From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@justintime.com)
Date: Sun Oct 25 1998 - 21:19:16 MST
den Otter wrote:
> Push the "lust" button and even your hamster will seem irresistible.
And keep on pushing. It would be fun, but not something I want
to do. Reading this thread brought forth what seems like an
obvious point in my mind, but one that hadn't ever gelled for me:
Having and cultivating "sophisticated" tastes could help
inoculate one against addiction to presumably easier to
satisfy tastes.
If your idea of paradise is, for example, learning to appreciate
"difficult" art, really understanding fine points of philosophy,
or discovering everything that can be known about the physical
universe, you'll have to work really hard to scratch your itch,
and "improve" yourself tremendously in the process.
If your idea of paradise is, for example, a permanent high or
everlasting orgasm, you can or will be able to obtain reasonable
facsimilies with little effort, which means you won't improve
yourself, which means you're evolutionary fodder.
A "neo-Calvinist" ethic of hard work and limited pleasure could
have the same evolutionary benefit as pursuing hard to obtain
pleasures (ok, I'm probably completely mangling neo-Calvinism),
though the latter sounds more fun to me.
Finally, I have a practical justification for my aesthetic
preferences!
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