16 posts tagged “pleasure”
Attacks on consumerism always miss the point though — there’s nothing wrong with abundance, pleasure, not being rained on when you buy your groceries, or shiny stuff in general. Criticising consumerism is what people do when they can’t quite stomach criticising capitalism.
From Andrew Stevens's interview in 3:AM magazine with Owen Hatherly, author of Militant Modernism
—David
How you decide what you do each moment of each day? It seems a complicated question without an easy answer.
But while looking for something else this week, I came across a newspaper science column that suggests there's just one motivating factor in everything we do. Physiologist Michel Cabanac's behavioral experiments lead him to believe that "each of our decisions is ultimately driven by pleasure-seeking. 'Pleasure is the common currency that allows us to make any, and I mean any, decision in our lives,' he says. 'Any decision is made according to the trend to maximize pleasure.'" This is true even when not immediately obvious as in the case of willing martyrs, for example, where agonizing death is chosen as a means to greater joy.
Neuroscientist George Stefano goes further, believing "that pleasure is not only the driver for every decision we make, but is the crucial component for making sense of the world." 'As human beings, we always pride ourselves in being rational, but if we were 100% rational, we would have to weigh up every single possible action we might take at any time. Imagine how time-consuming that would be.'.... Pleasure... is our brain's way of short-cutting the rational process by subconsciously and continuously ranking what is most important to us from the vast number of options we are faced with."
Oh, and there's more. Inside brain neurons and other body tissue, the chemical proenkephalin breaks down when we experience pleasure, releasing enketylin, "a strong antibacterial agent." Stefano notes that when we feel good, we are protecting ourselves.
The article, by Ian Sample, appeared in the Guardian in 2004. If I find any updates in this fascinating area, I'll let you know.
--Julian
The last two posts have been about books and their insights into physical and mental wellbeing. Here's one more that adds another piece to the puzzle of health, happiness and pleasure in life.
Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor have written a new book on the history and psychology of kindness. In their words,
"One of the distinctive things about kindness -- unlike an abstract moral idea such as justice -- [is] that in the end we know exactly what it is, in most everyday situations.... We usually know what the kind thing to do is -- and when a kindness is done to us, and when it is not. We usually have the wherewithal to do it (kindness is not an expert skill); and it gives us pleasure.
'A sign of health of the mind', Donald Winnicott wrote in 1970, 'is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us.' To live well, we must be able to identify imaginatively with other people, and allow them to identify with us. Unkindness involves a failure of the imagination so acute that it threatens not just our happiness but our sanity.
It is often said of small children now that they are naturally cruel, but it is less often said that they are naturally kind, instinctively concerned for the wellbeing of others, often disturbed by the suffering of others and keen to allay it.... Only the self-caring child who enjoys being alive will [as Rousseau writes] 'seek to extend his being and enjoyments' to others.... [Kindness] is the strongest indicator of people's wellbeing, their pleasure in existence.
We desire it, in some way knowing that kindness... creates the kind of intimacy, the kind of involvement with other people, that we both fear and crave. That it is kindness , fundamentally, that makes life seem worth living."
The above is from an article by the authors in The Guardian. I wish you could read the rest but it's been removed from the website for matters of copyright.
That doesn't seem kind, but I'm sure the authors have their reasons.
On Kindness by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor is now available in the UK. It is published in the US on May 26.
--Julian
In the very first month of this blog (June 2007), I asked what I called a medical question: Is there a healthy minimum number of times for a male to have sex?
It's taken a while, but at last I've found an answer thanks to Blake Morrison's Guardian review of Paul Martin's new book Sex, Drugs and Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure.
As Morrison writes, "Throughout history, church and state have worked to prohibit almost everything except procreative sex within marriage, but science suggests that recreational sex (in all its varied forms) is good for us. Orgasms relieve stress, reduce the risk of heart disease and prostate cancer, and activate the immune system: a study of middle-aged men found that those who had two or more orgasms a week had a mortality rate 50% lower than men who had orgasms less than once a month. Martin also speaks up for masturbation as a 'biologically mainstream form of behaviour'. Bears do it. Deer do it. Even dolphins at the zoo do it."
