Talk:Vatican Saying 28

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This stock phrase is an obvious opinion. The issue is respective quantity, and guessing concrete circumstances: epilogismòs. For instance Epicurus (who had few student, being almost unknown) got honored and wealthy by friend's presents. Did he refer to the risks of others? We don't know what he gave in return. If he gave only sound advices, who r i s k e d more when he moved away? Epicurus also, who wrote 300 books, had possibly not much time to be together (he lived at home in Melites, and after him Hermarchus and possibly so on), it were friends who staid together, coming behind him. A charismatic man discovers that friends are at hand and many, but all want something, if nothing else his own time. Underestimating a risk is no thinking positive, it's idealism. Caesar was killed by friendly dagger.
All of us in infancy get attention, presents, but with crying and despair when we aren't mollycoddled. Talented and fine persons may r i s k protracting childhood narcissism with dependence and despair enclosed - self-murder and car 'crash' of actors for instance. Common people learn early the hard way that honeymoon lasts a little, then getting up early is needed. Ancient Greek middle class hadn't will, in fact was ashamed, to work hard, and they expected help from relatives and friends frightened by tumble of class/family ascendancy by knock-on effect.
Risk was but unavoidable in business friendship, for lack of protests information, checks, assurances, ratings, efficient justice. Risk may be there in gay-friendship of an elderly man with a young penniless man. How much consolation or distractions can give ordinary emotional friendship, opinions differs. According to personality tests, many people prefer also hobbies, sports, doing thing oneself, books, art, and in case socializing through them without any risk.

Behind the word 'friendship' are there for sure many experiences. The very Epicurus recommended univocity of meaning, but in this case are involved many repressions and false clear consciences. "Friendship, ideally defined by dogmatists of antiquity, is one of vain hopes philosophers lull us by" [La Mothe Le Vayer, De l'amitié].
Altruistic sense happens by instinct to parents of kids, to lovers (gay and one-way repressed love are commonly said friendship), to very elderly person - a sort of early bequest for lack of youthful narcissism, and for heavier submissiveness. It's but possessive too.
Against outside danger friendship rises for the time being. In wars and natural disaster man is helping, E. said [On Choice and Avoidances, XI]. Complicity friendship is a degeneration of the former. The more a sect has secrets the more friends betrayal is anathemathized, and compelled by insult, revenge, sectarian solidarity and silence concerning its secret doctrines
Swap friendship or logrolling. It's the foundation of archaic societies, continuing in underground economy. Instinct involved is interest.
Recreation friendship. Among young people, holiday and retired people, it matches with teasing, emulation, gang support (risky in this case), territorial instinct and team home ground spirit. Very similar to primitive groups psychology, lacking in books, media, hobbies. Instinct involved is stimuli need. Getting more than giving. One feels tedium as loneliness. When he bump into some people, he is so relieved from his inability to bear oneself that he's ready to buy them a drink, but at next meeting he'll be upset if isn't there the other way around. He who works full-time becomes 'hard to get'.
Crosscheck friendship. If I carry weight, if I'm of value, if I'm chic, I'll have entourage; one regards the possession of friends as some proof of worth. It causes the bitterest crisis to retired people. Of course politicians get in return prospective votes, but envy as well. Moralists call it vanity, as it is based on peculiar values and information difficulties. Actually we aren't assessed about our real value, that is being able to make us pleased, but rather to be exploitable or to be harmlessly funny. Typical of courts, of artistic and intellectual world. Instinct involved is leadership, which is never absent even among the most sociable Mammalia, nor between couples. Friendship dies more for meddlers than for submissive spongers. Friendship of followers (and of good hearers...) would be the utmost for our genome, and sometime presents and hospitality are a means to acquire ascendancy. Useful against delusions of omnipotence, generally it's a symptom of human insecurity, justified in savanna, not in private life today; in fact privacy and suburbanization are sometime a reaction to the emergence of the modern city. Although everyone trys to get the better, one exchanges information each other [V.S. 74]. Perhaps here's the conflictual point of Epicurus - defined 'stern ... refuting ... outgoing [...] embittered friends ... seemingly quick-tempered ... [justified as] caused by fatherly love' [Phld., On Anger, 7]: "We do not so much need the help of our friends... [VS 34] [but the understanding and admiration of them ... one could add]" "So greatly blessed were Metrodorus and I that it has been no harm to us to be unknown, and almost unheard of, in this well-known land of Greece” [U188]. He realized school is exoteric (uncivilizedly false or politically correct ...) dogmatism and ferule for unfriendly mates, that is distortion of philosophy. The secluded concentration of the (rentier) researcher is hardly compatible with good feelings of a proselytizer. Researcher is doubting, unsure adherents needed certainties. Leader gratifications (he called friendship) vs seclusion (làthe biôsas) advantages. Vanity vs self-esteem. But perhaps in old age balance changed in direction of a relaxed patriarch. Distinguishing between Epicurus' philosophy and his class register is needful.
Snobbish friendship of them who make some VIP hundred times die by newspaper death notice, whom, live, was the very departed unaware of. 'Friendship' to the sage (a boss after all) is something snobbish too.br> Consolation friendship. Typical of meditative and philosophical persons. If someone is depressive indeed, after a while he/she exhausts, unless he/she pay fee.
Friendship for following the Book ... or papyrus, whether for desire to overcome feelings of guilt or for herd instinct. The cult of Plato in the Academy, was established on day of his birth, as well as Epicurus on the 10th of Gamelion, later on the 7th (Apollon's Day).
