Follow Me On Substack and Society of Epicurus

I have not posted here for years and noticed that some of my readers still visit this old blog. If you’d like to be updated on my more recent content, please visit my Substack, subscribe, comment, and share. My two most recent posts were an exploration of the parallels between the Taoist sage Yang Zhu and Epicurus, and in the coming months I will be writing about the awakening of our pleasure potential.

Of course, you may also find my content at the Society of Friends of Epicurus page as well, which has study guides for De rerum natura and Kyriai Doxai, a self-guided study curriculum, a list of past Eikas messages, and much more. If you’d like to become an expert Epicurean, please follow me on these platforms, and also participate in our FB Group Garden of Epicurus, where you can ask questions and get guidance from others who have been practicing for years. Cheers!

Review of “William”, and more Neanderthal Sci-Fi

I just finished watching William, a movie about a Neanderthal boy that is cloned, grows up in modern United States, and has difficulty adapting to life as part of our species. The reason for my interest in William is that it’s similar to a short story that I wrote, and which was published last month as part of the bilingual (Spanish-English) sci-fi anthology Fricción cuántica.

I had originally written “Ogre Island” as a coming-of-age story of a Neanderthal boy in a future where these hominids have been cloned and are beginning to become a visible human minority. Many years ago, when the original anthology was first conceived, its title was going to be “Ciencia fricción”, but the original anthology project fell through. This is probably a good thing, since many things have happened–including the pandemic–in the last couple of years, which have created post-apocalyptic real-life scenarios that inspired many of the authors who ended up contributing stories. I’m currently about half-way through the new anthology, which has over 600 pages of great content. So far, in addition to stories, I’ve read and enjoyed a few essays about science fiction’s peculiar expressions and concerns in Caribbean and Latin American literature. If you’re a sci-fi fan, and would like to support Latin American sci-fi literature, feel free to enjoy and share a copy of Fricción cuántica.

As to William, I can’t say how scientifically accurate this film is, but the human side of the story shares many of the ethical concerns I raise in Ogre Island: Neanderthals were psychologically complex creatures, and if we clone one, we should probably clone several so that they may have access to socializing with other members of their own species. It’s a special form of cruelty to keep animals (including humans) from associating with other members of their own species in their own environment. I have no idea how we would navigate this, if it ever happens, because it opens another, more complicated, can of worms: while a Promethean and pro-science case can be made in favor of cloning Neanderthals, what are the ethical responsibilities that we would acquire towards these creatures, once materialized? How do we ensure they’re happy and functional? We simply don’t know.

Like much good sci-fi, William is a word of caution to the future generations, for whom the cloning of extinct creatures may some day be a reality. William accentuates the psychological difficulties and the quasi-autistic personality traits of its main character. It’s a very touching, human story, a commentary on how members of our species treat those who are different–with both violence and compassion.

Puerto Rico Statehood: Some Anthropological, Genetic, and Historical Considerations

In a nature documentary years ago, I learned that female chimps, once they enter puberty, have a strong migratory instinct. In order to avoid incestuous relationships, the females feel a strog urge to run away from their tribal lands in order to join the alpha male of another lineage. This happens naturally as if their bodies had a clock dictating the behavior, and they frequently risk going through dangerous terrain, where they might be hunted by large cats or have to climb through cliff-like obstacles. Yet, their nature drives them to migrate.

This idea stuck with me. Much of human history is about migrations, and practically every existing culture has its own migration narratives, usually as part of their official or romanticized origin myth. Is it possible that human migrations also follow a similar logic? In other words, to the extent that nature drives creatures to overcome great obstacles in order to migrate and achieve a greater degree of genetic diversity for their offspring, can we re-interpret many chapters of human history as driven by unconscious natural forces, in addition to the historically-accepted economic forces? A method of multiple explanations suggests that, so long as these interpretations are not mutually-contradictory, they might both be true.

