Strategies of Pleasure and Pain

Hedonism is the school of thought that happiness comes from pleasure and/or avoidance of pain. This pleasure is held as the highest good. But is this true? Is pleasure the highest good?

My way of philosophy is different from those of others because most philosophers try to reason their way to some undeniable and inescapable conclusion usually after some extended Platonic word game. I think this is stupid. Over 2000 years of philosophy should show the futility of this approach as philosophers today seem no further along than Socrates in his day when it comes to discovering truth. The reason for this is because they define truth in the wrong way. For them, truth is what can be deduced logically and cannot be contradicted. Yet, philosophy is filled with contradictions, paradoxes, and ultimately, meaninglessness. This is to be expected when rationalism is put as the cornerstone.

Truth is simply that which exists. Truth is whatever is real. As such, science has shown the progress that philosophy has not. This does not mean that science answers all questions. It cannot tell us whether the Mona Lisa is beautiful or not. Science cannot tell us whether it is wrong to euthanize a brain dead individual. Science simply provides us with facts and data. Questions of value are another matter.

Philosophy to be done well must never lose this empirical foundation. Philosophy is less a search for what is true so much as it is a selection of strategy. A person's philosophy is essentially their strategy for living, and those strategies can be judged solely upon whether or not they achieve the ends desired. It is pointless to debate whether or not Marxism is the proper political philosophy when it has been shown again and again to not work. It might be nice to consider a classless utopia of total equality, but the fact that it does not happen indicates it is a fantasy on par with the myth of Valhalla or Mount Olympus. You might as well argue for the necessity of being gods or having eternal life while you are at it.

I do not believe that happiness and pleasure are the same thing. My basis for this is empirical. You simply have to look and observe the various strategies for hedonism to see that they fail to deliver the desired end. Conversely, asceticism as the antidote to hedonism also fails to deliver the desired end. A scientific understanding of these things will show why they succeed in some respects and fail in others. It also suggests a new strategy for living a more pleasurable life.

The Cyrenaics

The Cyrenaics were a Socratic school that existed in Greece and was founded by Aristippus who lived from 435 to 356 B.C. The Cyrenaics believed that pleasure was the highest good. Bodily pleasures were more important than mental pleasures. Immediate pleasures were more important than future pleasures. They were the originators of the phrase, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow, we die." The Cyrenaics were crass hedonists. They were the frat boys of the ancient world.



Crass hedonism delivers the goods in terms of pleasure. Fucking, eating, drinking, and doing drugs are great. They feel good. The problem is they all come with nasty consequences--hangovers, obesity, drug arrests, drug overdoses, marriage. It seems that pleasure comes with pain. Conversely, no pain comes without pleasure. For instance, water tastes better after enduring a hard workout on a hot day.

Pleasure and pain are like a two-headed beast. You cannot have one without the other. Attempts to increase pleasure will only yield greater pain. This inescapable fact may depress some people, but it shouldn't. But what it shows is that crass hedonism will not yield the desired result.

Epicurus

The philosopher Epicurus had an answer to this Cyrenaic dilemma. Epicurus famously said that pleasure knows no increase only variety. Epicurus taught a refined hedonism where the goal is not a maximum of pleasure but the absence of pain. By tending to one's needs, you eliminate the pain and discomfort of life. Instead of eating a gigantic fattening meal, you eat simple foods that sate the hunger without disturbing the digestion or contributing to weight gain. Epicurus counseled this strategy in all things yielding what we could call today the "simple life."



People who live the simple life want to live carefree. They want to live pleasantly with few worries, concerns, or troubles. This pleasant life sounds appealing until you realize its impossibility. You can retire to the countryside for an idyllic life and to escape the rat race. But you adjust to this new reality such that new things become unpleasant. You replace honking horns with chirping birds until the chirping birds become annoying. This phenomenon is what psychologists call the "hedonic treadmill." You adjust to whatever the new normal is such that you are back where you started. The effort to create a more pleasant life merely results in a lower tolerance for pain. At this point, you can feel a bit depressed.

Asceticism

If hedonism doesn't work, why not become ascetic? Why not renounce worldly pleasures for higher pleasures? Why not devote yourself to a philosophy, a religion, art, music, or what have you? Why not live a life of virtue and renounce base pleasures and embrace pain and hardship? This was the answer that the Stoics gave us who counseled us to seek the only good which was virtue. The Stoics were the bad asses of the ancient world. Today, they would be Navy SEALS.



