epicurus
"So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness,
since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it." -- Letter to Menoeceus
The Physics of Peace
Epicurus adopted Democritean atomism and believed the cosmos were only particles and void. No cosmic God, and no magical post-mortem places. The soul was material that dissolved at death -- "for what has disintegrated lacks sensation." No heaven, no hell. He's often portrayed as a hedonist, but I think of him more as an optimist.
Pleasure
He distinguished pleasure into three categories: natural & necessary (bread, water, friendship, shelter); natural but not-necessary (luxury food); vain & empty (unlimited wealth). The first category plateaus into ataraxia -- a life of peace rich with gratitude, bodily ease, and quiet joy. The third fuels hedonism.
What I like about Epicurus is that he saw friendship as infrastructure. He built intentional communities where meals, property, and conversation were shared. He believed in the power of relational wealth, suggesting that it will always outperform financial arbitrage in the long run of well-being (Vatican Saying).
The tetrapharmakos was his four-part cure to live a worry-free life:
There is no need to fear god.There is no need to fear death.Anything good is easily attainable.Anything terrible is easily endured.
Trade fear for clarity and treat friendship as the most stable currency. Bro was nonchalant af.
Hedonism and Stoicism
The Epicureans believed a certain kind of pleasure was the sole good, while the Stoics said that virtue was the sole good. Note that pleasure here is not vain as it's the kind which comes from wholesome living. Epicureans believed the path to a state of happiness involved pursuing pleasures, like friendship and good food, while minimizing pain. Acquiring knowledge, for example, was only worthwhile if it served to satisfy some question that troubled you.
Stoics claimed the path to a state of happiness involved living virtuously and always acting rationally. Deriving pleasure was simply irrelevant. They engaged in politics (while Epicureans believed in a more withdrawn, isolated way of living), focused on community, and believed we all had roles to fulfill within the "hive," or the universe. What's good for the hive is good for the bees
Seeking virtue is honorable, but some part of me doesn't believe that the gratification from being virtuous didn't motivate the Stoics. And wouldn't the pleasure derived oppose Stoicism entirely? I don't actively try to minimize pain, but I can't say I don't seek out pleasure either. I think there's stuff to learn from being miserable, just as there is from being happy. The key is to be both.
Activism, Errr More Like Outrage§
Epicurean withdrawal, what philosophers call political quietism, isn't apathy but rather a strategy of selective engagement or cognitive immunity. You participate where you can maximize returns, in friendship, tangible change, or time, and opt-out where noise overwhelms. Now obviously this was said with achieving ataraxia in mind, so it can be taken with a grain of salt. But I still think there's some value to it.
Especially in today's political climate, public power + mass politics wrecks inner peace. A quietist would ask: Will this action -- a protest, rally, post -- protect my peace and the peace of my friends, or will it merely make me more anxious? Epicurus advised governing only if tyranny threatened your safety.
Don't get me wrong, I think tyranny is threatening a lot of people globally. And those people have every right to outrage, protest, advocate for change, just as we have every right to support them in any way possible. And yes, our voices matter, but I also feel as though it's equally as important to choose the right way to go about it. All the inevitable man-made byproducts, the manipulative media, fake news, and political drama that comes with it is just junk.
I think we can all learn from deliberate action. If we focus on too much, none of it tends to get done, and scale discipline is the difference between effectiveness and exhaustion.