Episode 048 - Nature Speaks To Us About Death
Date: 12/12/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1792-episode-forty-eight-nature-speaks-to-us-about-death/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”This episode covers lines 931–1023 of Book Three, where Lucretius has Nature herself speak directly to those who indulge in grief about death, calling them “fond fool” and “booby” for failing to properly enjoy the life they have. The session carries unusual weight because Elaine’s father died the preceding week from COVID-19 — aged 82, unable to have family present due to infection protocols, though each family member was permitted to speak to him by phone before he died. Elaine acknowledges she cannot find Lucretius’s tone particularly helpful in this immediate grief, while Cassius emphasizes that the Epicurean treatment of death is never flippant: the final third of Book Three is precisely the intellectual framework Epicurus intended as preparation for confronting mortality. Martin and Charles agree that Nature speaking here is not compassionate because physics cannot be — only living beings can offer empathy, which is why friendship is so central to the philosophy.
An extended discussion develops around whether novelty is a necessary pleasure, drawing on Principal Doctrines 18, 19, and 20, Vatican Saying 59, and the Torquatus passage from Cicero’s de Finibus describing the man living in “continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind.” The panelists examine whether the pleasures that cannot be increased after pain is removed must nonetheless be varied, whether novelty is a distinct pleasure in itself (the pleasure of surprise and newness) or merely a mechanism for obtaining pleasures one already values, and whether novelty-seeking varies by individual neurology. Boccaccio’s commentary on Dante’s placement of Farinata degli Uberti in Circle Six of Hell is raised: Farinata held Epicurean views but is described as fasting in order to then enjoy food more — which the panelists reject as the very approach Epicurus did not endorse. Thomas Paine’s famous line — “What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly, it is dearness only that gives everything its value” — is offered and then disputed as a similar misreading: pain is not necessary for pleasure, as the Epicurean gods demonstrate.
Elaine offers the episode’s most moving material in an extended personal reflection on grief. She observes that regret is the most dangerous component of complicated or prolonged grief: her recovery from her mother’s death at age 22 was harder because their relationship had unresolved adolescent conflict, whereas with her father she has clarity that he knew she loved him. She recommends fixing troubled relationships while the person is still alive. The episode closes by returning to the mythological figures — Tityus consumed by love, Sisyphus endlessly rolling the stone of political ambition, Tantalus haunted by vain fear of the gods — as illustrations of torments that exist here on earth for those who live wrongly. For listeners still afraid of hell or divine punishment after death, Lucretius’s argument provides consolation: those we have lost are not suffering, not being punished, not reincarnated as something worse. That assurance, Elaine notes, is itself a real comfort.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 48 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com Forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers, and everyone here is a self-taught Epicurean. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. For anyone who is not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode 1 for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. And if you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In today’s episode, we’ll cover roughly lines 931 through 1023 from Book 3 of the Latin text. In this episode, we’ll hear Nature speak to us about death, and Lucretius will compare the myths of Tityus, Sisyphus, and Tantalus to the tortures that actually exist for some people on Earth. Now let’s join the discussion with Elaine reading today’s text.
Elaine: But if the Nature of Things should offer to speak of a sudden, and upbraid the folly of any one of us in a manner like this: Prithee, man, why is it that thou indulgest thyself in such sharp sorrow and complaints? Why dost thou groan and weep because thou shalt die? If your life past has been agreeable to you, and all the abundant delights of it did not pass your mind as through a sieve, and perished without pleasure to you, why do not you, as a guest plentifully regaled with life, take your leave, and fond fool, enjoy your sweet repose with a cheerful mind? And if the good things thou hast received have been idly squandered and are gone, and life has grown a burden to you, why do you covet more, that may come to the same unhappy end, and vainly die away, like those that were before, and not rather put a period to thy life and all thy cares? For there is nothing further I can contrive or invent that can please thee more. Things always continue the same. If thy body was not to decay by years, nor thy limbs grow feeble by age, things will ever remain the same, though thou were to go on and live for ever, and much more so if thou were never to die. What could we say but that Nature gave a very just reproof, and set the case in a very proper light?
