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%FEAR OF PLEASURE 770324
Life becomes deadly when people fear pleasure.
Technocrats promote the fear of pleasure because pleasure
tends to undermine control and predictability---unless
pleasure itself is used as a means for technical
manipulation. Pleasure may be used as a reward and the
withholding of pleasure may be used as a punishment. If
people are regarded as essentially untrustworthy,
"fallen", "depraved", "selfish", etc., and at the same
time pleasure is regarded as essentially a reward for
being "good": then the stage is set for real dilemmas.
People who accept judgments of human un-trustworthiness,
and pleasure as reward, cannot accept pleasure without
guilt---for to accept it without deserving, it is to take
that which does not belong to you, to steal. This
inability to accept pleasure is accentuated if the society
revolves around possessions, ownership, and laws against
violating exclusive rights.
The fear of pleasure becomes an ultimate fear ---when
religious teachings create a god who is in charge of
rewarding those who conform to the moral teachings of the
scribes and pharisees. Such teachings often picture
pleasure as an ultimate reward, to be granted only to
those who are ultimately saved at the last judgment.
Technocrats who promote this picture thus successfully
postpone for themselves and others the problem/dilemma of
coping with the pleasures which they fear. Their method
of coping promotes fear of pleasure which is the focus of
the problem/dilemma. Thus they successfully promote the
need for their method of coping, and confirm its utility;
while successfully avoiding the pleasure which they fear.
Such success gives them technical pleasures.
When all pleasure (which is feared) is postponed
until the last judgment, the last judgment becomes an
ultimately fearful occasion which cannot be contemplated
with equanimity. On contemplating that occasion the
technocrat experiences a double-bind: (1) He should desire
to be found among the "good", (2) He fears the pleasure
promised to the "good". As a result, he cannot imagine
what it would be like to live in the heaven which is
promised for the "good"---because he has refused to accept
pleasure without guilt in the eternal now, choosing
instead to work on achieving acceptability. Thus
technocrats forever live in hell.
(c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in
www.essayz.com Search for Integrity and Honesty
(On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)
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