God is an Iron
Any fan of Spider Robinson should instantly recognize the quote that makes up the title of this post. Hopefully a few of those people have read the short story which also bears that name. This is the question of joy v.s. pleasure, and goes down to the fundamental core of why people pursue personal development.
So, why am I saying that God is an iron? Isn’t that a bit blasphemous? Well, in a way, it is, but no more blasphemous than any other religion giving God imperfect qualities, such as anger or jealousy. I’m talking about human nature, and the division between pleasure and joy.
Let’s assume for a moment that there is a creator, and by looking at that creator’s works, we can infer something about its personality. As humans, we are that creator’s works, and we have some peculiar properties. The most distinct of those qualities is our tendency to do things that, in the long term, hurt us.
People do drugs. Corporations destroy natural resources. Obesity is rampant in the United States. Organized religion is filled with people who only serve themselves, using their influence over others to spread fear and bigotry. It seems that mankind is built to enjoy those things which destroy ourselves.
“If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.”
- Spider Robinson
The American Heritage Dictionary states that irony is
“Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.”
It is truly ironic that humans enjoy that which leads to our destruction. Promiscuous sex, while good for the survival of a threatened species, is dangerous in the long run when population levels peak over the sustainable levels, yet it is extremely pleasurable. Consuming alcohol in small doses leaves a person with little pleasure and plenty of reason, yet when we ingest enough alcohol to do direct damage to the brain, we get the most pleasure out of it. Speed provides pleasure at the expense of your nervous system and metabolism. Driving cars is fun, yet cars consume massive amounts of non-renewable resources, leading us inexorably to an economic collapse when it is no longer profitable to drill for that resource.
White sugar. Glucose. Why is it that we find glucose in all of our processed food? What about highly refined flour, such as what is found in white bread and pasta? Why do we find “high fructose corn syrup” on the ingredient lists of all of our sodas? It is because sugar is addictive. I include starch as sugar, because the change from starch to sugar begins in the mouth. Have you ever wondered why fast food chains include a drink and fries in their meals? It isn’t to add value, it is to add to the addictive nature of their meals by giving you more sugar than your body knows what to do with.
Sugar leads to obesity. Sugar is directly responsible for the most common types of diabetes. In small doses, sugar gives us the energy that we need to survive, but in doses large enough to give us pleasure, sugar rots our teeth, gives us an insulin rush, adds fat to our bodies, then leaves us weak and tired, needing even more sugar just so that we can feel normal.
Man can not live on pleasure alone. In fact, too much pleasure kills.
I’m not saying that we should stop pursuing pleasure. In fact, to a certain point, pleasure is still good. The pursuit of pleasure is what helped humanity to survive for the hundreds of thousands of years of pre-history where we didn’t have time for anything except to worry about our own survival. We didn’t even have time to record our thoughts, which is why this period is called prehistoric; we didn’t have the time to invent history yet.
So far, I have been able to identify three distinct motivators for us humans; fear, pleasure, and joy. In terms of empowerment, fear is at the far low end of the spectrum. Fear should only come into play when our lives are in immediate danger, because of the power that we give up when using it, and when a person lives in fear for too long, it can be lethal, especially in the form of suicide and physical diseases brought about from stress and depression.
Pleasure, as a motivator, is the mammal instinct to find something that feels good, so that we can increase our chances of survival. With hundreds of thousands of years of refinement for humanity, it is the primary instinct that drives our daily decisions, and largely our strongest motivator when our lives are not in danger.
The reason why pleasure has turned sour, however, is because humanity has learned how to live without needing to constantly worry about survival. We have escaped from the need to find shelter from the elements, fire to defend ourselves from predators, and food to last us entire months. Our fire is contained in streams of electrons flowing across thin tungsten wires. Our shelters do not just protect us from the elements, they isolate us from them. We even have portable shelters in the form of clothes, umbrellas, and sun-screen, as well as the ability to build shelters that can withstand the vacuum of space. We don’t have to hunt for a single ounce of our food anymore, or live off of raw roots to hold us over between our large kills during a harsh winter.
Joy, on the other hand, is a different beast. Let’s narrow pleasure and joy down a little bit for the purposes of these posts, just so that we don’t have the cross-over of the definitions that we find when we’re talking about joy and pleasure in other contexts. For this post, let’s say that pleasure is meeting the physical needs that make us happy, such as sex, food, and physical comfort. Joy is meeting the emotional needs that make us happy, such as finding love and peace.
Joy doesn’t depend quite as much on the physical state of the body as pleasure does, and it is very difficult to die from an over-abundance of peace or love. Joy isn’t found in a pill or an activity, so we can’t mass-produce joy, unless entire societies devote their efforts to increase joy. Joy comes from looking at something and appreciating your role in it, whether you are looking back at a job well done, looking at a loving relationship, or admiring a child who you raised to be an influential person in the future.
Probably best of all, joy is a moving target. We can always open ourselves up to find more joy by doing things that we can look at and appreciate. In fact, we don’t need to do anything ourselves to experience joy; we simply have to open our eyes to the world around us, and by loving everything in our environment, we experience joy. It does help to multiply our joy, though, if we take an active, conscious part in our lives, which is why we find personal development.
I don’t know if joy is the answer to the world’s problems. I do know, though, that I will find out. Joy is the emotion that we feel when we participate in peace, which I have defined before as the love for everything in our environment.
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