MY House! Um, well...ok, YOUR house anyway.

The One!

Putin's comments drive company's stock down $6 billion...

In Praise of an Egotistic Philosophy

ego·tism
1 a: excessive use of the first person singular personal pronoun b: the practice of talking about oneself too much
2: an exaggerated sense of self-importance : conceit — compare egoism Merriam-Webster online dictionary

In other words, me, me, me, me, me!

Yes, so why an egotistic philosophy?

How can egotism - the practice of talking about oneself too much - be of value as a philosophy to a person and to mankind?

I remember my philosophy teacher five years ago saying how the "moi" can be despairingly irksome to others. Who can stand a person who breaks in every conversation - be it about the weather or a complicated relationship - by saying "I think that", "In my opinion", "in my case" or "it has been my experience"?

The "moi" becomes a threat to the harmony of a community as it pulls to much energy inwardly instead of productively using that energy externally. This is beautifully represented in Orwell's 1984 which brings forth a form of groupthink one must adhere to if one does not want to raise suspicion from the authorities and break social cohesion. As a side note, we can notice the "moi" is a threat as long as we are not in a capitalist society where knowing what a "me" wants can mean profit! ;)

I listened to a lecture given by French philosopher Michel Onfray about the XIXth century as the Century of the Moi. I found his ideas worth exploring.

He analyzes the XIXth century as being a time where two different - almost opposite - approaches to life existed.

• Social eudaimonism.
• To develop and contribute to a socio-economic system enabling the happiness of all is the ultimate project.
• Stuart Mill's social liberalism, Bentham's Panoptic capitalism, Owen's communist community, William Godwin's anarchist Protestantism, Bakounin's anarchist United States of Europe.
  
• Capitalism, liberalism, socialism, communism, anarchism.
• Plato's Republic. Social order is for the general interest, for the good of the people.
• Politics need to be there first for Ethics to develop
  
• Existential radicalism.
  
• The pragmatic concern of living a philosophical life is the priority. Universal solutions can only be found by first examining ourselves.
  
• Nietzsche, Thoreau, Emerson, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer.
• Individualistic, Egotistic.
• Socrates's "know thyself",
  
• Ethics need to be there first for Politics to develop.
  

There undeniably exists an egotistic philosophical tradition. This is most obvious with the diary medium for expressing ideas. Marcus Aurelius - a favorite of mine - jots down his thoughts in his emperor's tent late at night during a military campaign. The result: beautiful meditations about life, ruling and virtue. Augustine, almost single-handedly founds Christian theology by writing his Confessions. Schopenhauer, at the age of 19, travels across Europe with his parents and writes a diary which contains almost the totality of ideas found in the rest of his work. One cannot forget Montaigne's and Francis Bacon's essays which seem to reveal truths about ourselves with each reading. Thoreau, the philosopher and "ecosopher"; his only company was himself, and he lyrically writes about individualism, society and nature, after a day of chopping kindle near Walden Pond. Sitting down to express our thoughts means we formulate them, give them structure and coherence so they can be written down. Insight about ourselves and the world follow.

More generally than writing a diary, egotism almost always precedes constructive thought. In Maieutics - the Socratic method of investigation - Socrates often encourages people to explore themselves, to face their inconsistencies and reveal perhaps a lack of integrity. By not running away from ourselves, we face painful reality and can mature our thought on our way to uncovering Truth.

Self-examination! How can anyone have a philosophical life without self-examination?

It is when we take the time to examine our suffering, our behavior, our responses, our feelings, that we can learn to develop empathy and a sensitivity to others by perceiving what is universal. Art is usually the result of self-examination. Philosophy is primarily meant to be lived not theorized. Analyzing the day gone by and sorting the information ("that was nice, that was bad"), improves who we will be tomorrow if we have the discipline. This is what philosophy as a daily practice is. It gives us awareness of what we do and whether it is good and bad for us and others, it gets us out of destructive ruts to create room for self-improvement.

