WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.620 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:05.639 opening up a file that I think a lot of us think 00:00:05.639 --> 00:00:08.039 we know, but if we're honest, we've probably 00:00:08.039 --> 00:00:10.419 got the polar opposite of the truth. We were 00:00:10.419 --> 00:00:12.980 talking about Epicurus. Right. And I have to 00:00:12.980 --> 00:00:16.519 say, looking at the prep material, I felt a little 00:00:16.519 --> 00:00:20.640 called out. Called out? How do you mean? Well... 00:00:20.839 --> 00:00:22.699 You know, when I hear the word Epicurean, I get 00:00:22.699 --> 00:00:24.859 this very specific image in my head. I'm thinking 00:00:24.859 --> 00:00:27.539 like a Friday night where I blow half my paycheck 00:00:27.539 --> 00:00:30.179 on some crazy tasting menu, maybe a bottle of 00:00:30.179 --> 00:00:34.060 Barolo. Just pure indulgence, you know. The magazine 00:00:34.060 --> 00:00:37.140 Epicure is all about high -end food. Epicurean 00:00:37.140 --> 00:00:39.590 delights means luxury. Of course. But then I 00:00:39.590 --> 00:00:41.549 open up the source material and I'm reading about 00:00:41.549 --> 00:00:43.570 a guy who's living on bread and water in a garden 00:00:43.570 --> 00:00:45.890 somewhere complaining about stomach aches. It 00:00:45.890 --> 00:00:47.929 just feels like a massive bait and switch. It 00:00:47.929 --> 00:00:50.890 is probably the single greatest branding failure 00:00:50.890 --> 00:00:53.369 in the history of philosophy. Yeah. Or maybe 00:00:53.369 --> 00:00:55.789 it's the most successful smear campaign. It really 00:00:55.789 --> 00:00:57.890 depends on how you look at it. Because if the 00:00:57.890 --> 00:01:00.649 real Epicurus, the actual man, walked into that 00:01:00.649 --> 00:01:03.109 Michelin star restaurant you're picturing, he 00:01:03.109 --> 00:01:05.650 wouldn't just be confused. I mean, he'd be horrified. 00:01:05.950 --> 00:01:07.909 He'd probably look at that tasting menu. and 00:01:07.909 --> 00:01:11.629 see it as a recipe for misery. Like misery. That 00:01:11.629 --> 00:01:13.409 seems like a bit of a stretch. I mean, truffles 00:01:13.409 --> 00:01:16.230 are rarely miserable. For him, they were. Or, 00:01:16.349 --> 00:01:20.250 to be more precise, the need for them was. The 00:01:20.250 --> 00:01:22.150 premise we have to start with is that Epicurus 00:01:22.150 --> 00:01:25.469 wasn't a party animal. He wasn't a foodie. He 00:01:25.469 --> 00:01:27.909 was a system builder. And his whole system, it 00:01:27.909 --> 00:01:30.109 wasn't designed to maximize fun in the way we 00:01:30.109 --> 00:01:32.909 think of it now. It was designed to cure a very 00:01:32.909 --> 00:01:36.049 specific disease. And what's the disease? Anxiety. 00:01:36.569 --> 00:01:39.129 Fear. Mental disturbance. So he's not a chef. 00:01:39.209 --> 00:01:41.310 He's a therapist. He's more like a trauma surgeon 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:43.650 for the human soul. I mean, you have to put yourself 00:01:43.650 --> 00:01:45.849 in his shoes. This man lived in a time of absolute 00:01:45.849 --> 00:01:48.950 chaos. Alexander the Great dies and his whole 00:01:48.950 --> 00:01:51.129 empire just shatters. Right. The wars of the 00:01:51.129 --> 00:01:54.569 Diadochi. Exactly. His generals are just fighting 00:01:54.569 --> 00:01:56.810 over the scraps. Cities are being razed. Political 00:01:56.810 --> 00:02:00.129 alliances shift overnight. The world felt dangerous 00:02:00.129 --> 00:02:03.930 and just completely random. So Epicurus looks 00:02:03.930 --> 00:02:06.150 at the human condition and he asks a really fundamental 00:02:06.150 --> 00:02:10.360 question. Why are we all so terrified all the 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:13.259 time, and how do we make the pain stop? That 00:02:13.259 --> 00:02:16.080 is a much heavier starting point than eat, drink, 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:19.099 and be merry. It's so much deeper. And to understand 00:02:19.099 --> 00:02:21.479 his answer, we have to treat his philosophy as 00:02:21.479 --> 00:02:24.000 a complete package. We can't just cherry -pick 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:25.900 the pleasure part and ignore the rest. We have 00:02:25.900 --> 00:02:28.120 to look at his physics, his theory of knowledge, 00:02:28.219 --> 00:02:31.240 and his ethics as one giant interconnected machine. 00:02:31.599 --> 00:02:34.340 And it's all designed for one purpose. One purpose? 00:02:34.659 --> 00:02:38.639 To produce ataraxia. tranquility, peace of mind. 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:40.379 So where are we getting all this from? What are 00:02:40.379 --> 00:02:42.099 the sources? Well, we're pulling from a pretty 00:02:42.099 --> 00:02:43.800 wide stack today to piece this all together. 00:02:44.020 --> 00:02:46.439 We've got the biography by Diogenes Laercys, 00:02:46.539 --> 00:02:48.020 which is, you know, where we get a lot of the 00:02:48.020 --> 00:02:50.659 juicy personal details. He's always the guy with 00:02:50.659 --> 00:02:54.159 the gossip. He is. Then we have some of Epicurus' 00:02:54.280 --> 00:02:57.740 own surviving letters. The letter to Menoetius, 00:02:58.020 --> 00:03:00.919 which is a summary of his ethics, and letters 00:03:00.919 --> 00:03:03.919 to Herodotus and Pythocles on physics. And then 00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:07.539 we have the big one. The massive epic poem by 00:03:07.539 --> 00:03:10.159 the Roman poet Lucretius called Dererum Natura. 00:03:10.340 --> 00:03:12.280 On the nature of things. And that's basically 00:03:12.280 --> 00:03:14.259 the Epicurean Bible, but written in verse. That's 00:03:14.259 --> 00:03:16.580 a great way to put it. It's a six book epic poem 00:03:16.580 --> 00:03:20.099 that preserves the entire physical system. Honestly, 00:03:20.199 --> 00:03:22.199 without Lucretius, we'd have lost half of it. 00:03:22.539 --> 00:03:25.000 The Christian world did its best to erase him. 00:03:25.519 --> 00:03:27.860 So our mission today is to rebuild that system. 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:30.039 We need to understand why a guy obsessed with 00:03:30.039 --> 00:03:31.979 atoms thought that was the key to being happy. 00:03:32.180 --> 00:03:33.900 Okay, let's start with the man himself then. 00:03:33.979 --> 00:03:36.039 You mentioned the chaos of the time. Was he born 00:03:36.039 --> 00:03:38.000 right in the middle of it? He was born directly 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.400 into it. February 341 BC on the island of Samos. 00:03:42.020 --> 00:03:45.199 Now his parents, Neocles and Cheristrate, they 00:03:45.199 --> 00:03:47.960 were Athenians, but they were colonists, settlers. 00:03:48.099 --> 00:03:49.599 Okay, so they weren't locals. That would have 00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:52.699 made them outsiders. Exactly. And that sort of 00:03:52.699 --> 00:03:55.659 precarious status really defined his early life. 00:03:55.780 --> 00:03:58.740 Because when Epicurus was about 18, so basically 00:03:58.740 --> 00:04:01.759 college age, the politics shifted again. The 00:04:01.759 --> 00:04:04.319 native Samians, backed by a Macedonian general, 00:04:04.599 --> 00:04:07.360 kicked the Athenians out. So his family became 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:11.080 refugees. Overnight, they had to flee to Colophon, 00:04:11.180 --> 00:04:13.159 which is on the coast of modern -day Turkey. 00:04:13.419 --> 00:04:17.110 Wow. That's a rough start. It is absolutely crucial 00:04:17.110 --> 00:04:20.009 context. If you ever wonder why Epicurus later 00:04:20.009 --> 00:04:22.449 preached life hidden and don't get involved in 00:04:22.449 --> 00:04:24.670 politics, you just have to look at his youth. 00:04:24.910 --> 00:04:28.089 He saw firsthand that political power is completely 00:04:28.089 --> 00:04:30.829 unstable. One day you're a citizen with a home. 00:04:30.970 --> 00:04:33.129 The next day you're a refugee with nothing. It 00:04:33.129 --> 00:04:35.170 must have instilled a really deep craving for 00:04:35.170 --> 00:04:37.730 security. A fortress. Yeah. A place where the 00:04:37.730 --> 00:04:40.610 world couldn't hurt him. So this refugee is looking 00:04:40.610 --> 00:04:43.089 for answers. Where does he go? Who did he learn 00:04:43.089 --> 00:04:45.410 from? Who were his teachers? Well, the says he 00:04:45.410 --> 00:04:47.870 studied under a Platonist named Pamphilus and 00:04:47.870 --> 00:04:50.610 then later a man named Nosiphanes who was a follower 00:04:50.610 --> 00:04:53.009 of Democritus. And Democritus is the original 00:04:53.009 --> 00:04:56.350 atom guy? He's the OG atomist. The guy who first 00:04:56.350 --> 00:04:59.470 proposed that the world is made of atomos. These 00:04:59.470 --> 00:05:03.750 tiny uncuttable particles. Now clearly Epicurus 00:05:03.750 --> 00:05:06.649 learned a huge amount from these guys. His entire 00:05:06.649 --> 00:05:10.149 physics is basically a remix of Democritus. But 00:05:10.149 --> 00:05:11.310 here's where you get a little glimpse of his 00:05:11.310 --> 00:05:13.990 personality. Oh yeah. He hated admitting it. 00:05:14.110 --> 00:05:17.139 He absolutely refused to give them credit. Wait, 00:05:17.180 --> 00:05:19.259 really? He wanted all the credit for himself. 