By living a more painful life, you enlarge your capacity for suffering. The hedonic treadmill works both ways, so why not become accustomed to hardship? Just embrace the suck and live there. There is some wisdom to this approach. The Stoics would do just such things. They would embrace cold statues nude in the winter or sleep on boards like the emperor Marcus Aurelius. They believed these practices made them tougher and more resilient. But is this actually the case?

The Stoics would debate amongst themselves what the Stoic Sage would do in the bull of Phalaris. For those unfamiliar with this device of torture and execution, the bull of Phalaris was a brazen ox that had a door in the side. They would put the condemned in this bull and set a fire underneath roasting the poor guy alive on the inside. His screams and the steam made a nice bellowing bull sound as it exited the bull's nostrils. Debating the happiness and serenity of a Stoic Sage in such circumstances is ludicrous.

The fact of human beings is that we inhabit physical bodies. There is no escaping this fact. We are our flesh, and our flesh is us. A wide body of scientific knowledge attests to this fact. Our systems of pain and pleasure provide us important feedback when it comes to our bodies. Hedonism reduces us to these sensations, but asceticism cannot lift us above these sensations. There is no virtue in needless suffering.

These three strategies in dealing with pleasure and pain come with inescapable problems. The problem is trying to separate pleasure from pain. This is an unsolvable problem. Instead of trying to separate pleasure and pain, they need to be unified. We must accept the dual nature of the two and learn to use them for our gain.

Duality and Syzygy



To grasp this new concept of pleasure and pain, we must leave the West and go to the East and to the teachings of Taoism. Taoism teaches that nature is filled with these dualities. There is day and night. There is male and female. There is life and death. The word psychologist Carl Jung used to describe these concepts was "syzygy" or a pair of opposites. They seem opposed, but they are complementary. You cannot have one without the other.

These concepts must not be confused with the concepts of good and evil. They are devoid of these moral meanings. Pain is not necessarily bad nor is pleasure necessarily good. A sore muscle from a workout is a good thing. A broken leg from a fall is not a good thing. Similarly, water on a hot day is a good thing while a heroin overdose is not a good thing. You can see that the judgments we make on these matters is whether or not they improve or destroy the body. This was the evolutionary reason behind our sensations, but we have found ways to short circuit these things either for our benefit or our detriment.

In light of this Eastern perspective, the proper attitude to take towards pleasure and pain is to embrace them and use them. We should be both hedonists and ascetics and neither of them. If this sounds confusing to you, it shouldn't because we already have people who embrace this duality. They are athletes.

Athletes are simultaneously master of their bodies and servants of their bodies. They will punish their bodies in the weight room, ice them in excruciating torment in a tub, and then sleep for twelve hours and eat healthy delicious foods. They join together both punishment and pampering.



We should mimic this duality of pleasure and pain in our own lives. We need to enlarge our capacity for suffering with ascetic discipline but also enjoy the sublime pleasures that come from the relief of that suffering. The easiest way to do this is to go out for rigorous physical exercise such as running or working out at the gym. Then, enjoy some healthy food and plenty of rest. In short, you need to embrace both the weight set and the couch. The occasional beer is not so bad either.

Some will counsel moderation in all things, but this isn't going to cut it. There is nothing moderate about a CrossFit workout. People like extremes. When they find something they like, they want a lot of it. This is as true of pain as it is of pleasure. With syzygy, you get to satisfy these appetites. You increase the pleasure. Epicurus was wrong. Pleasure does know increase. It just comes with an increase in pain.

The bad pleasures and pains are those things which are destructive to the mind and body. This would be the world of drugs, tobacco use, and excessive drinking. Couch surfing, watching TV, or eating good food do not apply because they are good things in relation to running twelve milers, hitting the weights, or puking your guts out with a CrossFit routine.

Science backs me up on this as there exists lots of data about the need for both the stimulus of exercise and the benefits of rest. What science doesn't tell you is how great all this feels. Eliminate either the yin or the yang on this, and your body will rebel. Being a couch potato is not a pleasurable life and neither is being a sleepless robot living in ascetic denial. Speaking from personal experience, I have lived at both these extremes, and they both suck equally as much.

The syzygy strategy can be applied to other areas which I will explore and write on in the future. I just know that in this area we should not make enemies of the couch and the gym. They belong together, and you should feel no guilt for enjoying pleasures earned.

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