Recommendations for Happy Living

This morning I was cleaning up some old files and I came across this list which I had prepared some years ago. It's not very good, but rather than just delete it I will post it here in case someone who is working on a better list might find small parts of it useful.

Recommendations for Happy Living

1. First, last, and always remember that pleasure is the goal of life. Do not allow yourself to be distracted from this goal. Do not think that virtue is an end in itself. Do not try to reason yourself to something higher and more worthy. Pleasure is the guide given you by Nature. Follow Nature intelligently, and not just for the pleasure of the moment, but for a lifetime. Remember always, and shout to the world, that pleasure is the goal of the best mode of life.

2. If you are not thoroughly convinced that there is no god who wants to reward or punish you for your actions in this life, then drop everything and get your heart straight on this. It is impossible for you to live happily if you fear reward or punishment by gods. The best way to convince yourself of these truths is to study nature. You will find that the evidence confirms in your mind that the universe as a whole has always existed, and it was not created by any god to make you a plaything. Another way to understand this is to remember that almost all people who believe in a supernatural god believe that he/she/it/they are both immortal and blissfully happy. Why would an immortal and blissfully happy god want to spend time harassing you or making your life miserable, or hoping you will tell him "thanks for everything?" Work on this until you have thoroughly understood what is at stake.

3. If you are not convinced that this life is the only one you have; if you think that your life is just a warm-up for the big event to come later in heaven; if you think that you are just a speck of dust in an infinite universe and your life means nothing - drop everything and get your heart right on these issues. You are not going to be punished or rewarded after your death. Your death ENDS your consciousness. Period. Nothing afterward. Nothing! That is not a problem, because you won't be there to know it, but if you don't understand that the time you have in this life is all you have, then you are wasting time. Work on understanding that pronto before you waste another minute thinking that you have all the time in the world.

4. Do not be discouraged by those who tell you that pleasure should not be your goal because the desire for it can never be satisfied. You are a human being and you have a limited lifetime and a limited capacity. You can work to experience all the pleasure that is possible to you, and you can work to reduce the pain that you experience to pay for that pleasure to a minimum. That is the goal nature set for you. Don't argue with her.

5. Do not spend your life obsessing about running from pain. Any pain that comes your way that is terrible will not last long - it will kill you and you won't know it anymore. Any pain that comes your way that is not terrible will be manageable, and you will learn to bear it if you keep in mind that you will experience nothing after death, so that pleasure experienced now is worth the bearable pain that it costs you.

6. Keep in mind that in order to live happily you must live wisely, honestly, and justly. You can't live happily unless you do, but IF you do, you WILL live happily. But don't get confused. You are NOT living in order to be wise, honest, or just. You are living in order to be happy. If you forget the priority and reverse them, you will end in disaster. And that is why you must:

7. Never forget that other people are NOT all your friends, and many of them will try to take advantage of you in many ways. You must protect yourself from these people, and ANY means that you find necessary to protect yourself from them is sanctioned by nature.

8. Do not let the world convince you that fame and status and power will make your life happy. Many people pursue that and are totally miserable. You have to judge the proper amount of all of those to pursue according to one goal: living pleasurably under your personal circumstances.

9. As you pursue pleasure, don't let someone else tell you that what you find pleasurable is no good. ALL pleasures are good, but some pleasures come at a cost of pain that you will find to be too great. Judge the things you choose and avoid solely by that criteria: how much pleasure and pain will result from the action I am about to take?

10. Don't allow yourself to stress out that you aren't achieving what you think is some totally blissful pleasure. Remember that if you attained a state where you were overwhelmed by that pleasure and experienced nothing else, you would never be able to experience other pleasures. That would get boring very fast. No matter how cute she is.

11. If you haven't yet convinced yourself that pleasure is the goal of life, remember again that ALL PLEASURES ARE GOOD, and the ONLY guide Nature gave you to life is the faculty of perceiving pleasure and pain. If the pleasures of pulling the wings off flies IN FACT led to happy living, no one would have any right to laugh at you for spending all your time doing that. But you have to eat. You have to get clothing and shelter. You have to learn to protect yourself from whooping cough and sleep apnea. If you spend all your time pulling the wings off of flies, you will never learn to do those things, and you will wake up all night wheezing and with a terrible Antisthenesheadache in the morning. Don't let that happen to you.

