The real work of Epicureanism, then, is cataloguing, organizing, and minding the store of our desires. Remember that Epicurus doesn’t think happiness results from mere subtraction of corrosive desires. We must keep the store stocked with necessary items, which means devoting the time and energy we once expended in corrosive arenas to cultivating the prudence, habits of mind, knowledge, virtuous dispositions, and close relationships with like-minded people that make tranquility possible for creatures like us.
— Emily A. Austin, Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life
I was reminded of this passage by way of a couple tweets I saw earlier:
Emily Austin’s point about Epicurus is bracingly simple: happiness isn’t produced by piling on ever more interventions; it comes from limiting desires to what can be satisfied without strain, and cultivating the few practices that reliably quiet the mind. Bryan Johnson’s project runs the other way. To feel “healthy,” he must live like a medical experiment — protocols, machines, basically an entire wellness ICU in his home. Underneath is an immortalist itch: not just wanting as much time as a human life can reasonably hold, but wanting time without end. As Alan Watts warned, those are different things; the second is an appetite that can’t be fed.
Epicurus’s reply is commonsense: prefer pleasures that have a natural stopping point — sleep, simple food, movement, sun, study, friendship. Accept finitude; it’s what makes sufficiency possible. Enjoy extras when they appear, but train yourself not to need them. If a “health” practice breeds dependency, anxiety, and constant escalation, it isn’t health; it’s a new form of sickness.
Epicurus again: some desires end in contentment; others are a carrot dangling from a stick attached to a bridle. Chasing audience size, likes, and huzzahs belongs to the second kind. It produces a few brief waves and a long undertow of restlessness.
The alternative is ordinary and durable: do the work you can stand behind, cultivate a few like-minded friends, and let that be enough. Fame is optional and unstable; friendship and steady practice are necessary and within reach. An old Epicurean motto puts it plainly — lathe biosas: live unnoticed. I write for a handful of regular readers and would do it in private if I had to. That’s not settling; it’s refusing to let my contentment be held hostage by the whims of a fickle mob. Digital autarkeia. Epicurus called this self-sufficiency: being able to enjoy bread and water, so that luxuries, when they come, are gifts rather than requirements. Apply that to attention. Let praise be pleasant, not enslaving.