I often clash with people who believe that it is a waste of time to try to create a change in the world by egotistically first focusing on ourselves. Sculpting a lifestyle as an embodiment of values seems ridiculous to them.

How can we know what to do for the general good, if we don't even take the time to learn about what is good for us? Know thyself, learn, grow and adjust. Be egotistical in that sense, make your main concern you.

Cultivate your lifestyle - with the same zeal as the dandy -, be brave enough to become congruent with your self.

Pee-Wee's Morning

The Bicycling Horticulturalist

To all skeptics! Horticulture without a driver's license is possible!

"Ryan Nassichuk builds food gardens for people. His bicycle and trailer are the sole transport for himself, tools, and materials - including soil and plants! This horticulturist also builds container gardens and composters. Tour a backyard garden in which a 6-week class of students filled raised beds with soil, compost and fertilizer, did succession planting, and built a low-cost composter. Recently Ryan has added free seed-sharing to his wisdom-sharing, while continuing to propagate food gardens throughout Vancouver. This man has a low ecological footprint — or should we say bike tire tread? [www.ryansgarden.com]"
-Peak Moment TV

Just sayin'...

Wwoof wwoof!

Dunno if Dan already told me about this or not...here it is anyway ---> organic farming meets couchsurfing :)

http://www.wwoof.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWOOF

super cool! I saw a brief segment about it on arte or france televisions (not sure) and I thought it looked pretty cool, especially 'cause you walk away with whatever knowledge the farmer imparted; in the case they showed the guy explained les vignes et puis s'en est suivi bien evidemment une seance de degustation :)

definitely something to be looked into! :)

oh, and dan what was that herbie hancock song i listened to at your place? chameleon?

(gonna have to edit this thing at some point, but i'm putting it up as is for now :)

Discover Herbie Hancock!

Dare to be Naïve! Discovering Buckminster Fuller

I must confess that until today, I knew almost nothing about Buckminster Fuller.

I briefly read about him months ago while trying to figure out what Unitarian theology was about. I learned that he was some sort of genial modern polymath - à la Benjamin Franklin - who could, to those familiar with Jungian typology, easily epitomize the "extraverted intuition + introverted thinking" type. I imagined him as a man who needed to understand everything with a rational approach while being guided by an internal compass pointing to a certain universalism. He was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, philosopher and visionary. [*] The rest, I discovered today thanks to my lunch meal.

I had to prepare my meal early this morning before going to work since I do not have the opportunity to leave for lunch. Going through an Ayurvedic cooking phase, I've been experimenting with Indian recipes which inevitably include clarified butter: ghee. I have been amazed preparation after preparation by the richness in taste and texture it provides and the way it releases the aroma of spices. Today's meal included ghee and quickly after eating, I felt that the ghee itself was somehow responsible for an unusual sense of calm across my body. Curious to learn about the presumed benefits of the elixir, I searched for information online and stumbled upon an article written by a fellow called Peter Malakoff. After finishing the article - and being converted to the use of ghee forever :) - the author intrigued me, and so wanting to learn more about him, I visited his website where I read his biography.

It turns out this man's life is nothing short of incredible! For the sake of comparison, I would say it is what Into the Wild's Chris McCandless's life could have been had he lived earlier, but just a little crazier. To return to the subject of this post, Peter Malakoff after writing a paper was granted a scholarship to spend a month with Buckminster Fuller. This is how the meal lead to learning about the man!

"That night Bucky spoke of the world of sailing and the world as seen by a man at sea. Indeed, much of Fullers terminology, the very words he used and the principles they represented, came from the nautical world. Think of the famous term he coined- 'Spaceship Earth'. He likened the world to a ship, which, he pointed out, is a closed and limited environment, not an unlimited one and always in motion. He pointed out how important it was to grasp and understand this.

