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%SEEKING PLEASURE 770401
We often experience pleasure in the course of real
living within a loving community. At times we seek to
analyze the wholistic situation into its component parts
and identify those which caused us the pleasure --- in
order that we may again enjoy that pleasure. By
approaching the wholistic situation in an objective way we
seek to gain control over the processes which gave us
pleasure. Our efforts are partially successful and so
encourage us to continue them and to try to refine them.
We tend to think that the partiality of our successes come
from the lack of sophistication in our methodology. We
thus seek the aid of specialists who can perform more
objective and more thorough analysis of our situation ---
thinking that sophistication is to be gained through
reductionistic ways of coping. We thus forget that we
often experience pleasure in the course of real living
within a loving community. We ignore the holistic context
which plays an essential role in the situations which give
us pleasure. We forget that pleasure is a gift, not the
wages for successful goal seeking.
Properly understood pleasure should encourage us to
seek to promote integrity, wholeness. It is when people
and communities have wholeness, integrity, that they enjoy
their times together. Reductionistic efforts to achieve
pleasure tend to undermine the integrities which are
essential to being able to give pleasure, and to accept
the gift when offered. Such reductionistic efforts are
typical of technocrats who try to control life processes
according to systematic plans---including legalistic codes
intended to guarantee good living. Such legalistic efforts
are not designed to promote the possibility of pleasure,
but rather to confirm the efforts' goodness. In them
pleasure is an empty promise to be fulfilled at the and of
time, not in the eternal now.
There are times when to enjoy a situation one must
pursue indirect routes to the situation---often apparently
turning one's back on pleasure, and going away from it.
Such situations cannot be achieved as a goal. They are
the fruits of a way of life which is not dedicated to
achieving the pleasure of the situation, but rather to
promoting the integrity of persons and communities
whenever and wherever possible.
(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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