[ ♫ Gentle Music ♫ ]
Narrator: Ever since ancient times human beings have looked to
philosophy for the secret of happiness, but few philosophers have
come up with more suggestive or more relevant answers than
one born on the Greek island of Samos, off the coast of modern Turkey,
three hundred and forty one years before the birth of Christ .
His name was Epicurus.
Very little about him has survived;
all of his books have been lost across the centuries,
leaving his philosophy of happiness to be reconstructed from just a few fragments.
Epicurus believed that we could all find a way to be happy; the problem was,
quite simply, that we were looking in the wrong place.
[♫♫]
Unlike many philosophers, Epicurus' idea of happiness actually sounds rather fun,
he didn't think we should feel guilty about wanting to have a pleasurable,
enjoyable life and promised that he could show us how to.
Of course you might wonder why you need a philosopher at all to teach you how
to have a good time. We seem to think that the key to happiness
is really pretty easy; its all about having a lot of money,
so we can come to places like this, and go shopping.
But before we reach for our wallets, Epicurus wanted us to stop and think;
it's easy to imagine that money can solve everything, but can it?
[ ♫ Singing in Greek ♫ ]
Epicurus was committed to a life of happiness; he liked sex, laughter and beauty, but
crucially spent his time pointing out that happiness is in fact, rather a tricky issue,
and a philosopher might help you to find it more easily than a credit card ever could.
That Epicurus was in favour of pleasure at all shocked many of his ancient Greek
contemporaries, his philosophy became synonymous with a lotus eating lifestyle.
To this day, people who love luxurious eating and drinking can sometimes be
described as Epicurean, in fact that's a complete misunderstanding.
[♫ Singing continues ♫ ]
Botton: Epicurus said that pleasure was the most important thing in life, and yet if
we actually look at the way that he lived, it seems he lived far from a
luxurious life. His house was very simple, his clothes were extremely basic,
he always drank water rather than wine, he found fish much too expensive and
he was happy just eating meals with bread, vegetables and a few olives.
He once asked a friend, send me a pot of cheese, so that I can have a feast
whenever I like, these were the kinds of tastes of a man who would describe
pleasure as the end of life.
Narrator: At the heart of Epicurus' philosophy is a simple thought: that we aren't very
good at knowing what will make us happy, that we may feel powerfully drawn towards
material things, and be convinced that they are what we require to be happy.
We’re often wrong, what we want is not always what we need, and nothing shows
that up more starkly than our impulse to go shopping.
Steven: I like shopping, most weeks it’s just a couple of bags but sometimes it’s,
I don’t know like ten/twelve bags a time, I like designer names.
Dolce and Gabanna stuff, these clothes, DKNY and I love Gucci clothes as well.
Narrator : Steven Perry is a hairdresser from Liverpool who spends all his spare time shopping.
Steven: I suppose I could resist, but usually I don't, usually I just go in and shop anywhere.
Although when I go out buying all this stuff, it makes me happy, at the end of the
month when the credit card and the store card bills and the
loan payments come out, stuff like that, then that doesn’t make me happy because
I see how much is going out, every month on debt.
[ Indistinct Talking ]
Botton: How many watches have you got?
Steven: Not really that many, probably about ten. Something like that.
Botton: You've only got ten watches? Steven: Only ten
Botton: I've only got one! What’s the one you’re wearing now?
Steven: A spoon watch at the minute, I like this just for general everyday
because it’s only like ninety nine pounds and...
Narrator: Steven often gets into debt and I couldn't help wondering if his desire
to go shopping might be a bit out of control.
Botton: So if that’s the everyday watch, what’s the fancy watch?
Steven: The thousand pound Tag watch -- Oh my God, that’s amazing, so what’s
the craziest thing you've bought in terms of like, bad impulse buying?
A pair of shorts. -- From where?
Umm, from a shopping mall in Liverpool, I'll show you them, they didn’t have my size,
so I thought these’ll fit me, but you put them on and they just tend
to look truly horrendous, like cycling shorts, sorta thing.
Botton: How much did they cost? -- God, I don’t know, about fifty pounds?
Fifty sixty quid, something like that. They were never taken back,
the same as these jeans; I think these have still got the labels on.
