http://smbc-comics.com/comic/epicurean
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Currently reading through this stuff and the How To Live Your Life parts are like footnotes to page upon page of incorrect physics.
Bonus panel
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I enjoy the slight moral superiority I feel reading this despite not being any more consistent in my own beliefs.
You can still follow the ethical recommendations without believing the cosmology.
(Not an epicurean btw)
I think there’s some truth to the old or foreign element lending extra credibility though. And I’ll be the first to say that’s not really logically sound, if anything, the older an idea is the more likely it’s probably bullshit lol. But nonetheless it still works, even on me!
I think it’s more that the older an idea that survived the more credible it is. Also not perfect, but it’s why it seems to make sense.
Novelty as a signifier of value is a very new cultural norm by civilizational standards.
That’s a fair point! And ya know initially I was like “but what about orientalism, and the sorta ‘mystic healing guru’ nonsense”, but then again a bunch of the Eastern spiritual traditions or whatever do go back real far. Plus idk, have to admit we are all kinda suckers for “thrilling ancient (magical?) revelation”, lol
Lucretius De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) isn’t a terrible resd in translation for anybody who is interested in learning more about the ideas mentioned in the strip.
Not discussed: Lucretius holds Venus to be the greatest diety because she is responsible for propagation. There are some bits where he unabashedly celebrates the omni-horniness of nature.
Well, what is “nature” except the unfolding, in all of its bawdy fullness, of “life uhh…[finding] a way”?
Guess I’m Team Lucretius! Thanks for the recommendation.