But the wretch that deplores his death beyond all bounds — may not she deservedly cry out the louder upon such a one, and chide him in sharper note: Get thee gone with thy tears, thou booby, and leave sobbing. If he be an old fellow and far advanced that complains, dost thou fret thyself, that has run through all the delights of life? Because thou art reaching after absent pleasures, thou despisest the present, and so thy life passes away imperfect and without relish, and death stares thee in the face before thou art aware, before thou hast enough, and canst go off the stage satisfied and full of joy. It is high time to take thy leave of everything that does not agree with thy age. Come, make way cheerfully for others; there is no help for it. I think Nature upon such occasions would act justly, and by such a rebuke use him as he deserves, for old things must give way as new ones come, and one thing must needs be repaired by another, but nothing sinks into hell or descends into the dark shades. There must still be a stock of matter to produce future generations, all which likewise, when their races are run, shall follow thee, nor did things less pass away in the ages before than they do now, and so shall they do for the ages to come, for beings never cease to rise from the ruins of one another, and life was given to none for a property, but for all to use.
Look back, then, how that infinite tract of time that vanished before we were in being — how it has no relation to us — and the Nature of all time to come will be of the same concern to us after we are dead. And now does anything show dreadful in death? Has it anything melancholy in its appearance? Is it not more serene than the softest sleep? And truly all these dreadful things that are set to be in the shades below are all felt by us whilst we are in this life. Nor is there, as they tell us, such a miserable wretch so stupefied with idle fear as Tantalus, who dreads the fall of the huge impending stone upon him from above, but rather a vain fear of the gods torments men in this life, and terrifies them with all the ills that Fortune thinks fit to lay upon them.
Nor can they find in that large breast of his a liver they shall be forever tearing out, though his body were ever so big, though he not only covered nine acres with his expanded limbs, but could spread them all over the earth — yet he would not be able to bear eternal pains, nor could he furnish an everlasting meal out of his body. But that man is Titius, whom by love oppressed the birds of prey devour, and piercing sorrow eats through, or any other impetuous passion tears in pieces.
Sisyphus walks visibly before us in this life. It is he who sets his heart to court the people for honors, for the rods and cruel axes, and is ever repulsed, and retires sad and disappointed; for it is in vain to hunt after empty power which is never obtained, and to suffer the hardest labor in the pursuit of it. This is to thrust with all one’s might the stone up the hill, which again tumbles down upon us from the top, and rolls swiftly into the plain below.
Cassius: Thank you, Elaine. This week we’re continuing on the section at the end of Book Three that started with the “death is nothing to us” statement. And carrying forward from what we discussed last week — even though the Principal Doctrine is very short about death being nothing to us — I think the consensus of all of us here is that that was not intended to be a flippant statement. We should not give no consideration to death, because it’s obviously a huge concern to all normal, everyday people who are concerned about their own death and the death of their loved ones. So we see in Lucretius that here we have the full context of what Epicurus was saying. “Death is nothing to us” does not mean we’re not supposed to think about it, because he spends the last probably one third of Book Three discussing what we should think about death and how we should deal with it and how we can find peace with it. And so that’s what we’ll be discussing today as a continuation of last week.
Elaine: And I wasn’t on last week. So if I say anything that repeats what you all went over, I haven’t had a chance to listen to it. But for our listeners, I want to say my father died last week — Friday before last. He died of COVID and he was 82. He died alone. It was a difficult death and we didn’t get to be with him because of the infection, although we were each given a chance to talk in his ear by phone before he died. So this topic has been on my mind a lot over the past week, and I certainly would not take “death is nothing to us” in a flippant way. I’m not really even sure — I feel like Lucretius is trying to comfort us, but I don’t particularly find this approach all that helpful, and I’m interested in whether the rest of you do.
Cassius: Well, I do, but it’s a big topic that has lots of different aspects to it. And obviously when someone is going through a situation that’s so immediate to them, they’re not going to be able to approach it that way in the moment. This is not Stoicism — this is not a plan to put away your emotions and to not feel them. Because as we know from Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus says that the wise man feels emotions more deeply than others do, and that is not a hindrance to his wisdom. So surely this is not intended to be a method of forgetting about death, but it’s a matter of putting it into perspective, I think. As we discussed, you weren’t here last week, and we’ve got several more sections to go through, so there’s a lot of different arguments in this section.
Elaine: But they’re all arguments. They’re logical arguments. There’s nothing that can be done to change the fact of the pain that you go through on the death of a loved one, or concern about your own death.
Cassius: Yeah, and this is all about our own death, of course. When someone we love dies, for most people it brings a more acute awareness of our personal mortality.