So, two or more orgasms a week seems a healthy, not to mention pleasurable, goal to aim for.
And Martin's book is basically about pleasure. Morrison quotes Martin's own list of "modest pleasures, among them walking, gardening, cooking, fishing, napping, sitting in silence and having lunch. All... can help improve one's life."
I can speak for the pleasure to be found in all of those with the exception of fishing which I've never tried. I'd add cycling and reading to my own list. And reading Martin's book is a pleasure I look forward to.
--Julian
Uchimizu is the sprinkling of water to cool the surroundings of your house. The pleasure is both mental and physical. The mental satisfaction is in recycling, for uchimizu is a way to reuse bath water. The Japanese bath is for steeping, not washing in, and so the water stays soap-free. Instead of pulling the plug after the last person has used the water, leave the bath full as a water source for the next day's uchimizu.
The sensual pleasure of uchimizu is the simple joy of pouring and using water. Some prefer the bracing vigor of splashing it from a bucket with a ladle, or dashing it out with the hand. I prefer a watering can with a rose on the spout for its silent, gentle and even spread of water. At the hottest time of the day, cover the sun-baked asphalt, walls, gravel and flagstones with water, and the breeze that blows across them is immediately a degree or two cooler. Sprinkling the earth lays the dust and releases the sharp aroma of rain. If you have flowers or vegetables, give the beds and pots in the garden a good soaking.
It's a joy to meet relentless sunshine with your own rain. Afterwards, enjoy the sight of the pools and puddles that resist immediate evaporation--and the butterflies that dance over them. Uchimizu: a simple pleasure at the height of summer in Japan.
--Julian
For a cup of ocha green tea, open the caddy and pour some of the finely milled green leaves into the lid; about the same amount as would make a small pile in the palm of your hand. When you buy the best tea, the leaves don't rustle, and have a smooth, almost oily texture and a rich odor.
Tip the leaves into the teapot, which has a filter behind the spout to keep the leaves inside. Pour in water about 15 degrees shy of boiling; this is easy with an electric hot water pot with a green tea temperature setting. The leaves immediately swell and release their juices. Pour the tea into a cup immediately.
The dark green, slightly opaque liquid tastes mild and grassy, with a hint of bitterness. Sipped, it both calms and alerts. A cup of green tea at any time of the day is a simple, profound pleasure.
--Julian
Cherry blossoms and spring sunshine combine to create one of the great joys of Japan. They co-occur for a week at most, and the pleasure is only heightened by the brevity.
As winter ends, the blossom front sweeps up from the south. Here in Kanto, early varieties of cherry bloom here and there in mid-March, prefiguring the eagerly-awaited flood of pale pink at the end of the month. There are cherry trees lining roads and river banks, surrounding schools, clumped in parks, in temple precincts and gardens, on hillsides. Toward month-end, the first flowers open, and within a week, they have enveloped the trees in shimmering gossamer clouds. So prevalent is cherry that traveling by train you cannot look out of the window without seeing an oasis or ocean of pink.
In blossom week, Tokyo parks seethe with revelers, but here in the country you can enjoy a picnic closer to the solitary Ugetsu ideal. After deciding which tree or trees to sit beneath, assemble a ground sheet and some cushions. Cake shops and the basement of department stores offer a variety of sublime pink rice and bean confections decorated with flowers. Add to these tea, a can of beer, a glass of wine, a cup of sake, friends and the warmth of the day, and give yourself to the party. The sun shining through the blossom dapples and dazzles. A petal or two floats down. The breeze brings the laughter of another group of celebrants a little way away.
