Lucretius, and the man who saved his work from oblivion, sparked our modern world

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern – Stephen Greenblatt (2011)

            The intellectual progress of humanity is never smooth, and quite often fraught with violence, pride in ignorance, and just plain old bad luck.  Sometimes an artifact from long ago is rediscovered, or translated, and then becomes a touchstone for a whole world of new thoughts and ideas.  This book is about one such re-discovery.  There are few writings from antiquity that have shaped and informed the modern world we all live in quite like the work On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura in its OG Latin form) by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius.  Stephen Greenblatt does an amazing job of uncovering not only the history of Lucretius himself and his seminal work, but also the history and life of the sometime Papal Secretary, and lifelong lover of literature and antiquities, Poggio Bracciolini who through his diligent exploration unearthed a 400 year old handmade copy of Lucretius’ masterpiece and shared it with the world.

            Lucretius did not create the ideas espoused in his poem.  He was a Roman citizen at a time when the Empire was in decline, and many thinkers were looking back to the golden age of Greek thought and ideas to try and gain some sort of insight that would bring back the glory of Rome.  Lucretius was interested in the work of a specific Greek philosopher, Epicurus, who lived and created a school of philosophy nearly 300 years earlier.  This philosophy, known as Epicurianism, is central to the ideas of Lucretius, and forms a base for him to explore the nature of reality, life, and the universe at large.  Democritus’ idea, atomism, is that all matter in the universe is reducible to tiny non-reducible parts called atoms, and that because of this all matter is similar across the Universe.  Epicurus started his explorations at the age of 12 when his teachers could not explain to him the meaning of chaos.  He took the atomist idea and ran with it, positing that everything, planets, stars, the Sun, us, etc., were all a part of the natural order of things, and that the same principles that govern life and change on Earth do so in the heavens.  Because of this, he stated that pleasure, derived without hurting anyone or anything else, is the highest goal of life.  Epicurus denied the immortality of the soul, seeing it as just another part of the living organism, which dissipates at the time of death.  There is no afterlife, and yet one should not fear death.  “Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved I without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.”

            Consider this, using pure thought and reason, and before any scientific method of empirical experimentation was even conceived of, Lucretius had taken the starting point of Epicurus’ philosophy, and intuited some deep truths that, to modern, post-Enlightenment minds, come off like predictions of the advancements of science in the past 2,000 years.  As listed in this book by Mr. Greenblatt, here are some of the elements of the Lucretian challenge put forth in On the Order of Things, as stated by the author, Peter Greenblatt:

·         Everything is made of invisible particles (There are no non-natural forces or deities creating existence)

·         The elementary particles of matter – “the seeds of things” – are eternal (Neither destruction nor creation have the upper hand.  Everything is in a constant state of change and mutation of form.  The philosopher George Santayana called this idea, “the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon.”)

·         The elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size (Lucretius intuited that there is a hidden code of matter, and a specific set of rules by which they combine into the substances of our existence.  He could not have known about molecular chemistry, or genetics, or any other such thing, but his reasoning told him it had to be true.  Amazing!)

·         All particles are in motion in an infinite void (Every high school science student learns this as part of physics.  Einstein understood this as well and it was the basis for his Special Relativity.)

·         The universe has no creator or designer (There is no purpose or end-goal for the existence of the universe, only ceaseless creation and destruction.  This is a very similar concept to that of the endless cycles of time in many Eastern religions)

·         Everything comes into being as a result of a “Swerve” (If particles all moved in one straight line there would be no interactions between them.  Lucretius stated that “at absolutely unpredictable times and places they deflect slightly from their straight course.”  He was thinking of a minimally slight adjustment, enough to cause an infinite variety of combinations.)

·         The “Swerve”: is the source of human free will (if all motion were one pre-determined chain of events, there would be no room for free will, with cause following cause for eternity.)

·         Nature ceaselessly experiments (There is no single moment of creation nor an end to creation)

·         The universe was not created for or about humans (There were forms of life before humans, which no longer exist, and there will be forms of life after humans cease to exist.)

·         Humans are not unique (We are made of the same stuff as all other life and non-life.  We can find many life-forms that share traits we consider human, such as compassion, altruism, regret, and love.  As Lucretius states, a calf recognizes its mother cow just like a baby human recognizes her mother.)

·         Human society began not in a Gold Age of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival (Lucretius understood that life is harsh, and was especially so to early humans who had no tools, no medicines, no social organization, and no language.)

·         The soul dies (The human soul, or any other living thing’s soul, is as much a part of the body as the eyes, and also dissipates upon death.)

