Is Pursuing Pleasure Evil?

separating the "guilty" from pleasure

This fair food is entirely too healthy. Photo by Richard Sagredo on Unsplash

I spent a lot of bored summers watching reruns of VH-1’s Behind the Music. These episodes, like any bad biopic, follow a simple arc: the hustling days as a gigging musician, followed by the shocking rise to fame, followed by nights of excess—drugs, sex, diva-tastic temper tantrums over minor tour rider violations. (I SAID THIS IS A NO BANANA TOUR!) Then the musicians either died or went to rehab. The episode would often wrap with a current interview in their Malibu homes, maybe they’d be wearing all white as they talked about their enlightenment. The message I got was this: as soon as people get the power and money to do so, they will inevitably take pleasure to a degrading and damaging extreme. Pleasure, in this way, was dangerous, maybe even deadly.

This message was echoed by what I learned in a vaguely Calvinist church. A central narrative of that upbringing was the divide between flesh and spirit. The theory goes that, ever since The Fall of Man, humans have been inherently bent towards evil. Only through an inner transformation brought by Christ can we even begin to choose goodness. In this narrative, our bodies desire evil while our (transformed) spirits desire goodness.

Do you see the problem with this idea? It casts anything tied to the physical body as suspect, inferior to the things of the mind or spirit. American intellectualism often agrees, deeming most popular art, TV, and music as low brow, while complicated, difficult work is held up as superior. It’s the deep-fried Oreos of the county fair versus a well-dressed quinoa salad. It’s like we’re being asked to ignore the zing! of dopamine the Oreo elicits and pretend the salad is just as appealing.

Perhaps its only natural that a religion founded on martyrdom idolizes suffering. Many of us were raised on gory crucifixion stories; we were told to emulate this by “taking up our crosses.” We would know we were doing God’s work by how much we were suffering.

While suffering is inevitable and facing this truth is a necessary part of the maturation process, I don’t think there’s anything virtuous in suffering unnecessarily. Churches have prohibitions against alcohol, despite the fact that Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine. Christians spend an inordinate amount of time policing each other’s sexuality while Jesus only mentioned sex/adultery three times in all of his teachings, and one of those instances was to forgive the adulterous woman. (Compare that to the 43 times he talked about caring for the poor.) When I was growing up in Purity Culture, we were warned not only against premarital sex, but against getting anywhere NEAR anything sexual. What was the point? Youth leaders and Christian media asked, as if they didn’t know. Pleasure! Pleasure was the point! But everyone acted like pleasure just wasn’t worthwhile.

I have tried to toe this line, to stoically deny myself, but some part of me always rebels. When I was pregnant for the first time in 2011 and received the long list of Don’ts, I had a minor freakout. Specifically about deli meat. When I complained on BabyCenter message boards other pregnant women shamed me: maybe the risk of contracting listeria from prosciutto was incredibly small¹ BUT WHY WOULD I RISK DAMAGE TO MY BABY?? Unless I was SOME KIND OF MONSTER!!

And the only reason I could come up with was that pleasure is important. If I couldn’t see most of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, drink wine, or go in hot tubs, I should at least get to eat some gotdang honey ham! It seemed as if being a good, responsible person meant foregoing almost all pleasure.

But I’ve come to question this premise.

As I’ve gone about filling in the holes in my education around evolution, I’ve come to realize that humans aren’t inherently good or evil, rather we’re programmed with two competing desires—one drive to hoard resources for ourselves and our offspring, and one drive to share and cooperate. Yes, there is evolutionary basis for altruism. In fact, helping behaviors are seen in toddlers as young as nineteen months.

Humans, I believe, are fundamentally torn between “me” and “we.” Some of us tend to go towards the “me” end of the spectrum, and some of us tend to go towards “we.” My suspicion is that there’s a happy medium to be struck here: for some people, that means learning to be more giving. For former good church girls such as myself, it means learning to prioritize ourselves. I’ve always thought it’s interesting how the golden rule is phrased, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Not more than, not less than, equally. We’re not meant to be doormats.

There are caveats, of course. Pursuing pleasure can lead to the Hedonic Treadmill—an ever-escalating need for more, whether it be sweets, drugs, alcohol, sex, TV, adventure sports, adrenaline, shopping, or achievements and accolades. Pleasure shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of our lives. Happiness is largely a byproduct of having meaning in one’s life. As Arthur Brooks wrote in The Atlantic, “Happy people love people and use things; unhappy people use people and love things.”

Pursuing pleasure is a big step towards reorienting myself away from martyrdom and towards myself. Joy can also be a divining rod for finding meaning. There are a million ways to change the world, but after years of volunteering and activism, I’ve come to realize that the sustainable way to help my community is to do so in capacities that feeds me. Volunteering, like work, is not going to always be fun, but serving should be energizing rather than draining. And hey, if I come home from volunteering to eat Oreos and watch some trashy VH-1 reality TV, there’s no shame in that.

What about you? Do you associate the word “pleasure” with “guilty”? Share in the comments. And if you have a friend or family member who needs a break, why not share this post with them? Let’s all spend these last, delicious weeks of summer enjoying ourselves.

1. A great resource for pregnant women is Emily Oster’s Expecting Better. Spoiler alert: you can eat sushi! Just not gas station sushi.