[extropy-chat] Hedonism? Why or why not? Was (John C. Wright finds god)

[Trend Ologist]

When young I lived a full life, always with people,
now I spend most of the time alone.  When one is
nineteen, one has fire in the belly, later on it turns
to acid reflux, so slowing down is option #1; option
#2 is continuing on as if one were young. I chose #1
and feel much better, no more nagging 'significant
other', grasping family, bad friends. I have a few
good friends, but I wasn't able to make friends with
them until after getting the others out of my life--
that is, after choosing option #1.  Just because one
is active & lives a full life when young does not mean
it has to continue indefinitely. 
 Some fellows spend their whole lives getting women
into bed, some fellows reach a point where they want
to keep women out of their bed so they can watch
football videos.




> Sounds like you have a life dedicated to not dying
> and not
> being of service or a resource to power-grasping
> others. 
> And that sooner or later you think you will die,
> either as a
> result of power grasping by others or as a result of
> "natural"
> causes.
> 
> And that seems a "decent" life.  Aren't you trading
> life fullness
> for life duration? That isn't bad necessarily but it
> doesn't
> appeal to me.  
> 
> Unless denying others gives you pleasure than, to
> me, even
> hedonism has more to recommend it than your escapism
> as
> at least hedonists value their own pleasure. Your
> life seems
> to be dedicated only towards a denial of others
> pleasures.
> 
> That doesn't seem like the sort of life that you
> could have 
> always aspired too, it contains no obvious positive
> impetus
> for going on because it contains no goals, pursuits,
> or values.
> Or do you have these and leave them out? Am I
> missing
> something?
> 
> In the classics (perhaps slightly corrupted in my
> head by the 
> movie Troy), facing a life without any prospect of
> immortality
> Achilles had a choice, he could conduct himself in
> such a way
> as to have a long laborious life (as he saw it), or
> a short glorious
> one (as he saw it). 
> 
> As I understand it, what made Achilles different was
> his perception
> of the choice. Those that do not face their
> mortality squarely across
> a span of years or even decades cannot so
> deliberately choose. They
> can't weight the trade. (I assume we are all born
> wanting to live). In
> knowing that he was mortal I imagine Achilles could
> apply a sort of
> calculus that weighted the values of his moments. He
> could decide 
> that a short glorious life was to be preferred over
> a long inglorious
> one.  And that made him dangerous to other power
> graspers in a
> world of power graspers because there were fewer
> scales on his
> eyes than the majority of choice-deniers. He was
> motivated to be a
> player, a predator, and a fighter not just a fleer. 
> He lived fully while
> he lived and then he died as he would have done
> anyway. 
> 
> I'm not Achilles, and I'm not ready to name my
> poison. I'm still
> working out what the likely default timespan is.  I
> hope I don't
> settle for a "decent" life though - it would be
> disappointing I think. 
> 
> Brett
> 
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