Does the philosophy change you?

My problem is I really can't escape Catholic guilt. I wish I could.

Quote from Eoghan Gardiner

I really can't escape Catholic guilt. I wish I could.

I presume I know what you mean but I am not Catholic so maybe there is more to it that would be worth describing (at least in general)?

Catholic guilt prevades the lives of many catholics and ex catholics, when I enjoy food I feel guilty at times, when I laugh with friends I feel guilty...it's very deep for being brought up in this way. It makes it so every pleasure is marked with guilt. Speaking to hundreds of other ex catholics over the years it seems to be a common thing.

For example I am playing video games, I feel guilty I feel as if I am doing wrong. Other Christians seem to get it around sexually matters but Catholics and Orthodox seem to get it around every pleasure every joy.

That's a little deeper than I understood. I am familiar with "we are worms" and "undeserving of salvation" and so forth but not to the extent that *every* pleasure in *every* situation is wrong. I am familiar that Stoicism might be read in that way, but not really Catholicism. Maybe with Joshua's help we might want a full Catholicism thread.

"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." I've never been more glad that I wasn't raised Catholic than after reading the post above. That's very unfortunate.

I was raised Southern Baptist, deep in the belly of the whale, so I know (almost) exactly what you're talking about, Eoghan. It's like being raised bilingual--the second language is always in your head, even if you never speak it. The only truly regrettable result of breaking away from religion for me has been that it alienates me somewhat from my family and almost everyone I grew up with.

Quote from Little Rocker

only truly regrettable result of breaking away from religion for me has been that it alienates me somewhat from my family and almost everyone I grew up with.

.... Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

It seems to me that in most all cases it takes a special kind of person to be able to start this process, and even then it takes constant work thereafter.

But to me, it's worth it.

EDIT - Is has been pointed out to me that my "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln" joke might be misunderstood. See below post 37.

Yeah, fellow recovering Catholic altar boy here. 17 years in Catholic schools, baptized, confessed, and, against my better judgment, confirmed.

Learned young to lie early and often. When I got my first job at 16 I would skip Sunday mass for "work"; "work" in my private vernacular being to leave the house in my work uniform and go browse the books at Barnes and Noble. Imagine my surprise reading the Alexandrian novelist André Aciman years later: "People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are."

One of my prouder moments in secondary school was the paper we were asked to write on Natural Family Planning--or in very public vernacular, Vatican Roulette. I tore that whole business up one side and down the other. I didn't know at the time that I was really embarking on a long campaign which Christopher Hitchens was already defining in the aftermath of 9/11:

Quote

Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.

It could just as truthfully be argued that the conflict in question was not so different to the one articulated by Lucian of Samosata all those centuries ago. It was then and still is "war to the knife" between those on the one side who look for their reward in another life, and who more than merely scorn at the pleasure and beauty and wonder of this world, and those of us on the other who would do all in our power to make this one life truly worth living.

So reflecting on my early Catholicism is, for the second time today, like finding an old friend in Thoreau: "The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

Quote from Joshua

One of my prouder moments in secondary school was the paper we were asked to write on Natural Family Planning--or in very public vernacular, Vatican Roulette.

Natural family planning is so ridiculous they absolutely hoops they have to jump through to not make it the same as just using contraception is absolutely gas.

Catholicism falls apart when you come to study the bible academically, you can make all the arguments for the existence of God you want but even if they are logically in no way does it point toward the Bible, Quran or anything else.

I used to be friends with Dominicans and they basically just told me "don't worry about scholarship of the bible it's rubbish" for an order devoted to philosophy that didn't seem like a great answer.

I grew up (and through my formative years) a certain kind of black-book Lutheran for whom the standard Sunday recited confession was "I confess that I am by nature sinful and unclean" -- week after week after week, year after year. (I don't think that harsh a language is still used, even in the most conservative Lutheran churches.) Again, despite rational rebellion, there can still be that Pavlovian residue, buried in the subconscious.

Quote from Little Rocker

the second language is always in your head, even if you never speak it

An excellent and apt description!

Quote from Joshua

Learned young to lie early and often. When I got my first job at 16 I would skip Sunday mass for "work"; "work" in my private vernacular being to leave the house in my work uniform and go browse the books at Barnes and Noble.

