Epicure’s
error Epicure (341 – 271 BC) got it
badly wrong when he claimed that the purpose of life is generating pleasure.
He believed, falsely, that pleasure ensued if and when pain and fear (to wit,
physical and mental stress) were eliminated. In that he differed little from
the Shakyamuni Buddha. Because of that fundamental error both Epicurism and
Buddhism decayed to insignificance. Actually, the purpose of life all
dynamic biological units is survival, to wit, to live on (in this life and in
via one’s genes). Pleasure and happiness merely operate as biological system’s
relative survival status signals. Epicure claimed that “Not what we have,
but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance”. That was foolish on two
counts. Firstly, I cannot have but only be
a discrete (i.e. atomic) moment, as was suggested by Democritus and Pyrrho,
recently returned from India with a few early Buddhist insights. And,
secondly, enjoyment (to wit, pleasure or happiness) derives not from a ‘what’
(or a lack of a ‘what’) as such but from the achievement of a (indeed any)
‘what’ that increases my relative survival capacity in my current world, in short,
from increasing my survival capacity. Epicure’s aphorism should have read:
“Achieving ( * ‘We enjoy (i.e. derive pleasure or happiness from)
whatever gives us a survival edge in the current world!’ |