Travels with Epicurus (3 page)

On one of my many returns to Greece, I rode these trains around the perimeter of the Peloponnese, with my wife and daughter. It was the year 2000, and Greece, after failing to qualify for entry into the euro as currency in 1999, was trying again. My wife, who is from Holland, surveyed the scene outside our window with a sardonic eye, spotting “inefficiencies” everywhere. “Look at them!” she would howl as we passed a group of five Greeks leisurely unloading a cartload of eggplants bucket-­brigade style, several with cigarettes dangling from their lips. “These people aren't serious about the euro!” Although she was smiling, she was at least half-serious; Holland, of course, is the world capital of Calvinism. My daughter and I soon assigned her the nickname “the euro inspector.”

One morning, after a magical few days in the northern Peloponnesian village of Diakofto, we made our way to the railway station to catch the train to Corinth. My grade-school-level Greek qualified me as our tour leader; I bought the tickets and found us seats on the departing train, where I immediately spread out my limbs and drifted into a pleasant snooze. Minutes later I was awakened by my wife—we were going in the wrong direction! We had gotten on the train circling the Peloponnesian peninsula counterclockwise instead of the one circling it clockwise. My wife realized this when our train passed a bench holding the same three old men we had passed when we'd come from the other direction a few days before. “It's as if they never moved,” she said. My whimsical daughter chimed in that we must be on a time-traveling train and were rolling back into the past.
Indeed
.

Clearly it was my responsibility to rectify the situation. I found the conductor seated at the front of our car, where he was drinking coffee from an espresso-size ceramic cup—I learned later that when he wanted more coffee he simply exchanged this cup for a full one proffered through the window by waiters from various railway station cafés along the way. I wished the conductor a good morning, and he immediately urged me to sit down across from him, begging my pardon for not being able to offer me some coffee. I told him about my train mix-up. He laughed and said in English, “It happens all the time. You only had a fifty-fifty chance of getting on the right one.”

But for the next few minutes that subject had to wait for more significant matters: Was I from New York? Possibly Queens? Astoria? Oh, from Massachusetts? Did I know the Manikis family in Boston? They came from the same village as his wife. During this genial schmooze, I kept my eyes averted from my wife's urgent stare. After the conductor and I finally came to a satisfactory resolution of our round of Greek American demography—I
did
know George Genaris in Lenox, Massachusetts, whose grandfather hailed from Patras—the conductor picked up a radiotelephone the size of a wooden shoe, pressed some buttons, and spoke a few words in rapid dialect that I suspect would have been as unintelligible to a native Athenian as it was to me. Smiling, he then instructed me to get my family and luggage prepared to disembark. We did as told.

Several minutes later, our train came to a gentle stop beside an apricot grove. We now saw that the train coming from the opposite direction had also stopped here. The passengers from that train had stepped outside and were lounging among the apricot trees. Someone among them had produced a jug of a yogurt drink that was being passed around, some were smoking cigarettes, a few had picked ripe apricots and were munching on them, and all were chatting amiably. Our conductor saluted his counterpart, gestured toward us, and bade us a warm farewell.

And then we realized what had just happened: hearing of our plight, the engineer of the oncoming train had brought it to a halt, and his passengers, apparently without complaint—indeed seeming to take pleasure in this unexpected intermission—had disembarked to wait for us. Personal schedules, if there had been any, evaporated. This train was definitely not going to be running on time. Talk about inefficiency! This would never happen in Holland.

My daughter and I turned to the “euro inspector” and laughed so hard we could barely walk across the tracks.

Recalling this episode now, I am convinced I have come to the right part of the world to meditate on the best way to live my old age.

EPICUREANISM AS A LIVING PHILOSOPHY TODAY

Unsurprisingly, Epicurus's laid-back legacy survives more thoroughly in Greece's rural areas than in its cities. Aegean islanders like to tell a joke about a prosperous Greek American who visits one of the islands on vacation. Out on a walk, the affluent Greek American comes upon an old Greek man sitting on a rock, sipping a glass of ouzo, and lazily staring at the sun setting into the sea. The American notices there are olive trees growing on the hills behind the old Greek but that they are untended, with olives just dropping here and there onto the ground. He asks the old man who the trees belong to.

“They're mine,” the Greek replies.

“Don't you gather the olives?” the American asks.

“I just pick one when I want one,” the old man says.

“But don't you realize that if you pruned the trees and picked the olives at their peak, you could sell them? In America everybody is crazy about virgin olive oil, and they pay a damned good price for it.”

“What would I do with the money?” the old Greek asks.

“Why, you could build yourself a big house and hire servants to do everything for you.”

“And then what would I do?”

“You could do anything you want!”

“You mean, like sit outside and sip ouzo at sunset?”

ON THE TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT OF PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS

Would it be naive to imagine that a philosopher from the third century BCE inspired a random group of contemporary Greeks to uncomplainingly accept—even enjoy—an unscheduled interlude in an apricot grove? I don't think so.

To begin with, back in Epicurus's time, and the periods immediately before and after it, the ideas of philosophers, poets, and playwrights reached far beyond the Garden's dining table or the steps of the Acropolis or the Theater of Dionysus and into ordinary Athenians' everyday conversations. By all accounts, this was a civilization that liked to talk and made the time to do so. Later forms of communication, like the frequently one-way media of our era, did not yet offer competition to daily dialogue. Attending a performance at the Dionysus amphitheater was often an all-day affair in which the audience was cast in the role of a jury that deliberated on which character's actions and viewpoint was most worthy. After-theater discussions about justice, proper conduct, and human frailties could get hot and heady. These people were talking about
ideas
.

