The greatest and deepest pleasures are necessarily those which are unintended, and which have more to do with excitement than with satisfaction.Įven the truest pleasure loses its ultimate life value the moment it becomes one’s aim. The most dangerous spiritual temptation for the best sort of person: intentional repetition of the conditions of a nobly inadvertent pleasure (the pleasure itself can never be repeated, as explained above), until the rote recital of the original pleasure-inducing conditions becomes a mere habit, producing diminishing returns in the realm of pleasure, but also - and much worse - blocking off the long, difficult path to the good and the beautiful with an avalanche of artificial “ends in themselves,” those increasingly routine and soul-distorting moments of comforting distraction which he calls his “higher pleasures.” He has reset his soul according to the standard of pleasure itself, which is to say he has diminished and finally lost his original activity, the long and painful climb toward a dream of completion, in which pleasure was the furthest thing from his mind until it serendipitously met him at the side of the road. But this means he is not in fact seeking “the same pleasure” at all, but an entirely different one, though this new one is superficially occasioned by a similar practical situation. Each subsequent time, by contrast, since the excitement of the unexpected opportunity is inherently absent, it is increasingly just the momentary satisfaction of drinking the water that he is seeking, and that he anticipates - that anticipation itself involving an act of repositioning the pleasure as an essential purpose, rather than an accidental reward. It simply happened, a surprising and essentially unsought reward for his (frequently painful) efforts - efforts which had not this pleasure, but some higher aspiration, as their purpose. It was neither his goal nor his expectation. He fails, in part, because the difference between that first moment and all the subsequent repetitions is that only the first was entirely unanticipated.
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Eventually, however, he becomes increasingly frustrated, and then desperate, at his inability to revive the full exhilaration of that initial experience, though he cannot understand why he fails. On the first few attempts, he eagerly anticipates the renewal of that moment of excitement upon seeing the water bottle awaiting him. If only I could return to the point beyond that corner, turn the corner again, and experience the titillation of that approaching water station, and then the satisfaction of the drink, once more, or many times over! What more could a man desire?”Īnd so he forgets the race and its imperative to keep moving, to keep his sinews loose and lithe, and to keep his mind focused beyond this moment, and immerses himself in a repeated effort to return beyond the corner - perhaps sometimes even descending halfway back down that uphill climb in order to approximate his original pain more realistically - and then turn that corner again and again, to relive the joy of the water station. Now imagine that marathoner, upon eagerly slaking his thirst, losing himself in this thought: “I have never felt a pleasure sweeter than that which I just experienced, bringing that unexpected water bottle to my lips in this exhaustion and heat. Imagine the momentary delight of a marathoner on a hot day, as he turns a corner after a long uphill climb and suddenly sees a water station approaching.
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The second, a more insidious danger to finer souls, indicates the error of confusing the passing enticements of the good life with the essence of the good life. The first falls simply under the syllogism of pleasure and pain outlined above. Hence, the two great threats to spiritual development: (1) unproductive pleasure, and (2) intentional repetition of a salutary pleasure. This latter pleasure - the pleasure that accompanies or rewards growth as such - would thus be the only pleasure consistent with the life impulse. The only possible exception to this conclusion would be a pleasure that was specific to the process or achievement of growth itself. Therefore, pleasure either interrupts or thwarts growth.