WEBVTT 00:00:01.900 --> 00:00:07.285 [ ♫ Gentle Music ♫ ] 00:00:26.444 --> 00:00:29.048 Narrator: Ever since ancient times human beings have looked to 00:00:29.048 --> 00:00:33.992 philosophy for the secret of happiness, but few philosophers have 00:00:33.992 --> 00:00:37.231 come up with more suggestive or more relevant answers than 00:00:37.231 --> 00:00:41.256 one born on the Greek island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey, 00:00:41.256 --> 00:00:44.640 three hundred and forty one years before the birth of Christ . 00:00:48.082 --> 00:00:50.228 His name was Epicurus. 00:00:52.268 --> 00:00:54.838 Very little about him has survived; 00:00:54.978 --> 00:00:57.639 all of his books have been lost across the centuries, 00:00:57.639 --> 00:01:02.554 leaving his philosophy of happiness to be reconstructed from just a few fragments. 00:01:05.049 --> 00:01:10.811 Epicurus believed that we could all find a way to be happy; the problem was, 00:01:10.811 --> 00:01:13.815 quite simply, that we were looking in the wrong place. 00:01:16.147 --> 00:01:18.253 [♫♫] 00:01:30.281 --> 00:01:35.338 Unlike many philosophers, Epicurus' idea of happiness actually sounds rather fun, 00:01:35.978 --> 00:01:38.824 he didn't think we should feel guilty about wanting to have a pleasurable, 00:01:38.824 --> 00:01:42.646 enjoyable life and promised that he could show us how to. 00:01:46.099 --> 00:01:49.844 Of course you might wonder why you need a philosopher at all to teach you how 00:01:49.844 --> 00:01:54.060 to have a good time. We seem to think that the key to happiness 00:01:54.060 --> 00:01:56.955 is really pretty easy; its all about having a lot of money, 00:01:57.725 --> 00:02:00.222 so we can come to places like this, and go shopping. 00:02:02.292 --> 00:02:06.142 But before we reach for our wallets, Epicurus wanted us to stop and think; 00:02:07.461 --> 00:02:11.074 it's easy to imagine that money can solve everything, but can it? 00:02:12.482 --> 00:02:13.740 [ ♫ Singing in Greek ♫ ] 00:02:15.756 --> 00:02:20.948 Epicurus was committed to a life of happiness; he liked sex, laughter and beauty, but 00:02:20.948 --> 00:02:25.659 crucially spent his time pointing out that happiness is in fact, rather a tricky issue, 00:02:27.355 --> 00:02:31.493 and a philosopher might help you to find it more easily than a credit card ever could. 00:02:34.838 --> 00:02:38.422 That Epicurus was in favour of pleasure at all shocked many of his ancient Greek 00:02:38.422 --> 00:02:43.618 contemporaries, his philosophy became synonymous with a lotus eating lifestyle. 00:02:48.637 --> 00:02:52.867 To this day, people who love luxurious eating and drinking can sometimes be 00:02:52.867 --> 00:02:57.317 described as Epicurean, in fact that's a complete misunderstanding. 00:02:59.323 --> 00:03:02.441 [♫ Singing continues ♫ ] 00:03:05.911 --> 00:03:09.036 Botton: Epicurus said that pleasure was the most important thing in life, and yet if 00:03:09.036 --> 00:03:12.467 we actually look at the way that he lived, it seems he lived far from a 00:03:12.467 --> 00:03:16.807 luxurious life. His house was very simple, his clothes were extremely basic, 00:03:16.807 --> 00:03:20.736 he always drank water rather than wine, he found fish much too expensive and 00:03:20.736 --> 00:03:24.770 he was happy just eating meals with bread, vegetables and a few olives. 