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"The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead
of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of
your life. If you don't, life controls you." – Tony Robbins
"The
philosophy of hedonism means little to lovers of pleasure. They have no
inclination to read philosophy." –Mason Cooley
Hedonic refers to a philosophy
that looks to alternatives of choices to compare their inherent levels of
pleasure versus pain, and also to discover ways for pain to lead to
pleasure. In modern English it gets labeled 'hedonism' and misunderstood as
"the pursuit of pleasure", wherein 'hedonists' are misrepresented (even by
themselves) as those engaged in a pursuit of pleasure.
It really is ironic that the philosophy called
1Hedonism
may slowly, after all the ages through which it has survived, gain the
recognition it deserves, as the only true way for human beings to determine
how various kinds of behavior may rightly be valued as 'good' or 'bad', the
kind of consideration known under the heading of 'morality', thanks to the
growing dominance of science in all the fields of human enterprise and
interest. Religion (guessing about reality) gave rise to science
(recognition of guesses as such, then development of a method to give
recognition to facts) when religion's fractious practices produced
increasingly fewer believable answers to mankind's constant quest for
knowledge.
Religion lays claim to possession of "revealed" "absolute" truth; whereas
science runs in pursuit of factual, objective truth. That too often
overlooked difference leads some to denial of all truth, egged on by
science's constant upgrading of knowledge to accommodate new discoveries.
That humanity can, in spite of all chagrined expressions, learn and put to
use new facts through science has promoted our advancement away from painful
primitive naivety and ignorance.
The agonizing question ("How can I feel certain, from all the candidates
posing as 'truth', of what and in what can I find whatever is true?") finds
growing support for one ancient philosophy as it becomes updated with
increased understanding and the resultant verisimilitude it gains from that.
That questing for knowledge led to the practice of philosophizing, early
attempts to figure worldly things out according to what, at the time, seemed
true, then, later, how to know once and for all the difference for when
something was actually true versus it only appearing to be so. The path
through philosophical speculation took a different route than that of
religious speculation: after much discussion about the nature of knowledge,
philosophy came to demand evidence to support ideas before they could be
accredited as facts. Religion turned to revelation, and the practice of
looking for evidence to prove, rather than disprove, answers as revealed to
its agenda-driven guesses. Evidence for religion relies on scripture and
apologetic documentation, whereas philosophy looks in Nature.
SCIENCE: The study of natural objects, conditions and events until you can
show and tell what is true about them and attribute that to facts.
RELIGION: The study of natural objects, conditions and events until you
can find a good story to tell about them to attribute to a god or ideal.
The claim from religion that atheists have no source for moral standards
often gets repeated by agnostics, those weak-willed people who vacillate
between accrediting their disbelief and ascertaining their faith impulses,
who condemn atheists for deciding less than .0005 is not high enough (on a
scale of 100) to bother granting any credence to claims from theism, and
make all kinds of accusations against us regarding intolerance and
condescension. While I highly recommend, even in the face of that, to treat
agnostics as budding atheists who need our support, the political tactics
they learned as theists too often work to forestall that. They may abandon
the house of religion, but they generally make sure to bring their baggage.
"Atheists are a dying breed," they will tell us. "The religious of all
creeds out-produce atheists when it comes to birthing heirs; the religious
may bring more than half a dozen kids into the world, while atheists may
average .5 per family."
Where that kind of statistics might come from (nobody can agree on just
exactly what constitutes an atheist, let alone find honest answers on
surveys), it is likely somewhere close to correct. Considering the way
atheists typically treat each other, it might be a good thing for us to die
out, and it might be seen as a part of the evolution process were it not for
one thing: which is that we treat each others' differences of opinion in
very much the same way as do the theists. We copycat them, except for the
threats about Hell and evil, or the resort to weaponry to establish our
opinions. The difference is, it is they who are killing each other off
(although reproducing at a rate far beyond their rate of death) with war,
starvation, and religious support for the spread of fatal diseases. In large
portions of the part of the world they dominate, many of their young do not
live long enough to reproduce, one of the key factors to indicate they are
no longer adapted to their environments. All we have to do is keep ourselves
away from the killing fields and we should at least live long enough to
produce our .5 prodigious progenies.
Most of us refrain from posting our opinions anywhere, and make it plain
that expressing a thought is a good way to expect repercussions from other
atheists (no matter what we say, there are atheists who will disagree while
spewing rancor; it is those toward whom theists point while issuing their
blanket condemnations about us). Most theists do not have any awareness of
their own acquaintanceship with any atheists, and so all they know about us
is what they hear in sermons and read about us, or that we have written.
If we respond to them with our typical rancor when we do make our real-time
presence known to them, that not only serves to confirm for them all the
negative information they possess, it is also bad psychology. It is one
thing to explain to them why we think something is true, but personal
attacks are ineffective, which includes attacking their beliefs, in their
eyes, which they take as permission to attack our absence of belief. Once
attacking begins, whether real or imagined, thought ceases, weapons get
drawn, and fight or flight takes the stage. This painful scenario cannot be
acceptable to nurturant hedonic principles.
Our typical atheistic left-brain
dominated avoidance of metaphor, poesy, and other picturesque language
further decreases the strength with which we can defend ourselves: we strive
to impose logical rules and facts onto people who think in pictures and with
feelings. If we can't draw a picture of something, it is plain to them that
we don't understand it. When they attempt to ply our deafened ears with a
description of their picture, it is plain to us that they don't understand
it. The mutual refusal to consider their nature, or our own, as something
valid, that survived the evolutionary process to provide humanity with the
diversity required for future survival, must be deemed unacceptable to
nurturant hedonic principles.
And, we are much more like them than we think, if assessed by the typical
responses we make. It may be a simple matter of which brain hemisphere is
dominant that enables us to become atheists, but even if so, the other
hemisphere still heavily influences the responses we will make and the
actions we will take. If there be any truth at all in that notion, then we
have found a sound basis from which to gather support for the idea that
religion is somehow a genetically induced phenomenon.
In other words, we all have a bit of a religious nature floating through our
generations and riding the waves in our DNA. Whether or not that be true, we
do all respond pretty much alike to the various stimuli that affect us. We
also share much of that with other animated life, which is why we will
respond with compassion (most of us) to a howling dog's injuries much the
same way as we will to other humans. While including that, which will surely
be seen as a diatribe, on this page might seem out of context, it does have
a positive aim. It springs from a hope that by seeing our own nature alive
in the religious, and their nature alive in us, maybe we can learn to
recognize that our interactions with them could be pursued in a less painful
(more moral) fashion, which is what Practical Hedonism is all about.
While the tendency of dictionaries and preachers is to dwell on the aspects
of hedonism that pay homage to pleasure, avoidance of pain may actually be a
dominant factor in hedonism (as we shall discover from Epicurus) and a
natural practice we all engage in no matter what our religious beliefs may
be. I believe secular people of all persuasions should take note of hedonism
in that light, and study the practice of it for their own edification and
possible beneficial adoption, or at least acknowledge its large presence
(once correctly understood) as already prominent in all our lives. We can
learn to view it as an explanation of our behavior, more than as a
philosophy.
And, because it seems common to pooh-pooh unusual ideas without first giving
them a fair shake, let us be clear about its history and that it is not just
some fly by night scheme I have invented myself, or have purposefully
misunderstood. We can find it to be historically ancient, and follow its
development beginning several hundred years before the Common Era began.
Let's start from the beginning and work our way through the ages: The
accredited father of Hedonism,
2Aristippus of
Cyrene, (circa 435 - 356 BCE) taught that pleasure is the universal and
ultimate object of endeavor. By pleasure he meant not merely sensual
gratification but also the higher forms of enjoyment, mental pleasures,
domestic love, friendship, and moral contentment. His followers, however,
reduced the system to a plea for self-indulgence This also appears to
be the vulgar (common) form of hedonism to which the preachers devote their
sermons and, from that, the only form to be found in the common
consciousness.
3Archytas,
a mathematician in the time of Plato, lived from around 435-410BCE to
350-360BCE (his actual birth and death dates remain open to speculation).
According to Archytus, reason is the best part of humanity and so should be
the governor of our actions. His response to the rational hedonist,
Polyarchus, who had proposed that the pursuit of maximal pleasure requires
always to be striving for more, was that a person in the throes of maximal
bodily pleasure would be unable to reason at all.
About Polyarchus: "4According
to Athenaeus (912.513-14), the Persians were the first men in history to
become notorious for luxurious living. He quoted from an address by the
sensualist Polyarchus, preserved in Aristoxenus' Bíos Archyta, in
which he claimed that the Persians rewarded anyone who invented a new
pleasure. Polyarchus then described the luxuries with which the king of
Persia surrounded himself: his servants, his sexual pleasures, his perfume,
his elegance and conversation, and his entertainments (Athenaeus, 12.545-46;
cf. 12.512a-b).
While Archytas' argument seems likely, it is also as true that many
suffering equally the throes of bodily misery will also find reasoning
ability hard to acquire and maintain. It appears to be somewhere in the
period shortly following Archytas' lifetime that pain became a part of the
moral formula, and to be recognized as the antithesis of pleasure. This
appears to have most famously begun with Epicurus.
While still advancing human rights to pleasure, the School of Epicurus
(named "The Garden") succeeded the Cyrenaics to emphasize the superiority of
social and intellectual pleasures over those of the base senses. Epicurus
lived from 342 to 271 BCE and made many predictions substantiated by modern
science (not loosely, as is true of so-called biblical and Quranic
predictions, as checking
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Epicur.htm and also a reading of
Lucretius'
poem,
On the Nature of Things, will make clear to you. His
Ethic of Reciprocity is the earliest foundation of ethics in Ancient
Greece, and emphasized that acting to minimize harm to oneself and others
will maximize happiness.
For Epicurus, pleasure and pain were the ultimate basis of a moral
distinction between good and bad. Pain is chosen over pleasure only when it
promises a greater pleasure. To pursue moral reasoning, one calculates the
benefits and costs in terms of pleasure and pain. Epicurus issued explicit
warnings against overindulgence, which often leads to pain. It is mainly
through the influence of Christian polemics that Epicurus has become
misunderstood to advocate the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure, while his
main aim was to secure the absence of both physical and mental pain (i.e.,
suffering)
When we do not suffer pain, we are no longer in need of pleasure, and we
enter a state of 'perfect mental peace' (ataraxia)
(homeostasis).
The United States of America was founded on hedonistic principles, expressed
as "the pursuit of happiness." On the date of Oct. 3, 1819, Thomas Jefferson
wrote in a letter to his friend, William Short, "…As you say of yourself, I
too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of
Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece
and Rome have left us." And later, "…dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible
to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of
Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of
impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious of their own
invention. These they fathered blasphemously on Him whom they claimed as
their Founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their
caricatures of His religion so justly excite." and "Epictetus and Epicurus
give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and
charities we owe to others." and "I take the liberty of observing that you
are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence
to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that
'that indulgence which presents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater
pain, is to be avoided.' Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to
a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to
everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of
mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated
indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know, is one of his four
cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to
fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet
and arrest us at every turn…." So, do not take too lightly what was the
source for that gave rise to Jefferson's doctrine about human rights
including the pursuit of happiness. That source can be found in his own
words, and in his actions taken to defend them and solidify them into law.
Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1842 CE) attempted to apply mathematics to
hedonism, using what he called 'felicific
calculus'. To get his calculations, he measured the degree of hedonism
in a society by accounting by the duration and intensity of all
pleasures from which he subtracted the duration and intensity of all
suffering. He considered hedonism to be the basis of
morality, wherein that which creates the most pleasure are the most
moral. His 'utilitarian
hedonism' proposed that the structure of society should reflect the end
goal wherein creation of pleasure and elimination of suffering should be
that goal.
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873), considered
bodily pleasures to be inferior to
mental pleasures.
John Piper (1946- ) brought Xianity completely into the hedonic picture
by promoting
christian hedonism, in which people's actions should give pleasure to
God, thus removing humanity entirely out of the reward system but for the
promises of Heaven versus Hell, in his 1986 book, 'Desiring
God'.
A French scientist, Claude Bernard, first used the word, 'homeostasis', to
refer to the way in which stability gets maintained. In his 1932 book,
The Wisdom of the Body, Walter Cannon (1871-1945) coined homeostasis
in reference to ways the body and brain are
endowed with a multitude of automatic mechanisms that work to maintain a
stable internal environment and avoid disequilibrium in spite of
environmental variations.
