This article is a series of thoughts and questions on pleasure; quite what it is and whether or not it has any worth, and if it can ultimately exist if life is finite.
Pleasure on paper.
Pleasure: The gratification of the senses or of the mind; agreeable sensations or emotions; the excitement, relish, or happiness produced by the expectation or the enjoyment of something good, delightful, or satisfying; opposed to pain, sorrow, etc.
Pleasure. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828).
According to this definition pleasure is produced through the gratification of future expectation or through the present enjoyment of something which is good—that being that which is agreeable to our mind or senses.
In this article going forward I will refer to this definition as: /pleasure/.
Desire, expectation, time and memory.
As I understand it, desire is the expectation of future /pleasure/ (gratification), and expectation is the memory of past /pleasure/ or an imagined (not yet experienced) /pleasure/. We desire something because we either know it will gratify us due to our past experience of it, or we believe it will gratify us due to assumption, logic or even the persuasion of someone else who has experienced it before.
It seems to me then that /pleasure/ is connected with time and memory, but at what point in time does /pleasure/ actually exist?
Is /pleasure/ produced at the very moment of the gratification of expectation, or the very moment after the expectation is fulfilled; or does /pleasure/ even exist in part before, in the desire itself—the expectation of future /pleasure/ or believed future /pleasure/?
Could we say that the beginning of /pleasure/ is created at the very moment we desire its fulfilment (which is in itself part of the fulfilment of the gratification), and it rises to a climax either at the point of full expected (or not expected) gratification, or moments afterwards, and continues in the production of the memory of it and the further desire for more?
I want you to think of or imagine something which is pleasurable for you; be it a person, activity or even an object.
Now here we have an example of /pleasure/ manifested purely out of the memory or imagination. If you were now given the physical opportunity to fulfil it, I believe your /pleasure/ would increase, climax and produce further desire (be that more or less) for the /pleasure/ again in the future even if you could or could not ever physically experience it again. I would even say that just by me mentioning the idea that you could ever experience it physically has increased not only your desire for it but your current level of /pleasure/.
Time and memory continued.
/Pleasure/ is produced through the gratification of future expectation or through the present enjoyment of something which is good—that being that which is agreeable to our mind or senses. /Pleasure/ also exists in the imagination of future /pleasure/ or the memory of previous /pleasure/ (both which can be called desire), and is experienced during this imagination or memory and at the very moment of its fulfilment, which is always after the /pleasurable/ activity.
The /pleasure/ of a mother’s embrace for a newborn baby can only come out of surprise and after the embrace. The child has no previous experience of being held nor could ever imagine it, and so this /pleasure/ exists only after the action of the embrace. The future desire, expectation, imagination and /pleasure/ comes then out of the initial memory of this first /pleasurable/ experience of being held.
I would then say that /pleasure/ can only exist in time and memory, /pleasure/ can be a surprise but the experience of it is always after (no matter how shortly after) the activity. Without time there can be no /pleasure/, and without time there can be no memory, no desire, no expectation and no regret.
Pleasure and value.
It probably seems odd to you why I would even bother questioning /pleasure/ let alone write an article on it. It surely exists, though with some level of mystery and to know it exists should be enough. But for me I cannot let go of the desire (yes desire) to turn it around and around in my head and examine it. For me I want to get to the bottom of its reason, purpose of existence, and value. Does /pleasure/ have value, and if so does it give our lives value the more we experience?
If there were two lives of equal length and at death they were compared; would we say that the person who enjoyed life the most had the life of the most value? Or to put it another way, if you spent most of your life in bed in pain and died the same age as someone who travelled the world enjoying the sites and culture of each country; would you be able to say which had more value? Now what if the person travelling the world was a slave, whipped, beaten and moved around each country against their will, and you while in bed were pampered like royalty until you died… do you see what I am questioning here? Is a life enjoyed a life worthwhile?
Understandably /pleasure/ is not the only factor that determines worth, but to think of a life wasted is an easy thing to do. The phrase conjures up imagery of addictions, abuse, homelessness, laziness, failure, fear, seclusion or even religious piety.
But and this is what drives the question around and around in my head, if we have one life and when we die it ends completely; then why do we care that we do not waste it while we are alive? Is the experience of temporary finite /pleasure/ enough of a reason and purpose to live?
Really I want you to think hard for a minute. Would I be right in saying the reason you want to stay alive is that you enjoy life, it is in the most part /pleasureable/ enough to get you up in the morning, to make you plan your future and look forward to the experience. But what is the purpose of these experiences, why enjoy life for eighty years rather than just enjoying it for two? Is it related to value, and if so how and why would this matter?
