For the Love of Wisdom

I disagree with the notion that food should be sourced locally. For example, is it always better to eat locally grown bananas? Should one forgo bananas entirely? The same idea applies to wheat and meat. There may be higher transportation costs to distant foods, but locally sourced foods may use other expensive resources. To me food is not different from other goods and services. Should we restrict ourselves to local music, local schooling, local gasoline, and local steel?

Thanks for a great article pointing to the true teachings of Epicurus! The author's bio says that the she considers herself a Stoic, but fans of Epicurus can graciously overlook that in honor of her fellow Stoic, Cicero, who did so much to preserve Epicurus' views even while he was sometimes misrepresenting them. Even Cicero recorded that Epicurus was considered the "master-builder of human happiness." We can also mention Seneca, whose Stoicism did not prevent him from citing Epicurus as one of his most frequent sources of wise quotations. So once again we have a Stoic to thank for preserving the memory of Epicurus!

Readers of this article might be interested to know that if they wish to learn more about the true teachings of Epicurus, they can find much more at these free internet sites:

www.Epicurus.info
www.Epicurus.net
www.NewEpicurean.com

The real Epicureans walked their talk – for 800 years. No other philosophical school has kept its tenets unchanged for such an impressively long span of time. The ancient Epicureans had their own education system and sustainable communities. As do today’s body-builders, they built their chosen attitudes through daily exercise. Many of their ‘spiritual exercises’ were shared by the other character builder guild, the Stoics. Although the systematic communal and individual practice was interrupted when the Roman emperor Justinian closed the four still-existing philosophy schools in Athens, many of their tenets and attitudes were later studied and cultivated by philosophers, statesmen and psychologists. Their habit-forming practices of self-scrutiny are at the very basis of ‘modern’ behavior therapies . Martha Nussbaum’s “The Therapy of Desire” is an excellent illustration of the ancient desire therapies.
Alain de Botton gives a visually palatable introduction to Epicurus’s original philosophy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LTTRQcZ8c