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.
waiting for ‘verdict’ NOT stressful for Epicureans
The surgery went well yesterday. It surely hurt to get four needles stuck into my flesh for the radiological screening but Epicureans are taught and trained to accept some pain in order to avoid more pain in the future.
The friendliness of the people at Dean’s in Stoughton Hospital and the lunch cooked in their own kitchen definitely go to the positive side of the pain/pleasure ratio.
I was sedated with Versed and slept nicely as the surgeon did a wide excision over the same spot they had biopsied a few weeks ago. He also removed a lipoma from my back and 3 lymph nodes from my groin and sent the tissues to the pathologists who will give us the results in few days.
I have got painkillers so I had an additional nap in the afternoon and a good night sleep till 5.30 in the morning when I got up and attended to the running projects.
I know that some?/many? people find the time of waiting for the “verdict” of the pathologists stressful, probably due to the emotional load of their hopes and fears.
For Epicureans there is no reason to be stressed about the results of histological analysis since they are aware of the fact that they will die one day anyway and it does not really matter what kills them, or as Metrodorus put it:
“It is possible to provide security against other things, but as far as death is concerned, we men all live in a city without walls.”
Epicureans try to live their lives stressFREE and to the full as long as they are alive instead of wasting precious time on pointless speculations about its possible length, true to the motto: “vivamus dum vivimus” (‘let’s live as long as we are alive’).
I will live my days the same way whether the pathologists prognosticate a survival chance of 90% or 60% or 30% for the next five years, depending on the number and position of Merkel Cell Carcinoma cells in my body: enjoying my time chatting with my wife, children, friends and relatives, managing the projects of the company I work for (Allegro Translations in Madison, Wisconsin), taking walks in the snow, reading books ( at the time on the unique community experience of the inhabitants of the most remote island in the world, Tristan da Cunha), cooking, enjoying the meals cooked by my wife and daughter, and especially enjoying music, the most fascinating phenomenon for me.
Proven Ancient Prevention against Modern Life’s “Stressors”
Stress is the consequence of the failure of an organism to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined. The most common “stressors” include:
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- pain
- a lack of control over environmental circumstances, such as food, housing, health, freedom
- social issues such as social defeat, relationship conflict, deception, break-ups
- major events such as birth, death, marriage, and divorce
- life experiences such as poverty, unemployment, exams, deadlines
Why are these very common issues and experiences perceived by many as threats? If they are so common, why are we not appropriately prepared for them? Is our failure to cope with the most common issues not a result of the malfunction of those whose responsibility it is to prepare us for life? Have our parents, teachers, educators and counselors all failed us?
Epicurus, the founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy and happiness-boosting life conduct, suffered all his life from a bladder pain that finally killed him. This fact, however, did not interfere with his pursuit of happiness, even though they had no pain relief medicines in 271 BCE.
So what was Epicurus’s secret? His “four-part cure,” in Greek “tetrapharmakos,” can give us a hint:
Don’t fear the gods,
Don’t worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure
But his anti-stress medicine could not be swallowed at once with a glass of water. His followers had to chew and digest it over many years in their communal educative life-schools. The effort must have been worthwhile since the Epicurean circles of friends flourished over 800 years from 300 BCE till 500 CE.
So how was Epicurus’s stress-prevention program practiced?
The Epicureans did not give up their possessions as the Pythagoreans did, since that would have prevented them from generously sharing their resources with each other. They did not rebel against the state and its institutions, as the Cynics did, since they relied on the state to protect them in exchange for performing their duties as citizens. (Epicurus himself went to Athens for his two-year term of military service at the age of 18.) They did not plot against rulers or attempt revolutions, as the Platonists did, since they believed that the exercise of political power beyond the bounds of their own self-administrative communes endangered their peace of mind, necessary for a good life in freedom and happiness. For the same reason they did not participate in state affairs, as the Stoics did. They kept a low profile according to one of their principles: “lathe biosas,” in English,” live unobtrusively” or “unnoticed.”
This is what they did: The happiness-seekers lived together in communities where they could individually and collectively promote each others’ progress on their pathways from pain to pleasure. They studied intensively Epicurus’s therapeutical writings and memorized the most important precepts so they had them ready at hand the moment the specific philosophical-psychological pill was needed. They gave each other feedback on their progress and those who were more advanced helped the others in the way modern life-coaches and trainers do through lectures, discussions, conversations, and practical activities.
How can an Epicurean lifestyle prevent each of life’s main “stressors”? Through the education and continuous practice of stress-busting, happiness-boosting attitudes towards all the issues related to pain, fear, frustration experienced today as social defeat, relationship conflict, deception, break-ups, births, deaths, divorce, poverty, unemployment, exams, and deadlines.
I will take up these issues individually and describe how Epicureans dealt with them over eight centuries and how we can deal with them today.
Epicurean choices of attitudes and actions
Epicurus’s “Authorized Doctrines” (Kuriai Doxai) is practically a guide for the choice of attitudes toward the essential things in the art of living happily.
Epicurus drew a clear distinction between
- choosing a basic general attitude (diathesis) toward action in a given sphere and
- choosing to do or not to do a given thing within that field.
Thus Epicureans were trained to make these two choices.
They were trained, for example, to first choose what attitude they will assume towards, for instance, death, the gods, pleasure and pain, necessity, fortune, political life, food, fame and friendship.
The choice of a basic and general attitude, however, by no means abolished the necessity of making individual decisions.
The proper attitude toward pain, for instance, is to regard it as inherently evil and to be avoided; nevertheless, in the individual case the lesser pain, such as that of the surgeon’s knife, is endured for the sake of the greater good.
Again, the proper attitude toward food is to prefer a simple diet, but this does not preclude and even approves the occasional indulgence.
In a series of articles I will touch upon those topics that are considered as possible sources of stress and therefore can act as happiness blockers. By showing the attitude Epicurean practitioners applied over 800 years, I hope to help today’s happiness-seekers to escape from the most dangerous happiness-blocker: stress.
stress may cause stroke
New research discovers a strong link between stress and ischemic cerebral vascular accidents, popularly known as strokes.
Read more here:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/10/05/beware-of-intense-stress/8755.html
be aware of the devastating effects of stress on our health and happiness
I wish to inform and warn as many people as possible against the devastating effects of stress on our health and happiness so I have sent out a mail to all my friends and acquaintances and invited them to download a free copy of my stress-report “How We Worry Ourselves Sick: A Revealing Report on the Devastating Effects of Stress on Our Health and Happiness,”
FREE Report about stress
Download instantly your copy!