The invasion or conquest of the Americas by Europeans, who also brought Africans to the new promised land, could be seen from the perspective of obeying an unconscious instinct to prevent inbreeding, and a need to expand the territory in order to gain greater genetic diversity. Even before the accidental “discovery” of the two new continents and what lay beyond, there were strong expansionary interests brewing. Spain had just pushed off the Moors from Europe, and its king and queen were emboldened by the “Reconquista” of their kingdom, believing God to be on their side. There was, in addition to this, a hunger for new economic opportunities by many wealthy subjects of the king and queen, including recently converted Jews who chose to convert (sincerely or not) to Catholicism in order to remain in Spain and not lose all their property. The wealthy Catholic elites were anxious to explore new grounds, and we know that they were planning efforts to find alternate routes to India in order to expand the spice trade (in reality, the thirst was for the extraction of foreign wealth). This gave birth to the violent missionary ideology of the Spanish Crown, which was born from a flawed, white supremacist understanding of history and human cultures. The Gospel provided an excuse both for the economic and the racial realities that ensued, but the instinct behind it was expansion. 

Both Islam and Christianity have (interestingly, in very particular times in history) provided justification for expansion ventures. What part of someone’s nature takes seriously the Gospel’s instruction to go off into the world and evangelize? I wonder if, behind the gullibility of the believers, there are unnamed drives and instincts. Are expansion and conquest ultimately the work of a certain sexual drive that is seeking to avoid incestuous outlets? Are the Gospels (like economic interests and other incentives) merely convenient excuses and tools for this instinct of expansion, which is fundamentally rooted in the sexual drive?

There is something Freudian about calling the invasion of the Americas a “conquest” in the same way that a man may conquer the love of a woman. This is why the term Conquistador is surrounded by romantic ideas and mystique.

We may go back further and imagine the 15,000 years during which humans coexisted and competed with Neanderthals in Eurasia. These hominids were our relatives, but we know from archaeological evidence that they engaged in cannibalism, and so it would have been quite dangerous to cross them. Plus, the ancestors who moved into Neanderthal territory were choosing to inhabit a cold climate during an Ice Age. There must have existed strong drives in their natures to make them see the path into these territories as a place worth conquering, generation after generation. The brutality of Europe’s settlement is perhaps remembered in vestigial form in the Viking myths, which feature Thor slaying giants, Odin mastering nature (he shapes the Earth by slaying Ymir), and the gods fighting forces of nature with brute force. Interestingly, the Indo-Europeans who worshiped the Aesir did not cease their violent incursion until they managed to intermarry with the locals, who worshiped the Vanir. This truce is documented in the Norse myth of the exchange of hostages and intermarriage between the Aesir and Vanir clans of deities, which in my view demonstrates that the intention of the Indo-European migration was to find an interbreeding outlet, for which violence had been merely a tool, a means.

Studying the Eastern branch of the Indo-European ancestors helps to shed light on why these migrations from Central Asia into Europe kept occurring and were a perpetual feature of prehistory. The first moral philosopher and prophet Asho Zartosht (aka Zoroaster), in his 17 Gathas or sacred songs (which are dated to almost 4,000 years ago) complained about the nomads who often attacked and sacked the settled peoples. In addition to rebelling against the corruption of the priests, he campaigned in favor of good governance for the protection of both humans and cattle. 

These nomadic cultures that we see vilified in the Gathas were, therefore, entering into conflict with settled populations in Central Asia during the times of the first prophet. If these settled populations achieved good governance (which we may assume they did when King Vishtaspa converted to Zoroaster’s “good religion”) and united to fight off the nomads, then this would have encouraged more of these clans to abandon the unstable nomadic life and find regions to settle by following their relatives into the lands west of them that they had been settling for many generations. Asho Zartosht lived just south of Central Russia, the place from where it is known that the ancestors of Scythians and other Indo-Europeans traveled into Europe before and during his time.

Clearly, there were many reasons why people migrated, but why did some migrate and others remain in a nomadic lifestyle for a longer period? I wonder to what extent the decision to migrate obeyed unconscious drives born from the incest-evading sexual instinct of the population. I wonder whether similar, unconscious drives govern the choice to disperse oneself in today’s migratory trends. I also wonder if this expansion instinct becomes accentuated every so many generations, and whether this could be mapped so as to predict future migratory trends–without dismissing the economic and other reasons for them.

We could go on and on considering the Viking, Gothic, Lombard, and Vandal gangs that invaded Britain, Spain, and Italy during the Middle Ages, or the repercussions of the American doctrine of “manifest destiny”, or the period of the Bantu expansions in Africa, but I’m today interested in Puerto Rico’s political status. I was recently on the island, and although many people are cynical about the chances that the new status bill will successfully decolonize the island, the junction that the island finds itself in during this time of choice is a very interesting point in history that reminds me of 1492 and of the days of the first prophet.

There are 5 million Puerto Ricans in the US, and over 3 million on the island. This means that, in our collective psyche, Boricuas have already found outlets (many communities in the US) that we can migrate to in order to gain greater genetic diversity. We also have many people from the states living on the island now. Our population is already one of the most genetically diverse in the world (and according to at least one geneticist, Puerto Rican women possess a nearly ideal genotype), so in theory we should not have a strong instinct to need this genetic variety. But we evolved on an island (which creates inherently limited genetic outlets), and in the genetic research that I’ve done about my own ancestry, I’ve learned that just three generations before me, my ancestors lived in some of the very first towns founded by the Spanish in Borinquen. My father’s hometown had not officially been founded. This, to me, means that I likely share ancestry with people from all over the island. The natural limits of being an island still mean that migratory outlets are needed in order to avoid inbreeding.

The pro-independence and sovereignty movement clearly obeys a territorial instinct and an instinct of power over one’s fate, which is a noble and useful drive. But I wonder to what extent the unconscious desire for genetic diversity will drive Puerto Ricans to vote for statehood, after 500 years of relatively limited genetic outlets by virtue of being an island.

What I’m saying is that the statehood movement obeys different psychological drives from the independence movement, of which we may not be fully conscious, and to which the economic, romantic, political, and other considerations might simply be tools or means. I do not mean to discount all these other valid (or not) arguments, but the choice of becoming a perpetual source of diaspora communities throughout an entire continent–from the perspective of nature’s incentives for genetic diversity–creates unlimited advantages for any island population, even if there are costs–as we saw in the example of the female chimp who reached puberty, climbed her way up a cliff, and migrated through lion-infested territory in order to avoid incest.

For all these reasons, I believe populations will always reach a point where they will refuse to remain closed to the outside world, and that whether or not Puerto Ricans of this particular generation choose statehood, and whether they themselves know it or not, it will likely depend on their body’s clocks.

Foundation: Science Fiction and Myth

I just finished watching the first season of the series Foundation–based on a novel by the same name–in which we find themes that resonate specifically with ancient Egyptian myth, although the aesthetics do not immediately suggest ancient Kemet.

As for whether it’s worth watching, yes, although it’s a little disorienting because of the huge time lapse between the historical events described in the plot. The ideas in the series are thought-provoking. The aesthetics is less like Star Wars, more like the retelling of an epic. The many planets and civilizations visited do not look too different from Earth. It’s an anthropocentric series, and it asks whether there might be mathematical formulae by which one may accurately predict future large-scale events. The sage who supposedly deciphers these historical codes is a type of future Pythagoras, his prophecies repeated and studied over the aeons.

One common theme: mortals who are rendered quasi immortal by some secret technology, or by magic. When it comes to transcending death, ancient Egyptian myth is rich. Osiris’ resurrection comes to mind.

The three Foundation characters that constitute “Empire” (a man named Cleon who is triple-cloned to live as a young man, adult man, and old man at the same time) are one model of an immortal being which reminds us of the belief in the divinity of the Pharaoh, who was himself an incarnation of the ba (soul) of Horus. Just as the Sun sets and rises forever and ever, the Divine King (empowered or possessed by Horus’ soul) will always be restored, and there would be eternal stability, in their belief.

In Foundation, we see a future technology by which a woman enters a sarcophagus-like ship which keeps her alive and in hibernation for 30, 150, or more years at a time, during which time the sarcophagus-like ship travels a huge distance in space. When she revives she is still of the same age as when she went into hibernation. Here, I see echoes of Osiris’ sarcophagus traveling in the currents of the Nile after his brother Set killed him, and eventually transcending his own death.

Foundation was brought to my attention by a fellow Epicurean when we dedicated an Eikas program to the intersection between science fiction and philosophy. We noted how many genres that relied on the magical (like the superhero and zombie genres) in their world-building, have in recent years relied more on future technologies. Sci-fi often serves as a great platform to explore philosophical ideas, but the genre also has archetypal imagery and themes that are evocative in ways that suggest something more Dionysian, and evocative of ancient myth. Foundation is a modern myth.

Book Review of Talking Stick: Peacemaking as a Spiritual Path

I picked up Stephan Beyer’s Talking Stick: Peacemaking as a Spiritual Path thanks to a neighbor, Fran, who is a librarian and who always has dozens of books in his house. Over the years we have always shared the books we’ve enjoyed with each other, and this book seemed interesting to me because (like yerba maté and kava, my two ceremonial drinks) it merges elements of ceremony with practices that have social utility.

I will first share some basic notes on the practice of the Talking Stick, then a few of the pros, and then the cons of the book. The talking stick is a medicine of the Native American peoples. It is a tradition whereby a communal “Council” is held (either to make important decisions, or as a form of tribunal) and, in order to evade chaos and facilitate communication and listening, a talking stick is passed around the circle. Only the person holding the stick may speak, and for as long as that person speaks everyone else must be listening. The Talking Stick is passed around the circle and everyone shares whatever they wish to say. Fran told me that he has used the Talking Stick with his students, and this tradition has been successfully used in schools throughout the country in order to keep the peace among the students and to diffuse conflict.

The book details the “four intentions”, which are the Council’s social contract. The ceremony and theory of the Talking Stick moves us from blame-seeking to identifying an unmet need that requires attention.

The author rejects the “punitive and violent mythology” we have inherited, which is admirable, and he criticizes how, in our conventional model of “justice”, we usually seek to craft outcomes (punish the wrongdoer, or enforce atonement in some concrete way) rather than deepen relationships. He rejects these transactional models of relating and says we should embrace “process” (versus “product”).

This seems more practical than the forever-war mentality of embittered opponents. However, it seems to imply that, even if we do not see any results, we should still employ the same “process”–which seems unpragmatic. It seems legitimate to expect or want results. We all want to have something to show for whatever time and effort we put into activities, even peacekeeping.

Beyer refuses to use “victim-offender” verbiage, saying that victimization implies moral superiority and is hierarchical. Does it really imply moral superiority? There seems to be a Christian-influenced epistemological error here. People who suffer are not always good, and people who make others suffer are sometimes observed to be defending themselves from some evil thing or person.

Also, we observe that there ARE people who are morally superior to others. There are people who are more responsible, kinder, or more just than others. Some are wiser, more mature, or more experienced than others. To deny this is to reject all ethical and behavioral standards.

On the other hand, when people offend others, they must sometimes admit their offense in order to begin a process of moral and personal development. Rejecting all talk of victim-offender seems, in this case, counter-productive.

And so one potential danger here is that, by rejecting plain facts and by avoiding naming victim-offender relations, this may lead to lack of moral clarity and denial of personal responsibility. I understand that the role of the peacekeeper is to keep the peace, but at what cost?

The Talking Stick ceremony has helped many communities to heal from trauma, and this book provides a good, complete introduction to this wisdom tradition. I advise readers to engage the book critically, and to keep in mind that the task of peacemaking is not always easy.

Further Reading:
Talking Stick: Peacemaking as a Spiritual Path

Expanse – the Finale

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the series Expanse, which is known for science fiction that is more realistic than most. The series deals candidly with issues of space politics, and also with scientific issues like how gravity would affect life aboard a spaceship.

I initially took an interest in the series as a fan of Steven Strait, whom I discovered in 10,000 BC. It turned out to be a good series for binge-watching when it’s cold outside. I did not read the novels the series is based on, but apparently the finale cut the narrative short. 

The planet Laconia is supposed to have produced a huge galactic empire in the original storyline. But at the end of the series, Laconia has barely been settled, and what little we know of it from one of the storylines seems to not have found its conclusion. Presumably, this is because the growth of such an empire would have required many generations, and it would have been difficult to follow the familiar main characters into the Laconian storyline.

As far as world-building is concerned, Expanse creates believable colonies in the solar system. Belters (residents of the Asteroid Belt) have developed an English-based Créole language, and their fashion sense creatively blends futuristic and punk styles. The actors chosen for the roles are of a much more diverse background than we are accustomed to, with many of them being Canadians of various backgrounds, but we also see Africans, Asians, Indians, New Zealanders, Native Americans, Persians, and others. Strong women leaders and soldiers also play prominent roles. This, in my view, adds to the realistic non-mystique of Expanse.

My next binge-watching adventure will be The Book of Bobba Fett. If it’s salient enough, I’ll write a review of it.

Dune 2021

After a long-enough wait, Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune finally hit the theaters last night and I was among the first to show up to watch it. Dune is a philosophical, artistic and cultural masterpiece, and it involves phenomenal worldbuilding, but one movie does not do it justice. In fact, the film (at over two hours) had just enough time to introduce many of the key concepts of the Duniverse, and it tells about half of the original story. Since it’s unfair to provide a full review of half a movie, instead I’m going to share a few highlights of the movie.

• It has the grandeur that a Dune movie should have: some of the ships are almost the size of small nations.
• Their “helicopters” look like metallic gigantic fireflies.
• Months ago, someone said this movie would be “dark”, and it is. It’s visually dark. Although Arrakis is a desert planet and gets plenty of sun, the heat and sun are not ideal for life outdoors, and the people live in enclosures that seem a bit claustrophobic. The desert landscape is magical, though, and I suspect we will see more of it in the sequels, when the inside of sietches is revealed (a sietch is an underground cave system that includes a reservoir of water and allows for human habitation).
• For some reason, the planet Caladan (which has oceans and is the homeworld of the House of Atreides) has Scottish, Irish, or other Celtic heritage. I don’t remember this being the case in the 80’s movie.
• A beautiful conlang (artificial language) was created for this movie by the same language expert who worked on the Game of Thrones languages. The script reminds me a bit of Ethiopian writing.

Further Reading:

Nietzsche and the Dune Saga

Book Review of “Winds of Dune

 

Happy Eikas: Prometheus Bound

Hi. This month (and henceforward), the literary updates and the Eikas message will be at societyofepicurus.com. Please check our Twentieth message for the new paperback edition of our Epitome: Epicurean Writings, and also some notes from the discussion we had during our Twentieth zoom meeting, which was an Epicurean interpretation of the Prometheus myth.

Happy Twentieth: On “Love Your Neighbor”

Happy Twentieth to all the disciples of Epicurus! Psyche Magazine published an essay titled Sprinkle a little ancient philosophy into your daily routines, and the Ad Navseam podcast published an episode titled The Whole Enchilada: Epicureanism and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. Unfortunately, midway through the episode the authors cast doubt on whether Epicureans can be good citizens–never mind the historian Diogenes Laertius’ testimony about the character of Epicurus. To balance this, I would invite the student to read John Thrasher’s essay on Epicurean contractarianism.

This month, the latest episode of the Newstalk podcast “Talking History” is titled “Epicurus: a Life”. Several scholars were interviewed.

Love Your Neighbor

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. ’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

– Jesus the Nazarene, in The Gospel according to Mark 12:28-31

Having been raised in a Christian household has made me aware of both the utility and the futility of Christian ethos–whether we delve into the details, or stick to the basics. Christianity provides a formative ethical framework for almost all of my family members and a large portion of the society I live in. Even after people leave Christianity behind, or stop taking most of its claims seriously, many still consider themselves Christian Humanists and frequently still unquestioningly accept the wisdom of “Love your neighbor“. Not wanting to embrace it or dismiss it without careful consideration, I decided to take a second look at the second of the two Christian commandments through the lens of my Epicurean ethical framework to see if “Love your neighbor” still works.

I believe that Epicurus would argue that a commandment to love God is a bit strange: if one is commanded to love someone, is it love or is it fear? Can sentient beings be ORDERED to feel an emotion? Furthermore, the Principal Doctrines on justice recognize the personal sovereignty of the individual, and so we do not have “commandments”, only doctrines and adages.

So the first Christian commandment is irrelevant to us, but I believe the second commandment is not only sound, but also that Epicurus and most of the Epicurean Guides might argue that it’s generally advantageous to love our neighbors–maybe not as much as we love ourselves, but we can still argue that it’s advantageous to let our brain brew its oxytocin and endorphin rush for them. I believe that they would argue this from the perspective of the safety and the advantages it brings, rather than merely virtue-signal around the teaching, as a sign of respect for the intelligence of their pupils. In fact, Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura 5:1015-27 includes compassion for the weak among the foundational cultural traits of human societies listed in Liber Qvintvs:

Then, too, did neighbours ‘gin to league as friends,
Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong,
And urged for children and the womankind
Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures
They stammered hints how meet it was that all
Should have compassion on the weak. 

But first, let us clarify what the second Christian commandment says and what it doesn’t say. “Love your neighbor”, on its face, does not mean that we should love everyone everywhere and always. No one has the attention span or time to love everyone. It’s naturally impossible to love everyone. Love, if it’s true, if the word has any real meaning, is a time-consuming pleasure. Two individuals must have wholesome exchanges and get to know each other with some level of depth, which takes some time. They must take time to communicate, and to demonstrate care with concrete tokens of friendship.

Notice that the word chosen in English to translate the Gospel teaching is “neighbor”–which in its prolepsis implies physical proximity. In Spanish, the word chosen is “prójimo”, which is related to words like proximity and also implies nearness. Our friend Nathan adds:

Within the ancient Hebrew context of Leviticus, ‘neighbor’ does not refer to ‘humanity’, it only refers to ‘other members of our tribe’. The full quotation from Leviticus is important for context: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (19:18 NRSV)

PD’s 27 and 39-40 argue for the benefits of loving our neighbors and keeping them near. The Doctrines seem to argue that it’s advantageous to love those who are in our proximity, for the sake of our safety and happiness. Although PD 39 is often used to justify the exclusion from our circles of people who bring trouble or conflict, it starts by spelling out the following ideal scenario:

The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can. – Principal Doctrine 39

Other issues we must discuss are the feasibility argument and the argument for a complete ethical education. We don’t know to what extent it’s possible to TRULY love all of our neighbors. It’s impractical for a community to set up a rule in its social contract that is impossible to follow, however, it’s not irrational to expect an agreement of harmlessness (rather than love) from relative strangers. While the Christian commandment is noble, it potentially imposes and breeds hypocrisy, whereas the Epicurean conception of justice founded on an agreement to neither harm nor be harmed is much more realistic and practical.

That is the feasibility argument. The argument for a complete ethical education, on the other hand, says: while a commandment by a god to love him makes that god sound narcissistic, and while his commanding us to love others sounds authoritarian, Epicurus’ approach of expounding arguments for the advantages and benefits of befriending and loving our neighbors constitutes a more complete ethical education, and appeals to both our self-interest and our prudence. Most importantly, it does not produce false reasons to love our neighbors, and respects the intelligence and autarchy of the practitioner of philosophy.

Some enemies of Epicurean philosophy have argued that Epicureans would not make good citizens, or have concern for others outside of their immediate circle, however:

1. Epicurus took care of orphans: he adopted and provided for the daughter of his best friend Metrodorus when she was orphaned. She must have been very young when Metro died, as he died eight years prior to Epicurus’ death and, as of the writing of his final will, Epicurus had not yet made arrangements for her to get married. Therefore, Epicurus had assumed responsibility for her and helped to raise her into adulthood
2. Epicurus taught his friends how to live properly and pleasantly: he had a concrete and useful curriculum that provided an ethical and philosophical education for both young and old in his community which specifically contributed to their happiness and to living correctly
3. The practice of friendship (philía) was a central aspect of the teaching mission. Each friend furnishes a concrete instance of loving our neighbor
4. Epicurus fed the people every month in a feast: his Kepos functioned like what we would think of today as a communal non-profit organization. The welcome sign at the gate in the garden said “_STRANGER_, here you do well to tarry”. Since strangers were welcome in the garden, this means that Epicurus fed strangers, which sounds like near-universal charity

Epicurus, I would argue, was an exemplary citizen by any measure who sought to make into one tribe all the creatures that he was able to befriend. When asking about this subject in our FB group, one of the group members Shahab had this to say:

I think showing affection toward a neighbor makes you feel more safe beside them. Nothing is guaranteed, as men wish more harm upon each other. In any case, your neighbor may be a religious, a superstitious family, or they may be from people working for the government (as in authoritarian regimes). In these cases you wouldn’t feel safe if you don’t show them friendly feelings, or once upon a time, inviting them for a party where they can find, at least, Epicurean friendly attitude, reassuring for a healthy happy life. Malevolent neighbors can sabotage your reputation, making you feel unsafe in the neighborhood. So, as long as it benefits an Epicurean, showing a well-calculated love and friendliness toward one’s neighbor is, to me, a wise thing to do.

Not everyone considers “Love your neighbor” as being useful. Jason says:

PD 39 sums it up for me. Enroll everyone possible into the social contract. Benevolence meets benevolence. If they cannot or will not keep the contract, avoid them and their disturbance. If they cannot be avoided, expel them. The English word love is too much of a catch-all term for all of the varieties of positive feeling I experience to apply it universally to all sentients.

The biochemistry of my brain responds differently to different people and circumstances. Putting all those feelings under one word makes for vague speech, something Christianity, out of all the Abrahamic faiths, excels in. It is precisely that vagueness that makes it incompatible with Epicurean philosophy.

Nathan also says:

“He who best knew how to meet fear of external foes made into one family all the creatures he could; and those he could not, he at any rate did not treat as aliens; and where he found even this impossible, he avoided all association, and, so far as was useful, kept them at a distance” (Principal Doctrine 39).

I invite everyone to heed scientific research, get vaccinated, and wear a mask. To those who are unable to get vaccinated, I understand and encourage safe practices. To those who take unnecessary risks, I’ll avoid like the plague.

To answer your original question: no, Epicurus would not have endorsed (Love thy neighbor), because that proposition is justified by devotional worship of a Creator and does not consider any negative consequences of unconditional love.

From PD 39, and from the above discussion, we conclude that he wisdom of setting boundaries must be balanced with making into one tribe everyone we can … and it’s up to each one of us to determine the extent of each.

Therefore, I believe Epicurus loved his neighbors just as well or better than any good Christian, because he demonstrated life-long love for those who were near him (and taught them by example how to love each other) not with naive, religious idealisms but with concrete tokens of benefits, and for the right reasons.

The Book of Job: an Indictment of the God character

Many have tried to justify the existence of God in light of all the evil in the world.

The Book of Job–uniquely refreshing among Bible books in its honesty–makes it clear that the monotheistic God character is not a moral example and is not a good tool to help explain the existential state of mortals. The monotheistic God idea creates many more problems than it solves. I recently had the pleasure of reading the Book of Job. Here are some notes of interest about it.

The “Holy Ones”

The book twice makes mention of “the holy ones” (5:1, 15:15), and contrasts them with mortals (which means that these “holy ones” are immortal). This indicates that the authors of the Book of Job were still polytheists, but they considered the Canaanite chief god El Shaddai (with whom Abraham believed to have made a pact) to be the supreme deity among many.

The text mentions the various lands that the four mortal characters mentioned in the Book of Job were from: Taman is associated with Yemen, for instance. Job himself was from the “land of Uz”–which is part of Aram elsewhere in the Bible. If Job was Aramean, the “holy ones” to him would have been deities like El, Ashtarte, Baal Hadad, Shamash (Sun), Nin (Moon), Anat, and others.

God Makes a Pact with Satan

The first time I heard of the idea that God had made a pact with the Devil was from Iaakov Malkin, author of Epicurus & Apikorsim. The relevant passage is Job 1:8-12. It shows Satan tempting God’s ego and succeeding (Job 2:3), as a result of which Job lost all his animals, sons and daughters, and most of his slaves, and later even his health–yet Job still praises God (1:21). This is not a matter of atheist interpretation of the text. In the text, God plainly and clearly admits that he was not just tempted, but incited by Satan, and God admits causal responsibility for his unjustified tyranny (“without any reason”):

“And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.” – Job 2:3

Job’s Angst

The Book of Job is an example of existentialist philosophical literature. In some ways, it reminds me of Arjuna’s depression in the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, when he realizes he must kill his family members and tells Krishna that he does not wish to fight. The Gita treats Arjuna’s turmoil as a “yoga” because it leads to his spiritual questioning. 

“I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” – Job 3:26

Job curses the day of his birth (3.1), and wishes he hadn’t been born (3:11). He hates his own life (10.1), doesn’t understand why he was born (10.18) and wants god to kill him (6:8-9). His depression and suicidal ideation are expressed throughout the text (7:15-16). 

Furthermore, the Book of Job makes a connection between exploitative labor / wage slavery and depression / existentialist angst, or meaninglessness. Job compares this life to hired labor (7:1-3), which contributes to making life senseless or alienating. 

Since Job is blameless, he cannot accept the idea that he is being punished for some sin, or that suffering is punishment (10.2), which makes his pain unbearable because it makes no sense. As a result, Job can’t sleep, and the thought of death makes him anxious and bitter, which contributes to life’s meaninglessness (7:4-11).

Failed Apologetics

You, however, smear me with lies; you are worthless physicians, all of you! – Job, speaking to his “friends” in 13:4

The Book of Job places before our eyes the psychological abuse and humiliation that characterizes primitive (and, often, modern) monotheism. In fact, the book’s role seems to be to persuade worshipers to praise their divine wrong-doer in spite of the admitted moral problems implied in this.

Job has four “friends” who offer him advice in the text. I place the word “friends” in quotes because they all engage in “blame-the-victim” behavior (8:4), although from the get-go we see that Job was blameless and was scared of his god (1:1), and that his god behaves like a cruel bully. 

In Job 4:7-8, Eliphaz the Temanite denies that god is unjust, and claims that everyone gets their karma, but his apologetics fail. He attributes many legendary and miraculous deeds to God, which are easily explained today as natural phenomena, or dismissed as mythical.

Later, Bildad the Shuhite appeals to “ancestral knowledge” (8:10-13) when he argues that that the godless are made to perish, but this is not true. All creatures perish, religious or atheist, and death is natural and has nothing to do with how pious we are. Furthermore, we are deeply aware that “ancestral knowledge” is wrong about many things, even if it mixes legitimate observations of nature into faulty interpretations of them. 

But these apologetics do not work, by the admission of the God character himself at the end of the book, who tells Job that, out of all that has been said, he was the only one who spoke truthfully about the nature of God. This includes the assertion that “the wicked” (or “the godless”, as they are indistinguishable for some reason even in this text) live their lives in peace and prosperity (21:7-14). This is a commentary on the practice by men of God of celebrating when something evil happens to their enemies (22.19). Here, there is no vindication of good over evil whatsoever (21.23-26). 

Here is where the indictment of monotheism as a philosophical failure is most clear. If there is only one God in charge of both all the good and all the evil in the cosmos, then this renders him useless as a moral guide. In order to be all things to everyone, God must be viewed as amoral, but this is not what is claimed of him in inherited tradition.

“For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal.” – Job 5:18

Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. He would crush me with a storm and multiply my wounds for no reason. He would not let me catch my breath but would overwhelm me with misery.

It is all the same; that is why I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’ When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent. When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it is not he, then who is it? – Job 9:16-18, 22-24

“Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the plans of the wicked?” – Job, in 10:3

The tents of marauders are undisturbed, and those who provoke God are secure— those God has in his hand. – Job 12:6

I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me. – Job 30:20-21

It’s no surprise that Job is depressed, if we consider what he believes about his god, about whom Job “cannot speak up without fear of him” (9:35). This means that he is restraining his expression, and makes us wonder the extent to which the authors of the Book of Job were openly atheists amongst themselves. This is one other reason why the Book of Job is fascinating: I have a suspicion that at least some of the authors of this one Biblical book were atheists.

But as a mountain erodes and crumbles and as a rock is moved from its place, as water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil, so you destroy a person’s hope. – Job (referring to his god), 14:18-19

If there are multiple gods and they’re all equal in power, some good and some evil, this at least protects the reputation of the good gods and makes it easy to blame the evil gods. But here, God is almighty and his power can’t be resisted, yet he falls for the Devil’s temptations and endangers mortals “without any reason”. And since he is a power-hungry and worship-hungry, and needs constant appeasement, this renders him positively a bully. Throughout the book, God is a violent, dangerous and cruel character. He not only experiences anger, but (like one who never reached adulthood and moral maturity) does not know how to restrain it (Job 9:5-10, :13)

“Who has resisted him and come out unscathed?” – Job 9:4

Perhaps this is the reason for Jesus’ accusations in John 8:44:

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. – Jesus, in John 8:44, speaking to a group of people identified as “the Jews”

Conclusion

From an Epicurean perspective, the Book of Job is a work of impiety. It accuses God of so many cruelties and crimes, that he’s indistinguishable from a demonic figure (Job 16.9). Job tells God’s advocates: “Will you speak wickedly on God’s behalf? Will you speak deceitfully for him?” (13.7), as this seems to be what is required to defend God.

The Book of Job is the most honest (and possibly the only) treatment in the Bible of how harmful the idea of the God character is. It’s a great existentialist and philosophical work. Its authors are the most anti-theist of all the Bible book authors–and in fact this book is being read today as atheist literature by many ex-Christians. It’s possible that some of the authors or sources of the book were atheists, even if they were scared of going too far in their criticism of their god idea. This makes Job unique in the Biblical canon.

I close this essay with Epicurus’ Trilemma, which is actually of unknown origin, but which beautifully and clearly articulates many of the problems that the Book of Job uncovers.

If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.
If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?