Drinking the Mortal Brew: Come Join Our Hopeless Cause

"Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without realizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink" ~ Epicurus, 30th Vatican Saying.

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." ~ Samuel Johnson

I have a disease that is eating away my intestines. It has spread to my stomach, created great ulcers, and has the potential to eventually form a cancer that will kill me. I'm sorry to bring it up, but it's a fact. There's often a mild pain in my gut that reminds me that I'm not immortal. I'm thankful for it. I may not die from this specific condition, but I will die somehow; this is a fact that can be forgotten as we carry on with our day-to-day business.

In my best moments, I am always trying to affirm life--always reminding myself to appreciate clouds and bright Autumn leaves and the sight of children playing; but it's impossible to affirm life without factoring in decay. After all, clouds dissipate. Leaves fall, children grow into adults, and adults grow old and die.

It's good to remember death. We are all dying. We are all transitioning. We are short, strange bursts of energy, and we are as alone as we are together. It's humbling to realize that one day all memory of us will be erased. These words, and the handful of people who read them, will be gone. There will be a world that doesn't know Shakespeare. One day, there will be no world at all. While we're alive, we're those brightly burning Autumn leaves.

So, if all of our work amounts to stitches in a great fabric that will one day be unwoven, why work? And if our lights will one day go out, what difference does it make when they go out?

Of all the advice I've received on this issue, I think Albert Camus puts it in the best (and possibly least comforting) way:

"The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions ... and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the "divine irresponsibility" of the condemned man"

I guess the reason we keep going on is because we can, as an act of sheer will in a mechanical and impersonal universe. We provide the universe with the personal. Our lights will go out, and we will accept the extinguishing when it comes, but until then we will persist, because we can. And we will do good work because there is nothing else worth doing. If we're all residents of the Titanic, what's the point in pillaging the rooms of rich evacuees and transporting the goods they left behind to our own rooms, which are rapidly filling with icy water? The only thing worth doing is good. We will play our instruments as the ship goes down. We will help others to higher ground while there is higher ground to go to. We will value each other as intensely as we can in this moment, because our last moment is rapidly approaching.



for more posts in this series, click here.

Epicurean Traffic

Since I have been getting a lot of blog traffic from people googling after Epicurus, I thought I would put the links to all of my little posts about Epicurus's Vatican Sayings in one easy to access spot. The series is called 'Drinking the Mortal Brew', and each piece so far has been named either after a favorite lyric or song title. I'll be continuing this series soon enough.

I. Intro: Epicurus In the Medicine Cabinet

II. You've Got To Tolerate All Those People That You Hate

III. Run On For A Long Time

IV. Send the Pain Below

V. Poor Old Granddad, I Laughed at All His Words

VI. The Future Is No Place To Place Your Better Days

VII. How Do You Afford Your Rock N Roll Lifestyle?

VIII. You Can't Always Get What You Want

to be continued...

Drinking The Mortal Brew: Poor Old Granddad, I Laughed At All His Words...

"Not the youth, but the old man who has lived life well, is deemed to be happy. The youth in his prime is made distraught and baffled by fortune; the old man, as though in port in his old age, has brought safely into harbor the goods he scarcely hoped for before, and has secured them with unfailing gratitude." - Epicurus, 9th Vatican Saying

At 30, I don't feel like I've earned the right to talk about this one yet. I am hardly established, my family is young, and the line about the youth being 'distraught and baffled by fortune' sounds an awful lot like me an awful lot of the time. I look forward to being able to chuckle at the truth of this vatican saying in my old age, but, until then, I think a cautionary word from George Orwell serves me better:

"At fifty, we all get the face we deserve".

Although--to go back to Epicurus--I have known many old people who have been distraught, grumpy, and generally lost by life. Old age doesn't seem to be a guarantee of wisdom and calm. In fact, it often seems to take the uncertainty and discomfort of youth and compound it, because people are often unwilling to consider new perspectives, especially as they age. Many old people have given up. Many have settled into their opinions and comfort zones and become decidedly less interesting. And some seem to be exactly the admirable and clear-eyed types that Epicurus is describing. I've also met enough calm and composed youths to question the other half of this equation.

Whatever the case, I'll keep this one in mind, along with the reminder from Orwell, who seems to share some of my feelings on the subject.