I also had a strange Sunday book ritual! I could never skip service, but I had a fellow student from my big public high school whose parents owned the only remaining independent bookstore in town. So they told me I could have the employee discount, and I went there every Sunday afternoon to pick out what I would read that week, usually two novels, with the occasional poetry or philosophy thrown in for good measure. I eventually worked there for a few summers in college. Also, I did lie, but only about whether I had been to Sunday afternoon choir practice...until the choir director ratted me out for missing!

It definitely was a big shift for me from deep mental affliction due to chasing "the divine", to living pleasantly in a relatively short period of time with the philosophy. I feel like the philosophy was meant for all, but particularly for someone like who I was about 2 years ago to about 2014: bedeviled by the "Gods" and constantly fearing death. So, I am bit of a zealot, a reveler, a "born again" type about Epicureanism.

Quote from EricR

Does the philosophy change you? Or perhaps it is better posed as "does the philosophy change your experience of being"?

Sometimes I ask myself the same question and realize most people won't ever walk in the same trails as I do. It's quite impressive, because I consider the Epicurean worldview as substantial to the recognition of happiness. It's not about the single elements, as there are normal people out there who know how to live a happy life, too. It's rather the unique approach of developing a comprehensive philosophy, starting with particles and ending up proclaiming self-esteem and the reign of pleasure.

I had become quite a fundamentalist, focusing on Epicurean philosophy only and its implications all day long. I've tried to "normalize" in the last months, but it seems I feel better in the "Epicurusphere" as I don't understand much of what's going on outside of my bubble anymore. It does not feel real, not focussed and obsolete.

I also like the religious flavour, adhering true philosophy and recognizing Epicurus as my saviour.

It seems there are worlds between religious education in America/Ireland and Germany.

In Germany, religious education is a mandatory part of education in state schools, includes church service on one school day morning per week, and is usually done separately for Catholics and Protestants, whereby Protestants are usually lumped together in one curriculum irrespective of their variants. More recently, religious education for Muslims, too, has been added in public schools. Parents can opt their kids out of the mandatory religious education, and from age 14 onward, kids can opt out on their own. However, that opting out was rare during my time at school.

This background would suggest that indoctrination is particularly severe in Germany but actually it is not, at least not in Cologne, which is predominantly Catholic, and nearby urban areas. Culture in Cologne is traditionally oriented toward pleasure. Carnival season lasts about 5 months, and many activists prepare for the next season during the remaining part of the year. Popular pubs are full throughout the year. Pleasure is in people's mind all the time.

A fear-mongering religion would be ridiculous in Cologne. Therefore, religious education was made interesting and partly even fun. As a consequence, I was confident to go to heaven as a faithful kid with good grades in Catholic education and did not fear Hell. Under the influence of my protestant father, who detested the Catholic church, I stopped attending Mass on Sundays and distanced myself from the church and the bogus concept of sins early but not yet from belief in the Abrahamic god and did not even know of the possibility of atheism until religious education discussed atheist publications in my 11th year at school. Against the intention of the curriculum, I found the arguments of the teacher against Marx and Freud not convincing and turned agnostic with 3 years of struggle in the transition. I stayed with Catholic ethics as a default because I did not find a new set of explicit ethics for several decades but ditched any part of Catholic ethics which did not make sense to me or appeared to be politically conservative mind control. Therefore, getting rid of Catholic programming of my subconscience was easy.

It was much more difficult to get rid of idealism. Whereas I am rather calm by nature, deviations from the ideal/optimum could trigger fits of anger both at work and in private. After 20 years of struggle, I got rid of that, too.

Recognizing Epicurus' philosophy as similar to my philosophy of life in 2016 and studying where it goes beyond what I had figured out on my own before has rooted out the last remains of that idealism of my past.

So far, my biggest change from exposure to Epicurus has been increased confidence in my choices.

Quote from Martin

In Germany, religious education is a mandatory part of education in state schools, includes church service on one school day morning per week, and is usually done separately for Catholics and Protestants, whereby Protestants are usually lumped together in one curriculum irrespective of their variants.

I cannot remember any obligatory church services. This has to be either a regional feature or an issue of the past or both.

Quote from Martin

A fear-mongering religion would be ridiculous in Cologne.