·         There is no afterlife (the afterlife has been a consolation and a torment to many humans.  However, once it is grasped that the soul dies alongside the body, one can grasp that there are no posthumous punishments to worry about, nor any rewards to be expected.  Life on this Earth is all we humans have.)

·         Death is nothing to us (Once the body and soul die, there will be neither pleasure nor pain, longing nor fear.  “You will not care, because you will not exist.”)

·         All organized religions are superstitious delusions (Humans become enslaved to their own dreams.  They experience sequences of misfortune and feel that they are being punished by some deity.  They feel awe and wonder while gazing at the sky above and assign that beauty to some magical being that must have created it, regardless of the natural explanations for such phenomena.

·         Religions are invariably cruel (They promise hope and love but their deep underlying structure is cruelty.  “The quintessential element of religion – and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core – is the sacrifice of a child by a parent.”  Lucretius was writing this nearly 60 years before the currently prominent sacrifice myth began.  He was aware of Hebraic myths such as Abraham almost gutting Issac cuz some voice in his head told him to, and would have understood the prominent display of images and statues of a bloody, murdered son.)

·         There are no Angels, Demons, or ghosts (All are entirely unreal and best forgotten.)

·         The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain (Lucretius believed that there is no higher purpose than the facilitation of the pursuit of happiness for oneself and one’s fellow creatures, and this includes all living things.  “All other claims, such as service to the state, glorification of gods or a ruler, and the arduous pursuit of virtue through self-sacrifice, are secondary, misguided, or fraudulent.” as paraphrased by Mr. Greenblatt.)

·         The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion (Lucretius believed the principal enemies of human happiness are inordinate desire and gnawing fear.  Our ability to imagine the infinite, whether infinite pain, infinite sorrow, or infinite joy, keeps us from accepting or enjoying the finite pleasures, rising up from finite sorrows, and controlling the desire for infinite joy.)

·         Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder (For Lucretius, humans engage in many poisonous beliefs that prevent us from enjoying the wonder of the world around us, including the idea of an eternal soul that will be punished or rewarded indefinitely.  This keeps humans from living in the now, and lets them accept the wrongs and horrors of life as just a way-station into the next world.  This is deep poison, and keeps us from doing our best to increase happiness worldwide, and reduce pain worldwide.  It is the source of much of the evil in the world)

          For hundreds of years, Lucretius works were forgotten, until the world changed and people started exploring the old Greek masters again.  Due to the inherent bias in christian researchers, they praised any philosopher whose ideas seemed to correlate to the tenets of christianity while excoriating or outright destroying the works of any philosopher who held what they believed to be “pagan” or non–christian ideas.  Because of this, Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius were consigned to the “pagan” pile, and their ideas and works ridiculed outright as part of Catholic dogma.  Ironically, it took a bibliophile like Poggio Bracciolini to travel to remote monasteries to rediscover these old works.  The masses in the intervening centuries had become dumb as rocks and highly illiterate.  The monk copyists in these secluded monasteries would copy old works, many times purely by eye, as they could not actually read old Greek or Latin.  Poggio’s discovery of On the Nature of Things, and his subsequent dissemination of the work, occurred before the invention of the printing press.  Once that was invented, copies of Lucretius spread far and wide, influencing many of the thinkers, artists, and writers that led what is now called the Renaissance.  These same writers went on to influence the Enlightenment, and through that, the modern world we all share. 

          This book is a great treasure, and should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the underpinnings of our world, and the many ways in which the enemies of free thought and free ideas fight and kill to keep their lies alive in the minds and hearts of the masses.  We currently live in a world where too many factions are seeking to distract humanity back into religious factions of “US” versus “THEM.”  If it is not one religion against another, it is upper classes against the poor ones, citizens against immigrants, or civilized people against uncivilized “animals.”  Every one of these con-artists, and they are ALL con-artists, seeks to force us to see the world in the manner they prescribe, for their own ends.  It is such a joy to find heroes in the past that help me fight the near-endless waves of stupidity and evil that seek to keep humanity under control.  Those who fight ideas do so because they KNOW these ideas shatter their bullshit lies.  Long live the life of the mind.  Lucretius was one bad mo-fo.