Elaine: But I just — the personification of Nature here — of course that’s metaphorical. Lucretius is having basically physics talk to us, the Nature of Things. And this “indulging yourself in sharp sorrow and complaints” and groaning and weeping, and calling this person a “fond fool” and a “booby” — that did make me crack up. I think it’s not very considerate.
Cassius: Not compassionate, yeah.
Elaine: And maybe Nature personified here is not really very empathetic. Maybe it’s because physics doesn’t care — physics is not a conscious thing, so the universe doesn’t — there’s nothing in the universe as a whole that cares about us, I would say. Which is a really different kind of thing than what religious people think. If we’re going to have somebody that’s going to feel empathy for us, it’s going to be other living beings and not Nature. That’s not what he’s saying here, but it’s kind of where it leads me.
Cassius: Probably somebody would think about the ending of the sixth book as well — when we talk about the plague of Athens, and Lucretius just leaves the poem in the middle of the agony of the people of Athens who are dying from the plague. There’s no argument for relief from them other than the relief of death that they escape the pains they’re going through. But what you’re saying in terms of lack of compassion is possibly the bitterness of the doctrine that he has talked about needing to rim with honey to get people to even discuss it. Because the universe, as you said a moment ago, doesn’t care, and there is no supernatural god that cares, so ultimately every bit of caring that gets done is done by living people.
Elaine: Yes. I mean, he’s clearly — a large part of the argument is to escape the pain of the fear of hell and the fear of retribution after death. And that’s maybe one of the biggest targets of the whole philosophy really is, I think.
Cassius: So, yeah. But then you also — there are also the sections about how friendship is so important. And Charles, last week you were reminding us of one of the Vatican Sayings about remembering our friends not through lamentation but by meditation — is that what it was?
Charles: Meditation and thoughtful concern. Vatican Saying 66.
Cassius: Well, that’s definitely something that is applicable to our discussion of whether the phrasing of “death is nothing to us” is flippant or not. Because if it were truly flippant — if it were all so harsh and uncaring about their own Epicurean friends — that would not be a very friendly approach.
Elaine: I mean, I guess it depends on the tone. It’s kind of hard to tell from this. But it could be kind of more of a teasing tone, and maybe this is not something that would have been aimed at somebody who had just suffered a loss. You know, “fond fool” — maybe it’s just like how we’ll call our friends silly when we’re teasing them and we don’t mean anything nasty. We’re not trying to be mean, but sort of teasing them to make them realize that if they’re sitting around worrying about it there are better things to do with life. And that part I agree with. It’s just hard to strike the right tone with that, I think. You have to know who you’re talking to.
Cassius: And as you said, the timing would be hugely important. Yeah, I cannot imagine that in the midst of somebody who’s really in the immediate loss of somebody you would necessarily want to start off with a basic discussion of the physics of the universe. And so this is probably more of a preparation far in advance of your own death, which you then apply to the death of other people as well. But I certainly have always got the impression that many of these issues were so basic that they would have felt like — you would teach at least, not maybe the youngest children, but children in their teens at least would begin to understand and be taught this material. Far enough in advance of their own death and the death of parents and whatever — at that age you would not have that much experience with death. But you would want to get people prepared for it as early as possible.
Cassius: So I’m looking back to see if there’s anything else in that section we did last week before we really dive into the examples of this week. But last week it was basically the issue that once you’re dead you won’t have any more pains or suffering, and so the people who lament their own death — they’re not taking seriously the fact that they won’t have any more suffering, and they won’t have any more needs or desires that will not be satisfied. And so now today we go on further and personify Nature as Elaine has discussed. We gotta ask Martin to say something.
Martin: You can’t — I don’t have something to say.
Cassius: He was very silent last week too, so we’re going to have to draw more commentary from Martin as we go through here. We did get some commentary from Martin last week about the flippancy aspect, and I think he agrees with us that it’s not really intended to be flippantly interpreted. So the one part in this first section that I do think is important — it resonates with me — is that “if you’re not enjoying life now, there’s nothing further I can contrive or invent that would please thee more.” So let’s say we were incorruptible like the Epicurean gods — if we weren’t taking pleasure in what we have, there’s not anything better. We already have what we need to enjoy life. And so it’s kind of strange: people who are not really happy and who are not really enjoying life still are afraid of it ending.
Elaine: I have read that that actually is the more common situation for people who are terminal, who have terminal illnesses — that the ones who have the hardest time are the ones who feel like they have wasted their lives and haven’t enjoyed it, and so they feel like they need more so that they can do that. Whereas people who have really made efforts to do the things they wanted to do, and said the things they wanted to say to people, and had good relationships — they have fewer regrets at the end and feel satisfied with what they’ve had.
