The Old Lucretius Plan

Where did we go?

Since our departure from Flores in July, we have spent a couple of months in the UK, and in early October returned to Indonesia.  We have now settled in Jakarta and both have jobs working in development.  It has been tough settling into new jobs after so long working in Flores, however we are now more settled in and can renew our obligation to keep this blog up to date. 

You can now expect some thoughts about our jobs (we are both working on some very interesting projects) and some obervations about Indonesia and aspects of living in Jakarta.

Ici n'est ce pas un blog

This site appears to be getting mentioned in various corners of the blogosphere, and recent sightings include macam-macam, which is the blog I usually use when I want to know what is going on in Indonesia, even though it is written by an Australian who is no longer actually living in Indonesia.

We also appear on the Asia Travel Blog, which makes the charming typo that Beth and I are 'originally from Bristols', which will have certain UK readers giggling in a smutty manner. See the page here.

FriskoDude seems to be a gentlemen from California with an interest in photography. He remarks that we 'sort of maintain a blog which seems to come and go with the months', which you could say is fairly accurate!

This does raise the point of what is this blog for, and what can be expected from it. For starters, it is not strictly speaking 'a blog' as we do very little in the way of logging the other websites we visit (which in any case are usually limited to The Guardian Online, and BBC when we need the West Ham results). This is more of a 'web journal', and we tend to prepare postings in advance, edit them a little, and then post them up in batches. This suits our situation here in terms of frequent power cuts and internet server outages, as we cannot usually rely on the assumption that we can upload posts on the spur of the moment. Furthermore, we have a very slow modem connection over very poor phone lines. The last time I used a connection like this was probably in about 1995, when the internet was in its infancy. Those of you enjoying 1mb/s broadband, or even decent dial-up connections, probably forget what it used to be like! Uploading photographs is a very tedious process, which may explain why we have not got many on the site.

It has been suggested to us that we make the site more spontaneous, by perhaps posting brief two-liners about some recent event, or about our current state of mind. We may have a go at this, but we are probably too anal. We tend to think quite carefully about some of the events we write about, as we are aware that we are responsible for conveying a certain image of Flores. If we are too free and easy with the facts, or introduce too much in the way of western-centric cultural interpretation, we risk objectifying our friends and colleagues.

Some of the entries are intended to inform our friends and family about our activities and impressions. Others probably have a wider application, informing potential visitors to Flores about the island, and also giving background information to NGOs who wish to work in NTT province. We also try to paint a picture of what development work entails, and clarify some of the issues and concepts that inform what we do here.

In case anyone is afraid that this all sounds frightfully serious, fear not. Most of the events we write about reflect the Flores attitude to the trials and tribulations of life, which tends not to be very serious at all!

Normal service resumed

As you can see, I have now had the chance to organise my blog a little better, importing most of the articles from the two previous sites. It is not as pretty as I would like, but it is the best method I could find which allowed me to update the site from remote computers on very slow connections. Feel free to leave polite comments.

Soon I will be posting up some photographs and few stories about Bali, before we leave on the 14th July to set up our new home in Flores.

Who was Lucretius?

A potted biography of the poet

Titus Lucretius Carus - a quick biography

(From Bartleby.com)
c.99 B.C.–c.55 B.C., Roman poet and philosopher. Little is known about his life. A chronicle of St. Jerome speaks of the loss of his reason through taking a love potion. It states that in sane intervals he had written books that were later amended by Cicero. The poetry of Lucretius constitutes one great didactic work in six books, De rerum natura [on the nature of things]. In dignified and beautiful hexameter verse the poet sets forth arguments founded upon the philosophical ideas of Democritus and Epicurus.

He seeks to persuade man that there need be no fear of the gods or of death, since “man is lord of himself.” His proof is based upon the so-called atomic theory of the ancients, which held that everything, even the soul, is made up of atoms, and the laws of nature control all. The soul is itself material and so closely associated with the body that whatever affects one affects the other. Consciousness ends with death. There is no immortality of the soul. The universe came into being through the working of natural laws in the combining of atoms, instead of by the creative power of a deity. Although not the same as the modern atomic theory, many of the principles he gives in his scientific discussions have been upheld by later investigations.