*
I should also add that what I just did there--questioning the source of one of my ancient guiding texts--isn't something devout religious folks are free to do. If you come across a christian blogger who writes around scriptural wisdom, you probably won't find them quoting a passage from the bible and then saying, 'ah, but I'm not so sure this one is true. Let's withhold judgment for now.' It's the obligation of the faithful to force their mind to rationalize a way to accept even the most dubious scripture.

I think that's why many christian apologists are so good at sophistry. They get a lot of practice in their daily internal lives.

Drinking the Mortal Brew: You've Got To Tolerate All Those People That You Hate

"We honor our characters as if they were distinctive to ourselves, whether we have worthy characters snd are admired by men or not. Therefore, We must esteem the characters of our neighbors, if they are friendly to us."-Epicurus, 7th Vatican Saying.

I love Epicurus's qualifiers: "If they are friendly to us".

Loving your enemies can be tiresome. You don't have to hate them, mind you (that can be even more exhausting), but loving them requires a huge investment that doesn't promise any returns; and besides, how many of us who attempt to 'love' our enemies really act as if we love them? How often is the love we feel for those who hate us really either just a self-aggrandizing veneer, or a sharp tool we use to beat ourselves down with when we realize that we are incapable of wishing well those who wish us ill? Why not just be honest about it?

Instead of choosing one or the other emotional extreme, Epicurus advocated that we tolerate the personality traits of those we encounter that do us no real harm, and as pertains to the other poles, I guess it's carte blanche. Destroy your enemies and love your friends to your heart's content. I endorse this position.

It may sound cold to advocate the destruction of your enemies, but sometimes it is necessary. And consider this: one of the best and most effective way of destroying your enemies is to turn them into friends. Discovering a mutual self-interest with an enemy can take you far away from a situation that would undoubtedly lead to much pain and suffering for both parties if it were allowed to escalate.

The genius and realism of Epicurus is notable in this Vatican saying: rather than calling us to strive for some kind of unrealistic ethereal ideal, he suggests that we understand our more carnal aspects. The poet Robert Bly has a lot to say about the way in which we unrealistically deal with our carnal aspects in his wonderful essay 'The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us':

"Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like, we, to keep our parents’ love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: “Good children don’t get angry over such little things.” So we take our anger and put it in the bag. By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota we were known as “the nice Bly boys.” Our bags were already a mile long.

Then we do a lot of bag-stuffing in high school. This time it’s no longer the evil grownups that pressure us, but people our own age."

he then adds what the consequences of all of this stuffing-into-the-bag is:

"We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again. Sometimes retrieving them feels impossible, as if the bag were sealed. Suppose the bag remains sealed-what happens then? A great nineteenth-century story has an idea about that. One night Robert Louis Stevenson woke up and told his wife a bit of a dream he’d just had. She urged him to write it down; he did, and it became “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” The nice side of the personality becomes, in our idealistic culture, nicer and nicer. The Western man may be a liberal doctor, for example, always thinking about the good of others. Morally and ethically he is wonderful. But the substance in the bag takes on a personality of its own; it can’t be ignored. The story says that the substance locked in the bag appears one day somewhere else in the city. The substance in the bag feels angry, and when you see it it is shaped like an ape, and moves like an ape.

The story says then that when we put a part of ourselves in the bag it regresses. It de-evolves toward barbarism. Suppose a young man seals a bag at twenty and then waits fifteen or twenty years before he opens it again. What will he find? Sadly, the sexuality, the wildness, the impulsiveness, the anger, the freedom he put in have all regressed; they are not only primitive in mood, they are hostile to the person who opens the bag. The man who opens his bag at forty-five or the woman who opens her bag rightly feels fear. She glances up and sees the shadow of an ape passing along the alley wall; anyone seeing that would be frightened."

that essay can be found in a book by Bly called 'A Little Book on the Human Shadow', and I recommend it.

The message of Epicurus and Robert Bly is pretty clear here: Be honest about your shit, and deal with it honestly.

It's much less scary that way, and the results you get will be infinitely better.