00:05:19.639 --> 00:05:23.000 He claimed to be self -taught. He publicly called 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:26.360 Nosiphanes a mollusk. A mollusk. Yeah, basically 00:05:26.360 --> 00:05:28.920 calling him spineless. He said all his predecessors 00:05:28.920 --> 00:05:31.040 were just confused and that he discovered the 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:33.300 truth all on his own. So he sounds a little bit 00:05:33.300 --> 00:05:36.230 arrogant. Or maybe insecure. It might have been 00:05:36.230 --> 00:05:38.110 a bit of both, but you could also see it as really 00:05:38.110 --> 00:05:39.990 smart branding. He was trying to set up a new 00:05:39.990 --> 00:05:43.329 school, a rival to Plato's famous academy and 00:05:43.329 --> 00:05:46.430 Aristotle's Lyceum. And you can't just say, hey, 00:05:46.470 --> 00:05:48.089 I'm teaching the same stuff as those guys down 00:05:48.089 --> 00:05:50.839 the road. Exactly. You need a unique selling 00:05:50.839 --> 00:05:54.800 proposition. So in 306 BC, he moves to Athens, 00:05:55.079 --> 00:05:57.339 the philosophical center of the world. And he 00:05:57.339 --> 00:05:59.319 does something really radical. He doesn't buy 00:05:59.319 --> 00:06:02.300 a grand public building or a gymnasium. He buys 00:06:02.300 --> 00:06:05.079 a house with a garden. The famous garden. The 00:06:05.079 --> 00:06:07.360 garden. And the location itself is symbolic. 00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:10.079 It was located just outside the city walls of 00:06:10.079 --> 00:06:12.160 Athens, sort of in between the Stoa, where the 00:06:12.160 --> 00:06:14.560 Stoics would later teach, and Plato's Academy. 00:06:15.180 --> 00:06:18.420 And this physical location really matters. The 00:06:18.420 --> 00:06:21.199 academy was an institution. The SOA was a public 00:06:21.199 --> 00:06:24.040 porch, the garden. It was a home. It sounds much 00:06:24.040 --> 00:06:26.000 more like a commune than a university. It was 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:27.959 absolutely a commune. They lived there. They 00:06:27.959 --> 00:06:30.860 shared meals. Epicurus didn't believe in forcing 00:06:30.860 --> 00:06:32.579 people to give up all their private property. 00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:34.639 He actually thought that created resentment and 00:06:34.639 --> 00:06:36.980 distrust. But they essentially pooled their resources 00:06:36.980 --> 00:06:39.379 to support the community. And the guest list 00:06:39.379 --> 00:06:42.139 for this commune was the biggest scandal in Athens. 00:06:42.199 --> 00:06:45.720 That was the thing. Everyone. While Aristotle 00:06:45.720 --> 00:06:48.540 is over at the Lyceum teaching that women are 00:06:48.540 --> 00:06:51.459 biologically inferior and that some people are 00:06:51.459 --> 00:06:54.939 just natural. born slaves, Epicurus is opening 00:06:54.939 --> 00:06:57.839 his gate to women and slaves as full members 00:06:57.839 --> 00:06:59.800 of the school. That must have ruffled a lot of 00:06:59.800 --> 00:07:02.139 feathers in polite society. It was completely 00:07:02.139 --> 00:07:05.040 shocking. You had highborn women like Themista, 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:08.680 who was a student, but you also had courtesans, 00:07:08.680 --> 00:07:11.199 you know, sex workers living and studying as 00:07:11.199 --> 00:07:14.120 equals with the male philosophers. But me? Yes. 00:07:14.589 --> 00:07:16.750 We know some of their names. There's a woman 00:07:16.750 --> 00:07:18.970 named Leona Kuhn, who was apparently a brilliant 00:07:18.970 --> 00:07:21.550 writer and philosopher in her own right. She 00:07:21.550 --> 00:07:23.750 even wrote a treatise attacking Theophrastus, 00:07:23.769 --> 00:07:25.790 who was Aristotle's successor as the head of 00:07:25.790 --> 00:07:28.329 the Lyceum. Hold on. A courtesan wrote a philosophical 00:07:28.329 --> 00:07:30.970 takedown of the most prominent Aristotelian of 00:07:30.970 --> 00:07:33.750 his day. Yes. And the establishment, as you can 00:07:33.750 --> 00:07:36.759 imagine, hated it. Centuries later, you have 00:07:36.759 --> 00:07:39.540 the Roman orator Cicero still clutching his pearls 00:07:39.540 --> 00:07:41.300 about it, complaining that a little courtesan 00:07:41.300 --> 00:07:44.300 dared to criticize a great philosopher. But for 00:07:44.300 --> 00:07:47.000 Epicurus, the logic was simple. Does this person 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:49.660 have a mind? Can they feel pain and anxiety? 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:51.920 And they need philosophy. Then they need philosophy. 00:07:52.160 --> 00:07:54.899 It wasn't an intellectual social club. It was 00:07:54.899 --> 00:07:57.879 a hospital for the soul. And you don't turn away 00:07:57.879 --> 00:07:59.660 sick people because of their gender or their 00:07:59.660 --> 00:08:02.220 social status. That metaphor of the hospital 00:08:02.220 --> 00:08:04.480 is really interesting. Because it implies that 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:07.660 everyone outside the garden is, well, sick. That's 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:10.360 exactly how they saw it. To them, mainstream 00:08:10.360 --> 00:08:13.680 society is a madhouse. It's driven by ambition, 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:17.560 fear, superstition, the pursuit of empty desires. 00:08:17.959 --> 00:08:21.120 The garden is the sanctuary. It's the sanatorium. 00:08:21.459 --> 00:08:24.000 And Epicurus was the head doctor. But he wasn't 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:25.889 alone, right? There was a core group. He had 00:08:25.889 --> 00:08:28.209 a core group of guides, people like Metrodorus, 00:08:28.449 --> 00:08:31.569 Hermarchus, and Polyenus. And by all accounts, 00:08:31.670 --> 00:08:33.850 they were an incredibly tight -knit group. They 00:08:33.850 --> 00:08:35.370 weren't just colleagues. They were best friends. 00:08:35.669 --> 00:08:37.870 So did he practice what he preached right up 00:08:37.870 --> 00:08:40.250 to the end? I mean, it's one thing to be a chill, 00:08:40.289 --> 00:08:42.870 tranquil philosopher when you're healthy and 00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:45.330 life is good. That is the ultimate test, isn't 00:08:45.330 --> 00:08:48.870 it? And Epicurus died in 270 BC at the age of 00:08:48.870 --> 00:08:52.129 72. And he died the hard way. He developed a 00:08:52.129 --> 00:08:54.070 blockage of his urinary tract, almost certainly 00:08:54.070 --> 00:08:57.470 caused by kidney stones. Oof. I've heard kidney 00:08:57.470 --> 00:09:00.049 stones described as pretty much the worst pain 00:09:00.049 --> 00:09:02.289 a human being can experience. And you can add 00:09:02.289 --> 00:09:04.950 dysentery to that as well. So it was a slow, 00:09:04.950 --> 00:09:08.309 agonizing, too -weak decline. But this is where 00:09:08.309 --> 00:09:10.710 the philosophy stops being abstract and gets 00:09:10.710 --> 00:09:13.850 tested in the real world. On what he knew was 00:09:13.850 --> 00:09:16.190 his last day, he wrote a letter to his friend, 00:09:16.350 --> 00:09:19.409 Idomeneus. And a version of it survives. What 00:09:19.409 --> 00:09:21.940 does he say? Get me some morphine. He writes, 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:24.100 and I'm paraphrasing here, on this truly happy 00:09:24.100 --> 00:09:26.139 day of my life, as I am at the point of death, 00:09:26.259 --> 00:09:29.019 I write this to you. The disease in my bladder 00:09:29.019 --> 00:09:31.360 and stomach are pursuing their course, lacking 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:33.639 nothing of their natural severity. So he's not 00:09:33.639 --> 00:09:35.899 downplaying it. He's admitting the pain is maxed 00:09:35.899 --> 00:09:38.279 out. He is. He's totally honest about the physical 00:09:38.279 --> 00:09:41.240 reality. But then he says, but set against all 00:09:41.240 --> 00:09:43.539 this is the joy in my heart at the recollection 00:09:43.539 --> 00:09:45.779 of my conversations with you. And he ends the 00:09:45.779 --> 00:09:47.960 letter by asking Odominus to take care of the 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:49.720 children of their friend Metrodorus, who had 00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:51.830 died earlier. OK, I have to play the skeptic 00:09:51.830 --> 00:09:54.409 for a second. Is that real or is that just him 00:09:54.409 --> 00:09:56.409 trying to, you know, look tough for the history 00:09:56.409 --> 00:09:59.210 books? I'm in agony, but my brain is so powerful 00:09:59.210 --> 00:10:02.049 I don't feel it. It sounds a little bit like 00:10:02.049 --> 00:10:04.750 stoic bravado. It does sound like it, but the 00:10:04.750 --> 00:10:07.450 mechanism is actually very different. A stoic 00:10:07.450 --> 00:10:09.789 might say something like pain is not an evil. 00:10:10.370 --> 00:10:13.029 Epicurus says, no, pain is absolutely an evil. 00:10:13.049 --> 00:10:15.330 It's the worst thing. He's not denying the sensation 00:10:15.330 --> 00:10:17.690 at all. So what's he doing? He's engaging in 00:10:17.690 --> 00:10:20.389 a kind of mental balancing act. He believed the 00:10:20.389 --> 00:10:22.830 mind has a unique capacity that the body lacks. 