I just got these home and they didn't fit miles too long and miles too big.
I did mean to take them back but I don’t like taking things back.
Narrator: Do you ever get home and think I'm surrounded by shopping bags
and you’re thinking God, what am I going to do with all this?
--Yeah, especially when you come home and you've just got bags everywhere
and you think, Why have I spent all that? And the credit card bill comes at the
end of the month and you think, Oh! Why did I spend all that?
Narrator: In a way we're all a bit like Steven, people who shop too much;
Epicurus thought he knew why. We don’t understand what we really
need and so fall prey to manic substitute desires for huge numbers of ill-fitting
trousers or countless pairs of shoes. But Epicurus declared that he had
actually discovered what we did need, and luckily for anyone without
much money, the ingredients of happiness come pretty cheap.
The first ingredient we need is friends. Epicurus took the idea of friendship
very seriously, so seriously that he made an extremely radical innovation.
When he came to Athens in 306 BC at the age of 35, he bought a large house
just outside the city of Athens, this place here which he called ‘The Garden’;
of course at that time it was rather beautiful, more beautiful than it is now,
where it seems to be a taxi graveyard.
What he did, was that he bought this house
and asked a group of friends to move in with him.
The house was quite large, so there was room enough for everyone to have
their own quarters at the same time as coming together for meals and
conversations in the common rooms of the house.
What Epicurus was doing was picking up on a rather common sense point,
which is that friends are a major source of happiness.
But I think where he was distinctive was in his idea that in order
to really benefit from friends, you had to see them not just occasionally
not just for the odd drink in a bar or the odd chat on the phone,
he had to be with his friends at all times, so they’d be permanent companions.
And I think that was his distinctive idea of happiness.
Narrator: You wouldn't catch Epicurus devouring lunch on his own in a burger bar;
he recommended that we try never even to eat a snack alone.
Before you eat or drink anything, he said, Consider carefully who you eat or drink with,
rather than what you eat or drink, for feeding without a friend is the life
of a lion or a wolf.
[ ♫♫ ]
Narrator: The second thing Epicurus thought we needed to be happy was freedom and
in order to achieve it, he and his friends decided to
leave Athens altogether.
For them, to be free meant to be financially
independent, economically self-sufficient, not answerable to horrible bosses
for their income, so they resolved to leave city life,
and its competitive and gossipy atmosphere behind them once and for all.
So they left Athens and started what could best be described as a commune.
We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday life and politics,
Epicurus wrote, and that’s precisely what they did.
The life was simple, but at least they enjoyed their freedom.
They didn’t mind if they looked shabby, or didn’t have as much money as other people,
because they were self-sufficient, and had gained their independence
from what other people thought. There was, in a financial sense,
nothing to prove.
Epicurus believed there was a third ingredient necessary for happiness,
and that was an analysed life. By which he meant a life in which
we take time off to reflect on our worries, to analyse what is troubling us.
Our anxieties quickly diminish if we give ourselves time to think them through.
And to do that we need to take a step back from the noisy distractions
of the commercial world, and to find time and space for quiet thinking
about our lives.
Of course, having loads of money has never made anyone unhappy,
but I think the lovely idea in Epicurus is that if you’re denied money
for whatever reason, and yet you have his 3 goods, that is you’ve got friends,
you’ve got an analysed life, and you’re self-sufficient,
then you’ll never be denied happiness.
And conversely, if you’ve got loads of money but you’re lacking friends,
you haven’t got a self-sufficient life, you’re not doing a lot of analysing,
then you’ll never be happy, according to Epicurus.
So if we try and draw this relationship between happiness and money on a graph,
imagine that on this side of the graph you’ve got levels of happiness,
and then on this side you’ve got levels of income, for Epicurus,
so long as you’ve got enough money to provide you with the essentials of life
you can start to be happy fairly early on, if you have his 3 goods.
You won’t get any happier the more money you accumulate,
the level of happiness stays pretty steady. However, if you’ve got loads of money,
yet you haven’t got any friends, you’re not self-sufficient,
you’ve got loads of anxieties,then you’re level of happiness
is going to stay very flat.
And I think that’s a lovely consoling idea for anyone who’s either worried about
the fact that they may lose their money or is denied the chance to make any.
