‘It was our drink, our trade, our greed which had hopelessly demoralized the native African. We had drugged him with our drink; we had shot him with our guns; we sold him powder and lead, so that he might enslave his fellow-blacks. Those castles along the coast were the monuments of our savage injustice to him’.*
Epicureans have no truck with forcing our goods, our guns, our culture and our religions on other people. Exactly the same goes for securing Middle Eastern and Turmen oil and gas by force (e.g Afghanistan and certain points West). Those who support sending armies to subjugate others and seizing their resources by main force may be many things, but Epicurean they are not
*William Butler, quoted in Heaven’s Command, by Jan Morris.
Stay in your garden and smell the roses!
Great will be the day when our playwrights, poets, and novelists stop romanticizing war — I think of Shakespeare and St. Crispin’s Day — and we see it for the bloody irrationality that it is. That day is a long way off, I fear.