Surely the Christian problem with sex goes back further than Augustine. It was Paul who said that it is better to marry than to burn (Corinthians 7:9), the implication being that if you really have to have sex, at least make sure it is only with someone you are married to. And, of course, Jesus himself is always depicted as being celibate, as are most saints.
WHAAAAT ?!!
Hey, can you spare a few Benjamins, dude ? It’s… for… RESEARCH ! YES !! I LOVE **RESEARCH **!
ETA :
One’s urban legend is another’s doctrine. The Catholic Church has been very busy preaching against any and all forms of birth control in Africa.
Opposing birth control =/= opposing all sexual pleasure. It’s opposing *certain instances *of sexual pleasure. Someone could say that a Church that oppposes any such instances of sex as do not involve (heterosexual + marital + “natural”) leaves too little wiggle room but that’s another story.
And yet, where are they now? Eventually they “went away” just like everyone else. So in the long LONG run, aside from some fame, what did it get them? Slavery to Rome (a people famous for heavy drinking and getting laid). :eek:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/07/23/the_last_ones_standing/
According to this article, there were four Shakers left in 2006.
Jumping in to recommend Carnal Israel, by Daniel Boyarin, a really engaging book about the importance and centrality of the body (and related functions, like sex, eating and weight/shape) to rabbinic Judaism.
Bloody hamsters.
I still think there’s something to the OP (besides the realization that overindulgence in certain pleasures in some cases may result in less-than-completely thought through posts on the internet :p), and I think it’s worth debating. Unfortunately, somebody mentioned the word religion, and now every attempt at reasonable debate needs to be formulated ten times as carefully for fear of injuring delicate sensibilities; so I’ll just preemptively state that from my point of view this isn’t about religion especially, and certainly isn’t intended to pass any kind of judgement.
That said, I think there is definitely a certain cultural tendency to frown on some pleasures, the most obvious ones being sexual in nature. Even if you don’t find such a thing in books of law, creeds or commandments, that doesn’t mean that, in practice, it doesn’t exist – I’m reasonably sure most people have, at one time or another, experienced a kind of ‘guilt of indulgence’ after engaging in some form of pleasurable behaviour, and there wouldn’t be any guilt if, for some reason, there wasn’t any perception of the behaviour as being wrong or bad in a moral sense. The most obvious example, again, seems to be masturbation – certainly, in recent years/decades, views on this have loosened up considerably, but it’s mostly still discussed in hushed tones. Other examples exist, too, going from sleeping in late on weekends to buying condoms in the supermarket – all behaviour for which one fears, at least subconsciously, to be judged by others, by society. So, while you probably won’t find a ‘Thou shalt not rise after noon’ written down anywhere, there certainly is a kind of cultural perception of having to account for even harmless pleasures, and a fear of some kind of punishment if one isn’t able to.
Conversely, there exists a notion of the ‘nobility of suffering’; that those who suffer in some way lead a better life than those who seek to avoid it. This needn’t be suffering in any kind of dramatic or perhaps even easily recognizable way – going with my earlier example, the early riser is certainly closer to the picture of an upstanding citizen than the night owl --, indeed, it seems most commonly to be of the kind you get through denying yourself some pleasure (like sleeping in late).
Both the discouragement of hedonistic pleasure for its own sake and the encouragement of patient suffering serve important roles in any society, of course: it gets people to get up in the morning and go to work, to pay taxes, to obey the law, in other words, to lead lives at least on average beneficial to society, rather than being motivated by pure individualist egotism. But both can also take on a life of their own: suffering becomes a virtue in its own right, rather than being a means to an end; pleasure, or indulgence, becomes a vice. People sometimes don’t question the utility of what they’re taught, so upon receiving a negative response to some behaviour because that behaviour leads to adverse social consequences, they do not associate the negative response with the consequences, but with the behaviour itself; if the behaviour is a pleasurable one, ‘pleasure is bad’ is an easily learned – and later, taught and passed on – lesson.
