I feel that my pleasure really is the only good thing in my life and is the only thing that makes me and my life good. My thoughts, other created good meanings in my mind, as well as everything else in my life including my own dreams without my pleasure are all nothing more than just different words, sounds, images, etc. In other words, they are all neutral (neither good or bad) things and it is only my pleasure that makes me and my life good while it is only my suffering that makes me and my life inferior, worthless, and bad. Again, it has nothing to do with me attributing a neutral value to these things. My thoughts and other created good meanings in my mind are all neutral in of themselves and it has nothing to do with me attributing a neutral value to them. This is because they are all neutral conscious experiences which means that there is no profound experience whatsoever from them without my pleasure and that my pleasure is the one and only profound good experience for me in life. Even if I were to perceive something as being good in my life without my pleasure, then that is still a neutral conscious experience and there is nothing profound and good about it. As a matter of fact, my mind would only be tricking me into perceiving that something is good in my life when the fact of the matter is that all of my thoughts and created meanings in life are nothing more than words, sounds, images, etc. in of themselves regardless of how I perceive them. These thoughts might be the words good and bad and might very well be good or bad meanings, but they are only good and bad in a neutral sense which means that they are not truly good or bad at all and that it is only our pleasure and suffering that are the true good and bad things in life. What I mean by “in a neutral sense” would mean that these thoughts are only good and bad in a fake sense.
But the words do have meanings and also are real and neither are "neutral" because they do exist and you do sense them and understand them whether or not you don't think you do. Those thoughts are brought to you by the things that you do like driving a car or breaking a leg so that they give you the thoughts that you sense.
Surely the conditioning supplied by another spectrum ranging from "mild mental irritation to outright bodily pain" undergirds this significance of pleasure. The innate kinds of enjoyment revolving around eating / drinking, sleeping, emotional / physical interactions, etc.... Seem to stem a good part from being relieved of or dodging anticipation-wise the painful and stress-oriented penalties that the body would otherwise be dispensing for failure to satisfy those (due to most of them being essential needs for survival and life's agenda to replicate). How much would an appreciation for fine food have developed if not for the already existing stimulus to regularly seek edibles [and thus avoid the suffering of hunger], with the taste receptors of the tongue in turn having evolved to ensure certain nutrient requirements were sought and detected / discriminated. Similarly, if not for the varying degrees of lesser, nagging discomfort that accompany not having an acquired recreational interest or ritual tended to during its usual frequency, then that particular class of "habit-forming pleasures" might have diminished importance as well. ["Lesser" obviously excluding the more severe consequences of going cold-turkey with acquired substance addictions.]
This qualifies you to be an amoeba. As we climb up the evolutionary scale, we have more kinds of concern and consideration, more meanings and purposes to our lives, more ways to judge the value of things and actions and events. As we grow the equipment for complex relationships and abstract thought, we devise more intricate ethical standards.
I am not a junkie or an amoeba for valuing my pleasure. I do not just sit around like some fat slob gaining pleasure from just sitting there watching tv or anything of the sort. I do use my pleasure for great things such as through me being a composer. You would be attributing a false personality to pleasure in saying that feelings of pleasure are for junkies and/or that they are inferior and unnecessary feelings.
I observe the importance of relief in basic pleasures all the time. As well as a sort of intentional context of discomfort to amplify the pleasure. Straining over a water fountain to swallow down the refreshing libation. The ache in the neck to just reach it. The effort to suck up every crystalline surge. And then there's the discomfort of lying in one position in bed, and then suddenly moving to another one. Oh the heavenly relief of removing that pressure from one's body. Of feeling the weight equally distributing itself as you lay on your back. Have you ever fasted? My god the FOOD when you break it! It's almost a spiritual experience, masticating the soft warm mouthfuls and tasting every subtle flavor as you gulp it down. I have to close my eyes, like when I eat really good chocolate. We disvalue suffering as if it were bad, but we should appreciate its interdependence with pleasure in the moment of satiation.
Awesome writing style! Is it possible to do that same thing with alarm clocks going off and screaming babies and what a hangover and the car won't start and I've never even tasted a lobster?
