The Socrates Express
- Автор: Вейнер Эрик
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
- Жанр: География, путевые заметки
Электронная книга - «The Socrates Express». Краткое содержание книги:
We contemplate for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a different perspective, to unearth hidden beauty and find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope.
Eric Weiner, *New York Times* bestselling author of *The Geography of Bliss* , combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from philosophers around the world, from Marcus Aurelius to Arthur Schopenhauer, Confucius to Montaigne. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport) he traversed thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi,...
We typically think of kinetic pleasures as the most satisfying, but Epicurus didn’t see it that way. Static pleasures are superior, for we seek them for their own sake. They are ends, not means. “I find full pleasure in the body when I live on bread and water,” said Epicurus, “and I spit upon the pleasures of plush living not for their own account, but because of the discomforts that follow them.”
What exactly are the discomforts that follow, say, a five-course meal at the French Laundry? Epicurus is speaking of physical sensations—indigestion, a hangover—but mostly about another, insidious kind of pain: the pain of not-having. You enjoyed the Pacific Wild King Salmon Terrine—the pleasure was real—but now it is gone and you crave it again. You have outsourced your happiness to the Salmon Terrine—and to the fisherman who caught it, the restaurant that serves it, the boss who cuts your paycheck so you can afford it. You are now a Salmon Terrine junkie, your happiness dependent on regular hits of the stuff. All because you have mistaken an unnecessary desire for a necessary one.
Take heart, says Epicurus. Nature has you covered. She has made the necessary desires easy to obtain and the unnecessary ones difficult. Apples grow on trees. Teslas don’t. Desire is nature’s GPS, guiding us toward the highest pleasures and away from the empty ones.
We are supposedly living in a golden age of pleasure. So many tantalizing options lie only a click away: gourmet food, memory-foam mattresses, kinky sex, gadgets galore. Pleasure decoys, all of them, Epicurus would say. Like any good decoy, they look real, and so we take aim. If we fail to hit the target, we blame ourselves for poor marksmanship and reload.
Stop aiming at decoys, counsels Epicurus. Better yet, stop shooting altogether. “Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance,” he says, noting that, with the right mind-set, even a small pot of cheese can convert a simple meal into a lavish feast.
Beyond a certain point, Epicurus believed, pleasure cannot be increased—just as a bright sky cannot get any brighter—but only varied. That new pair of shoes or smart watch represents pleasure varied, not increased. Yet our entire consumer culture is predicated on the assumption that pleasure varied equals pleasure increased. This faulty equation causes needless suffering.
Not only does the variety of pleasure matter less than we think, so does its duration. A twenty-minute massage isn’t necessarily twice as pleasurable as a ten-minute one. You cannot double tranquility. You’re either at peace or you are not.
This philosophy may not sound like much fun, but it was. The Epicureans, ensconced behind the garden walls, lived a simple life but one punctuated by lavish feasts. They knew that luxury is best enjoyed intermittently, and welcomed whatever goodness came their way. Epicureanism is a philosophy of acceptance, and its close cousin, gratitude. When we accept something, truly accept it, we can’t help but feel gratitude.
I recently met a young psychologist named Rob, who, I think, embodies the Epicurean ethos, even if he doesn’t know it. Rob and I spent three days hiking in the otherworldly wilderness that is southern Utah as part of an experiment into the health benefits of nature. (I was the guinea pig.)
One day, I noticed Rob’s water bottle, sleek and ergonomic, eliciting in me a nearly baglike thrill.
“Where did you buy it?” I asked Rob.
“I didn’t buy it,” he replied. “It happened at me.”
A lot happens at Rob. Not only water bottles but coffee mugs, flashlights, and other items. After our expedition, Rob and I exchanged emails, and he informed me: “A new coffee mug happened at me about an hour ago as I crossed campus; it is fairly fancy and came, for some unfathomable reason, in its own box. I have placed it in my office along with five other mugs, eight water bottles, a protein shaker, and two headlamps, all of which also happened at me. If this doesn’t abate soon, I’ll be able to retire early and just open up a gift shop.”
Rob’s attitude is pure Epicurus. If goodness comes your way, enjoy it. Don’t seek it. Good things come to those who don’t expect good things to come to them. Rob doesn’t expend energy hunting for these baubles. They simply happen at him. When they do, he is grateful.
In the centuries that followed Epicurus’s death, Epicurean gardens sprang up across the Mediterranean. They attracted large and devoted followings and, unlike other schools, had low attrition rates. Many entered the garden; few fled.
Those outside the garden walls threw stones. The Stoic teacher Epictetus called Epicurus a “foul-mouthed bastard.” Epicureanism, with its ethos of principled pleasure, threatened other schools of philosophy, and especially a popular new religion: Christianity. Eventually, the Church prevailed. For many centuries, Epicureanism all but disappeared.
Then, in 1417, an intrepid scholar named Poggio Bracciolini, scouring southern Europe for lost treasures from antiquity, discovered the single remaining copy of On the Nature of Things, an Epicurean treatise by the Roman poet Lucretius. In 1473, it became one of the first books printed on the newly invented mechanical press.
Epicurus’s ideas—about pleasure and simplicity and the good life—found a receptive new audience, from France to the American colonies. In 1819, a retired Thomas Jefferson declared, “I too am an Epicurean.” In a letter to a friend, he expands. “I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us.”
Jefferson was less familiar with the teachings of the Buddha, but the similarities with Epicurus are striking. Both men identified desire as the root of all suffering. Both identified tranquility as the ultimate goal of their practice. Both saw the need for a community of like-minded thinkers: the garden for Epicurus, the sangha for the Buddha. And both men apparently liked the number four. The Buddha had the Four Noble Truths, Epicurus the Four-Part Cure.
These similarities might be more than coincidental. Two of Epicurus’s early influences, Democritus and Pyrrho, traveled to India and encountered Buddhist schools there. Perhaps Epicurus had learned of the Buddha’s teaching. Or perhaps both men, journeying by different routes, arrived at the same destination.
Today the Garden has, like nearly everything else, migrated online. This is where I find Tom Merle. I wasn’t looking for Tom. He happened at me.
Tom is a capital-E Epicurean—adhering to the philosopher’s original principles—living in small-e epicurean Napa, California, where the word is synonymous with culinary indulgence. How does he reconcile these upper- and lowercase existences? That is the first question I jot down in my notebook. Questions, though, are like M&M’s, or bags: it’s impossible to have only one. Before long, I’ve filled a dozen pages in my notebook. Epicurus, the apostle of simple living, would not approve.
All my questions, I realize, distill to this: How can a dead Greek dude, prone to cursing and spitting, who lived in a garden and preached a life of radical simplicity, possibly be relevant in today’s complex, high-tech world?
I’ve traveled halfway around the world, from Athens to Napa, in order to meet Tom for an early lunch. I let him choose the venue, partly because it’s his town, but mostly because I’m curious which way he tilts, epicurean or Epicurean. He suggests we meet in the center of town, then walk to the restaurant.
Tom is seventy-three years old but looks a decade younger. He is wearing dark sunglasses, which he never removes, even in the shade, and a silk shirt adorned with colorful wine bottles. Tom is clearly comfortable in his tanned skin. I like him. As we walk, I make small talk, asking about life in Napa.