Living a "hedonistic" life is less risky.

[mrcockburn]

I never understood people who live lives of delayed gratification, restraint, and building their future.

Because all that hard work can be undone in an instant. You could save your whole life, and lose it all when you come down seriously ill.

Alternatively, you could live for the moment, doing every little thing you please - and capture and enjoy your desires as you go. It's a sure thing. You have money, you can enjoy travel now. You have the chance to do something, you can act on it now - or hold back, and never realize the benefits that you assigned to the delayed gratification.

You could argue that what you want "down the road" outweighs your conflicting desire now, but you have the certainty of enjoying that desire now, that you don't have down the road.

And the longer the time horizon, the less certain the expected outcome. The people who worked and saved their whole lives are turning 65 and are discovering that the accumulation of their savings and interest don't even nearly match their needed expenditures and the increased cost of living.

What do you think? Is the SJ life actually riskier than the SP life?

 

[mrcockburn]

Actually, I'm being a hypocrite - I'm still investing in my future and working for it. But I'm not totally draconian about it.

 

[Lark]

if you dont delay gratification and just obey every whim then I suspect there is less gratification overall.

Think about it, birthdays are special because they are unlike every single other day, free time or leisure time is appreciable in contrast to occupied time or working etc. Etc.

Plus there's the simple matter of accumulation, its not possible to live that well on the merge earnings afforded most of the population which is enslaved by impulsiveness.

Personally I see impulsiveness and impatience as bastard children of consumerism, in nature its a different story, things take time to grow, mature, bear fruit, its in no way impulsive.

 

[Lark]

man, everyone kicks ol' Draco's ass all the time

 

[Magic Poriferan]

You are over estimating the uncertainty of such choices. Hedonism might lead to a nasty heroin habit, and we can say with fair confidence that the long term loss outweighs the short-term gain.

On top of that, I seem to recall that hedonistic lifestyle counter-intuitively correlates with depression, but I'd have to go digging around on the research for that again. Happiness is subtle and complex, and it is also not the same thing as pleasure.

 

[violaine]

OP: I think you have a point. I cannot and will not put "shoulds" and duty as far as it pertains to my own existence above living life and having experiences. And I believe that no one has the right to make you sacrifice yourself like that. It's like being denied the basic expression of your existence. There is a way to be an ethical hedonist though. Someone who wants to suck the marrow but is also learning and enriching their existence along the way in healthy ways. Perhaps the strict interpretation of the term hedonist eliminates an ethical approach. I'm not talking about that kind of hurtful hedonism. I don't wish to hurt anyone else, not ever. (I most definitely can if I am ever required to push back at someone). I just want to live my life in the way that makes me happiest, as decided by me.

I still walk a middle path because I could easily spin off and go wandering at the expense of my very foundations and all responsibility. Picking up and going where I please and living out of a suitcase. That life beckons strongly and I do keep myself on a leash of sorts in that respect. But I wonder why I don't do just that...

I cannot figure out on a soul-deep level what everyone is chasing by being so focused on things that are often unenjoyable and one-dimensional/unfulfilling in terms of payoff. e.g. Super-careerists who don't enjoy their work. Or people who live according to an ethical system imposed by something outside of themselves without ever really deciding that that is right for them. I guess it's something to do with "the right way to do things" and wider society - it's what others aspire to, so it must be worth chasing? I don't know, but if so, ick. Aren't people wanting to get to the top of the career tree so that they can go off and be free at some point? I think it's so sad, almost tragic that a lot of people wait until they retire to travel.

I'm not being condescending or patting myself on the back as being something special. I know my approach to life is probably largely due to coming from a traveling culture, an experiencer culture which must have resonated strongly with me. I haven't had to fight a mentality where the message is that success, happiness and respect results from building your life around your career.

I'm sure my distaste for structure for the sake of structure is related to my very disciplined and religious upbringing. I was the most responsible 12 year old I've ever known. And now, I'm not.

 

[KDude]

I'm not sure if I'm hedonist in the commonly understood sense. More like the Garfield sense. I just want to chill. I have no regrets about that. I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to be striving for. People who think they're truly changing the world or something are delusional, I'll say that much.

 

[Not_Me]

The benefits of resource accumulation is not just for old age. Having a reserve will greatly reduce the stresses of everyday living.

Instant gratification is also inefficient. You end up paying more for everything.

 

[Rasofy]

Accumulating wealth can be a source of pleasure per se.

 

[KDude]

Having a reserve will greatly reduce the stresses of everyday living.

That all depends on what you want in the first place. Some people piss and moan because they don't have a 60" hdtv, a boat, a summer house, a hot mistress, kids, an ivy league education, etc.. Some people don't need any of it to get by.

 

[Sniffles]

There's more to life than just pleasure.

 

[highlander]

You can save a lot and still enjoy life. The best things in live do not have to cost very much.