00:03:25.637 --> 00:03:29.597 He once asked a friend, send me a pot of cheese, so that I can have a feast 00:03:29.597 --> 00:03:33.878 whenever I like, these were the kinds of tastes of a man who would describe 00:03:33.878 --> 00:03:35.611 pleasure as the end of life. 00:03:46.094 --> 00:03:50.223 Narrator: At the heart of Epicurus' philosophy is a simple thought: that we aren't very 00:03:50.223 --> 00:03:54.522 good at knowing what will make us happy, that we may feel powerfully drawn towards 00:03:54.522 --> 00:03:59.325 material things, and be convinced that they are what we require to be happy. 00:03:59.695 --> 00:04:04.492 We’re often wrong, what we want is not always what we need, and nothing shows 00:04:04.492 --> 00:04:07.449 that up more starkly than our impulse to go shopping. 00:04:08.687 --> 00:04:13.936 Steven: I like shopping, most weeks it’s just a couple of bags but sometimes it’s, 00:04:13.936 --> 00:04:17.210 I don’t know like ten/twelve bags a time, I like designer names. 00:04:17.950 --> 00:04:23.227 Dolce and Gabanna stuff, these clothes, DKNY and I love Gucci clothes as well. 00:04:24.026 --> 00:04:27.942 Narrator : Steven Perry is a hairdresser from Liverpool who spends all his spare time shopping. 00:04:28.991 --> 00:04:33.978 Steven: I suppose I could resist, but usually I don't, usually I just go in and shop anywhere. 00:04:35.242 --> 00:04:39.711 Although when I go out buying all this stuff, it makes me happy, at the end of the 00:04:39.711 --> 00:04:42.658 month when the credit card and the store card bills and the 00:04:42.658 --> 00:04:47.415 loan payments come out, stuff like that, then that doesn’t make me happy because 00:04:47.415 --> 00:04:50.238 I see how much is going out, every month on debt. 00:04:51.741 --> 00:04:54.741 [ Indistinct Talking ] 00:04:57.324 --> 00:04:58.927 Botton: How many watches have you got? 00:04:59.820 --> 00:05:02.358 Steven: Not really that many, probably about ten. Something like that. 00:05:02.358 --> 00:05:03.888 Botton: You've only got ten watches? Steven: Only ten 00:05:03.888 --> 00:05:06.620 Botton: I've only got one! What’s the one you’re wearing now? 00:05:06.620 --> 00:05:12.605 Steven: A spoon watch at the minute, I like this just for general everyday 00:05:12.867 --> 00:05:16.127 because it’s only like ninety nine pounds and... 00:05:16.977 --> 00:05:20.196 Narrator: Steven often gets into debt and I couldn't help wondering if his desire 00:05:20.196 --> 00:05:21.944 to go shopping might be a bit out of control. 00:05:22.094 --> 00:05:24.674 Botton: So if that’s the everyday watch, what’s the fancy watch? 00:05:25.192 --> 00:05:29.428 Steven: The thousand pound Tag watch -- Oh my God, that’s amazing, so what’s 00:05:29.478 --> 00:05:32.558 the craziest thing you've bought in terms of like, bad impulse buying? 00:05:33.288 --> 00:05:35.878 A pair of shorts. -- From where? 00:05:35.878 --> 00:05:44.753 Umm, from a shopping mall in Liverpool, I'll show you them, they didn’t have my size, 00:05:44.753 --> 00:05:50.693 so I thought these’ll fit me, but you put them on and they just tend 00:05:50.693 --> 00:05:55.899 to look truly horrendous, like cycling shorts, sorta thing. 00:05:56.118 --> 00:06:01.585 Botton: How much did they cost? -- God, I don’t know, about fifty pounds? 00:06:01.638 --> 00:06:05.216 Fifty sixty quid, something like that. They were never taken back, 00:06:05.216 --> 00:06:11.982 the same as these jeans; I think these have still got the labels on. 00:06:12.157 --> 00:06:17.703 I just got these home and they didn't fit miles too long and miles too big. 00:06:17.703 --> 00:06:21.851 I did mean to take them back but I don’t like taking things back. 00:06:24.681 --> 00:06:27.987 Narrator: Do you ever get home and think I'm surrounded by shopping bags 00:06:28.217 --> 00:06:31.041 and you’re thinking God, what am I going to do with all this? 00:06:31.041 --> 00:06:35.233 --Yeah, especially when