Drinking the Mortal Brew: The Future Is No Place To Place Your Better Days

"We are born once and cannot be born twice, but we must be no more for all time. Not being master of tomorrow, you nonetheless delay your happiness. Life is consumed by procrastination, and each of us dies without providing leisure time for himself"-

Epicurus, 6th Vatican Saying

The good wisdom gets passed around. Somebody in every culture and time is virtually guaranteed to either borrow the good stuff from another culture, or discover it for themselves and find a unique way to phrase it.

As a frequenter of atheist blogs, books, and youtube debates, I've run into the following point several times (paraphrased): 'If there was a huge calamity and mankind had to start from scratch with zero knowledge and memory of the past, and zero relics, all of the scientific laws would be discovered again. Religions may (and probably would) arise, but they would be different'. I'm too lazy to look up who originally made this point, but whoever it was was generally right; because religion is made up, any religions created in this calamity scenario would be unique to the ones we have now (because religion is man-made). I don't think they are wholly right, because I think there are true observations made by many religions. 'The Golden Rule' thing comes to mind. Since the good parts of religion are the result of anthropological pop-psychology--and since pop-psychology is based on anecdotal observation--some of the truths discovered by the contributors to the world's religions are bound to be true, even if only by accident.

This one by Epicurus is one of those truisms about the good life discovered by observing the human animal that would be discovered again if today and tomorrow were divided by a road paved by Cormac McCarthy.

Rabelais was the first to say 'Do What Thou Wilt', while Jesus--in summary--told us to 'Do What Thou Ought'. Epicurus--ever the moderate--comes down in the middle with 'Thou Ought to Do Some Of Those Things That Thou Wilt'. Except of course, Epicurus wasn't much of a 'Thou Shalt' kind of guy.

This saying--along with the carpe diem sayings of Jesus and Rabelais--can be taken as irresponsible 'eat,drink, and be merry' stuff, but in actuality, the irresponsible 'eat, drink, and be merry' stuff isn't so irresponsible either. Anything can be used as license by the irresponsible. The whole thrust is that we would be happier if we allowed ourselves time to stop storing up treasures in heaven, or kudos with the boss, and fully inhabit and appreciate a world that we would care to. While it's inevitable that we all will need to spend some time doing things that we may not want to do (working out, going to work on the odd Saturday, visiting with our in-laws), maintenance is part of the good life too. It's important that we save and plan ahead. It's also important that we not feel like we need to 'steal' time for ourselves.

The time we have is ours. The time we use to pursue things that bring us pleasure--the ultimate good--is not stolen time. Rather than thinking of the time you spend reading a mystery novel, tossing a ball with your kid, or drinking a beer and talking with your friends as some kind of gift from the system, think of it time spent as it should be.

By all means, you can find meaning in your work too; I do. But as Dr. Seuss so perfectly puts it, 'Life is a great balancing act'.

Leisure time isn't frivolous. That's one of the great sins perpetrated on America by the Puritans. Leisure time is no more frivolous than sleep and exercise, and it's just as necessary.

Drinking the Mortal Brew: How Do You Afford Your Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle?

"The leisure time of most men numbs them: activity drives them mad."- Epicurus, 5th Vatican Saying

Let me just put a big disclaimer here at the beginning of this piece: I'm no puritan. In fact, by the standards of many folks, I'm probably quite the deviant: Atheist. Welfare state liberal.Overweight. Casual drinker. Probably around a 2 on the Kinsey Scale. A Woody Allen fan.

Any one of those things are enough to get me burned at the stake in certain states. All of them put together limit my choices of residency considerably.

So, when I talk about the ways in which a person might prefer to spend their off time, don't think I'm coming at you like I just stepped off the Mayflower.

The truth is, this Vatican saying stings me a little bit, because I realize that in many cases, I'm the guy Epicurus is talking about.

While I'm not a glutton when it comes to food, I think I'm something a little bit worse; I don't overeat because I just can't get enough of a good thing, I overeat because--for some reason--I have a blind urge to consume. I am the same way with information. I take in way too much of it. I don't know why. The same demon that drives me to Wendy's to get a frosty after work also drives me to hit up Wikipedia at least a handful of times a day.

And so it goes for so many of our modes of unwinding: drinking and using drugs to excess, meaningless sexual encounters, time wasted on our knees in church, or standing in line at the buffet, ready to load up that plate a second time...

Do Americans suck at downtime because we have too much of it and are spoiled, or is it because the phrase 'Welfare State' is still considered a curse word in much of the country, and the concepts of self-maintenance and certain things being 'ends unto themselves' are completely foreign to us?

