Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Hedonism

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

- Matthew 6:19


Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

- Matthew 6:25


All man's efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied.

- Ecclesiastes 6:7


Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire.

- Ecclesiastes 6:9


In all these assaults on the senses there is a great wisdom--not only about the addictiveness of pleasures but also their ephemerality. The essence of addiction, after all, is that pleasure tends to dissipate and leave the mind agitated, hungry for more. The idea that just one more dollar, one more dalliance, one more rung on the ladder will leave us feeling sated reflects a misunderstanding about human nature; a misunderstanding, moreover, that is built into human nature; we are designed to feel that the next great goal will bring bliss, and the bliss is designed to evaporate shortly after we get there.



Religion does a good job in assessing specific aspects of human nature but the solutions it proposes feels like it's replacing one set of idols with another.



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