He told us of many years ago he had spoken to a group of architects in New York City and had asked the assembled group if any of them knew how much the huge, many storied building they were sitting in weighed. None of them had any idea. Fuller found this to be a major oversight and a serious fault on their part. How could they maximize the potential that could come from building materials and structures if they were not thinking 'ecologically', if they did not know what the building weighed? How could they build something in accord with the operating principles of life, of spaceship earth?

Fuller, who had captained many a boat, said that 'On a ship, one always had to know how much weight was to be carried. It was important to know this if the ship was to be able to perform well on the water. It was this 'closed' or limited environment, similar to the nature of the world as a ship, that gave rise to the very concept of ecology. The very word 'ecos' comes from the Greek word for house or home. Ecology', he said, 'begins with the recognition of the closed or limited environment of the world. It is born of the realization that you cannot just dump your trash or waste into a river or an ocean and that it will just be washed away. We are on a ship, a spaceship and absolutely everything is and needs to be recycled, we need to know how much things 'weigh' and how they 'work'.

He spoke about 'cybernetics' which Bucky defined as the 'science of self-regulating mechanisms'. (Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the 'cyborg' or the self regulating organism. Think of 'cyberspace' as self regulating space). Bucky said that the word, cybernos, comes from the Greek word for the 'helmsman' of a boat. Bucky then made a startling statement, "A drunk cybernos makes less mistakes than a sober cybernos". I asked him how that could be . . . I didn't want to be in a boat or a car driven or steered by a drunk. He shook his head in agreement. I felt completely lost. Then he made his point, "Unless you make a mistake, you do not correct your course. Because a drunk does not make so many mistakes, he does less correction of his course and so his course is mistaken, he weaves his way down the road, or he hits something with deadly results. A sober man is constantly correcting his many little mistakes before they get big and his course is thereby true"

He spoke of 'synergetics', what Fuller called the behavior of a whole system not predicated on the behavior of its parts. He told us of chrome-nickel steel and how its strength is over 50% greater than the sum of the strength of its component metals. He spoke of gravity and how there was nothing in all the stuff of the universe that would predict it would be mutually attracted to another thing.

He spoke of the principle of 'precession'. Bucky told us how precession is the relationship that occurs between objects that are in motion. 'Imagine a top', he said. 'When it is set spinning, if you push it, it will go at right angles to the direction of your push. This is the same as the earth spinning around the sun. The suns greater gravitational attraction would pull the earth directly into itself, but since the earth is spinning it goes in a great elliptical circle around the sun'. Fuller said that the principle of precession is how life 'works'- A honeybee goes to a flower in pursuit of honey. The bee only wants the honey, but at right angles to the intention or drive of the bee, flowers are pollinated. The honeybee is not concerned with pollinating flowers. Bucky proposed that 'life happens at right angles or in a precessional manner to the 180degree straight ahead intentions of the bee'. He went on to say that it was exactly the same with a human seeking money or sex or pleasure or power. Life is happening at right angles to our desires. By recognition of this, he said, we can begin to design our lives to take into account precession and thus work with the nature of nature.

Finally, I remember that Bucky spoke of the word 'trimtab', what it was and what it represented. Fuller told us of how a large boat like the Queen Mary has a very large, many tonned rudder at the the very back of the ship. At the back end of that very large rudder is a very small rudder. When the captain wants to turn the huge main rudder in one direction, he turns the small rudder in the opposite direction. This creates a difference of water pressure or lower pressure vacuum on one side of the large rudder and the main rudder can now be moved with almost no effort; It is literally 'drawn' in that direction. Bucky said this represented the power of the individual to change the direction of the 'ship of state', doing what government and corporations cannot, by applying design science, by doing the 'right' intelligent action. Further, he pointed out how the action of the trimtab is applied when the bulk of the ship has passed, when it seems to have gone past the point of any change. Fuller died in 1983 and the epitaph carved on his tombstone says: "Call me Trimtab""

Concepts like these are precisely what drew me to physics - a chance to increase the focus of my metaphysical observation lens. Knowledge of natural phenomena should give general epistemic tools by the improvement of intuition. Ideas like precession and the trimtab are very poetic and reveal the richness scientific knowledge can bring to philosophy. Many of his ideas may not be new today, but were visionary then.