you come home and you've just got bags everywhere 00:06:35.233 --> 00:06:39.793 and you think, Why have I spent all that? And the credit card bill comes at the 00:06:39.793 --> 00:06:42.565 end of the month and you think, Oh! Why did I spend all that? 00:06:43.526 --> 00:06:47.579 Narrator: In a way we're all a bit like Steven, people who shop too much; 00:06:47.929 --> 00:06:51.384 Epicurus thought he knew why. We don’t understand what we really 00:06:51.384 --> 00:06:57.246 need and so fall prey to manic substitute desires for huge numbers of ill-fitting 00:06:57.246 --> 00:07:02.065 trousers or countless pairs of shoes. But Epicurus declared that he had 00:07:02.065 --> 00:07:06.056 actually discovered what we did need, and luckily for anyone without 00:07:06.056 --> 00:07:09.485 much money, the ingredients of happiness come pretty cheap. 00:07:12.133 --> 00:07:17.674 The first ingredient we need is friends. Epicurus took the idea of friendship 00:07:17.674 --> 00:07:21.759 very seriously, so seriously that he made an extremely radical innovation. 00:07:21.759 --> 00:07:25.761 When he came to Athens in 306 BC at the age of 35, he bought a large house 00:07:25.761 --> 00:07:30.310 just outside the city of Athens, this place here which he called ‘The Garden’; 00:07:31.090 --> 00:07:34.199 of course at that time it was rather beautiful, more beautiful than it is now, 00:07:34.199 --> 00:07:36.438 where it seems to be a taxi graveyard. 00:07:39.658 --> 00:07:41.768 What he did, was that he bought this house 00:07:41.768 --> 00:07:43.960 and asked a group of friends to move in with him. 00:07:43.960 --> 00:07:46.245 The house was quite large, so there was room enough for everyone to have 00:07:46.245 --> 00:07:49.220 their own quarters at the same time as coming together for meals and 00:07:49.220 --> 00:07:51.824 conversations in the common rooms of the house. 00:07:54.142 --> 00:07:57.521 What Epicurus was doing was picking up on a rather common sense point, 00:07:57.521 --> 00:07:59.992 which is that friends are a major source of happiness. 00:08:00.262 --> 00:08:02.919 But I think where he was distinctive was in his idea that in order 00:08:02.919 --> 00:08:05.958 to really benefit from friends, you had to see them not just occasionally 00:08:05.958 --> 00:08:09.368 not just for the odd drink in a bar or the odd chat on the phone, 00:08:09.368 --> 00:08:13.489 he had to be with his friends at all times, so they’d be permanent companions. 00:08:13.489 --> 00:08:16.339 And I think that was his distinctive idea of happiness. 00:08:19.351 --> 00:08:23.110 Narrator: You wouldn't catch Epicurus devouring lunch on his own in a burger bar; 00:08:23.110 --> 00:08:26.540 he recommended that we try never even to eat a snack alone. 00:08:27.027 --> 00:08:32.311 Before you eat or drink anything, he said, Consider carefully who you eat or drink with, 00:08:32.311 --> 00:08:36.068 rather than what you eat or drink, for feeding without a friend is the life 00:08:36.068 --> 00:08:37.837 of a lion or a wolf. 00:08:40.734 --> 00:08:42.934 [ ♫♫ ] 00:08:44.170 --> 00:08:48.400 Narrator: The second thing Epicurus thought we needed to be happy was freedom and 00:08:48.400 --> 00:08:50.729 in order to achieve it, he and his friends decided to 00:08:50.729 --> 00:08:52.313 leave Athens altogether. 00:08:53.973 --> 00:08:56.743 For them, to be free meant to be financially 00:08:56.743 --> 00:09:01.085 independent, economically self-sufficient, not answerable to horrible bosses 00:09:01.085 --> 00:09:04.092 for their income, so they resolved to leave city life, 00:09:04.092 --> 00:09:07.787 and its competitive and gossipy atmosphere behind them once and for all. 00:09:08.506 --> 00:09:12.211 So they left Athens and started what could best be described as a commune. 