Why pleasure sucks

On settling for “fun” instead of happiness

Hi, I’m Susan. I like dark chocolate, black licorice, Call the Midwife on Netflix, and the occasional vodka soda cocktail. My favorite video game when I was a kid was Super Mario brothers, and it was the OG version… because I played it in 5^th grade in 1986. Mario and Luigi were fresh on the scene back then. And I must say, I was pretty dang good at getting through the first level in those days.

Now you know a few fun things about me and some stuff I like…

But you may not know this: none of those things are goods – not chocolate, licorice, a TV show, a preferred beverage, a video game. Not a one. Each of them is a pleasure for sure, but not a good. The distinction really matters.

Why? Because enjoying something (doing something that brings pleasure) is different from flourishing as a person. Fun is not fulfillment. A pleasure is not – to repeat myself – a good in and of itself.

I’ve been digging into this distinction for several years now; it’s what this Substack, “For the Sake of the Good,” is all about. It started when I read a passage from a parenting book written by a physician of three decades, in which he was giving advice to a mom whose son gamed excessively. The son said playing video games “made him happy…” but the mom was still concerned. The doctor recounts the incident:

I told mom she was confusing happiness with pleasure. That’s common today. A trip to the arcade may be a source of pleasure, but it will not give lasting and enduring happiness. This mother’s son derives pleasure from playing video games, but playing video games in an online world is unlikely to be a source of real fulfillment. The pleasure may last for weeks or even months, but it will not last many years…

Pleasure is not the same thing as happiness. The gratification of desire yields pleasure, not lasting happiness.

On one hand, this is incredibly basic stuff, stuff we all know. You want and get something but aren’t satisfied afterwards. You watch TV all day… turn into a zombie and feel gross. You eat 5 delicious cupcakes… get a stomachache, and have to go to bed early. You spend weeks lying on a couch… and can’t walk or breathe as easily the next month. Each activity is a response to an appetite, a desire for something we want that makes us feel good now. But what’s enjoyable in the moment doesn’t produce long-term positive outcomes.

On the other hand, we see that our society no longer has a grasp on this basic principle. We have, in short, fallen in love with pleasure. We give ourselves wholly to pursuits of fun and enjoyment. We want to believe – and spend  time trying to convince ourselves and each other – that pursuing pleasure is The Way To Go. We think if we try hard enough, we’ll figure out a way to do BOTH a whole bunch of what feels good here/now… AND ALSO flourish in the long run.

Natural law – the age-old set of universal truths, common to all humans and discovered through reason – is what tells us: no. It can’t be done. The world and human beings and flourishing all don’t work that way. We don’t flourish by pursuing pleasure for its own sake (however much we might dislike this truth). We can’t change that. We aren’t in charge and don’t make the rules. The system was already in place when we showed up on earth, and it’ll be here after we’re gone.

The boy who plays video games all day in the basement, having “fun,” ends up miserable. His outcomes are empirically worse than the boy next door who plays ball with his friends, reads books, goes on sunrise hikes.

Why?

Because the ball-playing, book-reading, sunrise-viewing hiker boy will achieve the basic goods in his life. He will grow in all six of them: life (including health), beauty, knowledge, friendship, play, and practical reasonableness (the capacity that organizes them all). The video-playing boy will gain virtually none of them.

And here’s the most important part: the side effect of pursuing basic goods turns out to be (plot twist) fun and enjoyment. It’s the very thing the video-playing boy seeks when he boots up “Grand Theft Auto” for the hundredth time… and ultimately ends up without. It’s ironic – and tragic for him.

Bottom line: when you pursue the basic goods, you end up with BOTH the goods themselves, which make life worth living, AND ALSO the pleasure that pursuing them eventually brings. The enjoyment may not come immediately, but it will come eventually.

If this is true (and you’ll find, if you think about it for a few minutes, that it is), then the smart thing to do is pursue the basic goods instead of pleasure for its own sake.

Let’s be clear though.

Am I saying that chocolate, licorice, my show or favorite drink, Super Mario Brothers, or a video game – in short, some things I enjoy – are bad? I am not. Does doing something that brings pleasure suck? It doesn’t necessarily. However none of those things is intrinsically good. Licorice and watching Call the Midwife are neutral (more here) and shouldn’t be the purpose for my actions or the point of my life. I shouldn’t put energy into pursuing them, because pursuing them for their own sake, especially excessively, will leave me empty… and I’ll have wasted the time that could have been spent on true thriving. Pleasure, compared to true flourishing, sucks.

The boy saying, “But Ma, these video games makie me happy!” is incorrect – and dangerously so. The games are pleasurable and are gratifying a desire, but that’s it. His mother should require him to instead actively pursue friendship, knowledge, true play, beauty, life (health), and practical reasonableness... It’s not too late for him to flourish! Or for you or me either. Here’s to it.