Neo-Epicurean Life Hacks

[Mequa]

Your definition sounds more like Jeremy Bentham than Epicurus. I guess that's where the "Neo" comes from. It was a pretty tongue in cheek article anyway.

Bentham's hedonism was more collectivist, leading to Utilitarian maxims to act to maximise the greatest happiness of the greatest number, including being impartial when looking at one's own happiness with respect to others. The approach I offered here is more akin to an enlightened form of egoistic hedonism. It's often compared to Rand (or even Anton LaVey) more than Bentham, although the former is definitely not my political cup of blood.

Your description of Epicurean hedonism causes me suffering. What should I do?

Good, according to Epicurean epistemology (kanonikon) the pleasure-pain mechanism is an integral part of cognition. Both pleasant and painful emotions provide valid data, when said data is interpreted correctly, including in the everyday decision-making process. Which brings you on to my next point:

-How does one determine what behavior, right now, is most likely to achieve a positive hedonic state in the future? By following animal desires? If not, then what?

With Epicurus this methodology was tied into an epistemology which constituted an early form of scientific empiricism. It incorporated evidence from sense experience (aesthesis), together with a naturalistic view of cognition (an early form of cognitive science?) which combined this sense experience with the formation of concepts (prolepseis) derived from past experience (and possibly also instinct, according to Norman DeWitt). This necessarily involves an active pleasure-pain mechanism (pathos).

In Epicurean epistemology these three natural faculties - aesthesis, pathos, and prolepseis - all provide valid data when this data is correctly interpreted, only misinterpretations can produce error.

So the suggestion for creating such a methodology is a largely informal form of empiricism (also connected with naturalism and materialism), which does not ignore the data provided by emotion and also incorporates intuition and "gut" feeling into the decision-making and planning process.

As for animal desires, Epicurus attempted to demarcate which desires correspond to human needs. Said desires operate using the pleasure/pain mechanism. It is the combination of the empirical evidence, with the observations of what provides pleasure and eases pain, together with the correct use of our cognitive faculties, which determines the extent to follow which kind of desire.

--What about the greater good? If I can spend my life building schools in Africa, doing fundraising work, and saving the lives of perhaps hundreds by distributing mosquito nets, but DO NOT GET PLEASURE from doing so, should I do it? Or should I say, "Fuck those little African kids. Starbucks is waiting for me."

In this framework, there is no "greater good" than the happiness (e.g., health, flourishing, inner peace, imperturbability) of the individual. You are welcome however to help the people of Africa if this leads to personal fulfilment which outweighs the sacrifices made towards this. Due to human nature as a social animal, if this is how you are constituted: the good of the welfare of these Africans, and the virtue of helping them, thus becomes an instrumental good and instrumental virtue towards your own individual happiness.

-What about morality? If I can maintain positive social relationships while secretly back-stabbing all those around me, why shouldn't I?

Confidence in never having the betrayal uncovered is not really rational in that case according to Epicurus. Thus such social relationships cannot really be considered positive. Openness and honesty are instrumental virtues due to their utility towards individual happiness in intimate social relationships, due to such relationships satisfying basic human needs provided by nature.

Beyond that, there isn't really an honest motivation to follow "morality". What moral discourse often amounts to is what Thomas Jefferson called "hypocrisy and grimace", where people rhetorically attempt to take the moral high ground as a means to one-up each other.

-Isn't the complete obliteration and subjugation of our animal desires the most sure way to eliminate suffering? Should I not therefore consider all the suffering required to achieve such a goal an investment in the only long-lasting secessation of suffering and subsequent positive hedonic state?

Some animal desires are still necessary to sustain life, health and well-being according to Epicurus (that would include breathing, eating, excreting, obtaining shelter, among others). Such necessarily produce pain when not satisfied and pleasure when satisfied. This is an instinctual process to maintain the health of the organism.

-What about drugs?

Drugs have many legitimate medical uses. I assume you are talking about recreational uses, however.

Addictive overconsumption would be something to avoid due to the greater pain over pleasure produced in the long run, together with the damage to both physical and mental health, and the impairment in self-control which is a cardinal (instrumental) virtue. Damaging one's health would also impair long-term pleasure and promote pain in the long run. I think Epicurus would have proscribed pleasure at the expense of health. His "hedonism" is more nuanced than most readings of it, I find.

-What if I'm a sociopath? Should I act in a way that will maximize my chances to rape, kill and mutilate young women?

If you lack a moral conscience you are going to lack the motivation to act consistently morally. It's really as simple as that. Kant's maxim "Ought implies can" applies here. You cannot expect a sociopath to be moral because they are not capable. They are like a lion, all bets are off.

Sociopaths can certainly benefit themselves by learning to behave more prudently and less impulsively. However they would likely remain a threat to everyone else, and from anyone else's perspective is best shunned (and forcibly detained if necessary) out of concern for your own well-being and that of friends and other non-sociopaths.

I have had first hand experience with sociopaths actually. All I can say is that lions in a zoo are behind bars for a good reason.

It seems to me you are going to have to make a lot of bald assertions about what is good, what constitutes pleasure, and about how these relate to change over time, in order to make any kind of a useful lifestyle out of this philosophy.

I do reject the dogmatic approach of Epicurus. I do not claim to promote a universalisable normative ethic. I restrict discussions of the good to "good for the individual" and "good to the individual", and consider discussions of "good in general" to be somewhat nonsense.

I venture though that to a free individual, that individual's own good is his or her highest good. Other forms of "higher" good are a way to subjugate the individual (a point covered by Max Stirner, who called them "spooks"). One could put this in memetic terms: They are like viruses which infect and disempower the individual. So-called "higher" values can be used for personal fulfilment (as instrumentally valued towards one's own good), however infection implies placing them beyond one's own life, health or happiness and choosing martyrdom, rooted in shame and guilt. Throwing off the shackles implies becoming an egoist or individualist.

Of course, such mental slavery is still hugely useful for society as it really exists. It may be collectively useful to reduce the worth of the individual to a utility towards the collective. However, this is still a form of slavery.