Just a quick thread in lieu of a memory from my studies I stumbled upon recently.

The maxim "Carpe Diem" is, as you may know, taken from Horatio's Odes (Carmina).

It is taken from a poem about savoring the daily pleasures/satisfactions in life in the face of time's unstoppable passage.

In fact it is an expression of Epicurean Ataraxia , of tranquil simple living opposed to superstitious ignorant lifestyle (Pagan Olympionic/Oriental Cults') and frivolous hedonism/animalism common in antiquity (and to this day).


IT IS NOT an exhortation to an Hedonistic lifestyle of debauchery, sin and wickedness as it is commonly thought today!

You'll often hear the aphorism repeated mindlessly by everyone when trying to justify a reprehensible/idiotic act they've committed/are about to commit such as getting drunk or committing lewd senseless acts; and even the Mass Media abundantly abuse of it to further their degenerate agenda.


Now I don't know WHO started this whole thing, but I have my suspicions.




Closing thoughts: next time you hear the sentence uttered by someone you know, try to educate them, as it is a very dangerous element of our milieu (more than the Karma pseudo-Hindu nonsense), and in fact Epicureism would be a step up for most people alive today anyway.




PS: Here's the original text for the latin readers

Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati.
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum. Sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.