From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Thu Jan 10 2002 - 04:55:04 MST
It is not true to suppose that the life of the hedonist is, as Lawrence
Durrel once put it, one of "untrammled lubricity in a cage-full of
nightingales"
As an aspirant hedonist I quickly came to realise that pleasures, especially
of the carnal variety, may quickly pall. The practical hedonist will set
great store by new (pleasurable) experiences. So whilst it may be true to
say that the pleasure experience is just a dopamine phenomenon it does not
necessarily follow that the intensity of that experience is always uniform
in response to a particular stimulus.
Yet more practical difficulties confront the hopeful hedonist. One of the
more vexing tests is the common dilemma of whether it is better to opt for
immediate, but possibly unsustainable, gratification, or for a less certain,
but possibly greater, future gratification. The way is hard.
(Epicureus felt that deprivation was the key to maximum intensity pleasure.
It has been said that he starved himself for a week in anticipation of the
arrival of a particular cheese from a particular village. Novitiates
interested in Epicureanism are perhaps best advised to steer clear of the
world of rock 'n roll where, oddly, the notion seems to have gained very few
adherants.)
The starry-eyed newby will also have to confront the inconvenient fact that
the amount of dissapointment he will have to endure is in inverse proportion
to the height of his expectations. The Scylla of mediocrity vies with
Charybdis of boredom.
The way is narrow and beset with thorns.
Love is held by many to be the greatest pleasure. Some maintain it is the
only one worth pursuing at all. The thoughtful hedonist must question
whether this is in fact so. He need only look to the unbroken march of
broken dreams and ill-considered promises through the divorce courts to be
given pause.
It is worth considering that our (Western) idea of (romantic) love has it's
relatively recent origins in the troubadors of Europe in the 12th and 13th
Centuries. Alarming to the practical hedonist is the fact that this flavour
of love must, in it's ideal form, remain unrequited. The most prominent
symbol of this idea is probably that of Tristam and Isolde who, having
escaped the king, slept, chaste, in a forest with a sword between them. It
may be that this tradition is a major vector of the meme that "love is
something worth dying for". A trenchant hedonist might consider this idea to
be by no means self evident.
In the fullness of time the remaining hedonists, those lucky enough to
survive the graver consequences of their follies, will have begun to
question the the apparently rather limited palette of carnal pleasures. Some
will be fortunate and encounter others who encourage a life of the mind and
the infinite delight that it offers.
Viva CoV
Blunderov
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