pleasures

100:1.1While re­li­gion pro­duces growth of mean­ings and en­hance­ment of val­ues, evil al­ways re­sults when purely per­sonal eval­u­a­tions are el­e­vated to the lev­els of ab­so­lutes. A child eval­u­ates ex­pe­ri­ence in ac­cor­dance with the con­tent of plea­sure; ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tional to the sub­sti­tu­tion of higher mean­ings for per­sonal plea­sure, even loy­al­ties to the high­est con­cepts of di­ver­si­fied life sit­u­a­tions and cos­mic re­la­tions.

44:3.1There are cities “whose builder and maker is God.” In spirit coun­ter­part we have all that you mor­tals are fa­mil­iar with and in­ex­press­ibly more. We have homes, spirit com­forts, and mor­ontia ne­ces­si­ties. For ev­ery ma­te­rial sat­is­fac­tion which hu­mans are ca­pa­ble of en­joy­ing, we have thou­sands of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties that serve to en­rich and en­large our ex­is­tence. The di­vine builders func­tion in seven groups:

• desire for p. has superseded hunger-want

68:2.11Van­ity con­tributed might­ily to the birth of so­ci­ety; but at the time of these rev­e­la­tions the de­vi­ous striv­ings of a vain­glo­ri­ous gen­er­a­tion threaten to swamp and sub­merge the whole com­pli­cated struc­ture of a highly spe­cial­ized civ­i­liza­tion. Plea­sure-want has long since su­per­seded hunger-want; the le­git­i­mate so­cial aims of self-main­te­nance are rapidly trans­lat­ing them­selves into base and threat­en­ing forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance builds so­ci­ety; un­bri­dled self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion un­fail­ingly de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

• p. mania great threat to family life

84:8.1The great threat against fam­ily life is the men­ac­ing ris­ing tide of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the mod­ern plea­sure ma­nia. The prime in­cen­tive to mar­riage used to be eco­nomic; sex at­trac­tion was sec­ondary. Mar­riage, founded on self-main­te­nance, led to self-per­pet­u­a­tion and con­comi­tantly pro­vided one of the most de­sir­able forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. It is the only in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety which em­braces all three of the great in­cen­tives for liv­ing.

84:8.2Orig­i­nally, prop­erty was the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of self-main­te­nance, while mar­riage func­tioned as the unique in­sti­tu­tion of self-per­pet­u­a­tion. Al­though food sat­is­fac­tion, play, and hu­mor, along with pe­ri­odic sex in­dul­gence, were means of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, it re­mains a fact that the evolv­ing mores have failed to build any dis­tinct in­sti­tu­tion of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. And it is due to this fail­ure to evolve spe­cial­ized tech­niques of plea­sur­able en­joy­ment that all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions are so com­pletely shot through with this plea­sure pur­suit. Prop­erty ac­cu­mu­la­tion is be­com­ing an in­stru­ment for aug­ment­ing all forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, while mar­riage is of­ten viewed only as a means of plea­sure. And this over­in­dul­gence, this widely spread plea­sure ma­nia, now con­sti­tutes the great­est threat that has ever been lev­eled at the so­cial evo­lu­tion­ary in­sti­tu­tion of fam­ily life, the home.

• cannot satisfy the soul

84:8.4There is real dan­ger in the com­bi­na­tion of rest­less­ness, cu­rios­ity, ad­ven­ture, and plea­sure-aban­don char­ac­ter­is­tic of the post-And­ite races. The hunger of the soul can­not be sat­is­fied with phys­i­cal plea­sures; the love of home and chil­dren is not aug­mented by the un­wise pur­suit of plea­sure. Though you ex­haust the re­sources of art, color, sound, rhythm, mu­sic, and adorn­ment of per­son, you can­not hope thereby to el­e­vate the soul or to nour­ish the spirit. Van­ity and fash­ion can­not min­is­ter to home build­ing and child cul­ture; pride and ri­valry are pow­er­less to en­hance the sur­vival qual­i­ties of suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions.

• suicidal if they destroy property, marriage, or home

84:8.6Let man en­joy him­self; let the hu­man race find plea­sure in a thou­sand and one ways; let evo­lu­tion­ary man­kind ex­plore all forms of le­git­i­mate self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the fruits of the long up­ward bi­o­logic strug­gle. Man has well earned some of his pres­ent-day joys and plea­sures. But look you well to the goal of des­tiny! Plea­sures are in­deed sui­ci­dal if they suc­ceed in de­stroy­ing prop­erty, which has be­come the in­sti­tu­tion of self-main­te­nance; and self-grat­i­fi­ca­tions have in­deed cost a fa­tal price if they bring about the col­lapse of mar­riage, the deca­dence of fam­ily life, and the de­struc­tion of the home—man’s su­preme evo­lu­tion­ary ac­quire­ment and civ­i­liza­tion’s only hope of sur­vival.