 

[wildflower]

i think it depends on the sorts of things you are referring to. travel & other fun experiences--yes, do it now but i'd still save money too. i don't agree with work, work, work and wait until you retire to have fun. you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. but...consistently doing things like drugs, overeating, risky sex--just might kill you, so no thanks. also, if you don't save anything and just rack up debt you could have big problems down the road. different people find pleasure in different things. a large screen plasma tv that costs several grand--please no, i'd go travel the world rather than sit on my butt watching reruns.

 

[FDG]

Depends on the probability of dying. I would wager that living an hedonistic life at the age of 30 is quite risky, since you're likely to be alive in say 5 or 10 years, where many consequences of your (impersonal "your" here) choices will be felt. On the other hand, living an hedonistic lifestyle at 80 sounds perfectly reasonable. Basically, you'd have to consult mortality tables for your population and age of reference. Then estimate your daily probability of dying, integrate over the next 20 years, define a loss function for excessive hedonism and check if the such loss function obtains higher values than your maximum acceptable level.

Instant gratification is also inefficient. You end up paying more for everything.

That depends on an extremely large number of factors. Generally speaking, we are slowly running towards the exhaustion of our solar system, so from a thermodynamical point of view, instant gratification is always more efficient.

 

[pickledoctopus]

There's more to life than just pleasure.

''Yes, hold on a minute''

*hands phone*

I think Sigmund Freud would like to have a word with you.

All joking aside, I agree that disregarding the long term is harmful to your overall experience. However, I think what OP had in mind was that it is useless to deny yourself sane and healthy pleasure for baseless reasons (e.g., religious dogma). Why repress your sexuality (not just speaking of religion here, too many people berate themselves for thinking 'gay thoughts', for example)? Why refrain from buying something you would appreciate if it doesn't harm your verall financial status.

A balance needs to be stricken.

 

[Lark]

There's more to life than just pleasure.

Like Orwell said in his excellent review of Mein Kampf, socialism and capitalism had both promised people the good life, Hitler had only promised misery, hardship and death, he was every war God incarnate and the people had loved him for it and given him all they could.

 

[Lark]

''Yes, hold on a minute''

*hands phone*

I think Sigmund Freud would like to have a word with you.

All joking aside, I agree that disregarding the long term is harmful to your overall experience. However, I think what OP had in mind was that it is useless to deny yourself sane and healthy pleasure for baseless reasons (e.g., religious dogma). Why repress your sexuality (not just speaking of religion here, too many people berate themselves for thinking 'gay thoughts', for example)? Why refrain from buying something you would appreciate if it doesn't harm your verall financial status.

A balance needs to be stricken.

Yes but I see no balance at all being stricken in the live for today consumerist philosophy at hand in the OP.

What is baseless about religious dogma? What you call dogma I may call heritage, legacies and time honoured, and more importantly time tested, tradition.

The traditions of many of the world religions are not being invalidated by most innovative research but rather their veracity is vindicated. Even when the truth is unpalatable, distasteful or objectionable for different reasons it remains none the less the truth, for instance that total abstaining from sexual activity prevents the spread or acquiring of sexually transmitted diseases or unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, that is true, is it fun? Nope, is it something someone who wishes to experiment sexually or who wishes to descralise and reduce sexuality to recreation and amusement wants to hear or believe? Nope.

Does anyone repress their sexuality? Does anyone berate themselves for thinking "gay thoughts"? Not on this forum anyway, I've actually heard people berate themselves for not thinking gay thoughts, I've heard of people, particularly young people, feigning and faking "gay thoughts" or "queer" sexuality because heterosexuality is "vanilla" or "uninteresting". The central cultural scaffolding of both consumerism and potential militate, indirectly and unintentionally perhaps, in favour of homosexuality.

The recasting of these trends as sane and healthy is not something which I would consider a good thing at all.

 

[Lark]

I would like to consider again the title of the thread, would there not be greater risk involved in hedonism?

As I understand it hedonism involves a devotion to pleasure and pleasure seeking, would being completely devoted to this and eschewing any deferal of immediate gratification not increase the risks of addiction, dependency and habit forming behaviour? Are there not possibly greater negative consequences to prefering pleasure seeking to prudence?

I would suspect it is not just possible but likely, burning out the pleasure centres of the brain is a bio-physical-social-psychological problem for the individual, that's before any kind of existential or cultural angst or disillusionment is considered at all.

In practice I find that most budding hedonists are people who actually are good at defering gratification and entertain fairly modest expectations or "someday, maybe" ideas, living out their hedonistic hopes in a week or two a year on holiday, or they are younger people who want to try every single thing they have heard about, read about, fantasised about but are in for a rude awakening generally when the reality is measured against that same fantasy. There's little worse than exaggerated expectations and hopes coming up fast against disappointing reality.

 

[gromit]

Enjoy the small pleasures as they come along, work toward the things you want, right?

 

[King sns]

I think a lot of people are not introspective. They just follow rules of life without ever really stopping to think about what it's all about. If they did, they wouldn't work so hard for some kind of a "reward" that doesn't exist. I think that a life completely full of pleasure can be just as empty as living life for the future. Everyone can achieve their own true happiness, it's just about finding the right balance.