Complex Numbers

The Pleasure Principle

Today's story is kind of parent-focused, but it illustrates some things that I've been harping on for a while.

https://theconversation.com/pleasure-is-good-how-french-children-acquire-a-taste...

Pleasure is good: How French children acquire a taste for life

The article discusses the idea of pleasure from different cultural perspectives. Well... not too different. European and American. But it's still worth noting some of the ideas in here.

In the US, we tend to compartmentalize pleasure, separating it from our daily chores and relegating it to special times. We have happy hours, not happy days. We have guilty pleasures, as if enjoying chocolate or a favorite movie is a moral failing.

To too many people, it is a moral failing. Whereas in France...

Pleasure, in fact, takes the weight of a moral value, because according to the French, pleasure serves as a compass guiding people in their actions.

Pleasure, then, is the goal. The purpose. Not a meaningless distraction on the way to some other goal.

Stimulating practices included reading to children, playing music and giving them massages. The ultimate goal of stimulating children is to develop their understanding of what gives them pleasure.

Some in the US would find this "creepy." The whole point is that it's not.

The moment that tied it all together for me was when I asked a mother in my research study why it was important to train her children to behave properly in public. She simply replied, “Because if they know how to behave properly, they will know how to adapt and get along with people. And that will give them pleasure.” Adhering to social rules is a means to greater pleasure. You have to give up something to gain something greater.

Pick an activity, any activity. Ask "why do we do this." Ask "why" to the answer. Keep doing this and eventually you come to the root causes. If the root cause is "to increase pleasure," I'd say you're on the right track.

As Americans, we are taught to deny pleasure and venerate self-sacrifice and hard work. And when we finally take time off to have fun, we often do things in excess. We party hard. We eat and drink too much. And then we feel guilty. When we enjoy food too much, we say we’ve been “bad.” Maybe if we didn’t deprive ourselves of simple pleasures all day every day, we wouldn’t feel so compelled to overdo it on weekends.

I'm just going to leave that right there. Personally, I've never been on board with that ethic. Hard work just leads to more work. If, as our cultural myth goes, hard work leads inevitably to financial success, then sharecroppers would be millionaires. So that myth is debunked right there.

I only ever worked with the goal in mind to one day not have to work anymore.

The rest of the article delves more into the family aspect of things, which I skipped, because it gives me great pleasure to have never had to deal with offspring.

Now, I understand others' ideas of pleasure are different from mine. Maybe work gives you pleasure. Not the results of the work, but the work itself. Or maybe raising kids was a challenge you willingly embraced, and it gives you joy. That's great My point is those things aren't universal.

Maybe if people chased things because it would genuinely improve their level of happiness instead of adhering to someone else's idea of happiness, people's lives would be better.

Or maybe we all just need more money.

Hell if I know. I just thought it was an interesting article.