References
“De Rerum Natura.” Wikipedia, 10 Apr. 2024. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=De_rerum_natura&oldid=1218250609.
the unhappiness and degradation of humans arose largely from the dread which they had of the power of the deities and terror of their wrath.
Epicurus thus made it his mission to remove these fears and thus establish tranquility in the minds of his readers.
Epicurus invoked the atomism of Democritus to demonstrate that the material universe was formed not by a Supreme Being but by the mixing of elemental particles which had existed from all eternity, governed by certain simple laws.
He argued that the deities (whose existence he did not deny) lived forever in the enjoyment of absolute peace—strangers to all the passions, desires and fears, which affect humans—and are totally indifferent to the world and its inhabitants, unmoved alike by their virtues and their crimes. This meant that humans had nothing to fear from them.
Brown, Andrew James. “Embracing the Creative Possibilities of Exhaustion.” Caute, 12 Apr. 205AD, https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2015/04/embracing-creative-possibilities-of.html.
”The notion of exhaustion has always been anathema to the discourse of modernity, of romantic Sturm und Drang, of the Faustian drive to immortality, the endless thirst for economic growth and profit, the denial of organic limits”
~ Franco Berardi
I consider myself lucky that very early on in my life — at school via the poet A. E. Housman — I came across the philosophy of the third-century Greek philosopher Epicurus (341—270 BC). It was through him and his first century Roman follower, the poet Lucretius (c. 99 — c. 55 BC), that I was gently inducted into a religious naturalist philosophy of life that never bought into the cult of youth. Here are just two examples of Epicurus’ general view:
We should not view the young man as happy, but rather the old man whose life has been fortunate. The young man at the height of his powers is often befuddled by chance and driven from his course; but the old man has dropped anchor in old age as in a harbour, since he secures in sure and thankful memory goods for which he was once scarcely confident of (Vatican Sayings No. 17).