00:09:12.890 --> 00:09:16.320 We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday life and politics, 00:09:16.320 --> 00:09:19.244 Epicurus wrote, and that’s precisely what they did. 00:09:20.439 --> 00:09:23.137 The life was simple, but at least they enjoyed their freedom. 00:09:25.433 --> 00:09:29.312 They didn’t mind if they looked shabby, or didn’t have as much money as other people, 00:09:29.312 --> 00:09:32.634 because they were self-sufficient, and had gained their independence 00:09:32.634 --> 00:09:36.901 from what other people thought. There was, in a financial sense, 00:09:36.901 --> 00:09:37.865 nothing to prove. 00:09:39.941 --> 00:09:44.239 Epicurus believed there was a third ingredient necessary for happiness, 00:09:44.239 --> 00:09:48.303 and that was an analysed life. By which he meant a life in which 00:09:48.303 --> 00:09:52.688 we take time off to reflect on our worries, to analyse what is troubling us. 00:09:53.691 --> 00:09:57.561 Our anxieties quickly diminish if we give ourselves time to think them through. 00:09:59.095 --> 00:10:02.504 And to do that we need to take a step back from the noisy distractions 00:10:02.504 --> 00:10:06.524 of the commercial world, and to find time and space for quiet thinking 00:10:06.524 --> 00:10:07.459 about our lives. 00:10:09.656 --> 00:10:12.766 Of course, having loads of money has never made anyone unhappy, 00:10:13.070 --> 00:10:16.905 but I think the lovely idea in Epicurus is that if you’re denied money 00:10:16.905 --> 00:10:21.415 for whatever reason, and yet you have his 3 goods, that is you’ve got friends, 00:10:21.415 --> 00:10:24.529 you’ve got an analysed life, and you’re self-sufficient, 00:10:24.529 --> 00:10:26.202 then you’ll never be denied happiness. 00:10:27.080 --> 00:10:30.405 And conversely, if you’ve got loads of money but you’re lacking friends, 00:10:30.405 --> 00:10:32.881 you haven’t got a self-sufficient life, you’re not doing a lot of analysing, 00:10:32.881 --> 00:10:35.486 then you’ll never be happy, according to Epicurus. 00:10:36.036 --> 00:10:39.933 So if we try and draw this relationship between happiness and money on a graph, 00:10:39.933 --> 00:10:45.119 imagine that on this side of the graph you’ve got levels of happiness, 00:10:45.119 --> 00:10:48.753 and then on this side you’ve got levels of income, for Epicurus, 00:10:48.753 --> 00:10:51.855 so long as you’ve got enough money to provide you with the essentials of life 00:10:51.855 --> 00:10:55.633 you can start to be happy fairly early on, if you have his 3 goods. 00:10:57.168 --> 00:11:00.832 You won’t get any happier the more money you accumulate, 00:11:00.832 --> 00:11:04.469 the level of happiness stays pretty steady. However, if you’ve got loads of money, 00:11:04.469 --> 00:11:06.570 yet you haven’t got any friends, you’re not self-sufficient, 00:11:06.570 --> 00:11:09.789 you’ve got loads of anxieties,then you’re level of happiness 00:11:09.789 --> 00:11:11.419 is going to stay very flat. 00:11:12.498 --> 00:11:16.131 And I think that’s a lovely consoling idea for anyone who’s either worried about 00:11:16.131 --> 00:11:19.536 the fact that they may lose their money or is denied the chance to make any. 00:11:22.082 --> 00:11:24.909 Narrator: But if the ingredients of happiness are so simple, why aren't 00:11:24.909 --> 00:11:29.218 more of us actually happy? Epicurus blamed advertising. 00:11:32.011 --> 00:11:35.465 As we've just seen, advertising can be enormously seductive; 00:11:35.465 --> 00:11:39.528 it tends to make us feel that there are all sorts of things missing from our lives. 