The Purpose

I am on the fourth floor of USC’s Levey Library. I look out the window to my right; I face the south – I see the Aerospace Museum, MacArthur Quad and much of the USC campus with its summer-school students - they look like ants at this distance.

I look again, and this time, I see a world devout of meaning but with a purpose – a utilitarian purpose. I see that every atom that we lay our hands on is put to use. The trees are planted, aligned and trimmed to efficiently provide greenery to the campus, oxygen to the city and shade for the students. The grass lawns are cut and watered daily to remove the feeling of claustrophobia in an urban environment. The red rock of a San Diego query has been cut into identically shaped blocks and placed on the ground with a repetitive pattern to soothe our obsessive compulsive personalities.

Granted, this is not actually bad, I at times enjoy the look of my campus – it really does remove the feeling of claustrophobia brought out by the city. But it’s the omnipresence of this feeling that bothers me. Everywhere, nature is harvested and given a purpose to serve us humans. National parks are no longer just “nature” – they are locations for people to escape the stressful urban environment in a “pseudo-natural” manner. Fruits, vegetables, and animals are no longer creatures that roam this land, they are our nutritional requirements – we farm them – we use them. And now, humans are taught in schools, colleges and academies to further our evolution – to be used as machines.

All of this is done by man and none of it is done the way nature intended it to be.

Before, there was an anarchic beauty to the world, things that were needed, existed, things that were not, did not.

Is this wrong? I honestly don’t know.

The Consciousness of the Subconscious

I am a shepherd with a growing flock. That young mongrel mutt of mine, the one I’ve spent so long training, he’s ran away. I find myself alone with the little that belongs to me using all my power to keep it. I know he’s just sitting at a distance beaming at me – laughing. He will come back when he’ll be ready, I won’t push him or punish him when he returns.

I herd these sheep – I love my doing. I love that I have nowhere to come home to. Am I lying to myself? Sleeping amongst the stars, the recurring dream wakes me often. It seldom varies in its ambiance. It’s always same, the realization, the feelings; they all surge at me when I wake. Why can’t I think in my dream? Dreams are thoughts after all. I suppose what makes a dream so beautiful is the absence of our obscene associations – that obscene consciousness that is created by society – that which we are born without.

I float on a raft on foggy waters. I paddle hard with my hands. All to naught. I move slowly – no worries of hitting an unseen object – this is the void. The fog is comforting – almost cozy. Sometimes, the fog may disappear entirely in the blink of an eye, and in such, all I see is more stagnant waters. I learn I am in a calm, stale sea with no land in sight – just water, all else is mirages I think to myself. I sometimes see more fog ahead, perhaps it hides another raft... perhaps these waters are infested with wondering souls. An illusion? Perhaps this is a world of likely beings all floating on a desolate planet of pure water. Perhaps we aren’t even beings. Perhaps I’m one of the few that has no cozy fog. Perhaps I know nothing.

Accepting the world outside the fog is not comforting, and worst of all, each time the fog returns, it becomes denser and the coziness weakens. What of a life of such? It’s simple. Every human being will find a niche in any world. They will either meet another raft (continuing to drift, but now in company) or they will find a part of the fog that satisfies them for some absurd reason only logical to them. Some may manage to emerge, close their eyes and drift forever in hopelessness for every rafter knows in his soul the promise of unseen land. That is why we paddle and do not dive off.

Only those who are mad enough to seek land underwater find it – bliss awaits them.

And here I am, just sitting waiting for my dog...

The Gull

Overt your eyes, you gazing flock, for I despise and dread you.
Deceiving eyes attempt to mock the lackings of your stale brew

A fish, a bird, a sea, a dive, you live a seagull’s life
And little interests is to me the sound of your small fife.

My intellect may speak to me but eyes can see, can feel.
Alas I may not prove myself to freedom that I will

And so, today, I gaze at you as you may spread your wings
A flap, another, off you soar to see what morrow brings.

A Voice in the Crowd

The true free living human-being is the one that achieves his dream without depending on someone. -Lao Tzu

This somewhat Nietzschean quote justly expresses my highest aspirations and gives good clues as to why I want to become a permaculture designer and horticulturist - as well as to what my stance about relationships is. Although autonomy is an illusion, developing understanding and control makes me feel alive and whole.

The various musings that have punctuated my waking hours for the last couple years have brought along gentle change. Like Anemoi slowly sculpting a dune, gusts of different intensities have given shape to my worldview, my sense of identity, and a sense of connection with my intuitions. The dune remains at the mercy of yet stronger winds in the future, collecting grains of sand from other dunes, but its body is essentially formed. An everlasting work-in-progress with boundaries in flux but boundaries nonetheless.

My exploration of personality theories, Yoga, Buddhism, a plethora of novels, the works and teachings of various philosophers and spiritual guides, social psychology and the world of pick up artists, as well as plenty of experiences with friends, strangers and family, abroad or home, have given me a sense of what is my "natural mode of interaction" with my environment. I have developed a certain capacity to isolate and listen to my voice within the sounds of the choir.

Despite embracing the concept of an "interrelatedness of all things" and knowing the crucial importance of learning lessons through a wide variety of experiences in order to grow, - many including other people - I am decidedly not a man of dogma, shunning "belonging for the sake of belonging" and prizing autonomy above everything else. I am one of Thoreau's men who hears a different drummer. Schopenhauer's self-heating porcupine. An arrogant prick who nonetheless holds compassion as the ultimate standard. A man doomed to be an apostate, who needs to create his own reality, who runs away from isms, knowing that even when he might be on his own, he will always belong to some abstract community. The somewhat moderate ascetic who shares the Stoicist's suspicion that overindulgence bogs down while peace of mind frees.

No, I do not wish to escape society by seeking refuge in a garden. There is too much to learn from others and to share. What I do wish is a livelihood which is compassionate, wholesome, demanding, frugal, solitary, within nature but where I have a certain amount of control over my environment and can satisfy my desire to constantly learn and grow good sense while playing with variables on a macroscopic scale (variables less dramatic than those of the shepherd Tim). If I do take "the one seat", permaculture horticulture would be a great one.

On the Edge - Climbing in the Alpilles

Allez Daniel ! Encore deux dégaines et t'y es !

The sun is scorching, the limestone scalding the fingertips. The mind is struggling not to overheat and the legs are riddled with prickling scratches, the shoulders frying.

The index and middle fingers are bleeding. Who knew a single phalanx structure could develop so much strength through training? Countless times locking in chalked tiny holds, these worn precious tools had to compensate too often for weaknesses in the rest of the body - for the not always calibrated sense of unwavering balance yoga should bring. The time is now. The body is what it is, the mind is itself - a monkey mind. In the present there is little choice, the veteran phalanges and the powerful arms go back to work.

Five meters above the last quickdraw, there is no room for hesitation. A single mistake and the fall will only be stopped by the ground 10 meters below. Dammit! I thought safety was always complete on a climbing route. What an idiot. Past a certain level threshold it is assumed that you are either an agile daredevil or very experienced.

Too much training indoors and none on cliffs leads to this kind of frightening realization. The physical capacity to comfortably complete 5.11 routes should mean a near-zero risk of falling on easier sections. Because of this, bolts can be spaced up to six or seven meters apart during simpler parts of the route. If you fall while trying to pass the rope through the quickdraw seven meters above the last bolt, you will descend at least 14 meters in full inertia. Unfortunately, you may not be more than 14 meters above the ground when you fail to pass the rope.