The Athenian populace also talked about philosophers' ideas. And because Epicurus welcomed men and women of all social classes—even slaves—at his ongoing symposia, his ideas flowed freely into the general public. This flow was undoubtedly assisted by the fact that, like all talky societies, ancient Athens thrived on gossip; the Athenians even had a goddess of rumor and gossip, Ossa. Epicurus's garden, what with its prostitutes and washerwomen at the table, was often a subject of general gossip, and whatever its indignities, gossip can be a powerful vehicle for new and interesting ideas.

Epicurus's ideas about the best way to live resonated for many Athenians. These ideas offered them new ways to see themselves and their personal options: “Hmm, if that fellow Epicurus is right, and the ultimate purpose of life is to maximize life's pleasures and not, say, to earn enough money to commission a statue of myself so I will be immortalized in marble, then maybe I should cut back on my job painting maidens on vases and spend more time just hanging out and appreciating life.”
All right, maybe I got a little carried away with my vase-painter fantasy, but something very much like it appears to have happened all around old Athens.

Of course, this does not tell us if Epicurus's philosophy has actually
endured
in Greek culture over the millennia. The relatively new discipline of sociobiology would argue that Greek DNA is the root cause for the sunniness of those Peloponnesians unexpectedly and happily detained in that apricot grove. Expanding on Darwinian theory, sociobiology contends that, in addition to physical characteristics, psychological and social characteristics evolve through natural selection in a particular geographical environment and climate. A frequently cited example of how sociobiology functions in the animal kingdom is the “altruism” practiced by specific members of various species, including the leaf-cutter ant and the vampire bat. These particular members behave in ways that benefit others in their extended families while not directly benefiting the individuals who make the generous sacrifices themselves. In the end, the entire species is better able to survive as a result of this behavior; thus the “altruistic” genes get passed down through the generations. Furthermore, similar species that do not have altruistic members sometimes die out because of their absence.

A sociobiologist, then, might hypothesize that in Greece's rocky terrain, and under its hot sun, early Greeks who became extremely anxious due to an unanticipated turn of events were more likely to die from stress-related illnesses before they could reproduce than more carefree Greeks; therefore the more carefree, stress-resistant Greeks—and their DNA—were naturally selected. I suppose that hypothesis is within the realm of possibility. In any event, sociobiologists basically would say it is more likely that those Peloponnesian travelers happily accepted their unexpected interlude in that apricot grove as a result of genetics than because of some philosophical tradition that was handed down to them through hundreds of generations.

But perhaps both explanations are true: maybe a disposition toward a carefree outlook and day-to-day gratefulness naturally evolved in Greek DNA
and
Epicurus analyzed that natural ­disposition and rendered it in discrete and coherent ideas. Ultimately, his ideas became a living, conscious philosophy of life that has endured through the ages along with the Greeks' naturally evolved predispositions. And one thing about a conscious philosophy is that it allows people to
consciously
deliberate about their options: “I suppose I could complain to the engineer that this unscheduled stop in the apricot grove will make me late for dinner, but wouldn't it better reflect my true values if I simply enjoyed to the fullest this surprising little respite?”

This, in the end, is the prime purpose of a philosophy: to give us lucid ways to think about the world and how to live in it. That is what I am up to, sitting here with my book on Epicurean philosophy in front of me: deliberating about my options for a good old age. There is nothing I can do about my DNA, but perhaps Epicurus and other philosophers can help me sort out the choices I need to make.

ON CHOOSING AN EPICUREAN LIFE IN OLD AGE

Opting for Epicurean freedom in old age makes terrific sense to me. The timing is perfect because this kind of freedom is available to many of us past the age of sixty-five without our having to pitch a lean-to in the woods or take up residence in a commune—although, come to think of it, living on a commune as an old man might be just the ticket. In any event, Epicurean freedom in old age might be an excellent choice for people debating the “forever young” option; by and large we are people with retirement resources, even if those funds may be insufficient for gourmet meals or even, possibly, for the homes in which we have lived during our productive years. Epicurus would have us scale down and taste the sweetness of this freedom.

Freed from “the prison of everyday affairs and politics,” an old man needs only to answer to himself. He does not need to stick to a strict schedule or compromise his whims to sustain his life. He can, for example, sit for hours on end in the company of his friends, occasionally pausing to sniff the fragrance of a sprig of wild lavender.

ON THE PLEASURES OF COMPANIONSHIP IN OLD AGE

Perhaps without fully realizing it, a good portion of the pleasure Tasso finds at his table at Dimitri's is that he is enjoying his companions
without wanting anything from them.
His tablemates are a retired fisherman, a retired teacher, and a retired waiter—all born and raised on the island—while Tasso is a former Athenian judge, who as a young man studied law in Thessaloníki and London. But this has little, if any, bearing on his relationship with his three friends.

Wanting nothing from one's friends is fundamentally dif­ferent from the orientation of a person who is still immersed in professional life and its relationships. An individual in commerce, whatever that commerce may be, is in service of a goal that has little or nothing to do with genuine friendship. A boss gives instructions because she wants results, and an employee follows her instructions for the same reason, one of those desired results being his paycheck. No matter how many management manuals propose treating employees and colleagues as genuine individuals, the underlying fact remains that a commercial situation is always inherently political. On the job, our colleagues are first and foremost means to an end, and so are we. So it always was. Epicurus understood this when he cautioned us about the perils of commerce and politics.

In Kantian ethics, we are specifically advised never to treat another human being as a means but always as an end in himself. In his monumental
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of ­Morals
, Immanuel Kant concluded that an abstract and absolute principle for all ethical behavior was required as the touchstone for all particular moral choices. The principle he deduced was his Golden Rule–like supreme categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” Thus Kant believed that in following this imperative no man would choose to treat another man as a means to an end; he could not rationally will that such behavior become universal law, in large part because then he too would be treated as a means by others.