And, from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Lucretius had a hard, clear commitment to naturalism. Throughout the poem he consistently attacks supernatural explanations of phenomena and resists the temptation to give in to some form of natural religion or "scientific" supernaturalism. The world, he argues, was not created by divine intelligence, nor is it imbued with any form of mind or purpose. Instead, it must be understood as an entirely natural phenomenon, the outcome of a random (thought statistically inevitable and lawful) process. In short, whatever happens in the universe is not the product of design, but part of an ongoing sequence of purely physical events. Lucretius denounced religion as the greatest source of human corruption and anguish. He sought to persuade man that there need be no fear of the gods or of death, since “man is lord of himself.” He believed that the soul is itself material and so closely associated with the body that whatever affects one affects the other. Consciousness ends with death. There is no immortality of the soul. No thing can be created from nothing, and thus matter cannot be reduced to empty space, although it can be changed from one form to another.

Lucretius’ literary influence has been long-lasting and widespread, especially among poets with epic ambitions or cosmological interests, from Virgil and Milton to Whitman and Wordsworth. Not surprisingly, as one of the main proponents and principle sources of Epicurean thought, his philosophical influence has also been considerable. The extent of his communication with and influence on his contemporaries, including other Epicurean writers, is not known. What is known is that by the end of the first century A.D. De Rerum Natura was hardly read and its author had already begun a long, slow descent into philosophical oblivion. It was not until the Renaissance, with the recovery of lost Lucretian manuscripts, that a true revival of the poet became possible.

A full transcript of the poem can be found here.

Who are we?

For those that feel they need to know a bit more about us. Our chums don't need to read this bit.

To make this blog entry easier to write, please forgive me if I use the third person:

Dom and Beth have been together since 1995, and married since 2002. Dom is in his late thirties, Beth is somewhat younger. Dom has been, at various times in his career, a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman, financial advisor, film producer, entrepreneur, photographer and advertising agency executive. He has no qualifications for anything he has done, except scuba diving, where he is the proud wielder of the basic PADI open water certificate ("tourist class" - he blows and wheezes his way through a 300 bar tank in about thirty minutes, and the sound of his attempts to equalise scare all the fish away). Beth, on the other hand, is a physiology graduate, knows what the knee bone is connected to, and has had a proper job for the past few years in the pharmaceutical industry. Beth also has a PADI certificate, but has trouble clearing her mask, and so has thus never actually seen anything underwater.

They are also keen skiers, experienced sailors (currently studying to be yachtmaster) and good at Trivial Pursuit.

In fact, Dom and Beth could be said to be a very fortunate couple: they are attractive (well, Beth is), fairly fit, in robust health and financially secure. They are perhaps an archetypal middle class couple to be found anywhere in the wealthy western world. However, in 2003 they decided to give up all the comfortable trimmings of life in Clifton, Bristol and sign up to become volunteers with VSO. Dom will be using his skills as an entrepreneur, change agent and marketeer to improve livlihoods in the Developing world, and Beth will be using her knowledge of palliative care and the hospice movement to improve the lives of the terminally ill, and also to do some HIV/AIDS education.

This blog has been set up to act as a repository, journal and photo album for the two and a half years that Dom and Beth are away.

No, I'm Spartacus

The 40 or so years of Lucretius' life was a period of violence and turmoil

The 40 or so years of Lucretius' life was a period of violence and turmoil:

100 BC: riots erupt in the streets of Rome; two public officials, the tribune L. Appuleius Saturninus and praetor C. Servilius Glaucia, are murdered.

91 BC: the so-called Social War (between Rome and her Italian allies) breaks out. No sooner is this bitter struggle ended (88 BC) than Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a ruthless politician and renegade army commander, marches on Rome, and an even more convulsive and bloody Civil War begins.