Narrator: But if the ingredients of happiness are so simple, why aren't
more of us actually happy? Epicurus blamed advertising.
As we've just seen, advertising can be enormously seductive;
it tends to make us feel that there are all sorts of things missing from our lives.
But Epicurus insisted that we only need three things to be happy:
friends, freedom and an analysed life. If he's right, why then do
we want to shop so much?
Epicurus' answer would be that the commercial world slyly associates the things
it wants to sell us with the things it knows that we need.
So for example, this might persuade us to buy Bacardi,
but only by blurring the fact that its really the friends that we're looking for.
This one tries to sell us perfume by naming it after the thing
we're all really after: freedom.
And this one flogs us whiskey by promising the calm resolution of our problems
that only an analysed life could bring us.
And it's this blurring of our
desires that makes us so confused about what it is we want.
What are the most important things that make you happy?
--Umm, the people around me, if theyre happy then I'm happy, umm,
and like if works going good then that makes me happy as well.
But do you ever think, what if I threw all this away,
threw all that away, all these jumpers, and just concentrated on getting work right,
getting a family and friends right I would never have to go to the
Trafford centre again.
Steven: Yeah, because if I shop to cheer myself up, if I'm already happy then I dont need
to cheer myself up do I?
Steven: So at the minute Im fairly happy so I'm not shopping quite as much as I used to,
but who's to say that next week something might happen and then
I'll just have to go and shop.
Epicurus may have lived more than two thousand years ago but he would've
understood the pressures that make people like Steven shop so much, and he had a bold
and practical solution to counter them. The place to find it is here in a dusty
and remote corner of South-Western Turkey. That Epicurus should still speak to us
at all is something of a miracle, as every one of the three hundred books
that he wrote has been lost. But his philosophy developed into a kind of creed,
almost like a religion, and remained popular for some four hundred years.
Epicurean communities were founded in places like this, all across the ancient world. And
it's largely thanks to them that fragments of what Epicurus wrote have survived.
Narrator: I've come with local Archaeologist Mustufu Adak to see the ruins of .
the ancient town of Oinoanda.
Oinoanda was once home to
twenty five thousand people; a place with a lavish theatre,
a busy market place, or agora, and a huge aquaduct.
It was also home to a follower
of Epicurus' philosophy, one of the wealthiest citizens of the town,
a man called Diogenes, of Oinoanda.
Around the AD 120s, this Diogenes took a highly unusual decision,
he paid for an enormous wall to be put up as part of a giant structure
known as a Stoa, on which he had inscribed Epicurus'
entire philosophy of happiness, so that all the citizens of his town
could learn and be inspired by it.
Botton: Where are we walking now? Mustufu: We are walking now in the old agora
where Diogenes had his Stoa.
Botton: What we're seeing now is bits of the wall.
Mustufu: This wall was broken up by an earthquake, most probably,
and there are more than two-hundred fragments of the inscription.
This is one of the fragments; this is the beginning of the inscription.
Botton: And this is where Diogenes tries to explain why he
put up the wall in the first place
Mustufu: Yes, hes saying that if there were one or two persons who are lost,
he could educate them personally, but there are more, many people,
So he decided to put up this stone.
So if there were just one or two people who didn't know how to be happy,
he'd go and talk to them, but because there are so many the best way
to help them is to actually put up a wall in the middle of the town.
That's right, that's the explanation he gives here in this part.
Botton: What a lovely thing to do. Diogenes was acting on a crucial
idea in Epicurus, that in order to live wisely, it isn't enough just to read a
philosophical argument once or twice; we need constant reminders
of it, or we'll forget. When we're encouraged to go shopping
by bright lights and inviting displays we're quickly liable to lose
sight of our true desires.
So we have to counteract the influence
of advertising by creating advertisements which say what we really do need,
and that's why Diogenes put up his wall.
Mustufu: ...and I think this door collapsed then.
Botton: What is this here?
Mustufu: This is another very fascinating fragment...
Narrator: The massive limestone wall originally stood right next
to the marketplace of the town.
Inhabitants shopping in the boutiques of Oinoanda
were warned to expect little happiness from the activity.
Luxurious food and drinks, says one fragment, in no way protect you from harm;
wealth beyond what is natural is no more use than an over-flowing container.
