epicurean
Original: epicurean on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A woman (purple coat) and a man (green coat) walk together on a snowy path through woods.
Woman: I follow the philosophy of Epicurus, which is the philosophy of being at peace with what you have.
Man: No, it's NOT!
Panel 2 (close-up of the woman, looking irritated): Have you actually read this stuff? Epicureans had theories of happiness, but they also had crazy shit!
Panel 3 (the woman, intense): They thought the gods were proved because we can detect the films they emit in the womb. They thought eyes came into existence before sight did!
Panel 4 (the woman walking ahead of the man on the snowy path): Every ancient school of thought did this!
Panel 5 (the woman, glaring): Stoics, cynics, Epicureans all had unworkable systems of logic and stupid pre-scientific beliefs, and made incorrect cosmologies, and modern people don't care!
Panel 6 (the man crouching/cowering on the path as the woman keeps walking): They just want to read a standard self-help manual, but have it supposedly founded in ancient philosophy so you don't have to feel shame!
Panel 7 (the man on the ground, the woman standing over/beside him): As an Epicurean, I am at peace with not having read the primary literature of my philosophy!
Man (screaming): AAAAAA!
Votey: A hand-drawn line graph. The y-axis is labeled "specificity of rants in SMBC" and the x-axis is labeled "time." The curve stays low and flat for most of the timeline, then shoots sharply upward at the end (exponential growth).
Woman: I follow the philosophy of Epicurus, which is the philosophy of being at peace with what you have.
Man: No, it's NOT!
Panel 2 (close-up of the woman, looking irritated): Have you actually read this stuff? Epicureans had theories of happiness, but they also had crazy shit!
Panel 3 (the woman, intense): They thought the gods were proved because we can detect the films they emit in the womb. They thought eyes came into existence before sight did!
Panel 4 (the woman walking ahead of the man on the snowy path): Every ancient school of thought did this!
Panel 5 (the woman, glaring): Stoics, cynics, Epicureans all had unworkable systems of logic and stupid pre-scientific beliefs, and made incorrect cosmologies, and modern people don't care!
Panel 6 (the man crouching/cowering on the path as the woman keeps walking): They just want to read a standard self-help manual, but have it supposedly founded in ancient philosophy so you don't have to feel shame!
Panel 7 (the man on the ground, the woman standing over/beside him): As an Epicurean, I am at peace with not having read the primary literature of my philosophy!
Man (screaming): AAAAAA!
Votey: A hand-drawn line graph. The y-axis is labeled "specificity of rants in SMBC" and the x-axis is labeled "time." The curve stays low and flat for most of the timeline, then shoots sharply upward at the end (exponential growth).
Alt text
A seven-panel SMBC comic. A woman in a purple coat and a man in a green coat walk together through snowy woods. The woman says she follows the philosophy of Epicurus, the philosophy of being at peace with what you have. The man protests, "No, it's NOT!" In escalating close-ups, the woman delivers an increasingly heated rant: asking if he's actually read the source material, she lists the strange ancient beliefs of Epicureans (gods proved by detectable films emitted in the womb, eyes existing before sight). She declares every ancient school of thought did this, that Stoics, Cynics, and Epicureans all had unworkable logic, stupid pre-scientific beliefs, and incorrect cosmologies that modern people don't care about. She accuses him of just wanting a standard self-help manual dressed up in ancient philosophy so he doesn't have to feel shame. In the final panel the man cowers on the ground screaming "AAAAAA!" as she stands over him, concluding, "As an Epicurean, I am at peace with not having read the primary literature of my philosophy!" Votey: a hand-drawn line graph titled "specificity of rants in SMBC" on the y-axis versus "time" on the x-axis; the curve stays flat then spikes sharply upward, an exponential rise, joking that the comic's rants keep getting more specific over time.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.