00:10:23.309 --> 00:10:26.730 It can travel through time. His body was trapped 00:10:26.730 --> 00:10:29.590 in the painful present, right? But he was forcing 00:10:29.590 --> 00:10:32.149 his mind to dwell in the past, on the pleasant 00:10:32.149 --> 00:10:34.529 memories of friendship and philosophical conversation. 00:10:35.049 --> 00:10:37.970 He was literally using nostalgia as an analgesic. 00:10:38.009 --> 00:10:40.269 So he's basically just distracting himself. It's 00:10:40.269 --> 00:10:42.850 more than distraction. He's counterbalancing. 00:10:43.169 --> 00:10:45.289 He's flooding the scales of his consciousness 00:10:45.289 --> 00:10:48.529 with positive mental data to outweigh the negative 00:10:48.529 --> 00:10:51.610 physical data. It's a learned technique. And 00:10:51.610 --> 00:10:53.850 whether it worked perfectly or not, the fact 00:10:53.850 --> 00:10:56.129 that he was coherent enough to be writing letters 00:10:56.129 --> 00:10:58.389 about caring for his friend's kids while dying 00:10:58.389 --> 00:11:01.929 of kidney failure, it suggests he wasn't completely 00:11:01.929 --> 00:11:04.990 consumed by self -pity. It's an impressive exit. 00:11:05.049 --> 00:11:06.950 I'll definitely give him that. Yeah. But to get 00:11:06.950 --> 00:11:09.149 to that level of mental control, we have to dig 00:11:09.149 --> 00:11:11.460 into this system. And this is where the listener 00:11:11.460 --> 00:11:13.659 might get thrown off because the system starts 00:11:13.659 --> 00:11:16.740 with physics. Yes, the foundation. Right. And 00:11:16.740 --> 00:11:18.799 if I go to a therapist today because I have anxiety 00:11:18.799 --> 00:11:20.580 and they start talking about protons and electrons 00:11:20.580 --> 00:11:22.639 and quantum mechanics, I'm walking out of that 00:11:22.639 --> 00:11:25.559 office. Why did Epicurus think you need to know 00:11:25.559 --> 00:11:28.879 about atoms to be happy? Because he had a different 00:11:28.879 --> 00:11:31.080 diagnosis for the root cause of our anxiety. 00:11:31.299 --> 00:11:33.799 In the ancient world, the world was alive with 00:11:33.799 --> 00:11:36.279 invisible threats. If lightning struck a tree, 00:11:36.460 --> 00:11:38.600 it wasn't a discharge of static electricity. 00:11:39.019 --> 00:11:42.279 It was Zeus. He was angry. Exactly. If the Earth 00:11:42.279 --> 00:11:45.740 shook, it was Poseidon in a rage. If you got 00:11:45.740 --> 00:11:48.179 sick, it was Apollo shooting plague arrows at 00:11:48.179 --> 00:11:50.659 you. You were constantly being watched, judged, 00:11:50.919 --> 00:11:53.639 and potentially punished by these volatile, invisible 00:11:53.639 --> 00:11:56.019 superpowers. It's basically paranoia on a cosmic 00:11:56.019 --> 00:11:58.379 scale. It is. And Epicurus realized that you 00:11:58.379 --> 00:12:00.980 can never, ever be truly tranquil if you think 00:12:00.980 --> 00:12:03.419 a capricious god might crush you at any moment 00:12:03.419 --> 00:12:06.820 for any reason. So he needed a way to... well, 00:12:06.919 --> 00:12:09.259 to kill the gods, not literally he thought gods 00:12:09.259 --> 00:12:11.740 existed, but to kill their involvement in the 00:12:11.740 --> 00:12:14.220 natural world. He needed a purely mechanical, 00:12:14.460 --> 00:12:17.320 purely naturalistic explanation for everything. 00:12:17.620 --> 00:12:19.659 And to the atom. And to the atom. If lightning 00:12:19.659 --> 00:12:21.980 is just a certain kind of atom colliding in the 00:12:21.980 --> 00:12:24.340 clouds, then it's not a divine judgment. It's 00:12:24.340 --> 00:12:26.259 just weather. And if it's just weather, you don't 00:12:26.259 --> 00:12:28.559 have to be afraid of it. Physics is the antidote 00:12:28.559 --> 00:12:30.460 to superstition. But didn't he have this weird 00:12:30.460 --> 00:12:35.259 rule about explanations? The principle of multiple 00:12:35.259 --> 00:12:38.379 explanations? Ah, yes. This is the part that 00:12:38.379 --> 00:12:41.000 drives modern scientists completely crazy, but 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:43.039 it makes perfect sense if you remember he's a 00:12:43.039 --> 00:12:45.940 therapist, not a physicist. He said that when 00:12:45.940 --> 00:12:47.620 you're looking at something distant and hard 00:12:47.620 --> 00:12:50.399 to verify, like the phases of the moon or an 00:12:50.399 --> 00:12:53.059 eclipse, if there are three or four plausible 00:12:53.059 --> 00:12:55.919 natural explanations, you should accept all of 00:12:55.919 --> 00:12:58.950 them as possibly true. Wait, even if they contradict 00:12:58.950 --> 00:13:01.470 each other, like if one explanation is the moon 00:13:01.470 --> 00:13:04.090 is a ball of rock reflecting sunlight and another 00:13:04.090 --> 00:13:06.789 is the moon is a bowl of fire that waxes and 00:13:06.789 --> 00:13:10.029 wanes. Yes, exactly. Because from his perspective, 00:13:10.110 --> 00:13:12.210 he doesn't care which one is technically correct. 00:13:12.289 --> 00:13:14.330 He only cares that you accept that the cause 00:13:14.330 --> 00:13:17.009 is natural. As long as a God is doing it is not 00:13:17.009 --> 00:13:19.700 on your list of possibilities. You're safe. The 00:13:19.700 --> 00:13:22.220 goal isn't scientific precision. The goal is 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:24.919 peace of mind. If you obsess over finding the 00:13:24.919 --> 00:13:27.779 one true cause, you just trade one anxiety fear 00:13:27.779 --> 00:13:30.120 of gods for another, the anxiety of not knowing 00:13:30.120 --> 00:13:33.480 for sure. That is pragmatism on steroids. It's 00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:35.019 like, I don't care how the toaster works, just 00:13:35.019 --> 00:13:36.960 convince me there isn't an angry ghost living 00:13:36.960 --> 00:13:40.019 inside it. That is a perfect analogy. Precisely. 00:13:40.200 --> 00:13:42.360 Now, when it comes to the atoms themselves, he 00:13:42.360 --> 00:13:45.500 borrows the basics from Democritus. The universe 00:13:45.500 --> 00:13:48.200 is eternal, and it consists of only two things. 00:13:48.639 --> 00:13:51.399 Matter, which is atoms, and void, which is empty 00:13:51.399 --> 00:13:54.659 space. The atoms are uncuttable, they're infinite 00:13:54.659 --> 00:13:57.320 in number, and they vary in shape, size, and 00:13:57.320 --> 00:13:59.360 weight. Okay, that sounds pretty straightforward. 00:13:59.600 --> 00:14:01.659 And he even had a theory of perception based 00:14:01.659 --> 00:14:04.700 on this. Vision, for example, happens because 00:14:04.700 --> 00:14:07.200 objects are constantly emitting these thin films 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:10.059 of atoms, like a skin, that fly through the air 00:14:10.059 --> 00:14:12.059 and hit our eyes. Like a constant stream of little 00:14:12.059 --> 00:14:15.389 pictures. Right. But he adds a twist to the system 00:14:15.389 --> 00:14:18.450 that Democritus didn't have. And this twist is 00:14:18.450 --> 00:14:21.110 absolutely essential for his ethics. It might 00:14:21.110 --> 00:14:23.669 be the most brilliant and, frankly, weirdest 00:14:23.669 --> 00:14:26.350 part of his entire system. You're talking about 00:14:26.350 --> 00:14:29.669 the swerve. The Klineman. The unpredictable swerve. 00:14:29.669 --> 00:14:31.309 Okay, explain this to me, because it sounds like 00:14:31.309 --> 00:14:34.679 a glitch in the Matrix. So, Democritus' atomism 00:14:34.679 --> 00:14:37.299 had a huge problem, at least from Epicurus' point 00:14:37.299 --> 00:14:40.419 of view. Democritus said that atoms move by necessity. 00:14:40.700 --> 00:14:43.059 They fall through the void. They hit other atoms. 00:14:43.159 --> 00:14:46.019 They bounce off. It's a perfect, unbroken chain 00:14:46.019 --> 00:14:48.620 of cause and effect. Which means everything is 00:14:48.620 --> 00:14:51.669 predetermined. Hard determinism. Exactly. And 00:14:51.669 --> 00:14:54.769 if you knew the position and momentum of every 00:14:54.769 --> 00:14:57.509 single atom in the universe right now, you could 00:14:57.509 --> 00:14:59.870 theoretically predict the entire future with 00:14:59.870 --> 00:15:02.590 perfect accuracy. And that means my choice to 00:15:02.590 --> 00:15:04.789 say pick up this water glass isn't really a choice. 