Lev Lafayette's journal

I have argued for a while that Epicureanism is a refinement of Hedonism and Stoicism is an advanced development from Epicureanism; "To live, to live well, to live better" (Whitehead, "The Function of Reason"). Each of these represents a qualitative change and, as one learns in the business of Quality Assurance, that is defined as improved precision and is differentiated as a continuum of accuracy, ultimately from "high quality" to "low quality". I find that this applies to people as well as processes; inconsistent people, who fluctuate between emotive extremes, can occasionally be enjoyable and exciting, but ultimately are hurtful and exhausting and are thus best avoided, no matter how enticing the good times are. Such people invariably are unsuccessful in life; quality requires both a degree of consistency and reflective, tested, improvement.

Over the past few days, I have been fortunate enough in life to experience a few examples of high-quality experiences. The first was an evening of music, which I attended with Kate. This was headlined by the Paul Kidney Japanese Experience, and supported by The Black Heart Death Cult and Cat Crawl. All performed with great competence in accordance with their particular style. "Cat Crawl" (who describe themselves as "a three-piece tantrum in the form of a band") provided early 1980s-style feminist punk with humour, whilst in comparison "The Black Heart Death Cult" were a gloomy-shoegaze fusion, reminiscent of the French "blackgaze" from the 2000s. Finally, the Paul Kidney Japanese Experience gave something akin to a Japanese version an extended Hawkwind space rock concert. All in all, a great night with a great variety of styles. As a radical contrast, the following day Nitul invited me to the end-of-semester Baroque Ensemble Concert from the students at Unimelb's Faculty of Fine Arts and Music. It was an admirable selection from Lully, Bach, Vivaldi, Schein and more, and in total included over fifty performers of music and song. I found myself, as I often do in such music, drifting off to another world.

As more culinary experiences, Kate and I attended the Melbourne Italian Festival the following day at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. The building is beautiful, but despite my heritage, I find a great deal of contemporary Italian culture pretty gaudy at best, especially in the field of fashion, homewares, and music. Of course, in food and film, it retains a very high level, the latter with a decidedly leftist influence. Apropos, last night I had the delight of being cooked for by the Minister for Climate Change Action and Energy Resources, etc, Lily D'Ambrosio, who provided an astounding Calabrian feast for some twenty individuals whilst showing off the capabilities of induction cookers. Lily deserves high praise for the quiet revolution she has led in Victoria, changing the production of electricity towards renewables and, more recently, with the phaseout of fossil fuels in domestic appliances, all with significant success. Quiet revolutions too, can be an example of quality.

On Sunday I gave an address to the local Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship on "The Pursuit of Happiness" which followed the phrase from the US Declaration of Independence, and outlined the three main approaches; hedonistic, Epicurean, and Stoic along with some empirical backing from the modern science of well-being and societal-level measures. As I mentioned in the presentation, I have discusssed this matter at some length in the past with "The Continuum of Needs and Wants", to the Melbourne Agnostics, on November 14, 2020, "From Stoicism and Naturalistic Pantheism to Effective Altruism" to The Sea of Faith in Australia, on April 21st 2022, and "We Are We Do: Emotions, Trauma, and Happiness" the Melbourne Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, on May 15, 2022. I neglected to mention, because I plain forgot, that I also gave a presentation to The Philosophy Forum on August 7, 2011, also entitled "The Pursuit of Happiness". Across all these presentations there is a running theme where I note that there are different stages of happiness that correlate with Hannah Arendt's categories of being and the satisfaction of each stage can lead to an indulgence which brings unhappiness - and the empirical evidence backs this up. Thus there is an evolution from sensual hedonism, to the contentment of Epicureanism, to the moral virtue and social engagement exemplified by the Stoics.

On the matter of hedonistic and epicurean approaches, the winter phase in Melbourne is an opportunity for me to engage in various forms of soups and stodgy fare of which various dining companions are given the opportunity to put on a kilo or two in my company. As promised in the last entry, I have a small mountain of recipes to update of this nature, so here's the new additions: Coq au vin, Vichyssoise, Soupe au Pistou, Hungarian Mushroom Soup and Langos, and Irish Colcannon. This last weekend also witnessed "German night" which is a challenge when you're cooking for vegetarians. Although in the past I have made Kaese Spaetzle (the German version of "mac and cheese"), this time I tried my hand at Eier in Senfsoße (eggs in mustard sauce) with a side of sauerkraut, Thuringian Klöße mit Bratkartofflen (potato dumplings and fried potatoes), with Schmorkohl (Braised Cabbage), and Frankfurter grie soβ (green sauce - mine was not nearly green enough), before finishing with a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Blackforest Cake). Apart from the cake, there was a pretty serious amount of cabbage, potato, and onion and whilst it all wasn't bad at all, my friends of Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg regions may forgive my preferences of the more colourful foods of the Campagne française.