I don't know the answer to this question, but I am aware that I could probably benefit from doing a few crunches.

Hmm. I wonder what Wikipedia has to say about that.

Drinking The Mortal Brew: You Can't Always Get What You Want

"Necessity is an evil; but there is no necessity for continuing to live subject to necessity." -Epicurus, Third Vatican Saying

As Mick Jagger so wisely observes: 'You can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you might find you get what you need'.

Often, what we need is to realize that we never needed what we thought we did to begin with. One of the important concepts of Epicureanism is to reduce your desire down to its basic components so that there's less stuff out there to be enslaved to, and thus, less stuff to need. By having our false needs thwarted, we discover our real ones.

Thank you Mick Jagger, for being a good Epicurean.

I am lucky to have very few regrets in my life (so far! there is always time to add to the collection...). There are plenty of things I wish I had never said, or wish I had said differently. There are a few people that have passed through my life that I wish I had been more helpful to. But these regrets are common; I am an imperfect animal, and can't expect to always live up to my full potential. Such is life.

But let me tell you about two different ways in which I have encountered the truth of this Vatican saying. Both pertain to regret.

For years, I fantasized about becoming rich and famous. Rich and famous as a baseball player (ages 9-14), rich and famous as a rock musician (ages 14-18), rich and famous as a stand up comedian (ages 18-19), and, finally, rich and famous as a writer (ages 19 to, oh, about 25). I'm 29 now, and I have spent most of my life fantasizing about that winning lottery ticket. The rich part is easy to explain. Becoming independently wealthy provides an individual (to paraphrase John Updike) an escape hatch out of the need to be A PRODUCTIVE MEMBER OF SOCIETY. As a person with a mild authority complex and a strong desire to do whatever I feel like doing, working a little harder on the front end so I could escape on the back end (or perhaps halfway through) was very appealing. The famous aspect of it...I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I have spent most of my life needing loads of outside validation. I have gotten better at validating myself (or 'carrying my happiness around on the inside' as I often phrase it), but that's the case. Insecurity + Aimless creativity + Desire to not become the kind of guy George Carlin spent his life making fun of = my artistic ambitions.

That shit made me miserable. Of all the artistic parachutes I've fashioned for myself, writing turned out to be the one I liked the best, and it's the one that I start to feel shitty about if I don't do it often enough. It clears things out, it's fun, and I'm pretty good at it. But until I came to terms with the fact that it would probably only ever be an outlet and hobby-horse to ride, it caused me anxiety.

I needed to get published. I needed to write a book. I needed to be paid for my work. At first, so that I could get the validation (and money) that I needed to function the way I wanted to. But as I discovered how wonderful it was to have a family, I incorporated them into my escape fantasy. We would all get out.

But the fantasy wore on me. I became disillusioned with it, and kind of burnt out. I kept writing though. Even though I had given up the fantasy, I kept writing. I think the best analogy would be to someone who realized they were unable to lose weight, yet kept working out. I laughed at myself for a minute, but then I realized that writing had become an end unto itself for me. Writing makes me happy, so I do it. As Banksy so aptly put it, 'You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit'.

Blogging, I have discovered, is even better, because it comes with the opportunity to exchange ideas and form relationships with people you otherwise would have never met, and it can be done as much (or as little) as you would like, at your own leisure.

What's better is that I've abandoned my escape fantasy too. I am fully intent to live the life of a family man (I think I'm a good one), read books,cook, write blogs, hang out with my family, play the occasional game of racquetball, and work at a homeless shelter. It's not a bad life. It's not what I have spent most of my adolescent and adult life thinking was necessary, but then, I am not required to gratify fanciful necessities.

the second way in which I encounter the truth of this saying comes to me courtesy of my appetite. I have a very weak will when it comes to the more sensual pleasures. Eating especially. Doughnuts are very hard for me to resist. The saying that alcoholics use that 'one drink is just right, two is too many, and three is never enough' could be applied to me and doughnuts. I know that I don't need them. I lust after them, however, and usually hate myself about halfway through one. God forbid I get to a second one! The guilt that I feel about my relationship to sweet pastries must be very similar to the kind of guilt an addict or adulterer has after engaging in their misdeeds. I go to the gym, I drink lots of water, but goddammit, the doughnuts have me by the balls. I regret this aspect of my personality, and see how it enslaves me.

So, we can see the wisdom in this little nugget: make the target area smaller, and it will be harder to hit. If pleasure is the ultimate good, overindulgence is surely the biggest perversion one can indulge in. All of the fundamentalists and fanatics will tell you 'THOU SHALT NOT!', but Epicurus just says, 'hey, take it easy'.

you knew this was coming:

Drinking the Mortal Brew: Run On for a Long Time...

this is part of a series I am writing on Epicurus's Vatican Sayings. To view other parts of the series, click here.

 "It is difficult for a wrongdoer to go undetected; to remain assured that he will go undetected is impossible"- Epicurus, 2nd Vatican Saying

"What is done in the dark will be brought to the light". "The truth will out". "A wrong visited on another will be visited on the perpetrator three times over".

The theme that we all 'get what is coming to us' is very popular, and very comforting (to a certain extent). It's what gives some of us hope, but it's also what causes some of us to bite our fingernails.

But I don't believe in karma, and Epicurus didn't either. The beauty of this Vatican Saying is that it's not a promise of some kind of karmic woo-woo, but a practical observation: 'Yeah', it says, 'there's a chance you will get away with whatever it is you have done wrong, but if you do wrong, you have to live with the possibility that someday your deed may be uncovered'.

It doesn't say that the wrong will be uncovered. It says that it might. Once you act in bad faith, you must be ever vigilant that your transgression isn't discovered, and that you've always got the script--rationalizations you offer your self and others to justify your actions if they ever need justifying--down. Just on a meat-and-potatoes level, doing wrong is an exhausting prospect.

Belief in the inevitability of justice is bad for the same reasons that belief in saints is bad. The idea that 'someone else will take care of it' is the lazy road to apathy and inaction. Once you have been consigned to hell or promised heaven, everything in between is just filler. The brilliance of Epicurus's observation is not that it promises justice: it's brilliance lies in the understanding that a) in the end, sinning requires far too much work, and b) it's harder to reconcile yourself with a crime that you may not ever get convicted of than it is to receive a deserved sentence.

So, all ye evildoers, remember the exasperated refrain of the killer from Poe's 'Tell-Tale Heart' as he boards the bus to crazy town: "...it is the beating, the beating of his hideous heart!".

Who needs a hell in the afterlife when we are perfectly willing (and able) to construct private ones for ourselves, here on earth?

Drinking The Mortal Brew: Send the Pain Below

 [this is the first part of a series I am writing on The Vatican Sayings Of Epicurus. For the introduction to the series, click here.]

"All bodily suffering is negligible: for that which causes acute pain has short duration, and that which endures long in the flesh causes but mild pain." Epicurus, 1st Vatican Saying.

Anyone who has decided to skip that after-work martini or that second slice of pizza knows the truth in (at least) the second part of this saying. I certainly do: there are certain kinds of appetites that invite a dull ache into our lives simply by our acquisition of them. The mild pain that is caused by the absence of any of life's various narcotics is one of the underlying themes of this blog;  it's also something that can be lived with if it is understood.

Desire can cause mild pain, but sometimes it's a pleasant ache: I look forward to seeing my kids at the end of the day. I look forward to asking my wife how her day was, and I look forward to laying in bed and reading a book before I fall asleep.

There are other kinds of mild pains that are pleasant: there is an anticipatory ache during sexual encounters that is profoundly pleasant. Aches for familiar people and scenery, and aches for food and drink* can also make the reward of finally experiencing them heightened and satisfying.

There are other kinds of mild pains that are tolerable. Epicurus--who struggled with chronic disease for his whole life--must have been a master of this subject. As a person who suffers from ulcerative colitis, I also am aware of pains that can be put up with. I often have a vague string of pain that climbs up my intestine, and due to often being anemic from my condition, I experience bouts of fatigue. Sometimes it's necessary for me to work through them in order to find a greater pleasure. Sometimes they have to be indulged, and I can find pleasure lying in bed too. Constantly pursuing peak highs with no lows will make you miserable. I've discovered that--at least for me--it's important to be something of a connoisseur of experiences: there are subtle shades and bright colors, and all can be appreciated for what they are, and if they cannot be appreciated, they can (at least in some cases) be endured. Suffering is part of life, and like all parts of our life, we must have a meaningful relationship with it.

This brings me to the subject of acute pain brought up in the first part of this post.  I spoke to a young man the other day who suffers from bipolar disorder. He was deeply upset about a mistake that was made by the social security office that might end up affecting his housing options. He was off his medication, and was visibly very disturbed. Although he began by talking about throwing himself in front of a bus, and punching a table that sat between us, the act of talking through his predicament calmed him down.

Now, even as a person who does not have bipolar disorder, I can understand the anxiety that must accompany such a situation. Clearly, talking helped him navigate his feelings, just as talking often helps me; but as someone who has never experience mental illness, extreme disease (like cancer), or the tragic loss of a close family member, I feel uncomfortable talking with certainty about the endurability of certain forms of acute pain.

I do have guiding lights I can look to in this matter, however, who seem to validate Epicurus's thoughts on the survival of acute suffering.

Malcolm Varner is a person who blogs about his own experience with mental illness, and the various ways in which a person suffering with bouts of what I can only refer to as 'dark nights of the soul' can thrive. I have experienced despair, doubt, fear, and the whole range of human emotions. Yet I am conscious that folks who suffer from bipolar disorder and many other mental illnesses experience these emotions in much more acute ways than I am capable of conceiving. And many folks--like Malcolm--learn to constructively deal with them. This gives me solace.

And then there is Christopher Hitchens, who is not only dealing with stage four cancer with a bravery (and realism) that is utterly breathtaking and inspiring, but has managed to live a very admirable life after experiencing the great personal tragedy of losing his mother to suicide. I know it's risky to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, but his decision to not 'move on' or heal after this event--he wants the wound of the suicide to remain because it is real, and is a kind of memorial to his mother--tells me that even if it cannot be overcome, acute pain can be survived, and possibly even transformed into a mild pain that can be integrated into who you are.

*The difference between the mild pain that is caused when you forgo that after-work martini or slice of pizza is worlds away from the mild (pleasant) pain of anticipating a nice glass of beer at a festival, or a plate of your mom's walnut chicken: one kind of ache is due to a desire to escape experience, and the other is due to a desire to fully inhabit an experience.

Drinking the Mortal Brew: Epicurus In the Medicine Cabinet

The philosopher I find myself going back to most often these days is Epicurus. His philosophy was at root simple and good, and I am at root a simple person (and I often try to be good).

Here are the basic precepts of Epicureanism, via Wikipedia:

"Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His determinism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom very little is known—Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear, as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires. The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure as the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from "hedonism" as it is commonly understood."

I stumbled onto Epicurus while I was in high school. After reading a little bit of Anton Lavey--as all teenagers of a certain variety must--I discovered that there was much in his philosophy that seemed silly and gaudy, much that seemed stupid, and a strain of thought that was very appealing. The silly and gaudy stuff was the rituals and theatrical language. The stupid stuff was the Objectivism and Social Darwinism, and the appealing stuff was the Epicureanism, which didn't really seem to belong with those other things.

It has stayed with me. Decrease suffering, increase well-being. It seems like a simple calculus: Sometimes you forgo a trifling pleasure in order to earn the greater pleasure of self control and greater health. Enjoy the people you love. Be helpful to them. Don't make misery holy, and don't waste time storing up treasures in heaven; There are treasures all around us.

It's a good worldview in my estimation.

What I propose to do over the coming months is to dedicate at least one of my weekly posts to a meditation on one of Epicurus's Vatican sayings. It will be hardly academic.

The reason I am doing this is that I have found that when I look at the world through philosophical glasses, I am happier than when i am just lost in the barrage of events that is life. Writing about philosophy will--i hope--keep me focused.

Our lives are often very busy, and very hungry. It's important to remember that everything we desire may not be good for us, and that much of what we're busy at may be frivolous. I live in a (mostly) capitalist country, and am immersed in the culture of 'get some!'. I know it helps me to remember the following Epicurean advice:

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

Happiness is often only a perspective-shift away.

So, in short, if you don't enjoy watching strangers publicly masturbate, this blog may not be for you for a little while. If, however, that is your thing, grab a box of tissues and join my epicurean circle-jerk: the more the merrier.

read more here.