It’s easy to see how power structures can piggyback on this tendency, getting their ideological hooks into people’s minds: by reinforcing these associations (between pleasure and vice, or suffering and virtue) and regulating, through reward and punishment, when exactly pleasure is bad or pain is good, they get to create, in people’s minds, an idea of how a good life is to be lived – a life that the people think is good for them, yet ultimately is only directed at the upkeep of just these power structures. This is, to my mind, something distinct from legislating in order to minimize individual or societal harm through (over-)indulgence, even though it might start out as such.
I should add that this is done without any malicious intent – indeed, I fully accept that most of the people responsible for creating what I rather lamely call ‘power structures’ justifiably think that they serve the people/the greater good; however, those structures are in a sense evolving systems, and those that hook themselves deepest into the minds of the people are those that outcompete the others. Those structures thus are a natural consequence of society, and, to a certain extent, beneficial to it, if perhaps not always to all of their subjects.
(This post had originally become hamster food, and this is a previous version I managed to save; I probably forgot something, some clarification I added, but this’ll have to do for now.)
Pleasure is not bad unless it is not balanced with discipline.
The generation of kids coming up now are being called the laziest generation. We lowered the bar and keep lowering it. Many kids have no ambition to do much more then sit on the couch and eat Dorito’s and play video games.
We stopped saying no and expecting them to pull their weight. We became more interested in fostering their individuality then telling them to do their chores. It used to be the parents ran the show and now the kids do in some homes.
Maybe I was abused as a child if I go by todays standards but I am never unemployed or without a roof over my head. Both of my parents worked hard and set the example for me. If I got spanked I deserved it. I was doing something ‘wrong’. I don’t think todays kids have the role models I did. I am glad my parents took the time they did to raise me to be a contributing adult.
My Mom wasn’t a soccer mom but a nurse and worked full time and my Dad worked full time in a Prison. They worked opposite shifts so we didn’t need daycare even though it must have been tough on them. Their lives were good but not overly pleasureful. It was almost as if they felt guilty if they over indulged in relaxation. I am no where near as disciplined as my parents were.
Still I am not one to let a day go by without getting something constructive done. I go to work and then come home and get a few chores done. My pleasures are of the simple kind. Taking my dog for a walk and stopping for an ice cream. Cooking a nice meal for my son.
When I think of a society based on pleasure I think of Rome. Doing pleasureful things to excess. Eating so much you had to go vomit. Drinking too much and having orgies. Finding sport in feeding humans to Lions. It became debased and ended up in the fall of the Roman Empire. Sloth is just procrastination in 5 syllables.
It just seems that way. Simply put, a case can be made, at least some cultures have perceived, that some pleasures, such as adultery, are socially harmful. But there’s no point in declaring a “Thou shalt not!” with respect to anything unless it is something people are tempted to do in the first place. Pounding your right hand to a pulp with a hammer held in your left would be socially harmful if a lot of people did it, but who wants to?
The war cry of the adult baby in his high chair is I want, I want, I want. Left alone and without help the adult baby will either die or get out of the high chair and earn the money to get what he wants.
I think the reason Christianity gets a bad rap on this is that several of the Seven Deadly Sins are related to pleasure in some way. With sloth, lust, and gluttony I think we’ve pretty much got all the pleasure centers covered. But, as Cecil pointed out, the Sins aren’t meant to be thought of as individual acts, but rather as habits or predilections to state of continued sinfulness, if you will. Presumably this means you wouldn’t be condemned as a glutton for having thirds at Thanksgiving dinner and then pegging out before you had a chance to confess. But an ongoing pattern of consistent, harmful, face-stuffing behavior would be sinful. Perhaps civil and criminal law is a factor in how we imagine sin to be understood. With a criminal law, one time is the crime, and you can be tried, convicted, and punished. Perhaps sin is more a question of attitude.