There seems to be two main versions of potato bread that are advertised. One follows a traditional Irish style, which is a lot of potatoes, a little bit of flour, then fried in a pan. The other version is an American potato bread, which is a lot of bread with a little bit of potato. A potato-flavoured white-bread, if you like. Neither of these is really to my taste. So I have since created Lev's Famous Potato Bread (well, it should be famous, and maybe one day it will be). Plus it's easy to make, and healthier, too.

• Dice and cook one onion


• Add four medium (c150g) potatoes (I prefer skin included), chopped very fine, or through a processor, and mash with add a cup of milk


• Add 3 cups of flour (I prefer half oat, half multi-grain wheat or wholemeal)


• Add 2 teaspoons of yeast


• Add 1 cup of warm water


• Important! Mix it up, even if you're using a bread-maker


• Bake loaf in your preferred manner. Lazy me likes bread-makers.


• Nom. No seriously, nom.

Add herbs to taste; plenty of garlic is a delicious option. This will create a loaf that is pretty much a third baked potato mash and two-thirds bread. It will be quite moist but will cut and goes really well with a pottage on a colder night. What you don't eat can be put in a bread basket and nibbled over the next few days as it gradually dries.

Now, the other reason for posting this is to say that I am still doing very well, thank you very much, with my diet and exercise regimen. Still following Silver Hydra's cheat mode, albeit with more cardiovascular activities thrown in. Since starting this just over a month ago I've dropped a remarkable 8 kgs, reaching a weight goal I set eight years ago, and I've noticed I'm two notches down on my belt. Energy levels have increased noticeably, and parts of my weights set which were somewhat painful I can do with ease - and dishes like the potato bread with a pottage are very much an acceptable part of this diet. My poor doctor in two month's time is going to be scratching their head.

EDIT: It has been pointed out that I really should mention aloo paratha in a discussion of potato bread.

Not exactly being particularly Christmas people and not doing the family visit to Perth this year, caseopaya and I instead caught up with Brendan E., and Kerrie H., on the allocated day. Being the person with some vague semblance and interest in cooking my role for the afternoon was pretty well set, with Brendan providing increasingly strong gin and tonics. The fare was relatively simple; salmon steaks with sour cream and dill, with rösti, plus a tiramisu with added cherries. The afternoon was spent chatting although we were convinced to watch Megladon, which could have been a good comedy if they deliberately tried to make it worse. Returning home we watched The Beyond, which was a low-budget, faux-documentary, which was fairly sound thematically.

It was actually the third tiramisu I had made in as many days, including one for the regular Eclipse Phase gaming group on December 23, one for an unofficial work function on December 24 (a few hours of chatting and watching the National Lampoon Christmas Vacation), and of course the Christmas variant. They are devastatingly simple to make (my original recipe comes from frou_frou), and well-received. Apropos, I have also heard mentioned that northern hemisphere students visiting Australia that they find the "traditional Australian Christmas feast" (i.e., the heavy, hot, and imported from the UK style) to be amusing and perplexing the first time they encounter it, and increasingly unpleasant after that. Fortunately, I think there has been a cultural shift over the past twenty years or so that has seen the North European Christmas feast fall out of favour.

Yesterday was a trip to the Astor Theatre with ser_pounce and hathhalla to watch Die Hard which is a Christmas movie of choice among those who don't want it to be Christmas thematically, but are happy for it to be the setting. A very good combination of action with comic relief, plus an opportunity to practice one's German. Speaking of which, another Golden Owl approaches, only two more branches to go for the Esperanto from Spanish tree. I should have it finished tonight.

Visited Dean E., on Saturday evening, a local genius when it comes to law and politics. In a carousing evening of wine followed by scotch, eventually ventured home with a copy of Roland Dworkin's Justice for Hedgehogs. The title is from the ancient Hellenic poet, Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing". Dworkin attempts to establish, philosophically, the existence of objective morality and metaphysically independent value. In both these claims I do not think he is successful, however the political and legal conclusions he comes to are excellent, mapping an interdependence of liberty, democracy, and justice, concepts which are often considered at odds. In many ways the lengthy, readable, but not very dense text reminds me of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Just as Rawls could have saved himself many chapters of mental gymnastics of ethically grounded notions of redistributed wealth by reviewing the political economy of natural resources (e.g., David Ricardo, Henry George), so too Roland Dworkin could have saved himself a great deal of text struggling over trying to pin down an objective theory of morality and metaphysical value in favour of intersubjective universal morality (e.g., Jurgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel) with contemporary pragmatism.

Paula, the anarchist Magic Coffee Faerie (and convener of the Adelaide Isocracy Network), and partner Craig are visiting Melbourne. We caught up all too briefly today and, true to our shared interests, spent some time at the New Internationalist Bookshop, where we all accumulated a good swag (Paula is also celebrating her fortieth birthday, so she received hers gratis). This evening attended a chocolate appreciation night at Xocolatl, as part of the Kew Festival, and sampled such wares from Peru, Cuba, Madagascar, and Venezuela as part of the lecture. Informed the presenters of the health benefits of the emulsifier lecithin . True to gendered assumptions about such tastes, there were 26 women and 4 men in the audience; including - quite unexpectedly - one of caseopaya's former workmates.