Charles: That seems to be common. I’ve read that many different ways as well — that regret is the worst thing to feel when you’re dying, that you didn’t even try something or didn’t even take the time to make an effort toward the things that you really wanted to do. More so than mistakes. So acts of commission that didn’t go well — people tend to regret those less than acts of omission, things they never got around to.
Cassius: And also on the point where you’re bringing out how Nature is saying that she can’t contrive anything new — I guess it’s fair to say that what we’re kind of talking about when we say “the new” is variety. And so the question becomes: do you get tired of variety at some point? I don’t — I haven’t yet. Doesn’t the Torquatus passage touch on that? What do you remember there, Charles? About Torquatus and all the different varied pleasures and Epicurus, and the limit not always being extent but rather variety?
Charles: Well, yes — that’s where I’m going because that’s in the Principal Doctrines about — was it 20? It says only that pleasure cannot be increased but only varied after a certain point, after you’ve eliminated all pain. That’s the point there.
Cassius: So you can continue to have pleasure — or you might be remembering, Charles, maybe in that statement about the best life. I wonder if he used the word “varied” there. Let me get that because I think that would be interesting to see whether he does not put variety in there.
Elaine: Well, I mean, I would say you don’t need variety except to avoid the pain of boredom. So if you’re not bored with the same pleasure, then you don’t have to vary it. But most people eventually will habituate neurologically to a pleasure, and so we need to vary it a little bit.
Cassius: Let me cite this because I found the section I’m talking about. This is the one I think of as possibly the most explicit statement of what the life of the gods would be about, or the life of the best human being. This is in the Torquatus section, and it says: “The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain. What possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable?” And I’ll continue — but he does not say that those pleasures need to be varied. He’s just saying — well, he said “numerous.”
Charles: Yes, but does “numerous” mean “varied” necessarily?
Cassius: No, I think it’s included in there because you can’t really — I mean, we don’t multitask so much as task-switch, so there’s only so much we can include in our attention at one time. So if we’re going to have numerous things going on, we’re really switching quickly between one and another.
Charles: My testament to that — I’m in like three conversations right now.
Cassius: Oh my God, Charles. All right, well, we want your attention to this one, Charles, so let’s stay with us. But the question would be then: could you rotate among a set number of pleasures and be satisfied? Or will you always need to increase the number? And then the further question: is novelty a necessary pleasure?
Elaine: Well, you know, the older you get — I forget the plots of movies that I’ve seen, so I don’t actually have to necessarily have a new thing. I can repeat something after a long enough interval that it’ll seem new.
Cassius: Right. Well, we’ll move on past that, but I would suggest that that would be an interesting thing for people to think about — whether this statement in Torquatus of the best form of life whether it really requires novelty or not. It does say — of course I’m looking at a translation, so I don’t know what the Latin was for “numerous” here — but it says “numerous and vivid” but it doesn’t necessarily say “novel all the time.” So I think it’s probably individual.
Elaine: I think, like all pleasures, some people have a high novelty drive and are more easily bored, and some people are able to enjoy familiar pleasures. And maybe the novelty-seekers could learn it. But there’s an evolutionary basis for novelty-seeking, so I think it’s going to vary from one person to another.
Cassius: Yeah, I think each person has to find out what they need. Novelty — here’s my profound statement of the day — cats seem to like novelty and exploring things a lot more than maybe certain other animals. So maybe there is a genetic basis of some people needing it more than others.
Elaine: Yes, and that would take us back in the direction of what the word “pleasure” is supposed to mean, and whether pleasure necessarily requires novelty, or whether pleasure is pleasure is pleasure. And that kind of thing — I always go back to the idea that it is an individual situation. But maybe from a sort of philosophical, logical point of view, the ultimate guide is pleasure, and whether novelty is part of that is an interesting question.
Elaine: Okay, so I think this is really important, Cassius — this is exactly why you can’t turn it into a logic problem, because it’s a feeling. So: who needs novelty? Someone for whom the absence of novelty produces a pain that cannot be satisfied any other way except by novelty. If you have a pain from the lack of novelty that can be solved by maybe paying more attention to the familiar, savoring it, parceling out your attention so that you can distract yourself from this desire — then you don’t fundamentally need it, and you can have a pleasurable life without it. But if you can’t find any other way to satisfy the pain of lack of novelty, then if it’s a significant thing in your life you’re going to be obligated to find ways to look for novelty. So I would not turn this into a logic problem, because feelings.
