Epicurean-Compatible Quotes

    So to clarify, repeating affirmations won't do much if anything to change experientially and emotionally formulated abstractions, but they can be somewhat more effective on analytically formed abstractions. If I'm understanding this correctly, Ali's quote ("It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.") is contradicting this to a degree.

    Would the implications then be that it's easier to change philosophical beliefs than beliefs about one's personality? That seems to be my experience. The repetition of affirmations that Ali refers to would then seem to be most effective at reinforcing positive beliefs that a person already has about themself.

    Am I understanding this correctly?

    Thank you. Does that mean that a "repetition of affirmations" applied to analytically derived beliefs (values, etc.) can be helpful?

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

    Quote from Godfrey

    So to clarify, repeating affirmations won't do much if anything to change experientially and emotionally formulated abstractions, but they can be somewhat more effective on analytically formed abstractions. If I'm understanding this correctly, Ali's quote ("It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.") is contradicting this to a degree.

    Godfrey The issue here, standard in philosophical discussions, is differences in perspectives and semantics. Let me clarify. Ali's quote is correct. But it is written from a philosophical framework and not from a neurobiological framework. It is true that "affirmed" behaviors do become facilitated and reinforced. It is true that the more they are reinforced the more they might be counted as "deep convictions". And, it is true that as deep convictions they become active guiding behavioral principles for an individual. However, this set of perspectives basically centers on experiential reinforcement. This emphasis might more easily correspond to Pavlov's dogs and habits. And, "deep convictions" in this context is less deep than what happens when strong emotions are involved.

    A different set of perspectives derives when the "embedding influence" is emotions. When strong emotions act to encode behavior then the encoding influence is not as much derived from repetition as from the emotions. So, we have a very simplified saying, "Once burned, twice shy".

    To put this in clinical perspective, children who are abused during childhood encode behaviors that may adversely affect the rest of their lives. Yes, the abuse has to be more than once, but it doesn't need to be numerous if the abuse is serious. This discussion is objectively assessed in recent medical literature under the topic called "ACEs" - Adverse Childhood Experiences. (Reference the very large study at Kaiser-Permanente in California by Felitti, Anda, et al, published in 1998 - "The ACEs Study")

    Evolution "realized" that it is important to remember, and be influenced by, activities that result in major injury. If you've ever broken a bone - once - you probably remember how it happened and try to avoid it thereafter. But, you can fail to throw a spiraled football a number of times and you still get another chance to learn the technique. Where learning is not associated with strong emotions it takes longer to learn, but there is also a greater ability to change the behavior (again, more on the behavioral end we call "habits"). Conversely, where strong emotions (particularly negative but also positive) drive to encode behavior then behavior becomes more deeply entrenched.

    Does that help?

    Quote from Kalosyni
    Quote

    "May you do well," and "Live well."

    "Live long and prosper" -Spock

    "And those simple gifts, like other objects equally trivial — bread, oil, wine,
    milk — had regained for him, by their use in such religious service, that poetic,
    and as it were moral significance, which surely belongs to all the means of our
    daily life, could we but break through the veil of our familiarity with things by
    no means vulgar in themselves." -Marius the Epicurean

    ΕΥ ΠΡΑΤΤΕΙΝ ΚΑΙ ΣΠΟΥΔΑΙΩΣ ΖΗΝ

    May you do well and Live earnestly.
    May you practice well and live earnestly.
    May you flourish and live earnestly.
    "May you practice well and may your life be lived with purpose!" My translation

    “When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.” Colleen C. Barrett

    Aristotle = architect. Epicurus = bricklayer. (Well, okay: Epicurus was also an architect, and a structural engineer, and a bricklayer. Me? I’m just a squatter in the house that was built.)

    +++++++++++++++

    I still think my title for this thread was badly chosen. :( Maybe "Non-Epicurean Quotes for Epicureans"? (Probably just as bad. Maybe someone could come up with a better one ... )

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

    “Serenity isn’t granted; it’s practiced.”

    From a daily meditation book by an anonymous author (“Joe C.”).

    Serenity (as a state of unruffled calm, to borrow from Merriam-Webster) is one of the words I entertain to render ataraxia.

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

    Aegean islanders like to tell a joke about a prosperous Greek American who visits one of the islands on vacation. Out on a walk, the affluent Greek American comes upon an old Greek man sitting on a rock, sipping a glass of ouzo, and lazily staring at the sun setting into the sea. The American notices there are olive trees growing on the hills behind the old Greek but that they are untended, with olives just dropping here and there onto the ground. He asks the old man who the trees belong to.

    “They’re mine,” the Greek replies.

    “Don’t you gather the olives?” the American asks.

    “I just pick one when I want one,” the old man says.

    “But don’t you realize that if you pruned the trees and picked the olives at their peak, you could sell them? In America everybody is crazy about virgin olive oil, and they pay a damned good price for it.”

    “What would I do with the money?” the old Greek asks.

    “Why, you could build yourself a big house and hire servants to do everything for you.”

    “And then what would I do?”

    “You could do anything you want!”

    “You mean, like sit outside and sip ouzo at sunset?”

    – Daniel Klein, Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

    Particularly interesting in this context is a scene from the life of King Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus was preparing a military campaign against Italy, his collaborator and friend Cineas asked what the king would do if he should be able to conquer the Romans. Pyrrhus replied that at that moment, he should get control of the whole of Italy. Sicily would soon follow, and then Libya and Carthage, so that in the end Pyrrhus would triumph over all his enemies. Cineas insisted:

    “But when we have got everything subject to us, what are we going to do?” Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: “We shall be much at ease, and we’ll drink bumpers, my good man, every day, and we’ll gladden one another’s hearts with confidential talks.” And now that Cineas had brought Pyrrhus to this point in the argument, he said: “Then what stands in our way now if we want to drink bumpers and while away the time with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils, after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves.”

    Oxford Handbook of Epicurus and Epicureanism, Oxford University Press, Philip Mitsis, Editor: “Politics and Society” by Geert Roskam.

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

    King Pyrrhis should have taken Cineas advise. He came to a bad end. :(

    Pyrrhus of Epirus - Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org

    >>Since Antigonus Gonatas was approaching too, he hastened to enter the city with his army by stealth, only to find the place crowded with hostile troops. During the confused Battle of Argos in the narrow city streets, Pyrrhus was trapped. While he was fighting an Argive soldier, the soldier's old mother, who was watching from a rooftop, threw a tile which knocked him from his horse and broke part of his spine, paralyzing him. Whether he was alive or not after the blow is unknown, but his death was assured when a Macedonian soldier named Zopyrus, though frightened by the look on the face of the unconscious king, hesitantly and ineptly beheaded his motionless body.<<

    I wonder what they mean by: "ineptly beheaded"? =O

    • New

    “There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.”

    ― Issac Asimov

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

    • New

    “That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.”


    —Henry David Thoreau

    "We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content." (Vatican Saying 48)

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