False Happiness: Money; Status; Romance

Black Swan

Philosopher Epicurus suggested that the pursuit of money, status, and romance did not lead to happiness, rather to a false happiness. Such false pursuits were just as important during ancient Greek times, as they were today in advanced consumer capitalist societies. Ironically, today's adjective "Epicurean" has been more often used to describe luxury and decadence, neither of which Epicurus or his followers experienced nor advocated during ancient Greek times.

Epicurus suggested that humans wanted meaningful friendships in their lives. Romantic ones too often were confounded with possessiveness, jealously, misunderstanding, and bitterness; and when sex was added, it too often became a complication that rarely led to lasting happiness. Friendships in ancient Greece where similar to those that have occurred to this day, making friends one day, only to see them drift apart for various reasons. Epicurus attempted to correct for this drifting apart by founding colonies of friends, a practice that spread throughout the Mediterranean well beyond his death. Today capitalist consumer oriented advertisers attempt to tap into this longing for meaningful friendships by picturing friends sitting about drinking advertised beer, when many of these consumers end up drinking alone watching the telly, or whatever, and not realising the advertised friendships and associated happiness that friendship brings.

Would you like to introduce why or why not money and status may lead to happiness according to Epicurus or other philosophers? This represents just a few comments of many to open our discussion of Epicurus as reviewed in an edition of The Great Philosophers found in The Philosopher's Mail. Do you agree, disagree with their review (or my paraphrasing of their review) of Epicurus? Do you identify with the Epicurus "Epicurean," or the capitalist consumer "Epicurean," or some other definition or label attached to categorise human behaviour today?

Comments? Suggestions? Arguments?

Permabear

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Joe1919

Empty is that philosopher's argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated. For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the illnesses of bodies, so too there is no use in philosophy, unless it casts out the suffering of the soul . Epicurus (fragment 221)

I think Epicurus sees certain things as inevitable, eg death, some physical pain and suffering, perhaps poverty for some, etc. Now, he cannot offer a cure for the above, as they are inevitable, but he does offer a cure for our anxiety about these things, by minimalizing there effect in our mind/soul. e.g

‘death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.’

Epicurus writing can be seen a therapeutic in that it offers the possibility of comfort/happiness, even when facing his own certain and painful death (from kidney stones).

On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. My continual sufferings from strangury and dysentery are so great that nothing could increase them; but I set above them all the gladness of mind at the memory of our past conversations. Letter to Idomeneus

The idea is that the anxiety/fear (in the soul)of bad things happening (e.g poverty) can be great and is preventable if we change our mindset about the value of money.

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Maslow had the right sort of idea, in modern times the bottom area might also include wifi and battery life: