self-gratification

84:0.2Mat­ing is purely an act of self-per­pet­u­a­tion as­so­ci­ated with vary­ing de­grees of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion; mar­riage, home build­ing, is largely a mat­ter of self-main­te­nance, and it im­plies the evo­lu­tion of so­ci­ety. So­ci­ety it­self is the ag­gre­gated struc­ture of fam­ily units. In­di­vid­u­als are very tem­po­rary as plan­e­tary fac­tors—only fam­i­lies are con­tin­u­ing agen­cies in so­cial evo­lu­tion. The fam­ily is the chan­nel through which the river of cul­ture and knowl­edge flows from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other.

84:0.3The home is ba­si­cally a so­ci­o­logic in­sti­tu­tion. Mar­riage grew out of co-op­er­a­tion in self-main­te­nance and part­ner­ship in self-per­pet­u­a­tion, the el­e­ment of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion be­ing largely in­ci­den­tal. Nev­er­the­less, the home does em­brace all three of the es­sen­tial func­tions of hu­man ex­is­tence, while life prop­a­ga­tion makes it the fun­da­men­tal hu­man in­sti­tu­tion, and sex sets it off from all other so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

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.

84:8.3The vi­o­let race in­tro­duced a new and only im­per­fectly re­al­ized char­ac­ter­is­tic into the ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­mankind—the play in­stinct cou­pled with the sense of hu­mor. It was there in mea­sure in the San­giks and An­don­ites, but the Adamic strain el­e­vated this prim­i­tive propen­sity into the po­ten­tial of plea­sure, a new and glo­ri­fied form of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The ba­sic type of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, aside from ap­peas­ing hunger, is sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion, and this form of sen­sual plea­sure was enor­mously height­ened by the blend­ing of the San­giks and the And­ites.

• excessive s.-g. destroys civilization

68:2.2While the level of in­tel­li­gence has con­tributed con­sid­er­ably to the rate of cul­tural prog­ress, so­ci­ety is es­sen­tially de­signed to lessen the risk el­e­ment in the in­di­vid­ual’s mode of liv­ing, and it has pro­gressed just as fast as it has suc­ceeded in less­en­ing pain and in­creas­ing the plea­sure el­e­ment in life. Thus does the whole so­cial body push on slowly to­ward the goal of des­tiny—ex­tinc­tion or sur­vival—de­pend­ing on whether that goal is self-main­te­nance or self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance orig­i­nates so­ci­ety, while ex­ces­sive self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

• excessive s.-g. destroys civilization

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.

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.

84:8.4There 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.

84:8.5Ad­vanc­ing ce­les­tial be­ings all en­joy rest and the min­istry of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors. All ef­forts to ob­tain whole­some di­ver­sion and to en­gage in up­lift­ing play are sound; re­fresh­ing sleep, rest, recre­ation, and all pas­times which pre­vent the bore­dom of mo­not­ony are worth while. Com­pet­i­tive games, sto­ry­telling, and even the taste of good food may serve as forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. (When you use salt to sa­vor food, pause to con­sider that, for al­most a mil­lion years, man could ob­tain salt only by dip­ping his food in ashes.)

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.

84:8.7[Pre­sented by the Chief of Ser­a­phim sta­tioned on Uran­tia.]

• sensuous s.-g. does 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.

• need for moral discipline in place of

195:10.17Even sec­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion could help in this great spir­i­tual re­nais­sance if it would pay more at­ten­tion to the work of teach­ing youth how to en­gage in life plan­ning and char­ac­ter pro­gres­sion. The pur­pose of all ed­u­ca­tion should be to fos­ter and fur­ther the su­preme pur­pose of life, the de­vel­op­ment of a ma­jes­tic and well-bal­anced per­son­al­ity. There is great need for the teach­ing of moral dis­ci­pline in the place of so much self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Upon such a foun­da­tion re­li­gion may con­tribute its spir­i­tual in­cen­tive to the en­large­ment and en­rich­ment of mor­tal life, even to the se­cu­rity and en­hance­ment of life eter­nal.

84:6.8Mar­riage is the mother of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions, for it leads di­rectly to home found­ing and home main­te­nance, which is the struc­tural ba­sis of so­ci­ety. The fam­ily is vi­tally linked to the mech­a­nism of self-main­te­nance; it is the sole hope of race per­pet­u­a­tion un­der the mores of civ­i­liza­tion, while at the same time it most ef­fec­tively pro­vides cer­tain highly sat­is­fac­tory forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The fam­ily is man’s great­est purely hu­man achieve­ment, com­bin­ing as it does the evo­lu­tion of the bi­o­logic re­la­tions of male and fe­male with the so­cial re­la­tions of hus­band and wife.

68:2.4The herd in­stinct in nat­u­ral man is hardly suf­fi­cient to ac­count for the de­vel­op­ment of such a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion as now ex­ists on Uran­tia. Though this in­nate gre­gar­i­ous propen­sity lies at the bot­tom of hu­man so­ci­ety, much of man’s so­cia­bil­ity is an ac­quire­ment. Two great in­flu­ences which con­tributed to the early as­so­ci­a­tion of hu­man be­ings were food hunger and sex love; these in­stinc­tive urges man shares with the an­i­mal world. Two other emo­tions which drove hu­man be­ings to­gether and held them to­gether were van­ity and fear, more par­tic­u­larly ghost fear.

69:1.53. The in­sti­tu­tions of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. These are the prac­tices grow­ing out of van­ity pro­cliv­i­ties and pride emo­tions; and they em­brace cus­toms in dress and per­sonal adorn­ment, so­cial us­ages, war for glory, danc­ing, amuse­ment, games, and other phases of sen­sual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. But civ­i­liza­tion has never evolved dis­tinc­tive in­sti­tu­tions of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

68:2.9The func­tion of mar­riage in evo­lu­tion is the in­sur­ance of race sur­vival, not merely the re­al­iza­tion of per­sonal hap­pi­ness; self-main­te­nance and self-per­pet­u­a­tion are the real ob­jects of the home. Self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion is in­ci­den­tal and not es­sen­tial ex­cept as an in­cen­tive in­sur­ing sex as­so­ci­a­tion. Na­ture de­mands sur­vival, but the arts of civ­i­liza­tion con­tinue to in­crease the plea­sures of mar­riage and the sat­is­fac­tions of fam­ily life.

177:2.2“I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the king­dom be­cause I can de­pend upon your pres­ent faith and love when these qual­i­ties are grounded upon such an early train­ing as has been your por­tion at home. You are the prod­uct of a home where the par­ents bear each other a sin­cere af­fec­tion, and there­fore you have not been overloved so as in­ju­ri­ously to ex­alt your con­cept of self-im­por­tance. Nei­ther has your per­son­al­ity suf­fered dis­tor­tion in con­se­quence of your par­ents’ love­less ma­neu­ver­ing for your con­fi­dence and loy­alty, the one against the other. You have en­joyed that pa­ren­tal love which in­sures laud­able self-con­fi­dence and which fos­ters nor­mal feel­ings of se­cu­rity. But you have also been for­tu­nate in that your par­ents pos­sessed wis­dom as well as love; and it was wis­dom which led them to with­hold most forms of in­dul­gence and many lux­u­ries which wealth can buy while they sent you to the syn­a­gogue school along with your neigh­bor­hood playfel­lows, and they also en­cour­aged you to learn how to live in this world by per­mit­ting you to have orig­i­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. You came over to the Jor­dan, where we preached and John’s dis­ci­ples bap­tized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you de­sired to go with us. When you re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, your par­ents con­sented; Amos’s par­ents re­fused; they loved their son so much that they de­nied him the blessed ex­pe­ri­ence which you have had, even such as you this day en­joy. By run­ning away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so do­ing he would have wounded love and sac­ri­ficed loy­alty. Even if such a course had been wise, it would have been a ter­ri­ble price to pay for ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, and lib­erty. Wise par­ents, such as yours, see to it that their chil­dren do not have to wound love or sti­fle loy­alty in or­der to de­velop in­de­pen­dence and en­joy in­vig­o­rat­ing lib­erty when they have grown up to your age.