On hedonism.

Hedonism is an intelligence of the flesh. It is the active choice to make, of an indifferent and ugly world, a better one. Bite into the correct fruit, something spotless, pulpy, and wet, and you've not only gained admittance to the garden, but created it.

Why rely upon vulgar biology and accidents of time and space when we can make choices? We can invoke our best selves. We can wrap ourselves in strange glamours and furs, in suits with silken and luxurious linings never to be seen save by ourselves and a few lovers¹. We can inform the universe of what we are, rather than accepting the things we are told to want and be.

The current incarnation of the world, this thoughtless and slovenly beast that feeds on waste and plastics, is, indeed, disappointing. Materialism, we're told, is nothing but the cheap, the new, the replaceable. It is to be consumed without question at the same time that it is to be distrusted. That distrust is not revolutionary, but built into the creature itself. It is expected that we should resent without either fighting or ignoring the corporate gods we are told we cannot escape. In our discomfort with the physical we rape the planet because, for all our desires, we do not respect the things themselves. The objects will, they must, be replaced by something newer, so they may rot, and the earth and the materials and the people that made them, being also things, may rot with them. The segment of the world from which I hail, as noted by Mister Thomas à Becket, does have too much, and we certainly have more than we've earned. My nation is fast becoming a landfill because we feel that we need, that we are entitled to, things that we do not enjoy. However, the material of materialism, I might suggest, is not the problem.

Decadence is a delicate and wounded thing. I do not fear objects. I do distrust the ugly, and the inhumane. So I avoid it, and instead cling to the rare, the antique, the strange, and the beautiful. May I request that you join me?

Hedonism, I posit, requires more than excess. It also relies upon a strong sense of discernment. One wouldn't wallow in just anything. Drunkenness is little more than a vice without knowledge of what we drink. Our ability to afford fine wines and ancient liquors is irrelevant: what matters is that we perfect our own preferences. Knowledge of the textures, the colours, the flavours, the scope of possibility, makes selection a sacrament. Therein lies the indulgence.

¹_{Yes, I am in fact implying that Lord Whimsy's lovers include every one of us to read his blogue. He's a gentle, intelligent, and dashing man. We cannot be expected to restrain ourselves.}

A Brief Defense of Hedonism

I am a hedonist, and proud of it.

I do nothing except search after new experiences, facts, situations and puzzles in the hope that I will derive some enjoyment from having found them. My mind is ever-hungry, and the rest of my life is structured around feeding it. Everything else is less important, the body a not-always-so-distant second. The world exists, and I yearn to know it with an intense and bottomless hunger.

I'm no good at owning and caring for material goods. I don't keep my room in order or my clothing clean. I have a lot of trouble paying attention to things that don't interest me. But when I'm on my game, when my mind is sharp and my talons are out, when I can taste what I'm looking for in my brain, that's when I know I'm alive.

There is so much that I don't understand, so much that I have not seen, and I want to know it all. And there isn't time to do anything else but seek it out. If pleasure is the motivating factor in my continually deepening understanding of the world, then so be it.

I try to be the best person I can, because I find it hinders my ability to enjoy myself when I do not.

I don't understand people who don't set out, as best they can each day, to enjoy the world. Sure, it's a terrible place full of terrible people who want to do terrible things to one another. Sure, it can be pain and suffering and despair. Sure, we're a set of evolved neuroses competing for processor time and nutrients in a fleshy sack laced with poisons and a million different kinds of tiny battling monsters.

But it still beats nothing.

The rain on your face when you look up at the storm beats nirvana hollow any day of the week, as far as I'm concerned. Heaven, as the Talking Heads say, is a place where nothing ever happens. This world may not be the best of all possibilities, but it's the one we have, and it is fascinating, fragile, beautiful and terrible in equal parts.

In the face of such an existence, hedonism is the only logical way to proceed. Enjoy the world you live in, take hold of it, and make it an even more unbearably beautiful place.

I can't think of a better alternative.