(To read On The Nature of Things - Lucretius (translated by William Ellery Leonard) click here: http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html) 

(To purchase The Swerve - Peter Greenblatt, click here: THE SWERVE )

Sometimes the idea for a book is better than the finished product

Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century – Marina Warner (2008)

            As an artist, I have always been interested in the way we humans perceive the world around us.  Most people take it for granted that what they see, hear, touch, etc. is corporeally real.  They assume that our brains are just receptacles, containers for the input our senses provide.  This is a very limited view of our minds.  Every single one of us is living in a world that exists solely in our minds, filtered by our personal experiences, beliefs, and prejudices.  Where some people see images in clouds, others never bother to look at all.  Our human culture, literature, and especially religion, has been reading into the visions of the mind since before we have record of it.  Marina Warner explores the many different ways that humans have tried to visualize the ephemeral.

            One thing that Ms. Warner does so well is to combine what appears to be a shit-ton of research and information into a concise accounting.  Each chapter describes human’s explorations into the meaning of ephemeral visions, such as clouds, shadows, fata morgana, mirror images, etc., from ancient times to the modern day.   This makes the book a very valuable resource from which to find other material that further explores the topics at hand.

            There is one big problem though.  I read such books to encounter new analysis and new insights into these subjects, as I am already well-versed with all these topics through my own personal research and reading.  This book does not have such analysis or thought.  After a few chapters it begins to read like a thesis by a graduate student, one that contains too many examples and too little substance.  Too many examples are cited with no context, just to pad out some of the thin chapters.  That is a shame.  I think a wonderful book could be written using this material, if it was more carefully edited and if it included more original insight.

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Phantasmagoria-Visions-Metaphors-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0199299943 )

Our universe is not "The Universe." Get over it.

Masks of the Universe – Edward Harrison (1985)

            I have always been very curious when it comes to the subject of perception.  Perhaps this comes from having worn eyeglasses from a very early age, but the awareness of difference in perception between two people probably began there.  Even now, after over 4 decades of living, I find it very hard to adequately explain how frustrating it is to me when I am not wearing my glasses to someone who has never worn them before.  This glitch in communication magnified a thousand-fold, is what occurs when people who live in a Christian universe attempt to merge their world-view with someone who is Hindu, or vice versa.  We all assume that the universe we experience every day is the same universe that others live in, and any inconsistencies are tossed off by assuming the other person is mistaken, or deluded, or just plain stupid.  What Edward Harrison discusses in this cool book is the difference between the personal universes we as people and societies create and live in, and the Universe at large which encompasses all of existence.

            Mr. Harrison draws a distinction that is critically important.  An individual’s view of the world at large, and their place in it, is labeled a “world picture.”  Each of us carries a world picture in our minds that defines the universe around us, changes due to new stimuli, and is based on our personal experience, as well as the education/indoctrination that we receive about the universe we all share.  A lower-case “universe” is the collective ideas of the culture and society that an individual happens to find themselves living in.  For example, a human living in NYC in 2016 lives in a universe that is “explained” by science, contains very little overt religion compared to past universes, is run by our supposed “free will,” etc.  500 years ago however, the average human being lived in a universe where any event was ruled by mysterious unseen demons or angels, where free will did not exist, where life was brutish and short and meant only to wait until death and eventual entry into an afterlife.  Two thousand years ago the average human lived in a universe where gods were abundant, fought each other, had petty human qualities, and where the appropriate ritual or incantation to the proper god would guarantee a good harvest.  Each of these universes were self-consistent.  The ideas we now think are stupid were seen as “common sense,” and to question them could, at times, send you to your death as a heretic. 

            What is urgently explained by Mr. Harrison is that our current universe is also not The Universe, but yet another filter by which we view ourselves and our world, and our place in it.  In the future our universe may be seen as ridiculous and wrongheaded, just as we see the universes of past people’s sometimes.  The Universe itself never altered, but our human-created vision of what the universe is and was changes as humans develop intellectually.  One big problem is that humans very rarely are able to step outside the confines of their world-picture to see the bigger universe they collectively reside in, or to step out of their culture’s universe to grasp things at the level of The Universe.  Not all universes are beneficial to humanity, just as some world-pictures are twisted and demented.  For 400 years the western world lived in a universe where witches and Satan were active players in day to day life, where no matter how many innocent people were burned at the stake for witchcraft, the Inquisition would always find more and more.  This was a universe in direct odds with the one described in the Bible, but by this time the word of theologians and church leaders took on more weight than the very scripture they supposedly based their religion on.  Corruption can affect even whole universes of thought.

            Books such as these are invaluable to me because they help remind me that those people who seem ignorant because they espouse a world-view that I do not follow or agree with, are all floating around in a universe they did not create, and which they are grasping to understand, just like we all are.  It also helps me somewhat understand the minds of the early humans and the universe they lived in, before organized religion or a designated order of humans who are the intermediaries between humanity and the gods.  The universe that ancient humans lived in was alive in ways that our universe cannot approximate, and which will never come around again.  Each universe is self-consistent.  In a universe where witches run the show, you will find evidence of witches everywhere you look.  In a universe where all things are divine and have a spirit/soul then it makes perfect sense to worship the cave in which you found shelter, or to yell at the rock which stubbed your toe, so it knew you were mad and would never do it again.