00:11:40.798 --> 00:11:44.559 But Epicurus insisted that we only need three things to be happy: 00:11:44.559 --> 00:11:49.332 friends, freedom and an analysed life. If he's right, why then do 00:11:49.332 --> 00:11:50.717 we want to shop so much? 00:11:51.644 --> 00:11:55.741 Epicurus' answer would be that the commercial world slyly associates the things 00:11:55.741 --> 00:11:59.191 it wants to sell us with the things it knows that we need. 00:12:01.722 --> 00:12:04.983 So for example, this might persuade us to buy Bacardi, 00:12:04.983 --> 00:12:08.689 but only by blurring the fact that its really the friends that we're looking for. 00:12:12.238 --> 00:12:14.947 This one tries to sell us perfume by naming it after the thing 00:12:14.947 --> 00:12:17.711 we're all really after: freedom. 00:12:22.643 --> 00:12:26.283 And this one flogs us whiskey by promising the calm resolution of our problems 00:12:26.283 --> 00:12:28.773 that only an analysed life could bring us. 00:12:31.963 --> 00:12:33.266 And it's this blurring of our 00:12:33.266 --> 00:12:36.788 desires that makes us so confused about what it is we want. 00:12:39.129 --> 00:12:42.961 What are the most important things that make you happy? 00:12:42.961 --> 00:12:49.852 --Umm, the people around me, if theyre happy then I'm happy, umm, 00:12:50.862 --> 00:12:55.457 and like if works going good then that makes me happy as well. 00:12:55.737 --> 00:12:59.222 But do you ever think, what if I threw all this away, 00:12:59.222 --> 00:13:04.083 threw all that away, all these jumpers, and just concentrated on getting work right, 00:13:04.083 --> 00:13:06.613 getting a family and friends right I would never have to go to the 00:13:06.613 --> 00:13:08.931 Trafford centre again. 00:13:08.931 --> 00:13:13.290 Steven: Yeah, because if I shop to cheer myself up, if I'm already happy then I dont need 00:13:13.290 --> 00:13:14.934 to cheer myself up do I? 00:13:17.154 --> 00:13:23.830 Steven: So at the minute Im fairly happy so I'm not shopping quite as much as I used to, 00:13:24.689 --> 00:13:29.032 but who's to say that next week something might happen and then 00:13:29.032 --> 00:13:30.292 I'll just have to go and shop. 00:13:44.167 --> 00:13:48.179 Epicurus may have lived more than two thousand years ago but he would've 00:13:48.179 --> 00:13:52.685 understood the pressures that make people like Steven shop so much, and he had a bold 00:13:52.685 --> 00:13:57.651 and practical solution to counter them. The place to find it is here in a dusty 00:13:57.651 --> 00:14:03.313 and remote corner of South-Western Turkey. That Epicurus should still speak to us 00:14:03.313 --> 00:14:07.072 at all is something of a miracle, as every one of the three hundred books 00:14:07.072 --> 00:14:11.710 that he wrote has been lost. But his philosophy developed into a kind of creed, 00:14:11.710 --> 00:14:15.466 almost like a religion, and remained popular for some four hundred years. 00:14:16.295 --> 00:14:21.620 Epicurean communities were founded in places like this, all across the ancient world. And 00:14:21.620 --> 00:14:25.558 it's largely thanks to them that fragments of what Epicurus wrote have survived. 00:14:32.834 --> 00:14:36.590 Narrator: I've come with local Archaeologist Mustufu Adak to see the ruins of . 00:14:36.590 --> 00:14:38.798 the ancient town of Oinoanda. 00:14:42.568 --> 00:14:44.258 Oinoanda was once home to 00:14:44.258 --> 00:14:47.592 twenty five thousand people; a place with a lavish theatre, 00:14:47.592 --> 00:14:50.307 a busy market place, or agora, and a huge aquaduct. 00:14:51.627 --> 00:14:53.307 It was also home to a follower 00:14:53.307 --> 00:14:57.823 of Epicurus' philosophy, one of the wealthiest citizens of the town, 00:14:57.823 --> 00:15:00.391 a man called Diogenes, of Oinoanda. 00:15:04.382 --> 00:15:09.098 Around the AD 120s, this Diogenes took a highly unusual decision, 00:15:09.538 --> 00:15:14.047 he paid for an enormous wall to be put up as part of a giant structure 00:15:14.047 --> 00:15:17.667 known as a Stoa, on which he had inscribed Epicurus' 00:15:17.667 --> 00:15:22.255 entire philosophy of happiness, so that all the citizens of his town 00:15:22.255 --> 00:15:24.204 could learn and be inspired by it. 00:15:24.914 --> 00:15:30.214 Botton: Where are we walking now? Mustufu: We are walking now in the old agora 00:15:31.094 --> 00:15:33.484 where Diogenes had his Stoa. 00:15:39.594 --> 00:15:41.934 Botton: What we're seeing now is bits of the wall. 00:15:41.934 --> 00:15:45.676 Mustufu: This wall was broken up by an earthquake, most probably, 00:15:45.676 --> 00:15:50.000 and there are more than two-hundred fragments of the inscription. 00:15:51.652 --> 00:15:55.284 This is one of the fragments; this is the beginning of the inscription. 00:15:55.284 --> 00:15:56.731 Botton: And this is where Diogenes tries to explain why he 00:15:56.731 --> 00:15:59.731 put up the wall in the first place 00:15:59.731 --> 00:16:05.925 Mustufu: Yes, hes saying that if there were one or two persons who are lost, 00:16:05.925 --> 00:16:11.749 he could educate them personally, but there are more, many people, 00:16:11.749 --> 00:16:13.676 So he decided to put up this stone. 00:16:14.247 --> 00:16:17.286 So if there were just one or two people who didn't know how to be happy, 00:16:17.286 --> 00:16:20.536 he'd go and talk to them, but because there are so many the best way 00:16:20.536 --> 00:16:25.080 to help them is to actually put up a wall in the middle of the town. 00:16:25.491 --> 00:16:28.561 That's right, that's the explanation he gives here in this part. 00:16:29.218 --> 00:16:35.388 Botton: What a lovely thing to do. Diogenes was acting on a crucial 00:16:35.388 --> 00:16:40.317 idea in Epicurus, that in order to live wisely, it isn't enough just to read a 00:16:40.317 --> 00:16:44.487 philosophical argument once or twice; we need constant reminders 00:16:44.487 --> 00:16:47.929 of it, or we'll forget. When we're encouraged to go shopping 00:16:47.929 --> 00:16:51.601 by bright lights and inviting displays we're quickly liable to lose 00:16:51.601 --> 00:16:53.360 sight of our true desires. 00:16:55.490 --> 00:16:57.200 So we have to counteract the influence 00:16:57.200 --> 00:17:01.912 of advertising by creating advertisements which say what we really do need, 00:17:02.972 --> 00:17:05.933 and that's why Diogenes put up his wall. 00:17:06.353 --> 00:17:09.563 Mustufu: ...and I think this door collapsed then. 00:17:09.563 --> 00:17:10.890 Botton: What is this here? 00:17:10.890 --> 00:17:14.231 Mustufu: This is another very fascinating fragment... 00:17:14.231 --> 00:17:15.955 Narrator: The massive limestone wall originally stood right next 00:17:15.955 --> 00:17:18.725 to the marketplace of the town. 00:17:19.995 --> 00:17:22.455 Inhabitants shopping in the boutiques of Oinoanda 00:17:22.455 --> 00:17:25.605 were warned to expect little happiness from the activity. 00:17:29.166 --> 00:17:33.800 Luxurious food and drinks, says one fragment, in no way protect you from harm; 00:17:36.550 --> 00:17:41.372 wealth beyond what is natural is no more use than an over-flowing container. 00:17:42.077 --> 00:17:47.159 Real value is generated not by theatres and bars, perfumes and ointments, 00:17:47.159 --> 00:17:48.144 but by philosophy. 