If I invited you to a ‘once in a lifetime’ event for free, no strings attached, and you turned it down for no real reason other than apathy, and the very next day all your friends, newspapers and television stations reported quite what a spectacular, ‘history in the making’ event it was; would you regret your decision to not have accepted the invitation? Would you feel that you wasted the opportunity?
Or perhaps while at work you receive a call from your wife or husband to say that you missed your firstborn child’s first steps or words because you decided to stay later at the office. Or you were invited to the wedding of your daughter and you decided to rather stay at home instead. How would this make you feel say on your deathbed? Would you regret that you missed these moments?
If so, why? Why would you regret even just for those last few moments of your life things that you had missed, why if you are were to die and exist no more would you worry about what you missed while you were living? Why would you feel you wasted it if you were never to contemplate the waste again? How would any of this matter, if when you die you and your memory, thoughts and experiences die with you?
Is it hearing about the event after its occurrence, the comparative weighing up of what you chose instead, the value of one against the other that causes regret, the feeling that you wasted the opportunity when you should have embraced it. Why do we value our lives so much if when we die there is no comparison, there is no looking back at what we could have done?
If /pleasure/ exists only and is also maximised by the existence of time and memory as described earlier, then surely we should not have such a strong desire for it if it is finite and one day will no longer exist, let alone have an agent to experience it. It seems odd to me that it is the very strongest reason and factor of our being human. I do not think we want to stay alive for the responsibility of the propagation of our species (though this is to a degree true), but rather we want to stay alive for the sake of life, and a life full of /pleasurable/ experiences and memories.
But why continually build memories upon memories if one day they will be gone forever? Why does /pleasure/ exist if memories do not ultimately?
The worth of pleasure.
As I believe we all have desires in whatever form and derive /pleasure/ through the gratification of those desires; I want to ask the question of the worth and purpose of /pleasure/.
Is our greatest /pleasure/ the present experience of it or the recalling and retelling (mentally or verbally) of a past experience?
Can you recall a great /pleasure/ which you cannot remember?
Tell me, if you were never ever able to remember any /pleasure/ in your life would your life have any worth presently? I say presently; because, does your life only have worth when you look back at what you enjoyed in the past and or does it only have worth because of your expectation of future enjoyment yet to come?
Now I am not saying that a persons life’s worth is only derived from it’s measure or accumulation of /pleasure/. Of course just our existence has intrinsic worth through our interaction with other people, affecting and being effected upon through events. But it seems to me as I mentioned earlier that for /pleasure/ to exist time and memory have to, and I would say that for life to be worth anything really there needs to be /pleasure/, and thus I find it difficult to see life as having any worth if it is finite.
Say you buy a single sweet (candy), your most favourite sweet and pop it in your mouth and throughly enjoy it for the length of its existence. That sweet was finite, it was and is now no more, but you value that sweet because you remember the /pleasure/ it brought you. Now understandably this finite sweet experience has worth even though we know it will not last forever, but does it have any worth ultimately if we do not last forever?
Unfortunately for me, and I do say unfortunately; I tend to experience the world through a complicated lens of worth. That being that I choose to do or experience something in relation to its ultimate worth (and or usefulness), not for the sake of its /pleasure/.
There is yet another question behind this article: is /pleasure/ in of itself worth anything ultimately? Is it to be desired itself, is it ultimately to be pursued above all things?
Is the /pleasure/ of an experience the worth of the experience itself? Or put in another way does the enjoyment of the experience give the experience worth? Does the experience of /pleasure/ get its worth from being itself: that which is produced through the fulfilment of expected or unexpected desire or does it have worth simply because it is?
I mentioned earlier that it seems to me that /pleasure/ is our reason to live, it seems foundational to the measure of the worth of someone’s life.
What I am trying to understand is if there is any purpose in /pleasure/, does it have any worth? Does it have any worth if it is merely fulfilment of present desire, and if there is no continuing memory of previous /pleasure/, is it completely meaningless or actually nonexistent?
The big question I am asking is this:
What is the point of /pleasure/ in this life? Can we call something truly /pleasurable/ if we were never able to remember it again? Can /pleasure/ only truly exist if memory persists?
Is life completely worthless (from the point of being /pleasurable/) if when we die and that’s it; memory dies with us?
Ahh, but you say: ‘Your life is not worthless as other people, still living people have memories of you and your life.’
