forgo ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others. There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man. This attitude comes from our notion of Sin. It leads not only to interference with freedom, but also to hypocrisy, since the conventional standard is too difficult for most people to live up to.
In China this is not the case. Moral precepts are positive rather than negative. A man is expected to be respectful to his parents, kind to his children, generous to his poor relations, and courteous
to all. These are not very difficult duties, but most men actually fulfil them, and the result is perhaps better than that of our higher standard, from which most people fall short. […]
Another result of the absence of the notion of Sin is that men are much more willing to submit their differences to argument and reason than they are in the West. Among ourselves, differences
of opinion quickly become questions of ‘principle’: each side thinks that the other side is wicked, and that any yielding to it involves sharing in its guilt. This makes our disputes bitter, and involves in practice a great readiness to appeal to force. In China, although there were military men who were ready to appeal to force, no one took them seriously, not even their own soldiers. […] The great bulk of the population, including the civil administration, went about its business as though these generals and their armies did not exist. In ordinary life, disputes are usually adjusted by the friendly mediation of some third party. Compromise is the accepted principle, because it is necessary to save the face of both parties. Saving face, though in some forms it makes foreigners smile, is a most valuable national institution, making social and political life far less ruthless than it is with us. […]
If the whole world were like China, the whole world could be happy; but so long as others are warlike
and energetic, the Chinese, now that they are no longer isolated, will be compelled to copy our vices to some degree if they are to preserve their national independence. But let us not flatter ourselves that this imitation will be an improvement.
The student of Epicureanism will have no difficulty in discovering the parallelisms between the teachings, and especially the results of practicing the teachings, of Epicurus and Confucius.
‘lathe biosas’ through the summer?
The members of the EpicureanGroup on Yahoo http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EpicureanGroup/
seem to have taken Epicurus’s advice a bit too much o heart: ‘lathe biosas’, i.e. live hidden, inconspicuously.
I miss their calm, cheerful and reflected voices.
For me the Wisconsin summer sounds (with the cicadas loud concerts) and feels (with the warm and humid air) rather Mediterranean: it reminds me of my favorite places on the Dalmatian coast of the Adria: Kotorska Boka and the island of Rab.
I spent most of the summer also mostly in hiding, too: most of the summer days working for money/sustenance of our holy bodiesJ, walking and talking with my wife and our children, reading and listening to Portuguese guitar music.
I had the chance to make a few people aware of the essence and the influence of Epicureanism on our daily lives by giving a talk in the Summer School in Madison, Wis. One person from the audience came to me after the lecture and confessed that she realized she was an Epicurean, unwittingly, as so many millions.
The lecture was taped and as soon as I manage to do some basic editing with my son I will upload it to youtube and give you the link. I could use professional help on editing, though, if anybody of my friends would offer their knowhow and some of their time.
Satisfiers (PP27)
Here’s sequel 27 of my Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (from Chapter 4: SATISFIERS)
Satisfiers
You may not need a review of the preceding two sections (Needs and Desires), but I do:
- We have fundamental needs, including nutrition, oxygen, affection, sex, and sleep.
- We have the no-less important needs for shelter and safety, love and belonging, and respect.
- We have desires that by themselves are neither good nor bad. Rather, their “goodness” or “badness” is judged by the consequences of the method we choose to fulfill them.
Satisfaction of needs and desires is necessary for our quality of life, including our need to achieve our potential as healthy and self-reliant human beings.
We will define satisfier as:
Any agent capable of fulfilling a need or desire; the agent can be a material object, a situation, a service, a fantasy, an action or an event
We won’t distinguish between needs and desires in our exploration of satisfiers. Whether they are one or the other isn’t relevant for this discussion.
Remember the Epi-test in the Desires section, the “Are-You-Really-Sure-You-Want-to-Do-This” test with its three questions?
- What shall I gain by gratifying this desire?
- What shall I lose by suppressing it?
- Will indulging this desire cause pain and discomfort or anxiety for me or others?
None of us wants to apply Epicurus’s criteria to every decision we want to make. It would grow mighty tiresome to pull over to the side of the road so we can consider the effect of saturated fats on our arteries or the possibility of staining a nice shirt with a drip of Chunky Monkey if we occasionally want to satisfy a desire for ice cream on a hot day.
Likewise, even if you know you always wake up with a bad headache after drinking red wine, you may decide to throw caution to the wind and have a glass or two on a special occasion if your need for belonging overtakes your conscience. (I think I hear Epicurus saying, “Suit yourself, pal. At least you have aspirin. We never did.”)
To read my complete Epicurean Happiness Guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” go to http://stressfreedomguide.com/
I am proud of my friends
I don’t believe pride is an emotion anybody should be proud of experiencing if
“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?)
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