The Epicurean guide to digital life

It's an Ancient Greek philosophy known for its lessons on material existence and pleasure-seeking. So what might Epicureanism say about living well on social media and the internet? Nathan Dufour Oglesby explains.

In all likelihood you're reading this on a screen.

Tens of millions of bits of digital information display this text within your perceptual field, while hundreds of billions of neurons interpret the visual information received from your optic nerve. A sprawling interplay of physical processes, theoretically reducible to infinitesimal signals and bits, underlies your experience of reading an online article.

I try to keep this physicality in mind, as more and more of my life occurs on screens. My main occupation is making comedic music videos about philosophy, ecology and other topics, for my YouTube and TikTok channels – it’s a joyous job, but one that comes with an overwhelming abundance of screentime. Hence, even when I'm using my digital devices to pursue my desired ends, writing and creating, an anxiety sometimes sets in – "Is this okay? Am I letting my very life vanish into the pixelated vistas of my video editing software, my docs? Is this a life at all">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });