God is an Iron (Pleasure v Joy)

[Adam]

Any fan of Spider Robinson should instantly recognize the quote that makes up the title of this post. Hopefully a few of those people have read the short story which also bears that name. This is the question of joy v.s. pleasure, and goes down to the fundamental core of why people pursue personal development.

So, why am I saying that God is an iron? Isn’t that a bit blasphemous? Well, in a way, it is, but no more blasphemous than any other religion giving God imperfect qualities, such as anger or jealousy. I’m talking about human nature, and the division between pleasure and joy.

Let’s assume for a moment that there is a creator, and by looking at that creator’s works, we can infer something about its personality. As humans, we are that creator’s works, and we have some peculiar properties. The most distinct of those qualities is our tendency to do things that, in the long term, hurt us.

People do drugs. Corporations destroy natural resources. Obesity is rampant in the United States. Organized religion is filled with people who only serve themselves, using their influence over others to spread fear and bigotry. It seems that mankind is built to enjoy those things which destroy ourselves.

“If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.”
- Spider Robinson

The American Heritage Dictionary states that irony is

“Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.”

It is truly ironic that humans enjoy that which leads to our destruction. Promiscuous sex, while good for the survival of a threatened species, is dangerous in the long run when population levels peak over the sustainable levels, yet it is extremely pleasurable. Consuming alcohol in small doses leaves a person with little pleasure and plenty of reason, yet when we ingest enough alcohol to do direct damage to the brain, we get the most pleasure out of it. Speed provides pleasure at the expense of your nervous system and metabolism. Driving cars is fun, yet cars consume massive amounts of non-renewable resources, leading us inexorably to an economic collapse when it is no longer profitable to drill for that resource.

White sugar. Glucose. Why is it that we find glucose in all of our processed food? What about highly refined flour, such as what is found in white bread and pasta? Why do we find “high fructose corn syrup” on the ingredient lists of all of our sodas? It is because sugar is addictive. I include starch as sugar, because the change from starch to sugar begins in the mouth. Have you ever wondered why fast food chains include a drink and fries in their meals? It isn’t to add value, it is to add to the addictive nature of their meals by giving you more sugar than your body knows what to do with.

Sugar leads to obesity. Sugar is directly responsible for the most common types of diabetes. In small doses, sugar gives us the energy that we need to survive, but in doses large enough to give us pleasure, sugar rots our teeth, gives us an insulin rush, adds fat to our bodies, then leaves us weak and tired, needing even more sugar just so that we can feel normal.

Man can not live on pleasure alone. In fact, too much pleasure kills.

I’m not saying that we should stop pursuing pleasure. In fact, to a certain point, pleasure is still good. The pursuit of pleasure is what helped humanity to survive for the hundreds of thousands of years of pre-history where we didn’t have time for anything except to worry about our own survival. We didn’t even have time to record our thoughts, which is why this period is called prehistoric; we didn’t have the time to invent history yet.

So far, I have been able to identify three distinct motivators for us humans; fear, pleasure, and joy. In terms of empowerment, fear is at the far low end of the spectrum. Fear should only come into play when our lives are in immediate danger, because of the power that we give up when using it, and when a person lives in fear for too long, it can be lethal, especially in the form of suicide and physical diseases brought about from stress and depression.

Pleasure, as a motivator, is the mammal instinct to find something that feels good, so that we can increase our chances of survival. With hundreds of thousands of years of refinement for humanity, it is the primary instinct that drives our daily decisions, and largely our strongest motivator when our lives are not in danger.

The reason why pleasure has turned sour, however, is because humanity has learned how to live without needing to constantly worry about survival. We have escaped from the need to find shelter from the elements, fire to defend ourselves from predators, and food to last us entire months. Our fire is contained in streams of electrons flowing across thin tungsten wires. Our shelters do not just protect us from the elements, they isolate us from them. We even have portable shelters in the form of clothes, umbrellas, and sun-screen, as well as the ability to build shelters that can withstand the vacuum of space. We don’t have to hunt for a single ounce of our food anymore, or live off of raw roots to hold us over between our large kills during a harsh winter.

Joy, on the other hand, is a different beast. Let’s narrow pleasure and joy down a little bit for the purposes of these posts, just so that we don’t have the cross-over of the definitions that we find when we’re talking about joy and pleasure in other contexts. For this post, let’s say that pleasure is meeting the physical needs that make us happy, such as sex, food, and physical comfort. Joy is meeting the emotional needs that make us happy, such as finding love and peace.

Joy doesn’t depend quite as much on the physical state of the body as pleasure does, and it is very difficult to die from an over-abundance of peace or love. Joy isn’t found in a pill or an activity, so we can’t mass-produce joy, unless entire societies devote their efforts to increase joy. Joy comes from looking at something and appreciating your role in it, whether you are looking back at a job well done, looking at a loving relationship, or admiring a child who you raised to be an influential person in the future.

Probably best of all, joy is a moving target. We can always open ourselves up to find more joy by doing things that we can look at and appreciate. In fact, we don’t need to do anything ourselves to experience joy; we simply have to open our eyes to the world around us, and by loving everything in our environment, we experience joy. It does help to multiply our joy, though, if we take an active, conscious part in our lives, which is why we find personal development.

I don’t know if joy is the answer to the world’s problems. I do know, though, that I will find out. Joy is the emotion that we feel when we participate in peace, which I have defined before as the love for everything in our environment.

(by the way, yes, I did write this for my blog, but I'm posting it here as well because I'd like to see some discussion about it, rather than people simply leaving a comment and not checking back for a few days to see if I answered. Also, I don't feel that this should be restricted to just those who read my blog. )

[stephencp]

" With hundreds of thousands of years of refinement for humanity, [pleasure]is the primary instinct that drives our daily decisions, and largely our strongest motivator when our lives are not in danger.

Hmmmm. What do you base this on? I, unfortunately see fear as the main motivator. Not fear for life but fear of losing a job, friends, respect, love, etc.

Stephen
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[ReallyGoodIdeas]

I'm with you on this Adam,

Joy is a far rarer beast than pleasure, and I have often pondered this myself. I think a concept you may not have considered in this is "externalisation". Why do we rush for pleasure, but not consider joy?

Pleasure is easier to get. We don't have to think, just buy the latest widget and we have pleasure, fleeting tho it is. Joy actually takes a bit of effort, not physical but mental effort to achieve. We feel joy when we are whole. When we can integrate ourselves fully and therefore see the world in a joyful way. I'm thinking on my feet here, so may not explain this properly.

What we see in modern society is pleasure seeking. We are told that if we buy x we will have pleasure. What i am conscious of is that every time we desire something (as opposed to genurine need, air, water, healthy food) we are externalising a psychological/emotional issue. What do I mean by externalising? I mean I am seeking something outside of myself that I am denying myself internally. For example, I drink alcohol when out with friends in the evening. While an extravert, I feel a bit shy in groups, and alcohol loosens me up. Many of us do this. We think drinking alcohol is fun, because alcohol loosens our inhibitions. Without going into all the stuff around alcohol, I've externalised my shyness into desire for alcohol. Rather than dealing directly with feeling shy, I have a drink. Having a drink is 'easier'. I would experience more joy by healing the aspect of me that feels shyness, but I get pleasure from a drink.

So I see joy (as you've defined it) as an output from personal growth/development. I also see it as the world's salvation, and I see it as what the bible, koran, buddhist writings etc all talk about.

I also see that the corporatist capitalist system we live in mitigates against joy by encouraging externalisation wherever it can occur. We could all be happy and healthy without needing drugs and hospitals. We would not feel the need for pizzas and french fries, or alcohol and drugs. We would not feel hatred and mistrust and jealousy. We would feel joy and they couldn't sell us much at all, because our desires for pleasure would be so much less.

CEO's would quake in their expensive shoes at the thought of us all feeling joy and therefore immune to their advertising! I look forward to the day. But for me, baby-steps, I'm giving up coffee tomorrow!!

Joy to you
Hazel

[Michael Chui]

Cicero, from "The Extremes of Good and Evil", says:

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure? On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by stephencp

Hmmmm. What do you base this on? I, unfortunately see fear as the main motivator. Not fear for life but fear of losing a job, friends, respect, love, etc.

The fear comes from the possibility of losing the pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure got us the car in the first place, which gave us the fear of losing that car. The job keeps our wants, needs, and desires funded, so it is the threat of losing those pleasures (and joy) which gives us fear.

You do make a good point. While the pursuit of pleasure breaks us out of our comfort zone, it is fear which keeps us working at that new level. Perhaps I should re-word that statement to say that "Pleasure is the primary motivator to do something new, while fear is the motivation to keep us from sliding back to inactivity."