Day of obligation friendship. A ceremonial festival at which gifts are bestowed on the friend and property is destroyed by its owner in a show of wealth that the friend later attempt to surpass. Among American Indians of the northern Pacific coast it's said 'potlatch' a black Friday....
In order friendship desire keeps into natural pleasurable bonds, characterized by a down-to-earth approach,  (as says E., without relating seemingly friendship to PD 30) it's useful understanding its motivations - almost selfish and non necessary. All friendships off the book are imperfect. If one cannot fix how much friends are to be and how long will they be trusted, natural unnecessary desire turns infinite and unnatural, and ethics turns from epilogismòs (hedonic calculus) toward moral obligation, i.e. dogmatism. Actually Epicurean friendly unselfishness was less  absolute than doxographic sources often suggest. Disagreements about its meaning among the disciples and scholars are well-known; there is no Perì Philias book, no mention of friendship in the Letter to Menoeceus (if it's not unabridged). Some friends thought friendship to be a good and it should be expanded as such; others objected that, with to many friends, whether one will condole and be glad at the same time each day, or share out one's emotion a bit for everyone with each relationship leveling off. Cicero, dedicating this treatise to his dearest friend Atticus - an Epicurean - claims interested friendship is felt in states of mind and body weakness (minimum firmitatis haberet minimumque virium) as for frail women more than for men, more for poor and unlucky people(ex eo fieri ut mulierclae magis amicitiarum praesidia quaerant quam viri, et inopes quam opulenti) [Amic. XIII, 46] ; that was first Epicurean view; but only some wary followers (recentiores, timidiores ) claimed ensuing affection [Fin. II, 83]. Hardly might he have forged.
Vatican and Principal Sayings have been transcribed, isolated and attuned in two millenniums until Gutenberg. Sententious florilegia, it's manifest, had lost the sense of responsibility of one's life, free from already given systems. No writer want to be read just about through his own media slogans, the very three letters had a propagandistic popular communicativeness. “And rather using all his time sparingly, he relies on his own capacities alone whenever there is need to do so. ” [Phld. Choices and Avoidances XXI transl. Indelli Tsouna]; and in Rhet. II, 157 , Philodemus holds again that it is better to care for oneself than for the ordinary multitude. "[Epicurus] counsels the Sage to bestow nothing on any man, for all things that are his own concerns make him wise. [U581 ]; "Epicurus say that nobody loves another but for his own prospective asset" [U540] ) “[Epicurus maintains that] pleasure is the greatest good; there is no human society – each one takes thought for himself” [U523]. "[Epicurus] holds that a Sage does all things for his own sake, he considers his own advantage in everything he does” [U581].
It's useful also knowing friends from experiences, not from claps on the back ... nor from P.D. nor Vatican Saying, as is said by Choices and Avoidances[XI, transl. and brackets Indelli Tsouna ; this is authentic in plain context; if 'them' refers to persons ('people' of former coordinate clause of same period) it would be even more strong (Indelli and Tsouna say “the cardinal principles influence choice indirectly”); (ed.'s n.)]: “the thesis that the understanding and the memorization of the cardinal tenets contribute greatly to actual choices and avoidances are traced back to the states of tranquillity concerning them [sc. the cardinal tenets] - as some have clumsily interpreted it - [...]”. Fundamentalist heroic friendship and falling in love are for sure non necessary to individual survival and good health, since a common option for security is “that natural good of kingship and high office" [P.D. 6]. If they were necessary to happiness we would depend from residential and emotional whims of another person. Lucretius and Colothes conflates family and social organization as more necessary for human life 's prosecution [DRN 5. l019-27], like many anthropologists do. Friendship was fit for few people societies, just an hunting team, a family, a battle maniple, consolidated also by hostile bands.
From this saying it's manifest that for Epicurus friendship choice must be weighed, therefore it's a unnecessary desire (an open variable pleasurable instinct), or atmleast a mean. Like virtue (as a mean) it is all the same inseparable from pleasure, even if his actual object varies and may have different after-effect. As said Saint-Evremond , a man about town, “there is nothing which more contributes to the life' sweetness than friendship; but there is nothing which more disrupts one's balance than the tangible friends. [...] I suppose, without precipitation, that such able painters who give us so much noble reproductions of friendship have never seen the original. […] Actually , in undeveloped societies, it is better being an unlucky outgoing personality than a lucky solitary type - in analogy with Menoeceus letter virtue, as friendship is assuredly protective, that is consoling, in undeveloped societies, and it may be sometime useful.
If one is successful not to be panicked by death, archaic consolation friends may give will continue to be pleasant but, thoughtfully, will become even less necessary: "his whole life will be confounded by distrust and completely upset" [V.S. 56-57] seem unbelievable of a sage (“To be an adult is to be alone” ... Epictetus , Discourses); luckily this saying is mostly conjectural. If somebody doesn't value my friendship anymore it's his own problem, I'm remaining the same: that is advised by psychotherapists. But perhaps it refers to defamation and retaliations against independent characters in primitive societies... but infamy doesn't work in big societies with social mobility, nor among plenty of cities-state. Social insurances are more in work order. The very P.D. XXXIX, in case of friendship difficulties, advises to retire into oneself [hopefully without begging for it]. Sabre-tooth tiger are there no longer. Even motherless children come almost off sane. Too many rhetoric and literature about friendship allow us to think religion and Swiss bank accounts of gurus. Common 'both feet on the ground' human relation, that is easy and replaceable in case, are welcome. After all we are no Gods.