00:15:04.909 --> 00:15:07.590 It was just the inevitable result of atoms banging 00:15:07.590 --> 00:15:09.909 into each other in my brain for billions of years. 00:15:09.990 --> 00:15:12.840 Right. And Epicurus hated this idea. He famously 00:15:12.840 --> 00:15:14.639 said it would be better to believe in the myths 00:15:14.639 --> 00:15:17.419 of the gods than to be a slave to the destiny 00:15:17.419 --> 00:15:20.159 of the physicists. At least with the gods, you 00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:22.100 can try to pray to them or appease them. You 00:15:22.100 --> 00:15:23.899 can't pray to a mathematical equation. It removes 00:15:23.899 --> 00:15:27.259 all human agency. So how does he break the equation? 00:15:27.480 --> 00:15:29.940 How does he escape this prison of determinism? 00:15:30.299 --> 00:15:33.240 He introduces a tiny element of randomness into 00:15:33.240 --> 00:15:36.480 the fabric of reality. He says that as atoms 00:15:36.480 --> 00:15:38.960 fall downwards through the void, at no fixed 00:15:38.960 --> 00:15:41.379 time and in no fixed place, they will occasionally 00:15:41.379 --> 00:15:44.460 swerve. Just a tiny, tiny bit. For no reason. 00:15:44.740 --> 00:15:47.039 Not because they were hit by another atom. For 00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:50.139 no reason at all. It's an uncaused event. A random 00:15:50.139 --> 00:15:53.120 wobble. Okay. Why? What did that get him? It's 00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:55.100 a masterstroke, because that one little wobble 00:15:55.100 --> 00:15:57.720 solves two massive problems for him. The first 00:15:57.720 --> 00:16:01.059 is a physics problem. It explains how atoms collide 00:16:01.059 --> 00:16:03.360 and clump together to create worlds in the first 00:16:03.360 --> 00:16:05.700 place. If they all just fell in perfectly straight 00:16:05.700 --> 00:16:08.000 parallel lines, they'd never interact. Okay, 00:16:08.059 --> 00:16:09.960 that makes sense. But what's the second more 00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:12.399 important problem it solves? It creates a break 00:16:12.399 --> 00:16:14.580 in the chain of fate. It's the physical basis 00:16:14.580 --> 00:16:18.039 for free will. Whoa. So he's trying to find a 00:16:18.039 --> 00:16:20.320 loophole for human freedom in the random motion 00:16:20.320 --> 00:16:23.419 of a single atom. That's it. He argues that this 00:16:23.419 --> 00:16:25.879 random uncaused motion in the atoms that make 00:16:25.879 --> 00:16:28.100 up our soul is the ultimate source of what he 00:16:28.100 --> 00:16:31.080 calls the free volition in living things. It's 00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:33.340 the reason we aren't just biological robots playing 00:16:33.340 --> 00:16:35.620 out a pre -written script. That connects weirdly 00:16:35.620 --> 00:16:39.039 well to like modern quantum mechanics. The idea 00:16:39.039 --> 00:16:40.779 that at the most fundamental level of reality, 00:16:41.019 --> 00:16:43.690 it's all about probability, not certainty. It's 00:16:43.690 --> 00:16:46.909 a stunningly modern intuition. He somehow understood 00:16:46.909 --> 00:16:49.590 that a perfectly ordered, perfectly predictable 00:16:49.590 --> 00:16:52.570 mechanical universe is actually a prison. You 00:16:52.570 --> 00:16:55.370 need a little bit of chaos, a little bit of unpredictability 00:16:55.370 --> 00:16:58.309 to have freedom. OK, so the universe is just 00:16:58.309 --> 00:17:01.169 atoms in void. They swerve around and there are 00:17:01.169 --> 00:17:04.109 no angry gods watching me. I have to admit, I 00:17:04.109 --> 00:17:06.369 feel safer already. But how do we know any of 00:17:06.369 --> 00:17:08.349 this is true? How do we know anything is true? 00:17:08.470 --> 00:17:10.670 He didn't like abstract logic games, did he? 00:17:10.960 --> 00:17:13.759 No, he hated them. He thought Plato was completely 00:17:13.759 --> 00:17:17.480 lost in the clouds with his abstract forms. Epicurus 00:17:17.480 --> 00:17:20.380 was a hardcore empiricist. He believed that all 00:17:20.380 --> 00:17:22.420 knowledge, without exception, comes from the 00:17:22.420 --> 00:17:25.359 senses. And this is his canon, his, like, ruler 00:17:25.359 --> 00:17:27.660 or standard for measuring truth. Correct. The 00:17:27.660 --> 00:17:30.119 canon, or the standard of truth, has three parts. 00:17:30.259 --> 00:17:32.759 And the first one is the most important. Sensation. 00:17:33.039 --> 00:17:35.799 He says that our sensations are always, always 00:17:35.799 --> 00:17:38.220 true. They are irrefutable. Hold on a minute. 00:17:38.559 --> 00:17:41.339 That can't be right. If I have a high fever and 00:17:41.339 --> 00:17:45.220 I eat honey and it tastes bitter to me, my sense 00:17:45.220 --> 00:17:48.900 of taste is telling me this is bitter. But honey 00:17:48.900 --> 00:17:51.849 is sweet. Isn't my sense lying to me? Epicurus 00:17:51.849 --> 00:17:55.049 would say, no. Your tongue is accurately reporting 00:17:55.049 --> 00:17:57.650 the physical interaction between the honey atoms 00:17:57.650 --> 00:18:00.009 and the atoms of your sick, feverish tongue. 00:18:00.369 --> 00:18:03.490 The raw report is true. The error only comes 00:18:03.490 --> 00:18:06.109 in with your opinion or your judgment. Your mind 00:18:06.109 --> 00:18:08.210 jumping to the conclusion the honey itself is 00:18:08.210 --> 00:18:10.490 bitter. Rather than the more accurate conclusion, 00:18:10.829 --> 00:18:12.970 my tongue is messed up right now and this is 00:18:12.970 --> 00:18:14.990 how it's perceiving honey. Okay, that's a very 00:18:14.990 --> 00:18:17.609 subtle but important distinction. He trusts the 00:18:17.609 --> 00:18:20.140 raw data from the sensor. But not the user's 00:18:20.140 --> 00:18:22.680 interpretation of that data. Exactly. Don't shoot 00:18:22.680 --> 00:18:24.900 the messenger. The senses just deliver the mail. 00:18:25.099 --> 00:18:27.359 It's our minds that misread it. All right. What's 00:18:27.359 --> 00:18:29.150 the second part of the canon? The second part 00:18:29.150 --> 00:18:31.950 is prolepsis, which is usually translated as 00:18:31.950 --> 00:18:34.829 preconceptions or concepts. This is basically 00:18:34.829 --> 00:18:37.230 how we form general ideas and recognize things. 00:18:37.430 --> 00:18:39.109 You see a horse, then you see another horse, 00:18:39.130 --> 00:18:42.109 then another one. Your mind stacks up those repeated 00:18:42.109 --> 00:18:44.890 sense impressions to form a generic composite 00:18:44.890 --> 00:18:48.089 concept of horse. It's pattern recognition. It's 00:18:48.089 --> 00:18:49.849 exactly that. So that when I say the word horse 00:18:49.849 --> 00:18:52.450 to you, an image or concept immediately flashes 00:18:52.450 --> 00:18:54.329 in your mind. That's a prolepsis. It's a memory 00:18:54.329 --> 00:18:57.049 of past sensations. And the third part. The third 00:18:57.049 --> 00:18:59.069 part is the most... critical one for our deep 00:18:59.069 --> 00:19:02.930 dive today. Feelings, or in Greek, pathy. And 00:19:02.930 --> 00:19:04.930 for Epicurus, there are only two of them that 00:19:04.930 --> 00:19:07.990 matter, pleasure and pain. So this is the internal 00:19:07.990 --> 00:19:10.410 compass. It's the only compass that matters for 00:19:10.410 --> 00:19:12.890 guiding our actions. He says nature has given 00:19:12.890 --> 00:19:15.569 every living creature two flags. Pleasure is 00:19:15.569 --> 00:19:17.490 the flag that says pursue this, move towards 00:19:17.490 --> 00:19:19.910 this. Pain is the flag that says avoid this, 00:19:20.009 --> 00:19:22.589 move away from this. You don't need a complex 00:19:22.589 --> 00:19:24.690 philosophical argument to know that putting your 00:19:24.690 --> 00:19:27.309 hand in a fire is bad. You feel it. It's immediate. 