Real value is generated not by theatres and bars, perfumes and ointments,
but by philosophy.
The wall may have crumbled into ruin, but movingly the ideas inscribed
on it retain their life and their relevance.
Botton: It strikes me as a real paradox really,
that you would've had where people were doing their shopping,
they're sort of carrying their shopping, and then on the wall you've got these
reminders that shopping is not necessarily going to make you happy.
Mustufu: Yes, the letters of the inscription were red so that everyone could see them...
Oh right, so it was all written in red? Mustufu: In red yes.
So you really could have seen it, you could've been at the other side
of the marketplace and you would’ve seen that there was this kind
of advertisement almost, for Epicureanism on the wall.
Botton: It must've been a beautiful spot; I mean to have not only philosophy
enlightening you but also a fantastic view onto the surrounding countryside.
I can imagine it would've been easy to be wise, not easy but easier to be wise here.
I would've done less shopping if I had this wall and this surrounding.
Botton: It's a pity they didn't do it more, and that they dont do it today,
I think its a lovely idea. Mustufu: Yes
Narrator: If Epicurus and his followers had been alive today they wouldn't have been
sniffy about advertising, they would've enlisted it for their own ends.
And for the same reason that Diogenes built his wall:
to counter the constant inducements to go shopping with some
equal inducements to live philosophically.
Man: First idea is basically try
ironic statements like, shop your blues away.
Narrator: I've come to the kind of place were Epicureans might have turned:
the offices of the advertising agency St. Lukes, to get ideas for creating some
modern public reminders of how to live wisely.
The first idea their creative team came up with was a sarcastic campaign,
satirising the materialistic messages of most ads.
Woman: This is really powerful,
certainly in production terms it takes a number of additions
but its very very cheap. Man: And then a bit more challenging,
be happy with shopping, TV and yearly holidays.
Botton: Right, I love that, that really does sum it all up, doesn't it?
Man: I thought this was the strongest- fill the void in your life with a product
Botton: And youd have shops advertising, shops selling these kind of products
and then this stark reminder that perhaps it's not really
going to fill any void.
Its brilliant, thank you Steve.
Man: The most obvious idea was just
to take luxury items and goods and somehow undermine them or show them
for being a bit shallow or a bit kind of, empty inside.
The best example we've got is something like this, just taking a lovely image of a
beautiful house and just using the language of advertising,
the caveat is, batteries not included, and just changing it to happiness not included.
Botton: Right, I really like that, in a way that says it all doesn't it?
It says, it keeps that subtlety of Epicureanism, which is,
you could be happy in a house like that, but it's not included.
It's not saying that you won't be happy in that house, which would be sort of Marxism,
it's just saying it's not included so you better watch out before
you spend all your energies trying to get this house.
Narrator: Unfortunately philosophers have rarely had much money for advertising campaigns,
but imagine a world where instead of being surrounded by adverts
selling you watches, cars or fancy holidays. these ads remind you of how important
it is to value friends to escape the rat race or reflect on your problems
and didn't just use these genuinely nice things to sell you aftershave or aperitifs.
It's hard to know whether the people of Oinoanda
discovered what they did need and ceased buying what they didn't because of a
giant advertisement in their midst.
But Epicurus' central message seems, if anything, more relevant to today's
consumer society than it did to his own, and theres no reason to believe
that happiness is any more included in the many more things we can buy.
Of course, putting up one poster in the Trafford centre in Manchester
couldn't on its own turn back the tide of consumerism and,
although shoppers seemed interested in what my ad was trying to say,
I didn't see much evidence of people stopping shopping.
But the fact remains, we're horribly confused about
what could make us happy, if we really knew what we needed
there are few things we'd be desperate to buy.
Botton: Epicurus makes us think very carefully about the merits of our own society,
of course these societies are enormously wealthy, we can buy almost anything
we want in a place like this, full of colourful shops selling wonderfully
well produced goods, and yet what Epicurus wants us to think is,
do places like this really provide us with the key ingredients of happiness,
and he thought, and I think he was right, that they don't.
Happiness may be difficult to attain, Epicurus admitted that,
but he insisted that the obstacles are not primarily financial.