Posts by isychos

I may be a few minutes late in joining, please let me know if this will disruptive or not, thank you

Thank you for raising this topic Eoghan Gardiner, this is something I often find myself battling with, some great suggestions to reflect upon and apply to one’s attitude to/at work

I hope to attend, dependant on work commitments considering the time difference between US ET and Sydney time

Thank you all so much for your responses, I will have to digest these a little further, however an initial thought/question or two around experiencing more pleasure than pain, more of the time:

I understand, well at least I think I understand, that it would be unreasonable to expect to experience a continual flow of pleasurable feelings, however if the pain I am experiencing does not lead to pleasure in the future, then that pain, dare I say, is to be avoided. Perhaps I am being too rigid in how I apply my calculation of pleasure vs pain sometimes??

Could you please also help me in clarifying if I have understood this correctly: that the feelings are two, pleasure and pain, if I am not experiencing one I am experiencing the the other, as there is no neutral state, or have I reduced this a little too far?

Thank you again

Happy twentieth all.

Long time listener, first time poster...

I have been trying to wrap my head around how pleasure fits in to the world of work (paid employment) for us as Epicureans, and how work should be viewed within our lives, considering it consumes such a large portion of our time.

Just to give a bit of context:

I would have to say most of my working life I have experienced more pain (mostly mental) than pleasure; I have tried many roles across various industries, however this sense of not feeling pleasure at work has been dominant most of the time, and the mental pain extends outside the working hours, which is very draining and does not allow me the energy to discover and devote to pleasures in my personal time.

Most of the people in my life have offered advice around how to deal with this, such as to look at work as a means to an end, however that has felt rather stoic to me.

Am I applying the measurement of pleasure vs pain correctly within the context of work?

These are just some of the thoughts I am grappling with around this topic, and may still seem a little jumbled, however it’s a start.

I am hoping my Epicurean Friends can help me to clarify my thinking on this.

Thank you

***Please feel free to edit the font, as I have posted this from a “smart” phone.

Thank you for welcoming me.

I discovered this forum through the Facebook group, however having recently deactivated my fb account I had been following the discussions here and decided to sign up.

Most of my reading has been through the multitude of links and resources provided here, and a couple of years ago I read EAHP by DeWitt, but have been intending to reread it again. I have also read A Few Days in Athens by Frances Wright.

I am grateful for being part of this community and for the wealth of information and knowledge here, and am looking forward to building on my understanding of Epicurean Philosophy.

Thank you