The Right Combination of Pleasures

So here’s the rub:  we seek fulfillment, but there seem to be two conflicting kinds of fulfillment.  There is the kind of fulfillment that comes from gratifying the sensual pleasures and impulses, and there is the kind that comes from enjoyment of “higher” pleasures, like love, and gratifying one’s moral feelings and intellect.  These two seem in conflict with each, and cause problems when we are deciding how to live.  For which should I live?

I have been wrestling with this question.  Not that I have been contemplating giving myself over completely to my instinctual desires.  rather, I have been struggling with the question because it gets to the very heart of the larger question that I am exploring:  How should we live as humans?  Is there a rational answer?

As I have been struggling with the question, and I think I have been approaching it in the wrong way.  I have been thinking of it as an either-or situation:  either lower or higher level fulfillment, either base desires or intellectual and moral desires.  But maybe it’s not either-or.  Maybe it can be both.

Can’t I find a balance in which my “lower” desires are fulfilled while not decreasing the fulfillment of my “higher” desires.  I think it should be possible.  If I cultivate my marriage and family, I can enjoy the pleasures of erotic love andthe rewards of raising children.  i can enjoy the excitement of adventures and be satisfied with a successful and moral life.  

If I were to plunge into the animal life, I would lose my wife, permanently damage my children, hurt all of those I love, and ultimatley destroy myself.  And living a morally satisfying life, a life that does not leave me with shame, a life I can feel good about, does not prohibit the enjoyment of those “lower” pleasures of sex and adrenaline. 

Like wine and tobacco, they must be used in moderation and with balance.  If misused, though I gain more immediate pleasure, I lose other important sources of fulfillment. 

If I am to seek maximum fulfillment, I must seek the correct balance, the correct combination of sources.  The man who lives as beast is out of balance and is irrational.  He sells his birthright for a single meal.

But why is it difficult?  Why do they lower pleasures demand to dominate my life?

Morality and the Quest for Fulfillment

How should man live?  Here’s how I see it.  The only reasonable motivation for doing anything is to increase my own present or future sense of fulfillment.  I may behave altruistically, but this is a means to an end:  the sense of fulfillment that I receive from the action.  It all comes down to this fulfillment (call it happiness if you like, but I think fulfillment is stronger).  I think this is as true of the theist as well as the atheist.

It is unreasonable to do something that will not bring some sense of hapiness or fulfillment, or which will decrease fulfillment.  Thus, if reason is our guide, then man should live in such a way as to produce his own fulfillment.

That seems simple enough. 

To go a bit further, we can point out that what might bring an immediate sense of fulfillment, like having an extramarital affair or slashing the tires of an enemy, may not be in my long term best interest.  Though it may bring fulfillment for the moment, the net effect after a period of time will be negative.  I will end up with less fulfillment in the long run.  As humans, then, it seems reasonable that following every impulse may not be desirable. 

This seems simple enough, but it leaves some questions.  How do we decide which is better?  How do we weigh these “fulfillments” against each other?  How do we know what course of action will yield a positive net fulfillment?  Is the negative sense of fulfillment that I get by withholding some immediate gratification from myself  really outweighed by the long term reward?  Maybe I can find long term fulfillment by simply pursuing every means of short term fulfillment that presents itself.  In fact, this is the life of the addict, he whose life is dominated by the pursuit of short term fulfillment.  or it is the life of the ape man.

And here is an interesting question:  Does this philosophy of the prusuit of maximum fulfillment provide us with any objective moral standard?  Is the road to maximum fulfillment different for everyone, or is it the same?  If we can say that everyone ought toseek their own maximum fulfillment (the only reasonable position if reason be our guide to oughtness), then can we say that all men ought to do certain specific things?  Can we build an objective ethic?

Can we look for those things which, because of millions of years of evolutionary conditioning, bring fulfillment to homo sapiens?  Can we identify those things in which we are genetically or “memetically” conditioned to find fulfillment?

What is man?

What is man and how should he live?

Is man any different from the animals?  Is he any different from a chimpanzee?  Is there any qualitative difference, or is he just a smart chimp?  These are important questions, because they seem to bear on how man should live and why. 

 Should he live according to his basest impulses?  Why or why not? 

Are there two conflicting natures in man or is man a unity?

This blog is an effort to explore these questions and others.