Book on fructose, mitochondria, and the sickest of mammals

On the good life

A rebirth gradually occurred in the Renaissance .  Fill your heart with loving thoughts (fellow feeling) as much as possible through activities that promote it, and that include the silent whispers, called thoughts, avoiding emotional quarrels, and the media that glorifies violence and ignorance.   

Bertrand Russell 3^rd Earl of Russell, wrote in 1925, The good life is focused on love and guided by knowledge.  I would replace love with fellow-feeing, the emotion which causes through the action of dopamine the bonding to parents, attachment for car, pet, spouse, plants, etc.  This website and skeptically.org give me years full of fellow feeling.  As Epicurus wrote, we are a pleasure seeking animal; we have two masters pleasure and pain (happiness and discomfort).  As B.F. Skinner wrote, Original sin is the difference between your pleasure and mine--referring to the state of pair bonding.   

The end of the 2^nd-enlightenment era and the good-life

There were two periods of enlightenment; the first started in the city of Miletus, near Troy around 600 BC, on the Turkish coast and spread through the Greek speaking world, which by 35 AD included the Roman lands.  It was strangled by the Catholic fanatics who became Emperors of the 2 Roman states.  Learning thrived in the Arab world where the Greek and Latin books were translated to Arabic  Copies were sold, translated to Latin in scriptoriums of the monasteries and the few universities built during the dark ages--both under the thumbs of the bishops.  Student in the commercial cities of Italy  in the 13th century read those Latin translations and were changed.  The Enlightenment spread over the next 2 centuries among the educated throughout Europe.  This 2^nd Enlightenment slowly replaced the churches synagogues and mosques as learning centers.  More schools and the printing press (16^th century) made possible for the commercial elite to become educated. 

My father was pleased with my major of chemistry (1963), not so pleased with biology (1965), and disappointed when I switched to philosophy (1966) at Temple University.  In the discussion to explain my choice of philosophy which does not have  the employment opportunities of chemistry, I explained that my lack of ability to do higher mathematic entailed that I couldn’t pass Physical Chemistry.  Biology had a much different obstacle.  I enjoyed the pursuit of knowledge that reveals the nature of things (De Rerum Natura). I enjoyed since elementary school the exploration of topics that revealed the nature of things.  About half of the biology students were pre-med, and they turned the subject into a rat race for grades.  I couldn’t burry my love of exploring topics, so I moved on to philosophy. 

Philosophy, which I had 4 courses in prior to 1966, was a natural for me: I learned about the foundation of subjects and mastered the technique of analysis.  There was a comradeship among philosophers, a social bonding that was stronger than in the sciences.  Being in my early 20s, the social drive is strong; philosophy was a good fit.  Philosophy focused on many areas of learning, such as psychology, science, mathematics, ethics, aesthetics, and political science epistemology, to name several.  A reading of Aristotle, Plato, and Lucretius reveals its scope.  My favorites were psychology, science, and ethics. 

The Greek philosophers advised developing the brain’s rational module through philosophy so as to have greater rational control of one’s animal nature.  Aristotle put their observation tersely in the definition of humans:  man is a rational animal.  I implied politely to my father that I wanted to be a rational animal (not wanting to imply that he wasn’t), to be above the common herd by seeing further and having greater rational control 

I tell you this because as those first philosophers asked the question what is the good-life?  They answered full of ataraxia, the pleasure that comes from studies and the association with like-minded friends.  This combination of association and studies would promote a tranquility, reduce boredom, and the perturbances that afflict the common herd (a phrase used to describe the common people). Among the perturbance is the likeliness of substance abuse, of being a soldier, a politician, and poor management of affairs.  Ataraxia lasts the longest in time and builds a better person & citizen, is pleasurable, and diminishes daily boredom; thus, the philosophers consider it the best of pleasures and essential for the good-life.  Those with the spirit of philosophy followed the golden mean, nothing in excess. 

Some philosophers set up schools and the leading citizens sent their male children there.  From this developed the first educational system.  In the Hellenic world, from India to Egypt to Italy and Spain, every city had schools ran by philosophers.  They were the keepers of knowledge including sciences and mathematics.  The leading philosophers became esteemed wise men of antiquity and celebrities.  Philip of Macedonia invited Aristotle to be his son’s teacher.  The son-built Alexandria, the leading center of learning in the ancient world.  At the mouth of the Nile, its population is in 2020, 5.2  million.  I tell you this because the Greek wisdom of studies and the social support of friends is at the center of the good-life.  Many of the political leaders through education had the spirit of philosophers.  The Catholic Church extinguished that by closing the schools. 

Janice, it was why when we joined for the first 2-years I tried to open for you the philosopher’s door which increases ataraxia.  Unfortunate our capitalist system following their think tanks advice, had shut that door:  schools and media were turned into their image.  I went to the UCSD library in 2011looking for video courses, like the one that were in the late 60s being created as teaching aid for high schools.  I thought there would be high school and college DVD education programs.  There weren’t. 

Since the mid-70s there has been a deliberate gradual decline in the evidence base for the rational module of the brain.  The art of analysis, of social conscience and the building of a world where people come before profits has been systematically removed.  The message we get poured in our reason is that the good life is measured by material items and the Greek light has been extinguished along with the spirit of community.  Buried is the Enlightenment and its utilitarian ethics.  Reagan and Thatcher representing the corporate wing of their party.  The parties have replaced Franklin Roosevelt, Clement Attlee (the liberal wing of their parties) their Keynesian economics of managed capitalism.  We live in the Thatcher-Reagan corporatist government, and the corporate honor system.  [Did the gods give him Alzheimer’s disease and her vascular dementia?] 

It is still evolving, the corporate mass dementia.  Public dupes informed by corporate media.  Each year the pro-corporate government tighten the noose that limits the oxygen to the brain.  Learning has been remade so that the masses can crucified on the cross of profits (a reference to the July 9^th 1896 saying by William Jennings Bryan, “crucified on a cross of gold”).  The banksters once crucified the masses on a cross of gold, today it is the limitless fiat currency.