12. Prepare an outline of your understanding of Epicurean philosophy to enhance your understanding, because as Epicurus said in the letter to Herodotus, you don't frequently need all the details, but you do frequently need to refer to the main points and be able to find the rest.

13. Surround yourself as much as possible with beneficial images (visual) and thoughts (philosophy).

I think my reference to not very good was more a reference to could be better style rather than a problem with the content. As I glance over it now I am still good with the basic thrust of it.

Those are great suggestions thank you!

As to number seven, that's mainly a reference to:

PD06. Whatever you can provide yourself with to secure protection from men is a natural good.

PD39. The man who has best ordered the element of disquiet arising from external circumstances has made those things that he could akin to himself, and the rest at least not alien; but with all to which he could not do even this, he has refrained from mixing, and has expelled from his life all which it was of advantage to treat thus.

PD40. As many as possess the power to procure complete immunity from their neighbors, these also live most pleasantly with one another, since they have the most certain pledge of security, and, after they have enjoyed the fullest intimacy, they do not lament the previous departure of a dead friend, as though he were to be pitied.

And:

Yet nevertheless some men indulge without limit their avarice, ambition and love of power, lust, gluttony and those other desires, which ill-gotten gains can never diminish but rather must inflame the more; inasmuch that they appear proper subjects for restraint rather than for reformation. (from the Torquatus material in On Ends Book 1)

Kalosyni it occurs to me to mention that I would have no problem with you taking my draft and adopting / adapting it in any way that you see fit if you'd like to pursue these thoughts in greater detail.

One of my key presumptions of everything that I do here is that it is all so heavily based on Epicurus and the ancient Epicureans that I can't imagine complaining about someone taking my writings and adapting them for their own use, just as I do from the Epicureans, so feel free.

This was an allusion to "nihilism" - the emphasis is on what it means to think that "your life means nothing" - and the heart of that issue is the question of "meaningfulness."

Yes you are indeed made up of atoms and void, and in the Epicurean view there is no "divine spark" mixed in. So if you are looking at the entire situation in terms of matter and space, you are indeed a speck in a huge extent of space.

Does that mean you should consider yourself to be in every respect the equivalent of dirt, and recklessly spend your time as if it were no concern of yours whether you lived or died?

That's the direction I am going with that statement.

Does your life in fact mean anything to the universe? No - the universe is not an animate object and has no concern or evaluation of you.

Does the fact that the universe has no concern or evaluation of you mean anything to you? I would say that Epicurus would answer that by his many statements about the value to us of the pleasure of living, which is implicitly in fact our highest value. There are times when we do voluntarily give up our lives, but we don't make that decision by asking "Universe, should we give up our life today?"

So both are true - we are indeed in terms of quantity a speck in a huge expanse of space. But at the same times, our lives are of most important value to us, so that we should focus our effort on using our time the "best" way possible. And we have to have a philosophical judgment as to what is the "best way possible."

Quote from Kalosyni

Of course, we assume that we have developed the wisdom to make choices that are ethical, and so we don't choose to do things that cause any pain or suffering to others.

One of the most challenging issues (ask Don! ) is that this wording itself probably has to be parsed, because there is no list if ethical vs non ethical to consult, and in the end Epicurus says there are no such lists. There's no guarantee that everyone feels pain when another person is harmed, and some in fact take pleasure in it in some circumstances. In the end much of the pain that can be expected to come from hurting other people depends on the circumstance that we can expect that others will punish us for that action, and if we have reason to expect that we will not be punished, that motivation will not exist.

All of which is not intended to invoke rabbit hunting, but to be a reminder that there are no supernatural forces lurking in the background to tell us what is ethical, or waiting to punish those who are unethical. Even back to Epicurus' time the majority thinks that such bright lines and supernatural forces do exist, so it's very interesting to think about how we should internalize and act on that knowledge.

Quote from Don

we - as members of society- have put in structures and "contracts" to deal with "injustice" to keep ourselves safe.

Yes hopefully so - but whether they are in fact in place is one of those contextual circumstances which has to be considered in projecting what will happen if we take particular actions. The point of writing this being that there is no supernatural automatic enforcement mechanism like the religious majority believes to be the case.

Yep. Nor is there a book in which you can find an absolute list of "things that are and are not ethical.". I think that is probably the harder pill to swallow.

We hate the things we find unjust, and we need at act against them, but we shouldn't confuse our own views with those of God or Nature.

That's a nice start to a website!