Cassius: Well, to subdivide it: I would certainly agree with you that the person who is finding pain in lack of novelty is not going to be able to satisfy it in any way other than finding novelty, presumably. So as an individual situation, yes. But let’s see if Martin or Charles has anything on that. Martin, would you have any comment on that?
Martin: I agree that it’s an individual thing.
Cassius: What about the issue of novelty itself? Any profound statement? Because that’s kind of where we’re focusing at the moment. Is novelty itself something that — certainly death puts an end to novelty, there’s no doubt about that.
Martin: Well, it puts an end to everything for that person.
Cassius: That would be something new that you can only experience once. Yeah, they stop experiencing at that particular point. Charles, do you have any thought on novelty?
Charles: Well, isn’t that just a mechanism for desire, though? Like, it’s only the desire to feel something or to experience something new, rather than novelty itself being a pleasure? I don’t have like a sensation of — there’s a particular pleasure I get with newness.
Elaine: Oh, it includes the pleasure of surprise. I’m not a high novelty-seeker. I mean, mentally I guess I have some tendency because I like new ideas, but I don’t necessarily sit down and think “I’ve got to find a new idea,” so it’s not like a seeking thing. But when I run into one and have that sensation of “oh, this is new” — it’s a real particular pleasure sensation for me that’s not like the familiar.
Charles: I don’t want to get too far into the replenishment idea, but in my example that would apply — the music I listen to is Baroque opera specifically from the countertenor repertoire. It’s difficult to find new music from that genre, and so I am constantly searching for new music and every couple of days I find some new aria here or there. And it is very specifically for the purpose of finding something new within this genre that I’m already very familiar with. It’s never the pleasure that it’s new — rather it’s the pleasure of the music that I enjoy. The desire for something new is only simply for the pleasure of that music that I prefer, because at the end of the day, or even a week from then, I’ll be listening to that new one I found and experience it just the same. The novelty isn’t really a factor. It just adds to it.
Elaine: So this may be an example of different people’s neurology having them experience life differently. You know — I told you a couple of sessions ago that I did this extra genetic analysis of my 23andMe just for curiosity, and one of the things it said was that I’m not motivated by extrinsic rewards, which seems to me like what we oversimplistically call the dopamine pathway. So the seeking is not a big thing with me. My pleasure tends to be more in savoring. So there is a specific kind of savoring of the new and unexpected that I really enjoy when it happens, but I don’t spend a lot of time seeking after it. And that kind of seeking of the new seems to me related to people who do gambling, or any kind of activity where their process is more that they’re looking for a pleasure that’s not there now. You can get caught up in that and forget to actually enjoy it when it happens.
Cassius: And it’s true — it’s not going to be more of a pleasure, but for me it’s a particular kind of pleasure to have some novelty. Intellectual novelty, actually.
Charles: The hunting for novelties could be a pleasure in itself — just the action of hunting.
Cassius: Yeah, for some people I think it is. Or it’s like when you’re hungry but you know food is coming — the hunger isn’t a pain in that situation, it adds to the excitement of “we’re about to have Thanksgiving dinner.”
Martin: Yeah, for up to two hours. My limit is two hours. After two hours it turns into pain.
Cassius: I can — that sounds reasonable, Martin. Well, I know in my situation I feel the same way Elaine does. And I would use the example that Charles gave: a particular type of music from the past that I like. I particularly enjoy finding something new, and in my own feeling feel a difference of intensity at least in the first time of finding and listening to it for the first time — not that I won’t feel the pleasure in subsequent listenings, but the first time of novelty certainly has a pleasure of its own that seems to go with it. And on the other hand, the pleasure of novelty is certainly something that is not going to be continued after you die. And so it is not addressed by the argument here that Nature says she can’t contrive anything new — because novelty certainly is pleasurable to us, it seems.
Cassius: We’ll come back perhaps to that as we continue to talk about death. Because I think remembering back to the way DeWitt was describing all this — we’ve been through the science of the fact that the mind and the soul do not continue after death, at least from the Epicurean perspective. And now we’re into a sort of reconciliation discussion. It isn’t probably as intended to be harsh as it may come across. It’s certainly intended, I think, to reconcile us to the fact that our lives have a finite time span and are not going to continue on indefinitely. So some of the arguments may be more successful than others, but certainly I don’t think it’s going to be able to address the fact that novelty is something that’s lost at death. There’s no doubt about that.