Once the third bolt is passed, you are generally "safe". This is when performance peaks. A fall could mean rope burns, cuts, contusions, or worse, a fracture - maybe even traumatic brain injury, but very rarely irreversible damage. Enough fear to remain 100% alert, enough security to express yourself on the rock. What a rush!

The sling is attached to the anchor. Looking down 35 meters, elation and pride are savored. A village in the distance, olive groves, voices from below, fellow climbers like ants climbing on other routes. Time to let go and enjoy a long descent.

Get in my belly! $200 burger?

"The burger's ingredients include the following: Japanese wagyu beef, white truffles, onions fried in Cristal champagne, topped with pink Himalayan rock salt. The burger's ingredients include the following: Japanese wagyu beef, white truffles, onions fried in Cristal champagne, topped with pink Himalayan rock salt. "

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Filth!

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Hypocrisy Now!

http://tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=764

Ok, so the numbers are a little manipulated here, but it works out to 19.3 times the energy consumption of an "average" American home. Of course, one would need to know what homes this "average" is based on (size and location) as well as that of Al Gore. But this doesn't change the fact that he is a total hypocrite.

Diesel Love Vs. Love Electric

Diesel Love

As you are probably well aware of now, I've been obsessing over Diesel engines recently since they are, in my personal opinion (and facts will back me up on this), the best small combustion engines you can have (efficient, powerful, reliable). To give you a little taste of diesels, here's a little comparison of Diesels with Gas powered engines* (sources vary the numbers):

	Gas	Diesel
Energy Efficiency rating	20%-30%	25%-45%
Energy Density of the Fuel	150k BTU/Gal	166k BTU/Gal
AVG DIST on Engine Lifetime	200k miles	350k miles
AVG Cost of 98 E320 Mercedes	$8k	$18k

*150k BTU/GAL for biodiesel and 100k BTU/GAL for ethanol (these are Imperial Gallons). Averages based on experience and personal research (the rest you can find anywhere online).

There is only a single disadvantage to diesels, and that's the Horsepower (the torque is far superior to gasoline engines though). This renders diesel engines poor for sports use (max speed is lower than for gasoline engines).

In short, the engine is amazing.

But wait, there's more. Diesels can run on biodiesel (here's info on why this the best thing since sliced bread - which I make). If you don't feel like reading that page, here's the gist of it: it reduces emissions, it is more efficient, it is easy to make and it can be made from algae (which thrives on CO2 and NO gases - filtering them).

'nough said.


Love Electric

Well, electric engines, are completely different from combustion engines; they are quiet, have a very high range of RPMs, can be easily repaired, have absolutely zero emissions and have a nearly flat torque and power curve (great for racing). The only issue is that the technology has not quite reached the level necessary to market it on a global scale and it requires the evolution of other technologies that have not yet been invented (fusion) in order to make it truly ecological and worthy of our use.

Hydrogen powered, fuel cell vehicles are conceptually great because they have all the benefits of electric engines but don't leach off the power grid directly enabling companies to manage their energy production more efficiently and give us the potential to evolve the technology. However, hydrogen storage is ridiculously expensive and very inefficient (tank takes up the space of an entire car trunk). This will take some time to be marketable.


Well, what I was getting to here, was that currently, we need to switch to biodiesel, 10 years from now, to electricity and then, finally to fuel cells thus allowing the petroleum companies to die slowly or adapt electricity as their main energy production (dropping crude oil).

So, hold on, I'm-a-coming - I'm jumping on the biodiesel wagon.

Living Together

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told—in the English phrase—to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself.

-Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

Freedom and Predetermination

Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.

This is a famous aphorism from Schopenhauer I enjoy quoting, like you fellow blog contributors might have noticed.

Will is the instincts which move and drive man, make him act. It is a notion very much akin to Spinoza's Desire.

For Spinoza, "Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being; and the endeavor wherewith a thing seeks to persist in its own being is nothing else than the actual essence of that thing."

What drives this endeavor to survive is Desire and it is our very essence as human beings - the source and reason for all our actions. This closely resembles Schopenhauer's Will, doesn't it?