Today, after more than two centuries of Xian shenanigans, and in
spite of science that shows how the many sources of unbalance and stress
that daily accost us harm our physical and mental health and wellbeing, a
review posted at
http://www.goodreports.net/reviews/writtenintheflesh.htm about the book
Written in the Flesh can say with the finality of taking for granted
that his audience shares his understanding that none of that is true:
" After all, if the pursuit of pleasure is nothing but
self-gratification, why bother with a partner? Might the next step
after total body sex be a form of computer-assisted "post-body"
virtual sex?"
In today's world, religion has changed the way we understand many words, and
the understanding of hedonism, pleasure, desire, selfishness and more, if
not solely about sexual activity, are about self-oriented gratification. The
writer's view of that gets stated (same link):
"Since desire - like other forms of hedonism also on the
rise - is all about personal gratification, sex is 'antisocial'."
A good case can be made for the idea that all our actions arise from a base
of selfishness, that self-interest is the common denominator of all we do.
If that is true, and it likely as not is, then what the writer of that
report has stated about sex is in error, or his statement is meaningless. I
would correct it to say that "ignorant sex is antisocial", but that mainly
means that ignorance is antisocial, not sex, since ignorance can turn many
acts into antisocial events. Sexual intercourse is antisocial only if spoken
intercourse (talking to each other) is antisocial.
While browsing through web pages I ran across
http://www.everything2.com/e2node/sensation-centric%2520ideal that
refers to avoidance of pain events as "negative hedonism". That leaves one
to suppose that pursuit of pleasure must be "positive hedonism" (although he
called it "selective hedonism") and further disables recognition that
positive and negative constitute the polarities inherent to all things— It
is like acknowledging the North half of Earth as somehow unconnected to the
South. One does not persist without the other: Avoidance of pain was early
on shown by Epicurus to induce the pleasures associated with comfort.
Alternatively, pursuit of a pleasurable activity beyond the point of
satisfaction induces (at the minimum) boredom, a psychological form of pain.
The Practical Hedonist will stay aware that every pleasure and every pain
has its own opposite counterpart, and will take that always into
consideration while contemplating what actions to take part in.
We are, in this span of time, so early trained, in all the ways that work
against our self interest that we give them no thought, even in passing, and
will laugh at the serious minded person who will concern himself about them.
A study of hedonism's history shows large swings of understanding throughout
its long history, as often initiated by religion as by gluttony and greed
(both of which prevail as much in religion as elsewhere). Our own personal
vested interests and the threat of impoverishment will prevent the average
one of us from contemplating anything alternative to however he or she now
lives, let alone actually taking even minor steps toward adoption.
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FOOTNOTES:
(1)
he·don·ism
(h¶d"n-¹z"…m)
n. 1.
Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the
senses. 2.
Philosophy. The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or
has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.
3. Psychology. The doctrine
holding that behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the
avoidance of pain. (American Heritage)
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LeftBrain/RightBrain:
It is typical that of the two cerebral hemispheres of our forebrains,
one predominates. This results in tendencies that steer us toward logic or
emotion for such tasks as decision making, thinking, responding to our
environments. An easy way to remember which side does what is to say,
"Left/Logic, Right/Religion." RETURN
(2)
from
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07187a.htm
and
http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/aristip.htm
RETURN
(3)
http://www.groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biography/Archytas.html
RETURN
(4)
from
http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v7f3/v7f304.html
RETURN
(5)
http://www.mesolimbic.com/homeostasis.html
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Copyright ©2008 by Lloyd Harrison
Whitling. All rights reserved.
![[Click to see larger picture]](../images/DMkahli000.gif)
"To deny a right to the experience of pleasure
is immoral unless that denial can be justified by a valid presentation of
how pain will result from that experience in an amount that would render the
expected pleasure regrettable; or, if it can be shown that pain will be
induced in others innocent of any involvement. The role of science in moral
issues should be to test that, predict that, and find harmless ways to
demonstrate that."
— L. H. Whitling in the eBook,
Secular Morality — |