However, I do think there is the argument — and Charles, if you remember which one it was about pleasure cannot be increased but only varied after that point — did we discuss what doctrine that was?
Charles: Isn’t that 18? “Which is the pleasure in the flesh is not increased when once the pain due to want is removed, but is only varied. And the limit as regards pleasure in the mind is begotten by the reasoned understanding of these very pleasures and of the emotions akin to them which used to cause the greatest fear to the mind.”
Cassius: And that is maybe the translation or the original — but not, as far as I’m concerned, one of the most clear statements. But 19 is not far from that.
Charles: 19 is “Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures by reason the limits of pleasure.” And you’d probably also go to —
Cassius: I would actually, instead of 19, look to Vatican Saying 59: “It is not the stomach that is insatiable, as is generally said, but the false opinion that the stomach needs an unlimited amount to fill it.”
Charles: Yes, there’s that. And before we leave the doctrines, there’s number 20: “The flesh perceives the limits of pleasure as unlimited, and unlimited time is required to supply it. But the mind, having attained a reasoned understanding of the ultimate good of the flesh and its limits, and having dissipated the fears concerning the time to come, supplies us with the complete life, and we have no further need of infinite time. But neither does the mind shun pleasure; nor, when circumstances begin to bring about the departure from life, does it approach its end as though it fell short in any way of the best life.”
Elaine: So this emphasis on novelty makes me think — really, what I’m missing with my father isn’t novelty. The Buddhist would say I’m clinging. Maybe I want the familiar. I want my father. More time. I want more time. And I think it’s just normal. I mean, we can argue it away, but I think it’s just — if it were me, I wouldn’t go about it like this. And I would say: people want the familiar in their life too. That’s part of why we don’t want to die — not because we’re missing something new, but because we’re enjoying what we have. I think that’s okay. Be sad about that. I think you get stuck in it and you’re not enjoying your life, but — I would just say, in many ways, it is just the nature of things that we are mortal. I’m just fine with saying that’s the way it is. We can experience grief that we don’t get to be with people we love forever. We have to lose people. We can also say that that’s terrible. And we’re not happy about it. That’s okay.
Cassius: I think grief tends to run its course more in a manner that feels more satisfying if we just say “yeah, it’s sad” and don’t feel ridiculous about being sad — because it’s human. And Nature wouldn’t understand it, but humans understand it. It’s okay to be sad.
Elaine: Absolutely okay to be sad. And I would add to that: you don’t want to get stuck in the sadness indefinitely. But clearly the knowledge that these things are going to happen is to some extent a motivator to enjoy life while we have it, and the things that we have while we have them, and not to take them for granted, and not to just waste our time when we should know from the very beginning that the time we’re going to have with anything that we value is limited and it’s going to come to an end.
And that’s related to what we were talking about regarding regrets from things we didn’t do. A similar thing is true of grieving people we loved — people are at a much higher risk of complicated, prolonged grief if they had conflicted relationships with the person who died. So when someone loses a parent and they had conflict going on, and then they have regrets that they didn’t treat that parent the way they wish they had, they are at much higher risk of pathologic grief — grief that just doesn’t come to any kind of acceptance.
I had a harder time when my mother died. I was 22, and we had — I love my mother, but we had a difficult relationship, and she was dying during the period when some of that adolescent parent clash was still going on. And it took me longer, and I felt guilty — maybe I just wasn’t nice enough to my mother. But I’m way over that being 56. With my dad I don’t have that, because I feel very clear that he knew I loved him and that we had a good relationship. So that part of the grief is easier.
So I recommend to everybody: if you’ve got a relationship that needs fixing, it’s a whole lot easier to do that when the person is alive. Don’t waste time. Get that done right. Because now mostly what I’ve been doing over this last week, besides being sad, is enjoying all sorts of wonderful memories of time I had with my father, and you’ll be able to do that if you’ve made sure you had a good relationship when that person was alive.
Martin: Nothing.
Cassius: Well, that was a really good statement that we’d almost like to end on. But I’m also aware that there is one more paragraph that sort of changes the subject a little bit. So let’s talk about it for a second.