00:17:53.602 --> 00:17:57.872 The wall may have crumbled into ruin, but movingly the ideas inscribed 00:17:57.874 --> 00:18:00.019 on it retain their life and their relevance. 00:18:01.249 --> 00:18:03.019 Botton: It strikes me as a real paradox really, 00:18:03.019 --> 00:18:05.667 that you would've had where people were doing their shopping, 00:18:05.667 --> 00:18:08.099 they're sort of carrying their shopping, and then on the wall you've got these 00:18:08.099 --> 00:18:12.484 reminders that shopping is not necessarily going to make you happy. 00:18:12.484 --> 00:18:16.875 Mustufu: Yes, the letters of the inscription were red so that everyone could see them... 00:18:16.875 --> 00:18:19.524 Oh right, so it was all written in red? Mustufu: In red yes. 00:18:19.524 --> 00:18:21.950 So you really could have seen it, you could've been at the other side 00:18:21.950 --> 00:18:24.988 of the marketplace and you would’ve seen that there was this kind 00:18:24.988 --> 00:18:28.642 of advertisement almost, for Epicureanism on the wall. 00:18:32.702 --> 00:18:36.121 Botton: It must've been a beautiful spot; I mean to have not only philosophy 00:18:36.121 --> 00:18:41.095 enlightening you but also a fantastic view onto the surrounding countryside. 00:18:41.095 --> 00:18:46.559 I can imagine it would've been easy to be wise, not easy but easier to be wise here. 00:18:47.344 --> 00:18:52.004 I would've done less shopping if I had this wall and this surrounding. 00:18:55.687 --> 00:18:58.217 Botton: It's a pity they didn't do it more, and that they dont do it today, 00:18:58.217 --> 00:19:01.193 I think its a lovely idea. Mustufu: Yes 00:19:05.631 --> 00:19:09.323 Narrator: If Epicurus and his followers had been alive today they wouldn't have been 00:19:09.323 --> 00:19:13.163 sniffy about advertising, they would've enlisted it for their own ends. 00:19:13.653 --> 00:19:16.661 And for the same reason that Diogenes built his wall: 00:19:16.661 --> 00:19:19.835 to counter the constant inducements to go shopping with some 00:19:19.835 --> 00:19:22.492 equal inducements to live philosophically. 00:19:22.492 --> 00:19:25.492 Man: First idea is basically try 00:19:25.492 --> 00:19:29.162 ironic statements like, shop your blues away. 00:19:29.435 --> 00:19:33.431 Narrator: I've come to the kind of place were Epicureans might have turned: 00:19:33.431 --> 00:19:38.395 the offices of the advertising agency St. Lukes, to get ideas for creating some 00:19:38.395 --> 00:19:41.353 modern public reminders of how to live wisely. 00:19:42.081 --> 00:19:46.419 The first idea their creative team came up with was a sarcastic campaign, 00:19:46.419 --> 00:19:48.283 satirising the materialistic messages of most ads. 00:19:48.283 --> 00:19:51.283 Woman: This is really powerful, 00:19:51.283 --> 00:19:54.269 certainly in production terms it takes a number of additions 00:19:54.269 --> 00:19:57.483 but its very very cheap. Man: And then a bit more challenging, 00:19:57.483 --> 00:20:00.873 be happy with shopping, TV and yearly holidays. 00:20:00.873 --> 00:20:04.358 Botton: Right, I love that, that really does sum it all up, doesn't it? 00:20:04.358 --> 00:20:10.899 Man: I thought this was the strongest- fill the void in your life with a product 00:20:10.899 --> 00:20:15.246 Botton: And youd have shops advertising, shops selling these kind of products 00:20:15.246 --> 00:20:18.607 and then this stark reminder that perhaps it's not really 00:20:18.607 --> 00:20:20.461 going to fill any void. 00:20:20.461 --> 00:20:21.461 Its brilliant, thank you Steve. 