Cherry blossoms coincide with the start of the school and fiscal year. It is a time when new recruits join companies, and old recruits are reassigned to new duties. The astonishing flowers mark these beginnings until after a few days the petals begin to blizzard down in earnest and fresh green leaves push out to dilute the pale pink. The blossoms are a dream, a memory, and they will be back next year.
--Julian
This is from Fiona MacCarthy's Guardian review of Richard Sennett
"[Sennett's] new book considers craftwork very broadly.... This is craftsmanship in action as "enduring, basic human impulse"; the deep inner satisfaction that comes from work perfected for its own sweet sake.... Sennett views the satisfactions of physical making as a necessary part of being human. We need craft work as a way to keep ourselves rooted in material reality, providing a steadying balance in a world which overrates mental facility.
"The best craftsmanship relies on a continuing involvement. It can take many years of practice for complex skills of making to become so deeply engrained that they are there, readily available, almost without the craftsmen being conscious of it.... The same total mastery of technique can apply to music making, ballet dancing, writing.
"Pleasure in making comes from innate necessary rhythms, often slow ones. As we know in our own lives there is much more satisfaction in cooking a meal or caring for small children if we are not in a hurry. Doing a job properly takes the time it takes. Sennett argues in a fascinating way that, while we are working, submerged processes of thought and feeling are in progress. Almost without being aware we set ourselves the highest standard which "requires us to care about the qualities of cloth or the right way to poach fish". Doing our own work well enables us to imagine larger categories of "good" in general."
(I find this final sentence startling, and reason in itself to read the book.)
--Julian
Last month I kicked off an occasional series of posts on the simple pleasures of Japan with one about tatami. I concluded that "to truly relax and to reclaim one's center, a chair will no longer do," and wrapped up with some lines about the smell of the straw mats filling the house.
About relaxing on mats vs. chairs, I thought it was a matter of posture and position, but there might be even more to it. A study by Hiroshi Morita of the University of Kitakyushu found that kids sitting in a tatami room outperformed kids sitting in a classroom when given an academic test, an effect that increased with age. The researcher suggests it isn't because--my first guess--a classroom is a dreadful, inhuman environment, but instead that it comes down to the aromatic compounds in the mats—phytoncide and vanillin among others—that "provide relaxation and make it easier to become more intimate with your surroundings."
On reflection, "reclaiming one's center" is a poor description of the effect of relaxing on tatami. Feeling at one—intimate—with one's surroundings puts it much better.
--Julian (written in a chair at work, far from the aroma of tatami)
Throughout Japan in spots felt to be sacred, or in spots made sacred by their presence, there are Shinto shrines. Some are large with magnificent buildings, and busy with acolytes and priests. These are places to visit at New Year and festival times. But what does "sacred" mean in a religion that has no object of worship? Perhaps it means the quintessence of nature, and this is more easily experienced away from the bustle of organized religion. Indeed, most shrines are solitary, seemingly forgotten on a mountain, hillside, cliff top or in a grove of trees: an unpainted wooden room on stilts, often just large enough to house guardian foxes, a dais and a mirror. A place on the margins of civilized life. A place where children go to play.
Large or small, a shrine is often approached by stone steps and always through a characteristic, often vermilion, torii archway gate. In front of all but the smallest there is an offertory box and a thick rope hanging above it to grasp and shake and rattle the bells and rouse the invisible gods (and they are invisible, as Philip Pullman points out, because they don't exist). We approach to ask for what we need to sustain life: a bountiful harvest, a good catch, a thriving business.
To move from one place to another in Japan is to encounter a shrine. Passing the gateway, or passing through it, is a pleasure both gentle and profound, perhaps because it calls us to forget our self-obsession for a moment and to experience—Pullman again--"awe and mystery" in the face of nature that we are a part of and which we depend upon. To pray in such a place and in such a way is to submit ourselves to the natural world.
Forgotten shrine
Alive with the shouts of children
Vine climbs the red gate
--Julian