When we start talking directly about the examples of Tityus, Sisyphus, and Tantalus, we’ve now come back — as we get to this ending paragraph of today’s session — to the general issue of not being afraid of hell. Which is probably almost as important as anything else in what he’s intending to convey — or what he is successful in conveying, let’s put it that way. Because the issue of the regret of losing unlimited time is something that is very difficult for even those who are convinced that there’s no heaven, hell, or supernatural god. It’s still a problem for all of us, because we’d like to continue our pleasures indefinitely.
But at the end of this passage here, he goes back and says that those people who are scared of death and the terrors of hell should realize that if they misuse their lives and don’t follow proper reasoning and a proper philosophy, they can get into a continuing suffering that is really comparable to the myths of the people who are constantly worrying about a stone falling from their head, or constantly being torn apart by vultures, or constantly attempting to pursue power through political office and seeking power over other people and never getting it. And that was a particularly important one I think for us to mention separately. “Sisyphus walks visibly before us in this life. It is he who sets his heart to court the people for honors, for the rods and cruel axes, and is ever repulsed, and retires sad and disappointed; for it is in vain to hunt after empty power which is never obtained, and to suffer the hardest labor in the pursuit of it.”
Elaine: So that’s one of those unsatisfiable urges that some people will fix their minds on, and it becomes a treadmill they can never get off.
Charles: They’re never enjoying the pursuit and they’re never going to get it right.
Elaine: Right. If they enjoyed the pursuit even of something they could never actually obtain, then they’d be getting their pleasure, and so that would be fine. But if they’re not enjoying the pursuit — it’s miserable like rolling a stone up the hill — and they’re never going to obtain it, then that’s something I think we can train ourselves not to do.
Cassius: But in terms of training ourselves not to do it, let’s also focus on Tityus. “But that man is Titius, whom by love oppressed the birds of prey devour, and piercing sorrow eats through, or any other impetuous passion tears in pieces.” So any other impetuous passion also seems to go along with the love example, I would think.
Elaine: Well, if it’s causing more pain than pleasure — and I think Epicurus always comes back to that — so it depends on the individual. If the pleasures of love outweigh the pain of loss, or maybe being unrequited, or whatever, then that’s worth it. But pay attention, because if it’s not causing you more pleasure than pain, then yeah — don’t be Tityus.
Cassius: Those things can be particularly dangerous. And Charles, I was just joking and referring to you there a minute ago — but is there anything else in your mind about that one?
Charles: Today’s our one month.
Cassius: Today’s your one month? Okay, well — I’ll say, what I’m concerned about now is if I leave this in and she hears it —
Charles: She’ll be fine. She listens to the podcast. It’s fine.
Cassius: Okay, that’s cool. Yeah. Nothing but good intentions are meant here by my joking about those withdrawals there, because I’m sure that relationship will flower to the point of death — which I guess is the ending of everything today.
Martin: Well, that will be a novelty.
Cassius: Novelty! You’re going to have sorrow, right? I mean, because one of you will suffer the death of the other. That’s the way it is. But I come down on the side that the love is worth the grief over the course of years.
Elaine: Yes, of course it would. And after a certain point it would begin to outweigh it.
Cassius: Now, that’s one of the sections of Frances Wright’s book that comes to my mind when you say that, Elaine. I know that might have been one you didn’t particularly agree with everything she said on — but there is a chapter dealing with the death of a loved one which some people might find helpful as an extension of this Epicurean application to that topic. In fact, that is certainly something to read and consider, whether you agree with it or not.
Elaine: And actually I think I need to emphasize — because we’ve talked about knowing our mortality giving us a motive to kind of get busy because we won’t have it forever — we have to be careful. Because Frances Wright actually said — I don’t remember exactly how she worded it — but almost that we couldn’t have that pleasure if we didn’t know it was coming to an end. Which would mean the Epicurean gods would not be possible, because part of their pleasure was in knowing that they were going to continue.
Cassius: That’s right. So those two things — you’ve got to pick one or the other. And I would say: if we could last forever and we didn’t have to lose each other, that would be wonderful. The reason that we have to go through all this thinking about and processing death is because it’s just not that way. It’s a reality.
Elaine: Right. Death is not necessary for our pleasure in life, but it happens, and so to take our pleasure in life we have to confront it.
Cassius: This is another similar topic — another, I would say, wrong approach or interpretation: that we need to be modest or never actively pursuing pleasure, so that when it does arrive we can appreciate it all the more.
Elaine: Yeah, yeah. You know, that’s the very Stoic approach to it.
