Who killed Epicurus?
I decided to write an electric diary, what you people call a "blog". I will not write about the daily life at Versailles or the War of Spanish Succession - that's stuff you can look up in every history book. I'll rather write about how I, the Sun King, am perceiving your century. You're living in a world that seems like Utopia for me - you guys would call it "science fiction". It's not only about flying ships, thinking machines and speaking boxes - it's about wholly different ideas, lifestyles, concepts. It would be interesting to write about this. And maybe - just maybe - it would be interesting for you to get kind of an "outside view" on your world.
When you read my diary, please don't forget that I'm writing from the year 1707. Some might consider me as a racist, a warmonger, an intolerant person, a misogynist, a tyrant. But those who do forget that my time does not know concepts like human rights or feminism. It's like accusing Moses of not respecting the new testament, or blaming Galilee for disregarding relativity theory.
(Besides this, if I would be, say, reborn in your time, I would probably have wholly different political convictions. So the opinions of the 18th-century-Louis have nothing to do with the convictions of a hypothetical 21th-century-twin. I'm not sure whether you get it what I'm trying to say. Never mind.)
Let's start with something not-so-political. One of the 21th-century concepts that puzzles me is the concept of Diet Coke. That's of course a pars pro toto for your whole "thin is beautiful" paradigm. In my time, corpulent women are considered attractive. (Personally I like both variants, thin and corpulent.) When a person is thick, this shows that he or she is a bon vivant, an epicure. So, being corpulent is a sign for joie de vivre, for zest for life, for vitality. In one word, pleasure is positive.
Your era seems to inverse this idea. Thickness counts as ugly, being thin is a necessary condition for being beautiful. (I'm talking of general 21th century fashion, not of SG where things are a bit different.) Little girls get skeleton-like puppets as toys, fashion is presented by skinny "supermodels", teenagers starve themselves to death. Sugar and fat are demonized, science creates food and drinks without any nutritional value. In consequence, the pleasure of eating is ruined by bad conscience. You're either hungry or ashamed. In one word, pleasure is negative, suffering is positive.
And the pleasure of eating is not the only pleasure that is "forbidden". Smoking is banned from public life. Sex and nudity are considered dirty (not on SG, of course). Political leaders broad about not drinking alcohol. Even playing tag is forbidden in some schools. A lot of people seem to follow the unofficial motto of Puritanism : "You can do what you want as long as you don't enjoy it." In order to get eternal life, they killed Epicurus. What a shame.
(The funny thing about Puritanism is that it even is contradictory to the new testament. The Lord himself was considered as "glutton and drunkard" - see Matthew 11, 19 - and His first wonder was to save an alcohol shortage on a wedding.)
Luckily, this Puritanism seems to keep out of Suicide Girls. When I discover girls of all weight classes on this site, when I see beautiful Baroness Tea proudly presenting her delicious chocolate-banana-cream cake or divine Flux waxing lyrical about butter, I say to myself : There is hope.
Maybe Epicurus is not dead...
I decided to write an electric diary, what you people call a "blog". I will not write about the daily life at Versailles or the War of Spanish Succession - that's stuff you can look up in every history book. I'll rather write about how I, the Sun King, am perceiving your century. You're living in a world that seems like Utopia for me - you guys would call it "science fiction". It's not only about flying ships, thinking machines and speaking boxes - it's about wholly different ideas, lifestyles, concepts. It would be interesting to write about this. And maybe - just maybe - it would be interesting for you to get kind of an "outside view" on your world.
When you read my diary, please don't forget that I'm writing from the year 1707. Some might consider me as a racist, a warmonger, an intolerant person, a misogynist, a tyrant. But those who do forget that my time does not know concepts like human rights or feminism. It's like accusing Moses of not respecting the new testament, or blaming Galilee for disregarding relativity theory.
(Besides this, if I would be, say, reborn in your time, I would probably have wholly different political convictions. So the opinions of the 18th-century-Louis have nothing to do with the convictions of a hypothetical 21th-century-twin. I'm not sure whether you get it what I'm trying to say. Never mind.)
Let's start with something not-so-political. One of the 21th-century concepts that puzzles me is the concept of Diet Coke. That's of course a pars pro toto for your whole "thin is beautiful" paradigm. In my time, corpulent women are considered attractive. (Personally I like both variants, thin and corpulent.) When a person is thick, this shows that he or she is a bon vivant, an epicure. So, being corpulent is a sign for joie de vivre, for zest for life, for vitality. In one word, pleasure is positive.
Your era seems to inverse this idea. Thickness counts as ugly, being thin is a necessary condition for being beautiful. (I'm talking of general 21th century fashion, not of SG where things are a bit different.) Little girls get skeleton-like puppets as toys, fashion is presented by skinny "supermodels", teenagers starve themselves to death. Sugar and fat are demonized, science creates food and drinks without any nutritional value. In consequence, the pleasure of eating is ruined by bad conscience. You're either hungry or ashamed. In one word, pleasure is negative, suffering is positive.
And the pleasure of eating is not the only pleasure that is "forbidden". Smoking is banned from public life. Sex and nudity are considered dirty (not on SG, of course). Political leaders broad about not drinking alcohol. Even playing tag is forbidden in some schools. A lot of people seem to follow the unofficial motto of Puritanism : "You can do what you want as long as you don't enjoy it." In order to get eternal life, they killed Epicurus. What a shame.
(The funny thing about Puritanism is that it even is contradictory to the new testament. The Lord himself was considered as "glutton and drunkard" - see Matthew 11, 19 - and His first wonder was to save an alcohol shortage on a wedding.)
Luckily, this Puritanism seems to keep out of Suicide Girls. When I discover girls of all weight classes on this site, when I see beautiful Baroness Tea proudly presenting her delicious chocolate-banana-cream cake or divine Flux waxing lyrical about butter, I say to myself : There is hope.
Maybe Epicurus is not dead...
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
I feel that everything should be taken in moderation, including (perhaps especially) moderation itself.