This is Darwinism pushed to the extreme. Every single human activity is about survival of the individual, the species or the group. A theory compatible with Tim's worldview if I am not mistaken. :)

There is no free will; the necessities of survival determine instinct, instincts determines desire, and desire determines thought and action.

Thank you Will Durant for expressing this clearly - The Story of Philosophy, page 136

But remember this from Schopenhauer's quote, even if all human activity is predetermined, we as individual can choose whether or not we do what we wish.

In life, the die is not necessarily cast. Let's divide the dice of life into three sets.

1. The die of genetics, the social background die and the die of instincts, desire and human cognition. This set of dice is cast before birth.
2. Each action leads to irreversible change even if only to an extremely small degree. In this set a die is cast with each action.
3. We have the freedom to act. We can create change in our life, try to take it in the direction we are aiming for. This set of dice can be cast over and over indefinitely.

We have the opportunity to throw die #3 as we please. Let us indulge, it is our only freedom, even if this "freedom" is a mere subset of a system where all is determined.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal. -Schopenhauer

We are links in the chain of evolution. The adaptation mechanisms at stake are outside our control and drive our actions, but with little decisions within this framework we make the whole chain hold.

Even if it is predetermined by dice sets #1 and #2, the die of change - die #3 - gives meaning to our lives.

Stoicism, Lucretius and the Collapse of Societies

Nothing can be created from nothing

Christianity had a predecessor as the major system of thought in Europe. Stoicism had very little in common with the religion which effectively separated man from nature to make him God's child. Justinian understood that a stoicist world view was too pagan in essence to allow it to coexist with the new-found dogma and the unifying political potential it presented.

"Everything is right for me, which is right for you, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which comes in due time for you. Everything is fruit to me which your seasons bring, O Nature. From you are all things, in you are all things, to you all things return." -Marcus Aurelius

However, Stoicism and its values such as Virtue were the dominant philosophy which shaped the livelihood of leaders and citizens in late Hellenism and then in the Roman Empire.

Its meditative approach to life and the central concept of ataraxia - absence of turmoil through detachment - is reminiscent of equanimity and reveals rooting or at least similarity with Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies.

"Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one's desires, but by the removal of desire." -Epictetus

What sets it apart from Paganism and Eastern thought is its obvious place in the lineage of other Greek schools which hold pure logos - rationality, thought, scientific dialectics - as the compass and arbiter of all decisions, behaviors and judgments.

"The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind." -Lucretius

Lucretius - the soberly lyrical observer, reminds me of Lao Tzu in his capacity to see what is timeless. Ovid, in his Amores, writes: "Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti / exitio terras cum dabit una dies" (which means the verses of the sublime Lucretius will perish only when a day will bring the end of the world). Everything experiences the inevitable dance of the cosmos: gestation, birth, growth, maturity, decline, illness, death. Not only is life caught up in the cycle but also societies, systems, ideologies, objects. All that remains is the stage - the universe - a patient spectator.

"Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortals live dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life." -Lucretius

Lucretius probably never doubted the Roman Empire would overextend itself and that its power would dwindle and that it would eventually be replaced.

Societies and economical systems collapse. It is inevitable.

In the video below, a parallel is drawn between our global oil-based economy and the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
"According to Professor Guy Prouty, every civilization rises, evolves, and then collapses to a simpler structure — and this will include our own. Comparing America with the Western Roman Empire, Prouty notes the over-reach of our military, the unsustainability of capitalism, peak oil, and climate change. And, this time, we may see a global collapse. Transitioning to a simpler society will require us to change behavior and consciousness: decrease energy, get out of debt, decentralize, de-consume, grow our own food, build community, see ourselves as connected to the planet. Collapse is not the end, he says. It’s part of a natural cycle."
(PeakMomentTV)



Who knows? We might start hearing the whispers of Epicurians and Stoicists again in a few decades...