Cassius: And that kind of thing — I think I mentioned it in the episode about what Boccaccio had to say about Farinata.
Elaine: Yeah, and how — can’t you say that without explaining it?
Cassius: Okay, give us a short explanation.
Charles: Here’s a commentary from Boccaccio — and Dante, who in turn was talking directly about Farinata: “He was of the opinion of Epicurus — of the soul dying with the body — and maintained that human happiness consisted in temporal pleasures. But he did not follow these in the way that Epicurus did, that is, by making long fasts to have afterwards pleasure in eating dry bread, but was fond of good and delicate viands and ate them without waiting to be hungry. And for this sin he is damned as a heretic in this place.”
Cassius: And reading that — it sort of raises what Elaine was talking about: we’re disagreeing with that, aren’t we? Of course — on many aspects.
Elaine: Yes, even the aspect that Epicurus fasted and then ate bread and water. I don’t think that’s practically speaking what he was saying, yeah.
Cassius: No, that’s not it. It’s not how you approach that at all. If you know you have the pleasure in the present, then you have the pleasant anticipation in the future — to borrow a word from the Canon — that you can expect pleasure in the future.
Cassius: And on the same topic, I’ll just go ahead and throw this in — the thing that comes to my mind is a famous quote from Thomas Paine: “What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value.” I think that’s what Elaine is kind of objecting to.
Elaine: Yes, yes. It’s not only pain that gives value to pleasure, right? It’s not only the dark that gives value to light or whatever. It is not “dearness only” that gives everything its value. Now, certainly there’s a truism involved — if you’ve got something commonly in front of you, then you don’t esteem it as highly. I mean, there’s some grain of truth in that.
Cassius: Elaine, care to say which part is true and which part is not true in a statement like that?
Elaine: The true thing is that we have limits in duration of life, and that we can only experience each moment once. This whole thing of only stepping into the same river once. So we can’t repeat this moment that we have. That is just the truth. And if we don’t enjoy and savor our life now while we have it, we’re not going to have another chance. It is true. It just doesn’t work the other direction — that that’s the only reason why we have pleasure. Right? I want to say one more thing about this last section.
Elaine: Part of it is to reassure people who are afraid of torment after death that that’s not going to happen. And there are still some people today who are really afraid of hell — the punishment of having displeased God, or karma, or whatever it is that could go wrong, that they will have suffering after death. And Lucretius is saying no. And that goes the same for people who lose loved ones.
I know that my father’s father, my grandfather, was a staunch Southern Baptist, and he worried about us going to hell because we were atheists. None of his kids turned out to be Christians — all four of his sons. And he was very bothered by this. But my dad — we bought him this StoryWorth memory thing that he was halfway through, answering questions once a week, and he answered a question about his dad. He said that his father had believed in hell, but that at some point he had decided that nobody went there. Which is one of the permutations of Christianity today — that there’s a hell but nobody goes there. And my grandfather kind of came to that conclusion — that no one was going there — and I didn’t know this about my grandfather. So I was really relieved to hear that he’d solved that problem for himself before the end. Because what a horrible thing: to worry about your loved one, that they were being tortured after they died.
So one of the hardest parts of my father’s death for me was those three days when he was in the ICU, struggling, and nobody could be with him. And I didn’t know if he was scared, or if he wanted people to stop, or if he wanted them to try hard. I just didn’t know what was going on. That was extremely painful. And when he died, that pain was over for me, because I’m not thinking that he’s suffering anymore. So this is also a consolation to those of us who are still here: that the people we loved are not struggling. They’re not suffering. They’re not being punished. They didn’t come back to life as a cockroach that somebody’s going to step on. Whatever it is that you worry about — it’s not happening.
Cassius: That’s really a profound thought, and probably a good place to come to an end for today’s discussions. Anybody have anything else to want to add for today?
Martin: Nothing.
Charles: Nothing.
Cassius: All right. Elaine?
Elaine: Well, thank you for joining us today so shortly after your father’s passing. It’s hard to know what to say in times like that, because it’s certainly very painful and there’s very little that you can do other than be there for your friends — I guess that would be, in general, the best statement of it.
Elaine: Yeah. Maybe in general the best statement of it. So well, thank you. And it’s good to be on Skype with you all today.
Cassius: Okay, well, we’ll come back again hopefully next week and continue on. So thanks, everyone.
Charles: Thank you guys for joining us today. Okay, bye.
Martin: Yeah, thanks and bye.