• man entitled to enjoy p.

100:2.6The goal of hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion should be spir­i­tual, not ma­te­rial. The only re­al­i­ties worth striv­ing for are di­vine, spir­i­tual, and eter­nal. Mor­tal man is en­ti­tled to the en­joy­ment of phys­i­cal plea­sures and to the sat­is­fac­tion of hu­man af­fec­tions; he is ben­e­fited by loy­alty to hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions and tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tions; but these are not the eter­nal foun­da­tions upon which to build the im­mor­tal per­son­al­ity which must tran­scend space, van­quish time, and achieve the eter­nal des­tiny of di­vine per­fec­tion and fi­nal­i­ter ser­vice.

• isolated and purely selfish p. are relative evil

100:3.4Mean­ing is some­thing which ex­pe­ri­ence adds to value; it is the ap­pre­cia­tive con­scious­ness of val­ues. An iso­lated and purely self­ish plea­sure may con­note a vir­tual de­val­u­a­tion of mean­ings, a mean­ing­less en­joy­ment bor­der­ing on rel­a­tive evil. Val­ues are ex­pe­ri­en­tial when re­al­i­ties are mean­ing­ful and men­tally as­so­ci­ated, when such re­la­tion­ships are rec­og­nized and ap­pre­ci­ated by mind.

• selfish satisfactions do not confer happiness

136:6.9In this de­ci­sion Je­sus of Naz­a­reth por­trayed to an on­look­ing uni­verse the folly and sin of pros­ti­tut­ing di­vine tal­ents and God-given abil­i­ties for per­sonal ag­gran­dize­ment or for purely self­ish gain and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion. That was the sin of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia.

• self-deception leads to enslaving

143:2.5“Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the in­flu­ence of the evil one when in re­al­ity you have but been led astray by your own nat­u­ral ten­den­cies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and some­times even des­per­ately wicked? How easy for you to be­come self-de­ceived and thereby fall into fool­ish fears, divers lusts, en­slav­ing plea­sures, mal­ice, envy, and even venge­ful ha­tred!

• amusement madness reason for Roman decline

195:3.9Even a good re­li­gion could not save a great em­pire from the sure re­sults of lack of in­di­vid­ual par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of gov­ern­ment, from over­much pa­ter­nal­ism, over­tax­a­tion and gross col­lec­tion abuses, un­bal­anced trade with the Lev­ant which drained away the gold, amuse­ment mad­ness, Ro­man stan­dard­iza­tion, the degra­da­tion of woman, slav­ery and race deca­dence, phys­i­cal plagues, and a state church which be­came in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized nearly to the point of spir­i­tual bar­ren­ness.

48:4.10When par­tially ex­hausted by the ef­forts of at­tain­ment, and while await­ing the re­cep­tion of new en­ergy charges, there is agree­able plea­sure in liv­ing over again the en­act­ments of other days and ages. The early ex­pe­ri­ences of the race or the or­der are rest­ful to rem­i­nisce. And that is ex­actly why these artists are called re­ver­sion di­rec­tors—they as­sist in re­vert­ing the mem­ory to a for­mer state of de­vel­op­ment or to a less ex­pe­ri­enced sta­tus of be­ing.

48:4.20The prin­ci­ples of Uran­tian play life are phil­o­soph­i­cally sound and con­tinue to ap­ply on up through your as­cend­ing life, through the cir­cuits of Ha­vona to the eter­nal shores of Par­a­dise. As as­cen­dant be­ings you are in pos­ses­sion of per­sonal mem­o­ries of all for­mer and lower ex­is­tences, and with­out such iden­tity mem­o­ries of the past there would be no ba­sis for the hu­mor of the pres­ent, ei­ther mor­tal laugh­ter or mor­ontia mirth. It is this re­call­ing of past ex­pe­ri­ences that pro­vides the ba­sis for pres­ent di­ver­sion and amuse­ment. And so you will en­joy the ce­les­tial equiv­a­lents of your earthly hu­mor all the way up through your long mor­ontia, and then in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual, ca­reers. And that part of God (the Ad­juster) which be­comes an eter­nal part of the per­son­al­ity of an as­cen­dant mor­tal con­tributes the over­tones of di­vin­ity to the joy­ous ex­pres­sions, even spir­i­tual laugh­ter, of the as­cend­ing crea­tures of time and space.

3:5.149. Is plea­sure—the sat­is­fac­tion of hap­pi­ness—de­sir­able? Then must man live in a world where the al­ter­na­tive of pain and the like­li­hood of suf­fer­ing are ever-pres­ent ex­pe­ri­en­tial pos­si­bil­i­ties.