Cross-posted from “Epicurean” by @[email protected] in [email protected]
More seriously though, nowadays when people call themselves Epicurean, they mean just the life philosophy stuff, not the physics stuff :D
Philosophy isn’t stuck in time. You can pick any school you find valid for your life and navigate yourself with it from that point forward, adapting it according to the reality you now live in.
It’s philosophy, not religion.
Also Epicurism is not “standard self-help manual” and I’ll die on this hill. If the majority of people followed epicurist lifestyles, Capitalism would fucking collapse :D In fact, Epicurism was so radical, the early Christian states went to extreme lengths to stamp out its influence, destroy all its books and then spent hundreds of years in propaganda to make people believe Epicurism means the exact opposite of what it says (which is why to this day, most people think Epicurism is synonymous with excession)
The modern resurgence of Stoicism in the zeitgeist is exactly this: self-help without actually engagement with philosophy.
Stoicism in the mainstream is much more nefarious.
if I say the sky is blue and fire is cold, are you gonna tell me the sky isn’t blue because fire isn’t cold?
No, but if you say that you discovered inner peace and fire is cold, I don’t trust that you discovered inner peace.
Why not?
Because you stated 2 things as if they were fact, and I know at least one of them is wrong. It’s okay not to know things, but definitively saying something is true when it’s clearly not true proves that you state unfounded ideas as if they were facts, which can and should undermine people’s trust in the validity of all definitive statements you make.
Stoicism in its modern resurgance in a nutshell with respect to the “self-help” bit, especially among the Andrew Tate types.
Crossposting my comment (when will my people truly be
freefederated?):Daoists spent thousands of years developing alchemy and practices to attain immortality. It’s wild to me, because the Daodejing seems pretty clear in it’s praise of nature, cycles, and being one with the order of nature. So to decide, collectively, that actually breaking those cycles and living forever is definitely what Laozi would have wanted is really something.
So yeah, considering that 90% of the canon is books of magic for achieving spiritual perfection, I pick and choose!
Syncretization and selection are the norms in all beliefs though. How many people who claim any ideology truly believe in all the tenets and consequences of their chosen system? How many Christians are just asking their buddy Jesus for a hand and have no idea of a single thing the man actually (allegedly) taught?
… aren’t eyes formed before sight?
Eyes are highly specialized organs for sight. Chances are that the first form of “sight” in our ancestors was a patch of cells that could vaguely detect the presence and absence of light, which was enough of an advantage for it to be selected for in that population, causing it to slowly get more and more optimized over millions and millions of years until it became an actual eye. For a structure as complex as an eye to pop into existence before any simpler sight-giving predecessor organ would be highly unlikely.
Ah, thanks for the clarity – I suppose the definition of sight is quite broad from a sensory perspective
Kind of at the same time. The form of the eye as it exists now is one that has been iterated on, but without the benefit of an eye-like organ it would not have been selected for.
Good point, how could sight come before eyes? Maybe I’m missing something
Well, what counts as an eye? When in development does an eye become an eye? If it isn’t complete, is it still an eye? In order to be considered complete, shouldn’t it be able to see? Seems like the eye and sight are two sides of the same coin.
But then again, some people have eyes that can’t see. Sight is both the defining feature of an eye, and also not necessary to define an eye. Maybe our languages aren’t specific enough. Let’s say the capital E Eye is a concept of an organ defined by the fact that it sees, (like how some frogs have rudimentary third eyes on the tops of their heads which just sense light above them) while a lowercase e “eye” is any object which resembles an organ that sees. Then the Eye works in the previous paragraph.
Depends on what you mean. Obviously plants and photosensitive tissues have been sensing light for a long time, millions of years. But hose aren’t eyes, and most wouldn’t even call that poor sight.
A baby human usually has its eyes closed at birth, and the brain isn’t completely formed until 25 years old. It takes at least a few years after birth for all the basic parts to settle in and get developed. So does a baby have sight if it hasn’t yet used it’s immature eyes? Does it truly process what it “sees” into anything meaningful in the beginning?
If there is a spirit that exists before life, does it “see” and with what?
So, then you’re agreeing – the sensory organ is developed first before the sensor is active
Hmmm, yeah, I suppose broadly (unless souls exists). If a creature evolves like… a dozen photosensitive patches, like a proto-spider, would we say that creature has sight but no eyes? If that’s the case, do compound “eyes” actually count?
I guess now I’m just musing on where the fuzzy line is between a bunch of eyelets and eyes (made up of single-celled photreceptors). I think sight is just what eyes do. Something like “insight” comes from a metaphor (“looking” within) and I… don’t know if there’s a different word for like… what the experience of being a plant and sensing the sun on your leaves would be called?