In the meantime, both the Catholic and the Unified Protestant Church in Germany have deleted Hell and Punishment from their curriculum. Their only interest is to keep the money flowing and their business empire growing. The only persistent blasphemy is to opt out the church-tax system.

It has been pointed out to me that my "other than that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play" joke might be misunderstood. I used the smile icon, but I better be more clear:

And I do indeed see in looking it up places like here that it is now being given a different meaning than what I understood. This is absolutely NOT the meaning of the phrase as i have grown up understanding it:

"A sarcastic phrase meant to downplay the complaint or misfortune of another person, similar to playing the world's tiniest violin with one's fingers."

As I grew up understanding it, the phrase was meant to be a joke which emphasizes that something huge (usually bad) has been mentioned, and that everything else (such as "how was the play") pales in comparison to that big event. So it's actually an inverted expression of agreement in how bad the event referenced really was.

For example, the use here in reference to a particularly bad day on Wall Street with few redeeming good things happening: https://www.pensford.com/industry-news/…lay-mrs-lincoln

Or here, where it is said jokingly that "on top of that..." nuclear war would be a climate problem: https://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2022/03/other-…rs-lincoln.html

Or this, which references the phrase as a "droll understatement" - https://www.nickharvilllibraries.com/blog/-other-th…lay-mrs-lincoln

So in this case, "other than that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play?" was not a sarcastic reference to what was stated in the previous post, but an agreement that the issue of alienating friends and family can be so important that it would be tempting to say that any offsetting benefits would be minimal.

I hope no one misconstrued the reference! I did not intend to write so much about this but I am surprised to find the "sick" joke references on the internet which seem to change the meaning completely.

Quote from EricR

Does the philosophy change you? Or perhaps it is better posed as "does the philosophy change your experience of being"?

I realize that since studying Epicureanism, I am thinking more of myself as a "human/animal" -- with the emphasis on "animal" and so now I am more integrated with this Earth and not something "above" it. (Perhaps Epicurus wouldn't have taken on that attitude? Since an Epicurean goal is to live as blissfully as the gods). So this sort of the meaning I give to my desire to sit near a sunny window or that inner pull toward sunshine (just one of many pleasurable things) which are the natural desires of an animal. So then the task at hand is to take good care of the human animal that I am, to accept that task without begrudging it, and to make wise decisions.

A key thing for me and maybe this isn't an Epicurean idea but I think it really is.

With philosophy I don't have to add meaning to things that happen, as if it's sort of part of some design. When something bad or good happens I am not being punished or rewarded it's something that happens in which I am experiencing pleasure or pain that is it. It's freeing, it allows to deal with the problem at hand or to experience the pleasure freely without a need to thank anyone.

Quote from Eoghan Gardiner

My problem is I really can't escape Catholic guilt. I wish I could.

I was raised Protestant, and wrestled with some guilt. Guilt in some situations can be good, such as if you say or do something by mistake to harm a friend, neighbor, or community member, then your conscience kicks in to help you think of how you can restore your inter-connection and the relationships.

But the unnecessary guilt you were brought up with is a by-product of an ethical system which takes there to be hard and firm rules of conduct across the board, without any way to judge things according to unique situations. This kind of strict ethical thinking is what brought about the Prohibition in the US. It is a simplified way of determining what one should and shouldn't do, but is not the most wise way of functioning in the world because some entity (or religious authority) is deciding for everyone, rather than letting each person decide for themselves. And this would fall into Kohlberg's level of Conventional Moral Reasoning.

Here are some ideas of how to deal with guilt...Perhaps the practice of noticing the guilt but then replacing it with positive thoughts, such as talking to it and saying that you are free to choose what is good for you. And you may benefit from contemplating a personalized list of what you consider "natural and necessary" for the health of the body, and "natural and necessary for happiness" (on this list of necessary for happiness remembering that you won't die if you can't have everything, but that it is perfectly natural to desire it) and third catagory of "natural but potentially harmful" (this would be things like sugar and alcohol so you want to close pay attention to the outcomes in this category) and a fouth catagory "unnatural and unnecessary" (grandiose desires for money and status). --Notice here that I have redefined the categories (and made 4 of them). And then remember to ask yourself: "What will happen to me if I get this or do this?, and what will happen to me if I don't get this or don't do this?"