00:20:22.151 --> 00:20:23.140 Man: The most obvious idea was just 00:20:23.140 --> 00:20:30.475 to take luxury items and goods and somehow undermine them or show them 00:20:30.475 --> 00:20:36.213 for being a bit shallow or a bit kind of, empty inside. 00:20:36.213 --> 00:20:44.241 The best example we've got is something like this, just taking a lovely image of a 00:20:44.241 --> 00:20:50.042 beautiful house and just using the language of advertising, 00:20:50.042 --> 00:20:54.433 the caveat is, batteries not included, and just changing it to happiness not included. 00:20:54.845 --> 00:20:57.705 Botton: Right, I really like that, in a way that says it all doesn't it? 00:20:57.705 --> 00:21:00.767 It says, it keeps that subtlety of Epicureanism, which is, 00:21:00.767 --> 00:21:03.718 you could be happy in a house like that, but it's not included. 00:21:03.961 --> 00:21:08.418 It's not saying that you won't be happy in that house, which would be sort of Marxism, 00:21:08.418 --> 00:21:11.172 it's just saying it's not included so you better watch out before 00:21:11.172 --> 00:21:13.366 you spend all your energies trying to get this house. 00:21:32.303 --> 00:21:36.407 Narrator: Unfortunately philosophers have rarely had much money for advertising campaigns, 00:21:36.647 --> 00:21:40.355 but imagine a world where instead of being surrounded by adverts 00:21:40.355 --> 00:21:45.263 selling you watches, cars or fancy holidays. these ads remind you of how important 00:21:45.263 --> 00:21:49.818 it is to value friends to escape the rat race or reflect on your problems 00:21:50.358 --> 00:21:55.855 and didn't just use these genuinely nice things to sell you aftershave or aperitifs. 00:21:57.322 --> 00:22:00.119 It's hard to know whether the people of Oinoanda 00:22:00.119 --> 00:22:04.182 discovered what they did need and ceased buying what they didn't because of a 00:22:04.182 --> 00:22:06.099 giant advertisement in their midst. 00:22:06.638 --> 00:22:10.970 But Epicurus' central message seems, if anything, more relevant to today's 00:22:10.970 --> 00:22:15.046 consumer society than it did to his own, and theres no reason to believe 00:22:15.046 --> 00:22:18.931 that happiness is any more included in the many more things we can buy. 00:22:20.075 --> 00:22:23.780 Of course, putting up one poster in the Trafford centre in Manchester 00:22:23.780 --> 00:22:27.244 couldn't on its own turn back the tide of consumerism and, 00:22:27.244 --> 00:22:30.928 although shoppers seemed interested in what my ad was trying to say, 00:22:30.928 --> 00:22:34.166 I didn't see much evidence of people stopping shopping. 00:22:35.131 --> 00:22:38.263 But the fact remains, we're horribly confused about 00:22:38.263 --> 00:22:41.991 what could make us happy, if we really knew what we needed 00:22:41.991 --> 00:22:44.785 there are few things we'd be desperate to buy. 00:22:47.853 --> 00:22:51.617 Botton: Epicurus makes us think very carefully about the merits of our own society, 00:22:51.617 --> 00:22:54.864 of course these societies are enormously wealthy, we can buy almost anything 00:22:54.864 --> 00:22:58.159 we want in a place like this, full of colourful shops selling wonderfully 00:22:58.159 --> 00:23:01.831 well produced goods, and yet what Epicurus wants us to think is, 00:23:01.831 --> 00:23:06.666 do places like this really provide us with the key ingredients of happiness, 00:23:06.666 --> 00:23:09.552 and he thought, and I think he was right, that they don't. 00:23:10.694 --> 00:23:14.453 Happiness may be difficult to attain, Epicurus admitted that, 00:23:14.453 --> 00:23:18.400 but he insisted that the obstacles are not primarily financial.