00:19:27.470 --> 00:19:29.750 It's non -negotiable. And this leads us directly 00:19:29.750 --> 00:19:32.309 into the ethics, which is the part where we have 00:19:32.309 --> 00:19:35.049 to fix everyone's definition of hedonism. Yes, 00:19:35.150 --> 00:19:37.549 the main event. Because if pleasure is the ultimate 00:19:37.549 --> 00:19:40.089 guide, why isn't he telling us to, I don't know, 00:19:40.170 --> 00:19:43.970 go do heroin? or eat cake for every meal. Those 00:19:43.970 --> 00:19:46.230 things produce a lot of pleasure, for a while 00:19:46.230 --> 00:19:49.150 at least. This is the absolute crux of the entire 00:19:49.150 --> 00:19:52.009 misunderstanding of Epicurus. He defines pleasure 00:19:52.009 --> 00:19:55.109 in a very specific and for us very counterintuitive 00:19:55.109 --> 00:19:57.690 way. We usually think of pleasure as what he 00:19:57.690 --> 00:20:00.470 called kinetic pleasure. That's active stimulation, 00:20:00.789 --> 00:20:03.250 the pleasure of eating, of drinking, of sex, 00:20:03.529 --> 00:20:05.769 of scratching an itch. The dopamine hit, the 00:20:05.769 --> 00:20:08.690 feeling of satisfying a craving. Exactly. But 00:20:08.690 --> 00:20:10.309 Epicures points out that this kind of kinetic 00:20:10.309 --> 00:20:12.470 pleasure is almost always just the process of 00:20:12.470 --> 00:20:15.509 removing a pain or filling a lack. You only enjoy 00:20:15.509 --> 00:20:17.990 the act of eating if you are hungry. Hunger is 00:20:17.990 --> 00:20:20.509 a state of pain, a deficiency. Eating is simply 00:20:20.509 --> 00:20:23.009 the process of removing that pain. So what happens 00:20:23.009 --> 00:20:25.329 once the pain is gone, once you're not hungry 00:20:25.329 --> 00:20:28.069 anymore? That is the goal. He calls that state 00:20:28.069 --> 00:20:31.630 catastematic pleasure. It's static pleasure or 00:20:31.630 --> 00:20:33.490 the pleasure of being in a stable state. It's 00:20:33.490 --> 00:20:36.130 the state of satiety. If you are not hungry. 00:20:36.599 --> 00:20:40.099 not thirsty, not cold, and not afraid, you have 00:20:40.099 --> 00:20:42.539 reached the summit of all possible happiness. 00:20:42.839 --> 00:20:44.759 That sounds, I don't know, kind of boring. To 00:20:44.759 --> 00:20:47.480 a modern ear, not being in pain doesn't sound 00:20:47.480 --> 00:20:51.420 like happiness. It just sounds neutral. Like 00:20:51.420 --> 00:20:54.460 zero. And that, Epicurus would say, is exactly 00:20:54.460 --> 00:20:57.119 why we are all so miserable. We don't recognize 00:20:57.119 --> 00:20:59.200 that neutral state of non -disturbance as the 00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:01.440 peak. We think we need to constantly add more 00:21:01.440 --> 00:21:04.000 stimulation, more excitement to be happy. But 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:06.339 he argues you can't get fuller than full. If 00:21:06.339 --> 00:21:08.160 you keep eating after you're already full, you 00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:10.460 don't get more pleasure. You just get indigestion. 00:21:10.460 --> 00:21:13.180 You get pain. So his hedonism is actually a philosophy 00:21:13.180 --> 00:21:16.619 of limits, of knowing when to stop. It is a philosophy 00:21:16.619 --> 00:21:20.190 of subtraction, not addition. Happiness isn't 00:21:20.190 --> 00:21:21.890 about getting everything you want. It's about 00:21:21.890 --> 00:21:24.430 getting rid of the things that hurt you. The 00:21:24.430 --> 00:21:27.890 ultimate goal is a twofold state. Aponia, the 00:21:27.890 --> 00:21:30.829 absence of physical pain, and ataraxia, the absence 00:21:30.829 --> 00:21:34.430 of mental anxiety or disturbance. Once you have 00:21:34.430 --> 00:21:37.369 those two things, you are, in his words, living 00:21:37.369 --> 00:21:40.089 like a god. But we're human. We're hardwired 00:21:40.089 --> 00:21:42.730 to want stuff. We have all these desires pulling 00:21:42.730 --> 00:21:44.789 us in different directions. How do we just turn 00:21:44.789 --> 00:21:46.849 that off? You don't turn it off. You manage it. 00:21:46.890 --> 00:21:48.670 You have to become a ruthless auditor of your 00:21:48.670 --> 00:21:51.450 own desires. He gives us a brilliant framework 00:21:51.450 --> 00:21:53.430 for this, breaking them down into three distinct 00:21:53.430 --> 00:21:55.910 categories. It's often called the calculus of 00:21:55.910 --> 00:21:57.549 desire. All right. Walk us through the spreadsheet. 00:21:57.670 --> 00:21:59.869 What's the first category? Class one, natural 00:21:59.869 --> 00:22:02.630 and necessary desires. These are the non -negotiables. 00:22:02.670 --> 00:22:06.190 They're rooted in our biology. Food, water, shelter, 00:22:06.470 --> 00:22:08.970 basic clothing, and interestingly, friendship. 00:22:09.269 --> 00:22:11.069 He puts friendship in the necessary category, 00:22:11.269 --> 00:22:13.390 like on the same level as food and water. For 00:22:13.390 --> 00:22:16.390 him, yes. It's absolutely essential for a happy 00:22:16.390 --> 00:22:18.650 and secure life. We'll definitely get back to 00:22:18.650 --> 00:22:20.450 that. But basically, if you don't have these 00:22:20.450 --> 00:22:22.769 class one things, you either die or suffer immensely. 00:22:23.250 --> 00:22:27.190 So the rule is you must satisfy these. But luckily, 00:22:27.329 --> 00:22:29.450 he says, nature makes them very easy to get. 00:22:29.529 --> 00:22:32.890 Water is free. A bowl of oatmeal is cheap. A 00:22:32.890 --> 00:22:34.789 roof over your head doesn't have to be a palace. 00:22:35.130 --> 00:22:36.869 Okay, that makes sense. What's class two? Class 00:22:36.869 --> 00:22:41.289 two, natural but not necessary desires. This 00:22:41.289 --> 00:22:44.009 is where variation and luxury come in. You need 00:22:44.009 --> 00:22:46.589 water to live. That's class one. But you might 00:22:46.589 --> 00:22:48.430 want a glass of fine wine. That's class two. 00:22:48.589 --> 00:22:51.029 You need basic food for sustenance, class one. 00:22:51.250 --> 00:22:53.769 But you might want a gourmet steak dinner, class 00:22:53.769 --> 00:22:56.269 two. Sex also falls into this category. It's 00:22:56.269 --> 00:22:58.349 natural, but you won't die without it. Exactly. 00:22:58.430 --> 00:23:00.640 And what's the rule for this class? Don't get 00:23:00.640 --> 00:23:02.700 hooked. That's the perfect way to put it. The 00:23:02.700 --> 00:23:05.200 rule is, enjoy these things if they happen to 00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:07.140 come your way easily and without effort, but 00:23:07.140 --> 00:23:09.960 do not become dependent on them. If a friend 00:23:09.960 --> 00:23:12.059 offers you a glass of that expensive wine, by 00:23:12.059 --> 00:23:14.440 all means, drink it and enjoy it. But if it's 00:23:14.440 --> 00:23:17.460 not there, you must be perfectly happy and content 00:23:17.460 --> 00:23:20.259 with your cup of water. The danger is attachment. 00:23:21.039 --> 00:23:23.680 The moment you feel you need the wine to enjoy 00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:26.039 the dinner, you've lost your freedom. You are 00:23:26.039 --> 00:23:28.880 now vulnerable to fortune. That's the classic 00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:31.339 hedonic treadmill, right? used to the luxury. 00:23:31.480 --> 00:23:33.359 You can't go back to the simple stuff. And your 00:23:33.359 --> 00:23:35.359 baseline for happiness just keeps getting higher 00:23:35.359 --> 00:23:38.140 and more expensive. Precisely. He wants you to 00:23:38.140 --> 00:23:40.640 keep your baseline for pleasure as low as possible. 00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:43.119 That way, a simple piece of bread and a pot of 00:23:43.119 --> 00:23:45.839 cheese can feel like an absolute feast. You become 00:23:45.839 --> 00:23:48.180 very difficult to make unhappy. What about the 00:23:48.180 --> 00:23:50.660 final category, class three? Class three, unnatural 00:23:50.660 --> 00:23:54.019 and unnecessary desires. He also calls these 00:23:54.019 --> 00:23:57.220 vain and empty desires. And this is the category 00:23:57.220 --> 00:23:59.200 that includes most of what our society tells 00:23:59.200 --> 00:24:03.430 us to chase. Fame, political power, vast wealth, 00:24:03.730 --> 00:24:07.950 statues in your honor, immortality. So the life 00:24:07.950 --> 00:24:11.390 goals of basically every influencer, politician, 00:24:11.670 --> 00:24:13.869 and billionaire on the planet. He would say, 00:24:13.970 --> 00:24:16.970 cut these out of your life entirely. Suppress 00:24:16.970 --> 00:24:20.369 them completely. They are poison. Why? What's 00:24:20.369 --> 00:24:22.890 so uniquely bad about them? Because unlike the 00:24:22.890 --> 00:24:25.269 natural desires, they are limitless. You can 00:24:25.269 --> 00:24:27.549 eat until you are full. You can drink until you 00:24:27.549 --> 00:24:29.869 are no longer thirsty. There is a natural stopping 00:24:29.869 --> 00:24:33.690 point. But you can't get full of power. There 00:24:33.690 --> 00:24:36.089 is always someone with more. You can't get full 00:24:36.089 --> 00:24:38.849 of fame. You are constantly worried about losing 00:24:38.849 --> 00:24:41.869 it or being replaced. These desires are bottomless 00:24:41.869 --> 00:24:43.990 pits that are designed to generate infinite anxiety. 00:24:44.490 --> 00:24:47.730 So the only winning move is not to play. Offed 00:24:47.730 --> 00:24:50.089 out of the rat race completely. A complete and 00:24:50.089 --> 00:24:52.569 total withdrawal. This is the source of his famous 00:24:52.569 --> 00:24:54.910 advice, Live Hidden. That's a radical prescription. 00:24:55.210 --> 00:24:57.490 It's basically telling 90 % of modern society 00:24:57.490 --> 00:25:00.769 that their core life goals are a form of mental 00:25:00.769 --> 00:25:03.150 illness. It is. He's looking at everyone scrambling 00:25:03.150 --> 00:25:04.890 to climb the ladder and he's saying, you are 00:25:04.890 --> 00:25:07.390 running a race you can't possibly win for a prize 00:25:07.390 --> 00:25:09.730 that won't make you happy, even if you get it. 00:25:09.789 --> 00:25:12.150 The only sane thing to do is to stop running. 00:25:12.369 --> 00:25:14.289 So we have the diagnosis and the general treatment 00:25:14.289 --> 00:25:16.849 plan, which is this audit of desires. But he 00:25:16.849 --> 00:25:19.630 actually had a more specific, memorable prescription, 00:25:19.809 --> 00:25:22.529 right? The four -part cure, the tetrafarmacose. 00:25:22.650 --> 00:25:25.869 Yes, the four -fold remedy. This was a simple 00:25:25.869 --> 00:25:29.369 four -line summary of the core therapeutic doctrines. 00:25:29.789 --> 00:25:31.910 It was something that Epicureans would memorize, 00:25:31.990 --> 00:25:34.410 like a mantra or a prayer to use when they felt 00:25:34.410 --> 00:25:37.529 panic or anxiety setting in. Let's go through 00:25:37.529 --> 00:25:40.089 the four doses. Dose number one, don't fear God. 00:25:40.430 --> 00:25:42.710 We touched on this with the physics. The gods 00:25:42.710 --> 00:25:45.650 exist, but their nature is to be blessed and 00:25:45.650 --> 00:25:48.279 immortal, to be perfect. And if you're a perfect 00:25:48.279 --> 00:25:50.460 being, you don't have needs or wants. If you 00:25:50.460 --> 00:25:52.240 don't have needs, you don't get angry or jealous. 00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:55.240 Anger is a sign of weakness, of being affected 00:25:55.240 --> 00:25:58.140 by others. So the gods are in a state of perfect 00:25:58.140 --> 00:26:00.460 bliss and are completely indifferent to human 00:26:00.460 --> 00:26:02.799 affairs. They are just chilling in the metacosmia, 00:26:02.920 --> 00:26:04.980 the quiet spaces between the different worlds. 00:26:05.259 --> 00:26:07.700 It's the divine indifference. They aren't malevolent. 00:26:07.740 --> 00:26:10.900 They just don't care about us. Which is the best 00:26:10.900 --> 00:26:13.019 news ever. It means you can stop worrying about 00:26:13.019 --> 00:26:15.019 angering them. You can stop with the elaborate 00:26:15.019 --> 00:26:17.769 sacrifices. You're off the hook. Okay, that's 00:26:17.769 --> 00:26:19.430 a relief. What's dose number two? Don't worry 00:26:19.430 --> 00:26:22.029 about death. This is probably the hardest pill 00:26:22.029 --> 00:26:25.150 for most people to swallow. His argument is deceptively 00:26:25.150 --> 00:26:27.329 simple, and it's a direct consequence of his 00:26:27.329 --> 00:26:30.970 materialism. He says, death is nothing to us. 00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:33.799 For all good and evil consists in sensation, 00:26:34.160 --> 00:26:37.160 but death is the deprivation of all sensation. 00:26:37.460 --> 00:26:39.460 Right. This is the famous line, when I am, death 00:26:39.460 --> 00:26:42.940 is not. When death is, I am not. Exactly. You, 00:26:43.220 --> 00:26:46.099 the conscious feeling subject, will never actually 00:26:46.099 --> 00:26:48.779 meet death. It is literally impossible for you 00:26:48.779 --> 00:26:50.980 to experience the state of being dead. I get 00:26:50.980 --> 00:26:53.319 the logic. It's a clean syllogism. It makes perfect 00:26:53.319 --> 00:26:55.960 sense on paper, but I just don't buy it as a 00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:57.980 complete cure for the fear. I'm not necessarily 00:26:57.980 --> 00:27:00.619 afraid of the experience of being dead, the darkness. 00:27:00.700 --> 00:27:03.339 I'm afraid of the loss, the FOMO. I'm afraid 00:27:03.339 --> 00:27:05.220 of not seeing my kids grow up, of missing out 00:27:05.220 --> 00:27:07.579 on the future. Cold logic doesn't seem to fix 00:27:07.579 --> 00:27:10.200 that emotional reality. That's a very fair and 00:27:10.200 --> 00:27:13.119 common pushback. And Epicurus, or maybe more 00:27:13.119 --> 00:27:15.599 accurately, Lucretius, has an answer for that. 00:27:15.740 --> 00:27:18.759 He would say that fear is based on a false projection. 00:27:19.200 --> 00:27:22.140 You are imagining a ghostly you hovering over 00:27:22.140 --> 00:27:24.500 your own grave, feeling sad about all the parties 00:27:24.500 --> 00:27:27.359 you're missing. But there is no you left to miss 00:27:27.359 --> 00:27:29.539 anything. So how do you convince yourself of 00:27:29.539 --> 00:27:31.960 that? He uses what's sometimes called the symmetry 00:27:31.960 --> 00:27:35.299 argument or the mirror of time argument. Lucretius 00:27:35.299 --> 00:27:37.940 does this beautifully in his poem. He says, look 00:27:37.940 --> 00:27:40.299 at the infinite abyss of time that existed before 00:27:40.299 --> 00:27:43.119 you were born. The Punic Wars, the building of 00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:45.599 the pyramids, the Trojan War. Did you suffer 00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:47.680 because you missed them? Were you in pain? No, 00:27:47.700 --> 00:27:50.220 of course not. I didn't exist. And nature, he 00:27:50.220 --> 00:27:52.579 says, holds up that past eternity as a mirror 00:27:52.579 --> 00:27:54.619 to the future eternity that will come after you 00:27:54.619 --> 00:27:57.599 die. It will be exactly the same. A peaceful, 00:27:57.799 --> 00:28:01.019 sensationalist non -existence. If the prenatal 00:28:01.019 --> 00:28:03.000 abyss doesn't scare you, then the postmortem 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:05.660 abyss shouldn't either. They are identical. That 00:28:05.660 --> 00:28:09.200 is chillingly comforting in a strange way. But 00:28:09.200 --> 00:28:12.039 it demands you really truly accept materialism. 00:28:12.059 --> 00:28:14.740 If you have even 1 % doubt, if you think maybe 00:28:14.740 --> 00:28:17.490 there is a hell or some kind of judgment. the 00:28:17.490 --> 00:28:19.549 whole system breaks down that's why the physics 00:28:19.549 --> 00:28:22.210 is the absolute foundation you have to be 100 00:28:22.210 --> 00:28:24.789 convinced that your soul is just a temporary 00:28:24.789 --> 00:28:27.009 arrangement of atoms that will disperse at death 00:28:27.009 --> 00:28:29.730 if you have any doubt the fear comes creeping 00:28:29.730 --> 00:28:32.750 back in okay moving on to the more cheerful doses 00:28:32.750 --> 00:28:36.849 dose three what is good is easy to get this refers 00:28:36.849 --> 00:28:39.559 directly back to the calculus of desire The good 00:28:39.559 --> 00:28:41.519 he's talking about is the satisfaction of our 00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:44.619 class one natural and necessary desires. Simple 00:28:44.619 --> 00:28:47.059 food, clean water, basic shelter, good company. 00:28:47.599 --> 00:28:50.240 Nature, he says, is kind. It doesn't make the 00:28:50.240 --> 00:28:52.380 things we absolutely need for happiness rare 00:28:52.380 --> 00:28:54.740 or expensive. We are the ones who make happiness 00:28:54.740 --> 00:28:57.259 difficult by convincing ourselves we need the 00:28:57.259 --> 00:29:00.000 rare, expensive class two and class three stuff. 00:29:00.259 --> 00:29:03.440 And finally, dose four. What is terrible is easy 00:29:03.440 --> 00:29:05.710 to endure. This one, I'll admit, can feel like 00:29:05.710 --> 00:29:07.650 a bit of gaslighting, especially when you consider 00:29:07.650 --> 00:29:10.109 how he died. Oh, don't worry, those kidney stones 00:29:10.109 --> 00:29:12.609 are easy to endure, says who. His argument here 00:29:12.609 --> 00:29:14.990 is about the relationship between duration and 00:29:14.990 --> 00:29:18.190 intensity, he claims. If a pain is extremely 00:29:18.190 --> 00:29:21.190 intense, it is usually short, because it either 00:29:21.190 --> 00:29:24.210 passes or it kills you. If a pain is chronic 00:29:24.210 --> 00:29:26.690 and long -lasting, it is usually of a milder, 00:29:26.690 --> 00:29:28.750 more manageable intensity. I feel like there 00:29:28.750 --> 00:29:32.009 is a very large middle ground of long, agonizing, 00:29:32.009 --> 00:29:34.289 but not fatal. that he's maybe ignoring there. 00:29:34.430 --> 00:29:36.890 Perhaps. But the deeper point, I think, is about 00:29:36.890 --> 00:29:39.269 mental resilience. He's not saying the pain isn't 00:29:39.269 --> 00:29:41.710 real. He's saying that even in the midst of chronic 00:29:41.710 --> 00:29:44.609 pain, the mind has the ability to retreat into 00:29:44.609 --> 00:29:47.509 the pleasant garden of memory or to focus on 00:29:47.509 --> 00:29:50.029 the anticipation of future pain -free moments. 00:29:50.890 --> 00:29:52.750 You are not reducible to your pain. You have 00:29:52.750 --> 00:29:55.490 a sanctuary inside your own head. It's a call 00:29:55.490 --> 00:29:58.029 to cultivate that mental toughness. So we've 00:29:58.029 --> 00:30:00.150 fixed the internal self. We've got our four -part 00:30:00.150 --> 00:30:02.390 cure. But we still have to live in the world 00:30:02.390 --> 00:30:04.470 and deal with other people. We mentioned he was 00:30:04.470 --> 00:30:07.470 strongly anti -politics. Vehemently, live in 00:30:07.470 --> 00:30:10.750 obscurity. For him, a political life is the opposite 00:30:10.750 --> 00:30:13.539 of a tranquil life. It brings envy, competition, 00:30:13.960 --> 00:30:17.500 danger, and it's entirely focused on the pursuit 00:30:17.500 --> 00:30:21.359 of those toxic class three desires for fame and 00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:23.720 power. It's a guaranteed recipe for anxiety. 00:30:24.140 --> 00:30:26.740 But if everyone follows that advice, if all the 00:30:26.740 --> 00:30:28.579 wise and good people retreat to their gardens, 00:30:28.779 --> 00:30:32.029 who builds the roads? Who defends the city from 00:30:32.029 --> 00:30:34.589 invasion? It seems like a fundamentally parasitic 00:30:34.589 --> 00:30:37.369 philosophy. It relies on other, less enlightened 00:30:37.369 --> 00:30:39.490 people doing the dirty work of running the state 00:30:39.490 --> 00:30:42.329 so the Epicureans can be safe and tranquil. That 00:30:42.329 --> 00:30:44.930 is the classic and probably the most powerful 00:30:44.930 --> 00:30:47.529 criticism of Epicurean social theory. It's a 00:30:47.529 --> 00:30:49.609 free rider problem. And Epiterius would probably 00:30:49.609 --> 00:30:51.670 just shrug his shoulders and say, let the fools 00:30:51.670 --> 00:30:53.750 who are addicted to power and glory run the city. 00:30:53.869 --> 00:30:56.029 We will obey the laws to ensure our own safety, 00:30:56.089 --> 00:30:58.130 but we will not be the ones riding them. His 00:30:58.130 --> 00:31:00.420 goal isn't to create the perfect state. It's 00:31:00.420 --> 00:31:02.519 to create a perfect life for the individual within 00:31:02.519 --> 00:31:05.539 whatever state exists. Speaking of laws, he had 00:31:05.539 --> 00:31:08.259 a very modern, almost revolutionary take on justice. 00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:12.039 Oh, this is huge. Before Epicurus, justice was 00:31:12.039 --> 00:31:14.519 usually seen as something divine or something 00:31:14.519 --> 00:31:17.700 written into the fabric of nature, a cosmic law. 00:31:18.309 --> 00:31:21.410 Epicurus said, no, justice is nothing more than 00:31:21.410 --> 00:31:24.569 a social contract. It's a pledge, a mutual agreement, 00:31:24.769 --> 00:31:27.869 neither to harm nor be harmed. It's a deal we 00:31:27.869 --> 00:31:29.849 make because it's useful. So killing someone 00:31:29.849 --> 00:31:33.210 isn't wrong in some. absolute cosmic sense it's 00:31:33.210 --> 00:31:35.690 just bad for business because it makes society 00:31:35.690 --> 00:31:38.450 less stable and secure it's bad for my personal 00:31:38.450 --> 00:31:40.890 tranquility if i go around harming you i have 00:31:40.890 --> 00:31:43.089 to live in constant fear that you or your friends 00:31:43.089 --> 00:31:44.950 will come after me that's a state of anxiety 00:31:44.950 --> 00:31:48.819 so purely out of enlightened self -interest I 00:31:48.819 --> 00:31:51.160 agree not to harm you and you agree not to harm 00:31:51.160 --> 00:31:53.400 me so that we can both live without fear. It's 00:31:53.400 --> 00:31:55.960 self -interest masquerading as morality. Or you 00:31:55.960 --> 00:31:58.319 could see it as the realistic and durable foundation 00:31:58.319 --> 00:32:00.740 for morality that doesn't require us to believe 00:32:00.740 --> 00:32:03.779 in any superstitions. But he does have one massive 00:32:03.779 --> 00:32:06.359 exception to this cool calculating self -interest 00:32:06.359 --> 00:32:10.460 rule. Friendship. Friendship or philia is the 00:32:10.460 --> 00:32:13.119 crown jewel of the Epicurean life. He valued 00:32:13.119 --> 00:32:15.930 it above. almost everything else. He has this 00:32:15.930 --> 00:32:18.910 amazing line, of all the things which wisdom 00:32:18.910 --> 00:32:21.450 provides to make us entirely happy, much the 00:32:21.450 --> 00:32:24.089 greatest is the possession of friendship. But 00:32:24.089 --> 00:32:27.069 isn't friendship incredibly risky from an Epicurean 00:32:27.069 --> 00:32:30.150 perspective? It's a profound attachment. If my 00:32:30.150 --> 00:32:32.490 best friend gets sick or dies, I'm going to be 00:32:32.490 --> 00:32:35.400 in immense pain. Doesn't that violate the primary 00:32:35.400 --> 00:32:38.220 rule of avoiding pain and disturbance? It's the 00:32:38.220 --> 00:32:40.339 great paradox at the heart of the philosophy. 00:32:40.619 --> 00:32:42.920 And he admits that friendship probably starts 00:32:42.920 --> 00:32:45.359 out for reasons of utility, for mutual defense 00:32:45.359 --> 00:32:48.420 and security. I need you to have my back. But 00:32:48.420 --> 00:32:50.660 he says it ripens into something much more, a 00:32:50.660 --> 00:32:52.700 state where we come to love the friend for their 00:32:52.700 --> 00:32:55.220 own sake, not just for what they do for us. And 00:32:55.220 --> 00:32:57.279 the immense security and joy that a network of 00:32:57.279 --> 00:33:00.160 true friends provides far, far outweighs the 00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:03.059 potential risk of pain from loss. The garden 00:33:03.059 --> 00:33:05.339 wasn't a collection of isolated hermits. It was 00:33:05.339 --> 00:33:08.720 a chosen family, a network of love. I want to 00:33:08.720 --> 00:33:10.240 talk about that letter you mentioned in the prep, 00:33:10.339 --> 00:33:11.859 the one that was found on a wall written to his 00:33:11.859 --> 00:33:14.089 mother. oh this is just a lovely little fragment 00:33:14.089 --> 00:33:17.089 it was found inscribed on that massive wall in 00:33:17.089 --> 00:33:19.329 inawanda that we'll talk about it's a letter 00:33:19.329 --> 00:33:21.549 epicurus wrote to his mother who was apparently 00:33:21.549 --> 00:33:24.569 having bad dreams and worrying about him and 00:33:24.569 --> 00:33:27.329 he writes to her to say basically mother don't 00:33:27.329 --> 00:33:30.069 worry i'm living well and happily your bad dreams 00:33:30.069 --> 00:33:32.609 are just atoms moving in your mind i am safe 00:33:32.609 --> 00:33:35.980 and well It shows this incredibly tender human 00:33:35.980 --> 00:33:39.039 side that completely contradicts the caricature 00:33:39.039 --> 00:33:41.940 of him as some cold, detached calculator. He 00:33:41.940 --> 00:33:43.940 loved his mom and wanted to ease her anxiety. 00:33:44.220 --> 00:33:47.019 Let's pivot to the legacy now. Because the story 00:33:47.019 --> 00:33:49.299 of how this philosophy survived at all is just... 00:33:49.599 --> 00:33:51.819 It's insane. We almost lost everything. We very 00:33:51.819 --> 00:33:54.880 nearly did. For centuries after his death, Epicureanism 00:33:54.880 --> 00:33:57.140 was a huge and popular philosophical movement 00:33:57.140 --> 00:33:59.460 across the Greek and Roman world. But then the 00:33:59.460 --> 00:34:01.220 Christians took over the Roman Empire, and if 00:34:01.220 --> 00:34:03.220 you think about it, Epicureanism is the ultimate 00:34:03.220 --> 00:34:06.400 anti -Christianity. No immortal soul, no divine 00:34:06.400 --> 00:34:09.320 providence, no afterlife, and pleasure, not faith, 00:34:09.500 --> 00:34:11.679 is the goal of life. It's public enemy number 00:34:11.679 --> 00:34:15.079 one. The early church fathers, like Justin Martyr 00:34:15.079 --> 00:34:17.300 and Augustine, they went on the attack. They 00:34:17.300 --> 00:34:19.920 systematically dismantled it. They created the 00:34:19.920 --> 00:34:22.460 Epicurean pig caricature claiming they were all 00:34:22.460 --> 00:34:24.820 just gluttons and atheists who lived in debauchery. 00:34:24.940 --> 00:34:28.219 They burned the books. By the Middle Ages, Epicurus 00:34:28.219 --> 00:34:31.420 was literally in Dante's Inferno, buried in a 00:34:31.420 --> 00:34:33.739 flaming coffin for the crime of being a heretic 00:34:33.739 --> 00:34:36.280 who denied the soul's immortality. So if all 00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:38.420 the books were burned, how do we know anything 00:34:38.420 --> 00:34:41.300 about them today? Two absolute miracles and a 00:34:41.300 --> 00:34:43.880 couple of other lucky breaks. The first miracle 00:34:43.880 --> 00:34:47.199 is Lucretius. A single forgotten manuscript of 00:34:47.199 --> 00:34:50.059 his poem, De rerum natua, was found in a German 00:34:50.059 --> 00:34:53.079 monastery in 1417 by a Renaissance book hunter 00:34:53.079 --> 00:34:56.179 named Poggio Bracciolini. That one book, rediscovered, 00:34:56.179 --> 00:34:58.360 brought the atoms and the swerve back to Europe. 00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:01.079 It was a bombshell. And the second miracle. The 00:35:01.079 --> 00:35:04.280 second miracle is the Villa of the Papyri. This 00:35:04.280 --> 00:35:06.500 story is straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. 