So is the worth and purpose of life only in the continuation of the memory of it by other people? But do we really care what other people remember about us if when we die that’s it? Surely we are not going to be around to know, let alone regret or relish anything.
Take for instance someone on their deathbed; perhaps in those last fleeting moments there is incredible sorrow and regret, or immense joy in thinking about a life full of /pleasure/. But once the lights go out, all of that is meaningless for the dead. There is not even an oppotunity to reflect on whether they left a legacy.
Simply, I find the notion strange that not only is our /pleasure/ finite (80+ years), but the reflection on whether life was /pleasureable/ and worth it only exists for the exact same amount of lifetime. So if you waste it you waste it for 80 years and cannot regret it except perhaps for the last few dying years of your life, and even then what does it matter whether you feel horrible for the last few years of your life; after you are gone you won’t feel anything. And even if you feel horrible or happy the whole of your life how does that really matter? If we are finite, when we die then there is no ‘This was your life’ presentation where you get to feel good about having a great life, or lousy about having a dull one.
It’s just odd, it just simply seems incocievable for me that this is the case. It just does not work.
I am meandering now, but basically without being too morbid, the only reason I can think of for someone not to kill themselves right now, is that they believe deep down that life is not finite. People kill themselves all the time to escape pain, but if they are finite then they are not ever around to experience the absense of pain, so why do they desire to escape it this way? And why not kill yourself at birth to avoid pain altogether, and if you say ‘so you can experience the pleasures of life’, but why? Why enjoy the pleasures of life, if one day you will die and that’s it?
What if the reason we enjoy life now, is because we understand that we will enjoy life forever, and the reason we don’t all kill ourselves at birth is that we realise that /pleasure/ only really matters if you are around to experience it or the memory of it forever.
The infinite eternality of pleasure.
Question One. What is the chief end of man? Answer. Man’s chief end is to glorify God1, and to enjoy him forever.2
Westminster Shorter Catechism
The Westminster Shorter Catechism3 states that the purpose of life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
That being that life’s purpose is derived from the present glorification of God and the enjoyment of Him; and the future enjoyment of God through the eternal glorification of Him in the afterlife. To me this seems very worthy, it seems solidly and unshakably worthwhile. Why, because it is eternal, it is not finite.
Our lives will be because of all eternity, infinitely /pleasurable/, infinitely worthwhile! Why, because we will for all time be having an ever increasing eternity of experience to draw upon, and it will be indescribably good!
Do you understand quite what this means? We will for all time, for all eternity be having our desires fulfilled and more so exceedingly surpassed. That we will have eternal memories, built upon eternal memories; infinite exponential memory growth of things which surpass our expectations. We will forever be being given desires and having them fulfilled over and above our expectations.
How…
We will be in the eternal presence of any infinitely worthy, infinitely holy, infinitely desirable, infinitely beautiful, infinitely fulfilling, infinitely gratifying, infinitely /pleasurable/ God. For all eternity!
This is what the Gospel4 is5; that God has freely given us worth, freely given us purpose, and this is in his son Jesus. That though we are totally undeserving of this gift of eternal life, because of our continuing hate for God, God loves us and provides the means for people to enjoy Him forever.
This is life’s greatest purpose and worth; that our worth is derived from being given worth through eternal life, and eternal life through Jesus. Eternal life to glorify the one who gave, and through worship we will receive an eternity of /pleasure/ because we will be given infinite desires, and have those infinite desires infinitely fulfilled through that which is infinitely desirable, God Himself!
Now, I realise life now may be incredibly painful, but it is short so very short in comparison to the eternal life what awaits those who’s greatest desire is for God Himself.
So what now?
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the Law? How do you read it?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.’
ESV. Luke 10:25-28.
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Footnotes.
1 Psalm 86, Isaiah 60:21, Romans 11:36, 1 Corinthians 6:20; 1 Corinthians 10:31, Revelation 4:11
2 Psalm 16:5-11, Psalm 144:15, Isaiah 12:2, Luke 2:10, Philippians 4:4, Revelation 21:3-4
3 Westminster Shorter Catechism: was written in the 1640s by English and Scottish divines. The assembly also produced the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Larger Catechism. The three documents are considered by many Protestants to be the grandest doctrinal statements to come out of the English Reformation. Completed in 1647, it was presented to parliament on 14 April 1648.
4 The Gospel Coalition: What is the Gospel?
5 Recommended reading: God is the Gospel: John Piper.