People who’re hedonistic are often described as those trying to escape from themselves. It seems they aren’t just trying, but are partially succeeding. For every amount of need they avoid or escape they eliminate some of their distinguishability.
There’s a prevailing notion that life is short and therefore must be enjoyed. Some people can find no reason not to take that notion seriously even if they have no desire to escape from themselves.
An entity’s distinguishability is in direct relation to its temporality. A distinguished entity can partially experience what may be called nirvana, but by definition it will be temporary.
People may claim they experienced nirvana subsequent to the experience, but in the moment, as they have one foot in the ether, they’re generally in no mood for personalizing their experience. To be entirely immersed is to have no ability to personalize; meaning being dead even if revivably so. That those who’re revived from death often speak of nirvana is due to the simple fact that to be immersed and then to resurface involves partial immersion on both ends.
We can’t say that an entity can experience nirvana fully and for eternity, but with some stretch of language, we could say that nirvana is experienced fully and eternally. Would there be any reason to bother besides convincing healthy yet confused people to avoid hedonism?
Things like hedonism can exist in all sorts of forms.
People can become fixated on a specific form of pleasure or relief. Then some other guy starts to sell it for a price, and it becomes a part of the economy. If an addiction becomes popular enough, it becomes legal. I talked to my dad about that briefly earlier today. Generally I consider creating higher than consuming, but it looks like the majority of hedonism is oriented with consuming things, instead of the pleasure of the hard work of artistic creation.
I think anything being higher than pleasure is a moral argument. We’d have to come to believe that there was a higher meaning than pleasure, first. After that, the values form, and motivations. The problem I seem to be seeing is that people have not forged ideals very well. The things that are higher than base desires and sensations are ideals. In most cases the ideal is ‘God’. In rare cases the ideal is human and earthly, but of a higher earthly quality. Desire suppression is mostly in the religious camp.
The demand for permanent happiness is without foundation because there is no permanence. The psychological demand for permanent happiness has no physiological foundation in the sense that the body cannot handle permanence.
No such thing exists as ultimate pleasure or uninterrupted happiness. Wanting something that does not exist is the root of the problem. There are many variations of the same theme: permanent happiness. The body can’t take uninterrupted pleasure for long; it would be damaged. Wanting a fictitious permanent state of happiness is actually a serious neurological problem.
To go for pleasure as pleasure can be problematic. But it seems to me what one gets pleasure out of goes also under and above what the critics of hedonism seem to only associate pleasure with. I mean wanking all day starts to hurt. Eating and throwing up Roman style also hurts, even when you get good at it. There is a lack of pleasure in what gets called hedonism and then on the other side what we find pleasure in is intimately tied up with what we are great at, find meaning in and so on. (I realize this is not the main Point of your post, but I want to respond to it)
In the abstract I have no idea what a good argument would be. In specific, I would try to get them to focus on the suffering, lack of pleasure in what they are doing and also the pleasure they take in other things that are not activities analogous to when the stimulate the pleasure centers of rats’ Brains. Look, at you, you have bags under your Eyes, you look sad and lonely, who gives a shit if you think it gave you pleasure just Went through a week high on cocaine fucking a bunch of women you do not like and were mostly stressed out and not satisfied the whole time. You are just focusing on one small part of your experience. Then perhaps a pointing towards some thing they loved in a more full way. REmember how that felt? hedonism is a problem if you are not very aware of yourself. (and most are not) But it’s not really a problem per se. If you are paying attention and getting better at paying attention, that pleasure is not really pleasure. Feelings can get you out. And it’s better that way…rather that than have the mind more or less tell the emotions they are bad for wanting pleasure. Welcome to a bad marriage inside yourself.
I used to think that human beings were based in positive energy, because they always want the positive and usually avoid the negative. Later I feel I realized that humans are actually based on negative energy, and it’s so negative that it attracts the positive. I think pain is, in its own way, a spiritual attractive force. It attracts and consumes life. When we stop polarizing things, we meet peace and completion. Pain is like the legacy of life, along with other things. It is a cycle and process. We would probably be nicer beings if we were energetically and magnetically positive.
If your definition of nirvana is the same as mine, I cannot see how such a state would be “temporary”. Nirvana isn’t so much an occurence as it is simply a realization of what was there all along. To have attained nirvana (in the Mahayana tradition) means simply to have extinguished all desire for, and attachment towards, conditioned phenomena. So, if one has truly attained this state, the suffering-causing source (the desire) will have faded forever. Sure, one may not spend all of their time “with one foot in the ether”, as it is entirely possible to attain this state and then just go about daily life, in Heideggerian everydayness.
My argument is that pleasure is only the antithesis to pain, meaning it has no reality outside of pain and so therefore to value it in-itself is to value the cessation life or that which causes pain.
Hedonism can be liked to making quick fixes to desires rather than dealing with them in a meaningful way, so it’s actually desire suppression as well.
I agree.
Its serious, but also common, wouldn’t you say?
I’d say that fearing pleasure and the fearing of pain associated with hedonism are both unhealthy extremes.
I said ‘partially’.
I understand the idea you’re expressing and I had forgotten it was associated with the word ‘nirvana’, and no, that wasn’t what I meant. In the OP just replace ‘nirvana’ with ‘seemingly-absolute pleasure’.
I could have said ‘disliking’. I mean the heroin addict should be afraid of their hedonism at that stage where the pleasure portion of the mixed pleasure pain of their Lifestyle is slipping away. My Point is not, however, what óne should feel, but rather than actually these things feel bad/not as good/painful, etc. Often the solution is presented as some form of discipline, the rational mind enforces a more profound set of values on the beast like emotional body. I Think that is a Deep error, and that the emotional body needs to be given more room, more consciousness - rather than Control - so that the rejection, if this is the right move, comes from the organism as a whole and not some portion of the cortex acting like a Little prophet or despot to the rest.
Don’t know anything about Heidegger, but well said.
Stuart-
“Self-deception is a constant problem as we progress along a spiritual path. Ego is always trying achieve spirituality. It is rather like wanting to witness your own funeral.” - Chogyam Trungpa
I looked up the definition of ‘hedonism’ on TFD, and here’s what came up:
Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.
Philosophy: The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.
Psychology: The doctrine holding that behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
All of us from the moment we are born are “sensation-seekers”; we covet fine foods and drink, luxurious clothes, and comfortable surroundings. We all seek to make ourselves as physically comfortable as we can be, within the conditions of the situation. We ALL fit definition 1, give or take a couple of exceptional yogis or ascetics. Hedonism is a simple fact of being a creature conscious of sensate pleasure, and desiring it. The extent to which we pursue it can often define our lives, and our attitudes.
I don’t think I fully understand the attitude you are positing in your first post, so I’m going out on a bit of a limb here. But it does seem that you wish to dissuade people from adopting a hedonistic attitude, your reason being that hedonism’s main goal (what you call nirvana, or ‘seemingly-absolute-pleasure’) is unattainable or meaningless in the long-run. I think a strong case could be made that far from pursuing this orgasmic extreme pleasure, one could simply modify one’s lifestyle in such a way as to maximize sensate pleasure, and minimize sensate pain. This to me seems a far more reasonable cast for a modern hedonist to take.
While some have mentioned that sustained absolute pleasure is either impossible or meaningless, I don’t think that is the object of the true hedonist. There is an equilibrium to be reached with the balance of physical comfort/discomfort, but it is not an equilibrium that is equal among all people. A rich and affluent person may likely live a life of substantially greater sensate pleasure than a homeless person, who is imaginably in a near constant state of physical discomfort.
That’s true. This thread would be useless to most hedonists, who have much more work needed to get over it than just a better understanding of pleasure.
In the OP I said:
So to clarify people with no desire to escape themselves are those who already have most of the work done, yet that prevailing notion is acting as a despot keeping them from more useful pursuits.
Neither can you witness yourself in deep dreamless sleep. Yet sleep is just one form of rest among many. Pleasure is the temporary cessation or rest from pain/need/desire, it is not; it’s only assumed like darkness is assumed even though it’s only the absence of light.
Those who pursue it to a relatedly high extent are who I was referring to as ‘hedonists’.
Yes.
I don’t see how you’re disagreeing with me; should a hedonist understand that death is the purest form of pleasure (absence of desire), he’d at least understand that he needn’t bother to pursue that extreme form of pleasure.
You defined the term so broadly that I don’t see how it doesn’t truly encompass those with that object.
That equilibrium is health; for those who reach it they can then risk it to progress or they can stagnate.
Homeless have more unmet physical needs, but do they have more unmet emotional needs?
That’s your core problem here. Pleasure isn’t the absence of desire, pleasure is having your desires fulfilled. In absence of desire an absence of pleasure necessarily follows.
As I assumed. The more pressing question is whenever it can be claimed that one has met most of his needs, why he would want to try to avoid further need.
It goes even further. Desire is to me an object of desire. I like to desire, as it gives energy. Desire is, from a certain perspective, ‘the justification of having surplus energy’.
I disagree with the Buddha’s idea that existence = suffering. I think that existence = enjoyment, and suffering is required to increase enjoyment.
I disagree with the Buddha’s idea that existence = suffering. I think that existence = enjoyment, and suffering is required to increase enjoyment.
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turtle says—isn’t reality both suffering and enjoyment