Title: Spa Massage | Date: 07/2011 | Photographer: IQP | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
1: the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life
2: a way of life based on or suggesting the principles of hedonism
Hedonism - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary
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I'm an avid Facebook user. The site is practically my virtual version of Cheers, a "place" where everybody knows my name.
Recently, my friend L.A. started a Facebook page called Mostly Unrepentant Hedonists. Upon being invited, I began using the page which mostly consists of cocktail recipes, risque humor, and sex tips. Mostly interested in the cocktail recipes, I'd drop in for a few minutes a day to see what was new and to share my two bits.
A few days after working this habit into my daily routine, I caught an episode of Saturday Night Live featuring musical guest Pharrell Williams. During the show, he sang his flagship song "Happy," the chorus of which is:
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do.
The song, and the frequent visits to L.A.'s page, got me thinking about the concepts of happiness, pleasure, and hedonism.
The philosophically astute will point out that, on the deepest level, happiness and pleasure are separate ideas, one being physical and the other being spiritual. While such people are on solid academic ground, I prefer to think of the two terms as synonyms; what makes us happy gives us pleasure, and inversely, what gives us pleasure makes us happy.
Of course, the third term, hedonism, often gets a bad rap, typically is thought of as the quest for pleasure at the expense of others. Conjuring images of Romans feasting and fornicating as slaves fight for their amusement, hedonism is considered, by many, to be a primary motivation for evil. By my way of thinking, it doesn't have to carry an evil overtone though.
Certainly, if enslaving three girls for eleven years is what makes you happy and gives you pleasure, that's undeniably evil. Sickness aside though, many things, apart from stiff drinks and unique positions, can give pleasure and make someone happy.
- A good meal can give pleasure and make someone happy.
- A walk on the beach can give pleasure and make someone happy.
- A good book or movie can give pleasure and make someone happy.
- Playing poker can give pleasure and make someone happy.
- Taking the grand kids for pizza & smoothies can give pleasure and make someone happy.
- Watching sports, listening to music, and a plethora of other positive things can all give pleasure and make someone happy.
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