82 BC: Sulla becomes dictator. His infamous proscription results in the arrest and execution of more than 4000 leading citizens, including 40 senators.

71 BC: Spartacus’ massive slave revolt (involving an army of 90,000 former slaves and outlaws) is finally put down by Cassius and Pompey. More than 6000 of the captured rebels are crucified and their bodies left for display along the Appian Way.

62 BC: Defeat and death of Catiline. By this point in his career this former lieutenant of Sulla had become a living plague upon Roman politics and a virtual byword for scandal, intrigue, conspiracy, demagoguery, and vain ambition.

What is the plan?

An explanation of 'The Lucretius Plan'

When we got married in December 2002, we prepared two readings for our friends Nick and Natalie to read out (these are available to read in a separate blog entry). As this was a secular wedding, and as both of us are somewhat agnostic, the readings were designed to be sufficiently moving without being spiritual. This is actually quite a difficult trick to pull off, which I guess explains why most of us end up with that bloody awful Irish poem about the sun being in your eyes and the wind in your bottom.

We wanted to attempt to convey some sense of our philosophical beliefs, and these can be broadly characterised as having been culled from a vague knowledge of ancient Greek rational thought.

Socrates said that "the unexamined life is not worth living", and Aristotle tells us that “One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy."

Our objective, and I should imagine this would hold for most people, is to live 'a life that works'. This does not necessarily mean rich, or popular or even surrounded by children, but simply a life that seems to have found a certain flow.

After a while, we found that the Epicureans had the best approach to this sort of thing, and I would also commend Alain de Botton to you, in particular his 'Consolations of Philosophy', as he does a very good potted history of the Epicureans. The gist of it is that a pleasure is not necessarily the presence of sybaritic delights, but is rather the absence of actual pain, hunger or loneliness.

Essentially, Epicureans believe that if one has shelter, some simple food to eat and the companionship of friends, then you will be happy. Anything additional to these basic requirements will not bring additional happiness, and may even bring misery, as it slowly dawns on you that you toil for nothing. This notion is nicely encapsulated in a recent lecture by Richard Layard, which I will cover in a separate blog entry (probably in the 'economics' category).

Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman devotee of Epicurus, and a poet. In his poem De Rerum Natura he wrote:

"Hot fevers do not depart your body more quickly
If you toss about on pictured tapestries or rich purple coverlets
Than if you lie sick under a poor man’s blanket."

Which I think you will agree is cheerful thought for anyone about to spend two years living in basic lodgings in the developing world for two years.

The poem also contains this slice of Epicurean doctrine:

Lo, see them: contending with their wits, fighting for precedence,
Struggling night and day with unending effort,
Climbing, clawing their way up the pinnacles of wealth and power.
O miserable minds of men! O blind hearts!
In what darkness, among how many perils,
You pass your short lives! Do you not see
That our nature requires only this:
A body free from pain, and a mind, released from worry and fear,
Free to enjoy feelings of delight? (2. 11-19.)

So Lucretius is appealing to us because he supports the Epicurean world view which challenged the reigning dualistic orthodoxies as well as the mystery cults, with their inevitable mysticism, asceticism and pessimism, and it is their great purpose to free men's minds from superstition.

Furthermore, Lucretius extends this love of rational epiricism to the concept of happiness. To be happy is not to toil endlessly for cash and personal gain, but is rather more concerned with what we would today call 'social capital'. Social capital refers to aspects of the network structure, such as social norms and sanctions, mutual obligations, trust, and information transmission, that encourage collaboration and coordination between friends and strangers

So, 'The Lucretius Plan' is what we have dubbed our adventure for the next two years. It seemed a fitting way to describe what it means to us to give up our affluent, comfortable lives in the UK and spend over two years living in challenging circumstances in a developing country. We will post to this blog further elucidation on this topic as the mood takes us...

The Wedding Readings

These were the two readings read out by Natalie and Nick at our wedding.

The readings take the form of an exchange of letters between Marcus Calixtus and Titus Lucretius Carus.

(Note to Scholars: please note that these are not real letters, I wrote them based on the writings of Lucretius and the fragments of Epicurus, with some other stuff thrown in.)

(Note to random google visitors: feel free to use these readings for your own humanist or secular wedding, subject to the creative commons license that governs this site.)

This reading is taken from a letter written by a Roman citizen and amateur philosopher, Marcus Calixtus, to the famous poet and Epicurean, Titus Lucretius.

Dear Titus

On this fine winter’s afternoon, I find myself compelled to write to you concerning love and marriage.

This is not for myself you understand, my own married life could not be closer to perfection, but I write to you on behalf of two friends who turned up at my villa today seeking guidance.

It transpires that this couple are soon to be married, and require some words of wisdom to be read out at the ceremony. I suppose they feel this will give some intellectual weight to the occasion, and of course I was only too pleased to help them.

I feel compelled to quote Aristotle’s words: “One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.”

By this I mean a wedding may well be a special day spent with family and friends, all fine words, decent food and a great deal of wine; but a marriage is a lifetime.

This makes it something more than a transaction, although that dry old stick Cicero would have you believe that there is something pure about a legal edifice wrapped in the words of a binding contract.

The words that bind these two people to each other are not simply those spoken on the day, they are the words, thoughts and deeds of a lifetime together.

So what is the missing ingredient? What is the immutable essence that attracts people to each other, and once together holds them to one shared existence? Can there be a force that defies rational description and is yet definable or measurable?

“One word frees us from all the weight and pain of life; and that word is love” wrote Sophocles, so I submit that love is the powerful alchemist, and as base metals may be turned to gold, so individuals can become lovers, and lovers become families.

Thus can one use the ancients to define marriage and find words to describe love.

However, I submit that love cannot be easily rationalised to suit Plato, nor held to a calibrated standard to suit Aristotle, so how can it be described to an assembled throng of friends and family in a manner that will spread warmth and good feeling?

I await your thoughts on the matter,

Your obedient servant,

Marcus Calixtus

This reading is taken from a letter written by the famous poet and Epicurean, Titus Lucretius, to the his friend and amateur philosopher, Marcus Calixtus.

Dear Marcus

Your thoughts on love and marriage are interesting, but you may be in danger of taking yourself a little too seriously, which is fine for the philosopher but somewhat tedious for everyone else.

Remember that Aristotle did point out that the most rational man is he who would be the happiest. To be happy is therefore a rational response to the desire to rationalise everything. What hope is there for mankind if people see fit to rationalise their way into marriage, argue themselves some children, and allocate their love to each other and their kin according to logical proportions?

The concept 'love' is irreducible, a self-evident state of affairs that warrants no further intellectual intrusion. Therefore, allow me to suggest a homily for your newly wedded couple:

Do not let love linger unseen, a hidden part of you that once blessed your actions but is now taken for granted, like the breath in your body and the food on your plate. Instead, adorn your love with the beauty of kind deeds and noble sentiments. Be lavish with your praise, and frugal with your desire to understand all, explain all, and generally know all.

It is better to wake each morning, see the sun flatter the world with light, and think of what the new day will bring for each other, rather than consider how your own affairs may be encouraged to yield more profit.

A marriage bound by love transcends material concerns, and you may find that the requirements of a marriage are few indeed, no more than to banish pain, and also to spread out some pleasures for yourselves. What does it matter if the hall does not sparkle with silver and gleam with gold, and no carved or gilded rafters ring to the music of the lute?

A good marriage does not miss these luxuries, when you can recline in company on the soft grass by a running stream, under the branches of a tall tree, and refresh your bodies pleasurably at small expense. Better still if the weather smiles on you and the season of the year stipples the green grass with flowers.

Thus marriage is more than a contract, it is a state of mind, settled in the present with no need for fancy words and endless philosophy.

Lastly, reflect on the words of Epicurus. When he was asked what the secret of a long and happy life was, he replied:

“My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.”

With best wishes for a successful wedding,

Titus Lucretius.