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By Root 666 0

” The really scientistic person will cultivate an Epicurean detachment. This is a disposition recommended by Epicurus, a Greek philosopher of the fourth century bc. His views about the nature of reality were about as close to correct as one could get by pure reason alone in Plato’s time. He believed that everything was basically atoms moving on determined paths forever. The physical facts, he rightly held, fix all the facts, and that made him an atheist. Epicurus held that there was nothing more to the mind than physical matter and that immortality was out of the question. He equated the morally good with pleasure and evil with pain. A tranquil self-sufficient life along with your friends was the key to securing the good and avoiding evil. That made Epicurus a nice nihilist, though he didn’t realize it. The tranquility he commended requires that we not take ourselves or much of anything else too seriously. Epicurus was no fatalist, and he wasn’t a stoic. That’s another ancient prescription for living that counseled indifference to pain and pleasure—definitely not Epicureanism. Epicureanism encourages a good time.

Scientism has nothing against having a good time either. In fact, it observes that we were selected for being Epicureans. It serves our genetic interests most of the time. Of course, our brain has become powerful enough to see through the stratagems of Mother Nature. We can get off the Darwinian train and stop acting in our genes’ interests if we want to. There can’t be anything morally wrong with that (recall nice nihilism) if that’s what we want to do.

There is one last persistent question that this book has been silent about. It was one that concerned Epicurus: Should we fear death? Is it a bad thing? This question is quite different from the easily answered question, “Is dying bad?” The answer to that question is obvious: prolonged painful dying, like any unpleasant experience, is very bad and should be avoided. Epicurus’s question was about being dead. His answer was no. There really is nothing to fear about death. Scientism will be sympathetic to his answer. It may even be able to take Epicurus one better.

Epicurus was famous for arguing that death is nothing to us, and nothing to fear when it arrives, because when it does arrive, we aren’t around to experience it. The event of dying is like a revolving door: we go out of existence just as our body dies. We never even get to meet death face to face. It’s impossible to do so, since death is the end of our existence, and if we can’t exist, we can’t be disturbed, discomfited, or otherwise made unhappy by death. So, death is nothing to fear.

Most of the commonsense objections to this argument start by forgetting that death—the termination of our lives—is an instantaneous event quite different from dying—a process that might take a long time and be quite unpleasant. That process is something to fear and to avoid. But becoming dead and being dead, those are two things Epicurus thought no one should waste time worrying about now. We are not around to suffer any harm from death. Another misconception about Epicurus’s argument is that it is neutral regarding longer lives versus shorter ones. Epicurus recognized that most people are better off postponing death and living longer. Premature death—a shorter life—is usually to be feared. But death, the event itself, he convincingly argued, is no cause for alarm.

An argument like Epicurus’s is a magnet for smart alecks, of course. Clever philosophers have long contrived counterarguments. Some try to show that bad things that happen to your reputation after death can harm you even if you are dead. Others argue that post-death survival, even infinitely long immortality, is a good thing, or at least something people might want. They conclude that by depriving you of that, death harms you.

Scientism helps Epicurus respond to these arguments and perhaps even strengthens his original one. The self, the person, the “I” inside the body is an illusion, along with all those others. That means that even if there is a loophole