00:35:07.210 --> 00:35:09.849 In the Roman town of Herculaneum, there was a 00:35:09.849 --> 00:35:13.349 huge, luxurious seaside villa. It was likely 00:35:13.349 --> 00:35:15.550 owned by the father -in -law of Julius Caesar, 00:35:15.769 --> 00:35:18.710 a man named Piso, who was a patron of an Epicurean 00:35:18.710 --> 00:35:21.570 philosopher named Philodemus. And this villa 00:35:21.570 --> 00:35:24.510 had a massive library filled with Epicurean texts. 00:35:24.809 --> 00:35:29.349 And the Matmosuvius erupted. 79 AD. The pyroclastic 00:35:29.349 --> 00:35:31.829 flow from the volcano buried the entire town 00:35:31.829 --> 00:35:35.269 instantly. In the villa's library, it carbonized 00:35:35.269 --> 00:35:37.750 the papyrus scrolls. They were flash -cooked 00:35:37.750 --> 00:35:40.110 into what looked like lumps of charcoal. When 00:35:40.110 --> 00:35:42.170 explorers first found them in the 1700s, they 00:35:42.170 --> 00:35:44.130 thought they were just burnt logs. They literally 00:35:44.130 --> 00:35:46.489 threw some of them away. Oh no, that's painful 00:35:46.489 --> 00:35:48.869 to hear. It is, but then someone realized they 00:35:48.869 --> 00:35:51.110 were books. For centuries, we couldn't read them 00:35:51.110 --> 00:35:52.610 because if you tried to unroll them, they would 00:35:52.610 --> 00:35:55.309 just crumble into dust. But today, using advanced 00:35:55.309 --> 00:35:57.550 technology like multispectral imaging and... 00:35:57.550 --> 00:36:00.690 CT scans. We are virtually unwrapping them layer 00:36:00.690 --> 00:36:03.150 by layer without physically touching them. We 00:36:03.150 --> 00:36:05.469 are recovering lost Epicurean texts right now 00:36:05.469 --> 00:36:07.869 as we speak. It's a time capsule from the garden. 00:36:08.010 --> 00:36:10.070 That is absolutely incredible. We are literally 00:36:10.070 --> 00:36:12.150 downloading the mind of this ancient philosopher 00:36:12.150 --> 00:36:15.440 from a piece of 2000 year old charcoal. And it's 00:36:15.440 --> 00:36:17.300 completely changing our understanding of the 00:36:17.300 --> 00:36:19.659 school. It shows us they weren't just naval gazers. 00:36:19.699 --> 00:36:23.280 They were sophisticated thinkers writing detailed 00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:27.420 treatises on poetry, music, rhetoric, even anger 00:36:27.420 --> 00:36:29.679 management. And we can't forget the giant wall 00:36:29.679 --> 00:36:32.159 you mentioned, Notawanda. Diogenes of Inuranda. 00:36:32.300 --> 00:36:34.099 This is one of my favorite stories in all of 00:36:34.099 --> 00:36:37.260 philosophy. Imagine a rich Roman citizen in the 00:36:37.260 --> 00:36:40.420 second century A .D. living in a small town in 00:36:40.420 --> 00:36:43.809 what is now Turkey. He's an old man and he decides, 00:36:43.949 --> 00:36:46.429 I want to save my town and all future generations 00:36:46.429 --> 00:36:49.789 from anxiety. So what does he do? He commissions 00:36:49.789 --> 00:36:52.650 a massive limestone wall. It was something like 00:36:52.650 --> 00:36:54.750 80 meters long and three meters high. And he 00:36:54.750 --> 00:36:57.510 has the entire philosophy of Epicurus inscribed 00:36:57.510 --> 00:36:59.809 on it in huge letters for everyone to read. A 00:36:59.809 --> 00:37:02.050 billboard for tranquility. Exactly. He wrote 00:37:02.050 --> 00:37:04.030 a preface on the wall that says, I have set this 00:37:04.030 --> 00:37:06.030 up not for myself, but for the salvation of all. 00:37:06.110 --> 00:37:08.090 It's an incredible monument to philosophical 00:37:08.090 --> 00:37:11.409 humanism. So the ideas survived against all odds. 00:37:11.800 --> 00:37:13.340 They trickled down through people like Pierre 00:37:13.340 --> 00:37:15.179 Gassendi who kind of cleaned them up and made 00:37:15.179 --> 00:37:17.340 them acceptable for the church. And then they 00:37:17.340 --> 00:37:20.659 hit the big time with, of all things, the American 00:37:20.659 --> 00:37:24.239 revelation. Thomas Jefferson. This is the connection 00:37:24.239 --> 00:37:27.539 that blows people's minds. Jefferson was a devoted, 00:37:27.619 --> 00:37:30.619 though private, Epicurean. He owned multiple 00:37:30.619 --> 00:37:33.519 editions of Lucretius. In his letters, he wrote 00:37:33.519 --> 00:37:36.380 explicitly, I too am an Epicurean. So when he 00:37:36.380 --> 00:37:38.380 wrote in the Declaration of Independence about 00:37:38.380 --> 00:37:40.920 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 00:37:41.159 --> 00:37:43.039 He wasn't talking about the pursuit of property, 00:37:43.179 --> 00:37:44.920 which was the standard phrasing at the time. 00:37:44.960 --> 00:37:46.940 He was almost certainly talking about the pursuit 00:37:46.940 --> 00:37:50.360 of ataraxia, the fundamental human right to live 00:37:50.360 --> 00:37:52.739 a life free from physical pain and mental turmoil, 00:37:52.940 --> 00:37:56.139 free from the tyranny of kings and priests. The 00:37:56.139 --> 00:37:58.960 American dream has Epicurean DNA woven right 00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:01.719 into it. And it doesn't stop there. Mark's too. 00:38:02.079 --> 00:38:05.280 Carl Marx wrote his entire PhD thesis on the 00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:07.280 difference between the physics of Democritus 00:38:07.280 --> 00:38:10.320 and Epicurus. He absolutely loved the swerve. 00:38:10.460 --> 00:38:13.800 For Marx, the atom that randomly swerves, that 00:38:13.800 --> 00:38:16.139 refuses to just follow the deterministic path, 00:38:16.420 --> 00:38:18.559 was a metaphor for human freedom and resistance. 00:38:19.059 --> 00:38:21.719 For Marx, Epicurus was the first great rebel 00:38:21.719 --> 00:38:24.139 against the crushing deterministic machine of 00:38:24.139 --> 00:38:27.699 fate. Wow. From a quiet garden in Athens, to 00:38:27.699 --> 00:38:29.539 the Declaration of Independence, to the Communist 00:38:29.539 --> 00:38:32.000 Manifesto, that is some s**t. serious range. 00:38:32.199 --> 00:38:34.480 It really shows that the core system he built 00:38:34.480 --> 00:38:37.840 addresses something universal and timeless. The 00:38:37.840 --> 00:38:41.039 fear of being controlled and the deep, deep desire 00:38:41.039 --> 00:38:44.119 for individual freedom and peace of mind. So 00:38:44.119 --> 00:38:46.519 let's wrap this up. We've gone pretty deep today. 00:38:46.559 --> 00:38:48.599 We've debunked the foodie myth. We've rebuilt 00:38:48.599 --> 00:38:51.820 the universe out of atoms and void. We've neutralized 00:38:51.820 --> 00:38:53.960 the gods. We've tried to face death without fear. 00:38:54.099 --> 00:38:55.800 We've done the work. If the listener wants to 00:38:55.800 --> 00:38:58.059 apply this today, not the atomic physics maybe, 00:38:58.179 --> 00:39:00.500 but the therapy, what's the single biggest takeaway? 00:39:00.909 --> 00:39:03.449 I think it's the power of subtraction. We live 00:39:03.449 --> 00:39:06.170 in an economy, an attention economy, that is 00:39:06.170 --> 00:39:08.730 designed from the ground up to manufacture and 00:39:08.730 --> 00:39:11.909 sell you class three desires. You need this new 00:39:11.909 --> 00:39:13.769 phone. You need this vacation. You need this 00:39:13.769 --> 00:39:16.989 social status. You need to look this way. Epicurus 00:39:16.989 --> 00:39:19.590 is that quiet but firm voice in the back of your 00:39:19.590 --> 00:39:22.210 head saying, no, you don't. So just check your 00:39:22.210 --> 00:39:24.789 desires constantly. Ask yourself that one simple 00:39:24.789 --> 00:39:27.190 question before you chase after something. Is 00:39:27.190 --> 00:39:29.630 this natural and necessary? Is this something 00:39:29.630 --> 00:39:33.309 I actually need for my well -being? Or is this 00:39:33.309 --> 00:39:36.030 just empty calories for my soul? Because if you 00:39:36.030 --> 00:39:38.369 can genuinely find happiness with a bowl of soup, 00:39:38.570 --> 00:39:40.730 a good book, and conversation with a friend, 00:39:40.849 --> 00:39:43.289 you are invincible. The world can't really take 00:39:43.289 --> 00:39:45.269 that away from you. And for me, I'm still stuck 00:39:45.269 --> 00:39:48.210 on the swerve. Kleinemann. That tiny random wobble. 00:39:48.289 --> 00:39:50.869 The idea that a perfect, flawless, predictable 00:39:50.869 --> 00:39:53.849 system is a prison. And that the flaw, the glitch, 00:39:54.010 --> 00:39:56.860 the little bit of chaos. That's where all the 00:39:56.860 --> 00:39:58.960 freedom is. It's a beautiful thought, isn't it? 00:39:58.980 --> 00:40:01.280 We are free because the universe itself is just 00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:02.880 a little bit broken. I think I'm going to go 00:40:02.880 --> 00:40:05.659 cancel my expensive dinner reservations and just 00:40:05.659 --> 00:40:09.940 call a friend instead. A very wise choice. Thanks 00:40:09.940 --> 00:40:11.460 for diving deep with us. We'll see you in the 00:40:11.460 --> 00:40:11.639 garden.