Eikas cheers to all! This month, we were kindly invited to participate in a Q & A and a friendly discussion on Epicurean philosophy as an alternative for modern people by Gregory Lopez, of New York City Stoics. The result is NYC Stoics: A Conversation with Hiram, Alan, & Marcus from The Society of Friends of Epicurus.

In our society, there is a huge pandemic of harmful beliefs about divinity, from those who are praying for Armageddon, to those who deny science, or who reject their own family members as a result of severance from a cult … or the “Kill the Gays” Christian mob in Uganda. This month, a poll revealed that Americans are distancing themselves from traditional values–which means, in part, a rejection of traditional religiosity and the harmful practices and ideas it introduces.

Some outlets have reported the news of the poll as alarming. This manner of addressing the move away from traditional values obeys a nihilistic Christian logic, which requires meaning and values to derive from their particular supernatural claims only. It also obeys a Platonic logic, according to which meaning and values can be imposed by the polis, or otherwise be a mere reflection of cultural power, rather than nature. But what if this is an opportunity to practice more natural, authentic values?

Richard Reeves discusses, in The friendship recession, the need for having friends. Friendship is a model of relation tends to render individuals equal to each other in some way. In that sense, it is a more natural and pragmatic value than traditional values (like religiosity and patriotism, which are cited in the poll). It becomes increasingly possible, as old values continue to recede, for people to be better able to identify and pursue more private, more intimate and personal values that feel authentic and natural.

The death of traditional values should be treated as an invitation and an opportunity to practice friendship and philosophy, so that we may evaluate choice-worthy and true values with our friends of like mind.

Liber Sextvs

I wish to share some of my last remaining notes from a recent re-reading of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, since this is of some relevance to discussions about the old and new tables of values. The mail goal of Liber Sextvs–the sixth book of De rerum natura–is to banish religious fear and superstition. It includes the following jeremiad:

Men see in heaven and here on earth things happen, that often fill their minds with fear, and humble their hearts with terror of the gods.

They’re crushed; they crawl on earth, because, perforce through ignorance of causes they confer on gods all power and kingdom over the world.

If people have learned that gods live carefree lives, and still, for all that, wonder by what means phenomena may occur, especially those they see in heavenly zones above their heads, then they will slip back into their old beliefs and take on heartless masters, whom they deem almighty: poor fools, they don’t know what can be and what cannot; yes, and what law defines the power of things, what deep-set boundary stone; thus with reason blinded, they err and err.

Reject such thoughts! Far from your mind remove them, unworthy of gods and alien to their peace!

Else power divine, belittled by you, will often harm you–not that gods’ power can be so damaged that anger would drive them panting for fierce revenge, but that you’ll picture these placid, peaceful, harmless creatures aboil with billows of rolling wrath, and then won’t enter their temples with peace at heart.

– Lucretius, De rervm natvra, Liber Sextvs, 68-75

The harms of having false, fear-based beliefs about the gods, and the benefits of having wholesome ones is a complex subject, when addressed from the Epicurean perspective, in part because many of us have been indoctrinated into a cosmology and social contract quite different from that of the first Epicureans. Epicurean ideas and methods were used originally to criticize Pagan superstition, and must now be employed with different types of false religions and beliefs that are popular today.

The conclusion of the Lucretian passage is that the gods themselves (if they exist somewhere in the cosmos) are not affected by our views. Instead, we harm ourselves (and often harm others) when we belittle or degrade the gods with our harmful beliefs about them. Gods, in the social contract of the cultures that have them, embody their highest values, the moralizing things that we are supposed to admire and celebrate.

It is our beliefs that are the target of philosophy’s treatment and healing. Pragmatically, the distinction between ancient polytheisms and modern monotheisms is less important than the irrational fears, the methods by which they are diagnosed and treated, and the harmful or beneficial beliefs that an individual adopts. These beliefs (as Philodemus of Gadara explains with many examples) affect our disposition, our character, and our choices, and are themselves affected by our associations, and often affect whoever we associate with. (This is not just true in religion: a recent Aeon essay argues that even in the realm of economics, the opinions and theories that we apply and lens through which we consider things have huge practical and societal repercussions.)

In this essay on the benefits of prayer according to certain studies, the author reports these findings, which confirm that what we believe about deity has psychosomatic effects:

However, all types of prayer might not work in the same way — when hospitalized patients appraised God as a kind supporter, their mental and physical health improved. But when they perceived God as punishing or were angry with God, their health declined.

Let us re-read what I believe to be the core ethical teaching of this passage. It delivers the following revelation: we have the power to degrade “divine power” with our beliefs and, in doing so, to render it harmful to us.

Power divine, belittled by you, will often harm you.

In Latin, the passage ends with what was translated as “peace at heart”. In Greek, this is ataraxia (the state of no-perturbation), and so instances of perturbations are the signs by which we may diagnose harmful beliefs, or place them before our eyes in order to better understand them. These perturbations might be different from the ones that identify signs of injustice in Principal Doctrine 17, or from the guilt and paranoia that point to Principal Doctrine 35. Therefore, this passage explains that the exertion of power to belittle divinity may be at the root, or might be one cause among several, of some of the perturbations we observe in people who do not enjoy “peace at heart”.