            At least one soothing thought comes to my mind.  The Universe has been and is and will be here whether or not our own personal universes are true, or whether our world-pictures are erroneous.  Life, energy, matter, and everything that comes with them are an inherent part of The Universe, and our “universes” are the mental structures that us humans create to try and make sense of The Universe, of which we will only ever be allowed an exceedingly tiny glimpse at.  Better a tiny glimpse than no glimpse at all!

(To read the Introduction from Masks of The Universe in PDF form, click here: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam041/2002031342.pdf )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

Death, we've all got it coming.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: and Other Lessons from the Crematory – Caitlyn Doughty (2014)

            Death is as natural as it gets.  The process of life ends inevitably in death.  The true “human condition,” what actually differentiates us from most other animals, is that we live our lives with the foreknowledge of our own imminent demise.  At least, most of us humans do.  It is what pushes us to achieve, to marry and reproduce, to explore, and to many of us, to wallow in deep depression and self-pity.  Our views on death feel natural and organic, but they are far from it.  It is our culture and our families that teach us how to look at death, how to receive it, and experience it, and think about it.

Our western society has kept up a steady pace of removing death from our daily lives.  Whereas people used to die at home, surrounded by family, and cared for after death by the family before burial, nowadays most people who die non-accidental deaths do so in a hospital, nursing home, or a hospice of some sort, usually surrounded by strangers, in a clinical, anonymous environment, and embalmed of cremated before burial.  This is a fairly recent phenomenon.  Caitlin Doughty wrote this book after diving in head first into the world of crematoria and funeral homes. 

The author has a long history with death, both in a personal and in a scholastic manner.  She details witnessing a young girl fall from a second story balcony at a mall when she was a very young person and how it stamped mortality into her unprepared brain.  She proceeded to mature and grow as a young girl and young woman, with countless manias and phobias all directed at keeping death at bay.  She talks about how as a kid she would repeatedly spit into the front of her shirt, thinking that this was somehow a talisman that would keep death from coming for her mother.  Our world and her family had not prepared her for the existence of death itself, so when she first experienced such an event, it traumatized her deeply. 

Smoke, and dead people soot, does indeed get in your eyes...

 In her University studies she focused on medieval literature, specifically anything and everything to do with death and how different cultures saw and dealt with death and the dead bodies.  After school she applied and got a job as a crematorium operator, for a funeral home in the Bay Area of California.  Ms. Doughty draws on her education and shares parts of what she learned and studied regarding cultures and death as she describes her life in the crematoria.

The descriptions are brutally accurate with nothing undisclosed, from the colors of putrefaction to the hardships of dealing with the bereaved to the horrible and unexpected accidents and situations that can occur working in such a morbidly specialized field.  As she grows experienced in her job she also talks about her growth in life, and how she hates the funeral industry that seeks to market every possible euphemism for death without actually discussing the truths of death with the bereaved.  Much scorn is heaped upon the con-artists who see a family’s suffering as a means to fleece them for more and more money.  She was lucky to work at a place that did not have a corporate structure forcing them to cut corners and mass-produce results, and with co-workers who were decent and dedicated.

This book really made me think deeply about death and my own experiences with it.  My father died at home, after a long illness, and I was able to go sit with his body for a while by myself.  I could not imagine at the time anything worse, but I am very glad that he died at home, surrounded by his family, and not stuck in a cold, grey box at a hospital or hospice or nursing home somewhere.  The author describes her dream for our modern world, where people can die with dignity, be cared for by those that love them, and be interred or cremated with a proper sense of ritual.  These rituals are not for the deceased, but for those they leave behind, and the more meaningful and resonant we can make these rituals of death, the better we will all be as a result.  Our modern world lives in a state of constant fear and anxiety about death.  We hide our aging, we ignore the elderly, and we focus solely on youth and youthfulness, as if death could be ignored or magically kept at bay.  Death gives meaning to our lives.  Death creates new life.  We even ignore the vast millions of deaths caused by our needs for convenient meat and vegetable.  It is creating a culture with deep imbalances, and bizarre coping mechanisms.  The most popular drugs right now are prescription painkillers, used by people of all ages to numb their inner lives, to blank out and ignore the progress of life towards death.  This book makes a good case for fixing this before it can no longer be repaired.

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )