Posts by Kalosyni

Quote from Peter Konstans

The master of this world will soon come after you and crucify you.

I believe that this poetic metaphor (and some of the other ideas in the above post) doesn't lead to finding good health and happiness of the soul. In fact it distracts from seeing the world "as it is". The best way to do that is start with your own life, and ask yourself: are you feeling more pleasure than pain? If not, why not? And what can you do to make your life more pleasant? And then remember that there will always be problems in the world, but if you say to yourself that you can't live a good life until all problems in the world are solved, then you will miss out on your one opportunity to experience what Nature endowed us with: the ability to experience pleasure. And we maximize it by using prudence, which also means that we "choose our fights" as some things just beyond our influence or our control. Don't miss out on making this one life as best as it can be - we only live once - and look for the goodness and pleasure that you can experience while you are yet alive.

I was recently listening to a recording of Book 3 (translation by Humphries), and it occured to me that there is actually a lot in it that is relevant to our times, since there are people who still believe in reincarnation (or heaven). The science we now have in our present time also could be combined (but it would be a lot of work to research and assemble it).

This would be something that I could see presented as a class/lecture. And it would also need a little something added in regarding living the best life now.

1. The nature of the mind.

2. The sense of "spirit" (or sense of self).

3. Why the mind and spirit do not survive death.

4. Living the best life now - using prudence, self-sufficiency, friendship, good health to experience the complete feeling of a pleasant and pleasurable life.

It seems that there would be 50 percent or more of positive emotions in a pleasant life.

Researching on postitive emotions I found this:

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What Are Positive Emotions? (A Definition)

Positive emotions can be defined as pleasant multicomponent response tendencies. They are multicomponent because they involve more than just our internal feelings; they also include changes in our nervous system, happiness hormones, facial expressions, thoughts, and more (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2008).

It's thought that the purpose (or function) of positive emotion is to facilitate approach behavior—it leads us to pursue things and move out into the world versus withdrawing (which is what sadness and anxiety lead us to do). Other people suggest that our experience of pleasantness is simply a mental assessment of our rate of goal attainment compared to our expected rate of goal attainment (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2008).

Positive emotion versus sensory pleasure and positive mood
Positive emotion is different than sensory pleasure (which is more about sexual pleasure, satisfying hunger and thirst, or remedying pain). Positive emotions are also distinguished from moods. Compared to moods, positive emotions generally arise as a result of some experience, they are short-lived, and they are closer to the forefront of our consciousness (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2008).

Types of positive emotions
All emotions are thought to exist on a continuum from very pleasant to very unpleasant (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2008). That being said, we use labels or adjectives to help communicate and understand our emotions. So I might say "I'm happy" or I might say "I'm sad" to indicate where I am on a continuum from pleasant to unpleasant emotion.

To better understand positive emotions, we also often think of positive emotions as either high-energy (e.g., excitement, joy) or low-energy (e.g., calm, content). Americans tend to value high-energy positive emotions more highly than low-energy ones (Fredrickson & Cohn, 2008). However, we also tend to be more motivated to get rid of bad experiences, like stress and anxiety, than increase good experiences. That means we also innately understand the benefits of low-energy positive emotions such as calm and relaxation.

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I found another article with a list (from Aristotle)...and it puts friends into external, and friendship into goods of the soul:

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A second approach is to survey the goods which we find ourself desiring, since happiness presumably consists in the attainment of some good or set of goods such that to have them in the right way is to be living well. One division of goods is into (i) external goods (wealth, fame, honor, power, friends), (ii) goods of the body (life, health, good looks, physical strength, athletic ability, dexterity, etc.), and goods of the soul (virtue, life-projects, knowledge and education, artistic creativity and appreciation, recreation, friendship, etc.). The problem then is to delineate the ways in which such goods are related to happiness. Aristotle's view is that (a) certain goods (e.g., life and health) are necessary preconditions for happiness and that (b) others (wealth, friends, fame, honor) are embellishments that promote or fill out a good life for a virtuous person, but that (c) it is the possession and exercise of virtue which is the core constitutive element of happiness. The virtuous person alone can attain happiness and the virtuous person can never be miserable in the deepest sense, even in the face of misfortune which keeps him from being happy or blessed. So happiness combines an element over which we have greater control (virtue) with elements over which we have lesser control (health, wealth, friends, etc.).

(Article Source)

As we know that in Epicurean philosophy a great amount of wealth or fame is unnecessary and possibly detrimental -- to acquire great wealth usually causes one to lose one's freedom (requires duty toward the act of acquisition).

I don't think that a pleasant life is possible without all the Epicurean "goods" and the most complete life (life with the highest pleasure) is also not possible without all the Epicurean "goods". (Epicurean "goods" being: friendship, prudence, self-suffiency, and good health).

It is a much shorter list of goods in Epicurean philosophy (I need to find more references to all of them).

Here is an excerpt from the above article (found in the Notes number 1):

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Aristotle, in fact, identifies a tripartite division of goods: external goods (ektos agatha ), somatic goods (ta soma agatha ), and psychological goods (ta peri psychen agatha). In this tripartition, the external goods include only goods external
to the body, like money, while bodily goods like health are called somatic goods. However, Aristotle typically collapses the categories of somatic and external into one, indicating the real distinction he wants to draw: that between psychological
goods and everything else. Aristotle takes this division to be commonplace (P1323a24-26), as does Plato (cf. Euthydemus 279b, Philebus 48e).

Here in this article we can see how Aristotle writes about goods.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44984429

Recently on the podcast Cassius and Joshua have been working on refuting Cicero's "On Ends", and I've been wondering if Cicero does take some of his views from Aristotle.

Also, perhaps Epicurus also took some of what Aristotle said, but yet he reframed and reworked it into a very different aim: we need external goods to have the most pleasant life (with pleasure as the goal and not virtue).

I found this very interesting website which gives updates on space weather and space phenomenon, with interesting nearly daily changing updates. Today's entry talks about sunspot AR3599 and SAR arcs.

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Wednesday Night 8pm ET - Vatican Sayings 75, 76, & 77!

Open to Level 03+ members and Level 01 by pre-approval of the moderating team.

Agenda:

1. Welcome
2. Discuss latest popular forum threads & latest podcast
3. Discussion on Vatican Sayings 75, 76, & 77:

VS75. The saying, “look to the end of a long life,” shows ungratefulness for past good fortune.

VS76. You are, in your old age, just such as I urge you to be, and you have seen the difference between studying philosophy for oneself and proclaiming it to Greece at large; I rejoice with you.

VS77. The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom.

Looking ahead:

March 13 - VS 78 & 79

March 20 - VS 80 & 81

March 27 - 1st of Usener fragments discussion

This came up very briefly in last night's Zoom meeting (here is a full quote):

"It is not good to desire what is impossible, and to endeavour to enunciate a uniform theory about everything; accordingly, we ought not here to adopt the method, which we have followed in our researches into Ethics, or in the solution of the problems of natural philosophy." - Letter to Pythocles, Yonge translation

Thank you to all who came to our First Monday Zoom discussion last night. We had a total of seven people. I greatly enjoyed our discussion on "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".

TauPhi brought up that the aphorism can also be about spending too much time over-thinking instead of taking action (if I am paraphrasing correctly)...which totally makes sense, and which I hadn't though of before.

Cassius presented several good questions to spur on the discussion regarding the aphorism...one such question being if any of us found that we dealt with this in our own lives.

We discussed several places within Epicurean philosophy which can be related to this aphorism....and this came up, the Letter to Pythocles.

Quote from Bryan

This riddle presents a scenario where a father is covered with a blanket and his son is asked to admit that he does not know who is beneath the covering.

This occured to me when pondering the paradox (and this may going off in a completely different direction and not the intended use of this paradox) but it could be of use when someone insists that the know everything (a common idea in immature young people is that they think that they are so smart that they know everything), and it can show that there are some things which we can know and some which we can't know (the mature adult easily understands this) and the point being that there are many things which we can't know (the future, other peoples thoughts or motives, and even the results of our actions)

A slightly similar yet different phrase: "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater":

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

One place in which we "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is in De Rerum Natura which we know has some places with scientifically incorrect causations, but yet there still are many good and beneficial aspects to Lucretius' writing.

This excerpt from the wall of Diogenes of Oenoanda may somewhat pertain to the idea of "not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good":

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If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «the virtues» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end.

Quote from Cassius

So it looks like Sturgeons are both much larger and much tastier than sprats and therefore very easy to distinguish from each other?

Yes, and sturgeons provide enough meat for many people and were served at feasts in ancient times.

Quote from CIcero (On Ends Book 2)

Truly those who disregard pleasure itself are free to say that they do not prefer a sturgeon to a sprat; but he who places his supreme good in pleasure must judge of everything by sense and not by reason, and must say that those things are best which are most tasty.

Just for fun here is information about the sprat (slightly smaller than a herring, they grow up to 18 cm (about 7 inches):

Sprat and the herring family

Sprat and the herring family. Sprat is the smallest fish species in the herring family. in this article, we will explain in detail.

www.mooijer.nl

And info about sturgeons (can grew up to 12ft long and sometimes bigger):

Sturgeon - Wikipedia

Coming up this next Monday is our First Monday Epicurean Philosophy Discussion - Via Zoom at 8pm ET - Open to forum members.

Agenda:

1. Welcome

2. Meet-and-greet for any new members who have not previously attended a Zoom meeting

3. Epicurean Philosophy Discussion

This month's topic: "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" - see this thread for more on the topic.

We'll have time for open discussion beyond the special topic, such as current popular forum threads or questions.

If you are new or haven't attended before then let us know if you are interested by posting in this thread or message Cassius or myself.

Previous attendees will already be on the list and will receive a private message about a day or two before the meeting which will contain the link (no need to RSVP beforehand). Hope to see you there!

Thanks Don ! I also think it could nice to learn both modern Greek and ancient Greek at the same time, just in case I want to visit some Greek islands (no actual plans yet). I see that the pronounciation must be different between ancient and modern, and I found this on Wikipedia:

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The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.^[6] Like Latin and Cyrillic, Greek originally had only a single form of each letter; it developed the letter case distinction between uppercase and lowercase in parallel with Latin during the modern era. Sound values and conventional transcriptions for some of the letters differ between Ancient and Modern Greek usage because the pronunciation of Greek has changed significantly between the 5th century BC and today. Modern and Ancient Greek also use different diacritics, with modern Greek keeping only the stress accent (acute) and the diaeresis.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet

But that may make it too complicated to learn both at the same time... perhaps I'll start with modern and learn some basic words for travel and basic communication

I see that there are a number of good videos which have been linked in this thread (especially in post 20). I just found this video, and looks like he mentions that he uses "standard/Erasmian" pronounciation... this video is for absolute beginners (like me) to learn the alphabet.

Wednesday Night 8pm ET - Vatican Sayings 73 & 74!

Open to Level 03+ members and Level 01 by pre-approval of the moderating team.

Agenda:

1. Welcome
2. Discuss latest popular forum threads & latest podcast
3. Discussion on Vatican Sayings 73 & 74:

VS73. The occurrence of certain bodily pains assists us in guarding against others like them.

VS74. In a philosophical discussion he who is defeated gains more, since he learns more.

• We will continue with the same Zoom link as previous Wednesday night meetings.
• Level 03 members who haven't previously attended (and need to get the link) please let us know here in this thread if you are interested in attending or message me.
• Level 01 members you can message Cassius if you are interested in attending (to be considered for approval by the moderator team).

*Note: We have four more meetings on the Vatican Sayings before we will move on to discuss a select number of Usener Fragments. So that we can focus on those with the most significance, we are working on a list that highlights those which we don't normally come across in Diogenes Laertius or Lucretius, and that curated list is here. We are going through the full Erik Anderson list and pulling out those which will best be suited for the zoom meetings, and if you have any suggestions for additions to or deletions from the list please use the comment feature on the page where we are setting this up.

Feb. 28 - VS 73 & 74

March 6 - VS 75, 76, & 77

March 13 - VS 78 & 79

March 20 - VS 80 & 81

March 27 - 1st of Usener fragments discussion

I found this video to be very good with relaxation (good for when you are feeling too amped up but need to go to bed, plus many other situations).

Also to me this illustrates the kind of control that we can learn to exert over our ourselves (and our free agency) once we know about this then we can choose when to apply it. It is not meditation and does not require practice - once you know about it then you can do it.

From the description: "Andrew Huberman reveals a simple breathing exercise that acts as a kill switch for stress. It's called the "physiological sigh" or "cyclic sigh", and it can help you short circuit the stressful response." (video is 11 min. long)