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Editorial
The Value of Contrasts
In the scheme of a good life, much of what
gets discussed in the mass media and in the most eloquent conversations, the ingredients are made of what be called
'epicurean' concerns, i.e. things that pertain to pleasure.
If avoiding pain is the aim of the health and security services, prevention requires planning.
Even the idea of beauty resides in matters of procedure. Art needs confidence in its
proper execution and most of all, this confidence is... sort of... RAZIONALE, in the simple sense that one has to know
what one is doing, especially if the intention is to entertain everybody else.
If he lived in our time, Epicurus may well be indifferent to the obsessions
of the affluent societies: hunger, thirst and other hosts of wholesome wishes.
Epicurus believes that romantic love, for example, is to be avoided, as it involves a loss of reason and self-control.
He thinks that the pleasures of the senses are inferior to abstract pleasures such as friendship and contemplation. So what
may seem examples (as may seem all artistic endeavour) of self-indulgence require in reality a degree of austerity in the
approach, as to give humble homages to technique, discipline and the time to practice.
It may be to do with how outlines are drawn to be read. Things look clearer when relieved from the background. Friendship itself
can seem merely a wish for the comforts in having faith but this in itself seems too, a veiled search for a kind of
functional truth, in some cases even trust, seen as a way of getting ahead.
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