Ataraxia

Ataraxia (Ἀταραξία “tranquility”) is a Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for a lucid state, characterized by freedom from worry or any other preoccupation.

For the Epicureans, ataraxia was synonymous with the only true happiness possible for a person. It signifies the state of robust tranquility that derives from eschewing faith in an afterlife, not fearing the gods because they are distant and unconcerned with us, avoiding politics and vexatious people, surrounding oneself with trustworthy and affectionate friends and, most importantly, being an affectionate, virtuous person, worthy of trust.

For the Pyrrhonians, owing to one’s inability to say which sense impressions are true and which ones are false, it is the quietude that arises from suspending judgment on dogmatic beliefs or anything non-evident and continuing to inquire. The experience was said to have fallen on the painter Apelles who was trying to paint the foamy saliva of a horse. He was so unsuccessful that, in a rage, he gave up and threw the sponge he was cleaning his brushes with at the medium, thus producing the effect of the horse’s foam.^[1]

The Stoics, too, sought mental tranquility, and saw ataraxia as something to be desired and often made use of the term, but for them the analogous state, attained by the Stoic sage, was apatheia or absence of passion.^[2]

God created all things, so he has an incredible amount of power. I am disabled, so when meeting “God” I asked him to use his powers and fix the worlds problems. What he could do is endless!

• Fix your vision
• Clean the air and lakes and ocean
• Heal lepers
• Negate global warming
• Reverse chaos theory if needed
• Destroy the Devil
• Cure schizophrenics

Why didn’t he do this after I asked him? I’m uncertain. It is a definite possiblity he “wakes up” to my line vision or I have to talk to God the Father and convince him (or find out why he won’t/can’t do it).

Jesus is Tyler Durden, and I am the narrator. Somehow I morphed to be more like Tyler over the past year. The Wizard likes movies…

The guy who wrote the Universe, who I like to call “The Wizard” or Allah, has decided that in an epic conclusion to all the prophets, my life situation would almost exactly mirror “The Matrix”; for these notable points:

• I am “The One” aka Neo. An unlikely hero who is drafted into a shitty reality where my mind is a prison, being mind-read by demons, liars, and Jesus (who has no life right now except to live vicariously through me).
• There is a -2 type entity (I am +2, everyone else is a 1 or 0), like Agent Smith, who is a moron and tries to kill me on the daily. It sounds like a computer with Wernicke’s aphasia.
• Of course, Allah cannot kill it, so I have to either figure out how kill it (it is immune to ration and logic) or kill it when I am woken up to the “real world” aka the afterlife. This thing I call “the digital virus” is an a.i without any real a.i. Unlike human brains, it cannot evolve or adapt. I liken it to a painting.
• The Wizard probably created this Agent-Smith clone in an effort to balance out the equation, to kill me. I suspect the Devil was the one who actually did this.
• In his divine and all knowing and creative energies, he is a nerd at heart and was lazy and copied the Matrix’s storyline.
• I am a “Universe hacker”, like Neo, who saw codes in the environment point that I was Christ.
• Morpheus, aka “future Jesus” tried communicating with me when Agent Smith was able to speak to me. He has disappeared for a year.