I have decided to stop educating the world and let it get along on its own wisdom:-)

Accordingly, this blog will be closed down within the next days.

My book, From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness, remains available, also in Kindle format, from Amazon, or as a PDF directly from me here.

http://www.philosophersmail.com/utopia/frenchman-revolutionises-travel-industry-saves-budgets-and-cuts-carbon-pollution-with-pioneering-new-kind-of-travel-room-travel/

Jon Jandai discovered for himself in a totally different cultural environment that what we really need is readily attainable.

This fact seems to support my hypothesis: “homo naturaliter epicureus”.

Brian Hiatt asks Louis whether he fears death and this is what Louis answers:

I don’t care about it. It’s got nothing to do with me. Somebody asked me once, “What happens after you die?” and I said, “Other people keep you alive. It’s not about you anymore, you just become nothing, so what? I’m not interested.” I don’t have any fear of it, none. Maybe some will come, I don’t know. It could happen any second.

If this is not natural inborn Epicureanism then what is?

Tim  Kreider, like many of us, has overheard something one of his freinds said about him and is struggling to give it an acceptable meaning: I Know What You Think of Me

His struggle for meaning reminds me of the “fundamental attribution error”, as described by David McRaney in his excellent collection of self-delusion techniques: ‘You Are Not So Smart':

THE MISCONCEPTION: Other people’s behavior is the reflection of their personality.

THE TRUTH: Other people’s behavior is more the result of the situation than their disposition.

My recipe is
• to strictly avoid doing anything that is not absolutely necessary – thereby drastically raising the level of laziness
• lay back on a couch and watch TV and listen to radio shows in 90% of your waking hours – thereby dramatically speeding up the dumbing down process
• follow this regimen, undeterred and unwavering, for 20-60 years.

Happiness is the pleasure I feel at the moment I experience something. It exists only in the present and it is a feeling.

Satisfaction is that which remains in the mind, created in the retrospect, like a review evaluating a film in a few lines. It is a judgment, almost like the Greek eudaimonia (the judgment that one’s life, on the whole, has been a good life that “all’s right with the world”).

Mindfulness is being aware of the world around me and of my own mental state at the same time, being aware of what is  going on in and outside.

An example: I am sitting on a wooden bench in our yard, my bare feet feeling the grass, my ears hearing my daughter talk about “our” sparrows Chuck and Diane feeding their chicks, my eyes seeing the birds flutter around the bird house against the blue of the sky [the elements of “happiness”], my mind being aware [mindful] of all this and concluding: “Ich bin wunschlos zufrieden”, which word for word means “I am wishless/desireless at peace” in the sense of ‘I am completely contented and have no wishes or desires’ [satisfaction/contentment]. The moment I realize that I am happy and content this realization sharpens my senses, I feel the grass more intensively, see the color of the plumage in more detail, hear more inflections in my daughter’s voice and feel my happiness deepen.

Sometimes we experience our life as a rushing brook, (as Heraclitus might have) with no present moment but only an alteration of past (memories) and future (plans). At other times, usually later in our life, we might feel that our brook had grown into a river and finally reached the see: we are calm and motionless (as Parmenides might have felt himself at times). Ataraxia, I believe, is more akin to this experience.