Humanity can be divided into two categories: people who wear hats and people who don’t.
Point being: generalizations are arbitrary and not all that illuminating; you can divvy up the world into any number of binary distinctions; the differences will allow you to sort, but the sorting won’t really tell you anything of substance.
Nevertheless, there may be something of value to take from noticing that people’s tastes and inclinations do fall, more or less, along a continuum between asceticism at one end and hedonism at the other. There are those, in other words, who are disposed more towards self-denial and those whose preference is for self-indulgence.
This is not to suggest that one approach is superior to the other; it is, however, to acknowledge that, given a choice of dinner entrees, some percentage of the population will order the full meal, while some other faction will decline to put in a request at all.
I believe I lean towards the ascetic side; it’s not that I don’t take pleasure in pleasure; rather, it’s that, to some extent, my most pleasurable experiences are not those that produce the most pleasure. Of course, if that’s the case, then those that don’t do, thereby revealing the contradictory nature of this state of affairs.
Suffice it to say, I’ll happily take an unpeeled carrot and a shot of rye neat; save the ortolan and Singapore Sling for that outgoing person at the other end of the bar.
The late great Anthony Bourdain embodied the attitude and behavior of the pleasure-seeker; it’s harder to find cultural archetypes of the ascetic sensibility; maybe the Dalai Lama qualifies, but I’ll also take former supermodel, Kate Moss, whose famous quote, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” seems like it captures the paradoxical quality of asceticism’s appeal.
It also highlights the key point that asceticism is different than self-denial; ascetics don’t not do what they want to; they just don’t do what they don’t.
Point being: generalizations are arbitrary and not all that illuminating; you can divvy up the world into any number of binary distinctions; the differences will allow you to sort, but the sorting won’t really tell you anything of substance.
Nevertheless, there may be something of value to take from noticing that people’s tastes and inclinations do fall, more or less, along a continuum between asceticism at one end and hedonism at the other. There are those, in other words, who are disposed more towards self-denial and those whose preference is for self-indulgence.
This is not to suggest that one approach is superior to the other; it is, however, to acknowledge that, given a choice of dinner entrees, some percentage of the population will order the full meal, while some other faction will decline to put in a request at all.
I believe I lean towards the ascetic side; it’s not that I don’t take pleasure in pleasure; rather, it’s that, to some extent, my most pleasurable experiences are not those that produce the most pleasure. Of course, if that’s the case, then those that don’t do, thereby revealing the contradictory nature of this state of affairs.
Suffice it to say, I’ll happily take an unpeeled carrot and a shot of rye neat; save the ortolan and Singapore Sling for that outgoing person at the other end of the bar.
The late great Anthony Bourdain embodied the attitude and behavior of the pleasure-seeker; it’s harder to find cultural archetypes of the ascetic sensibility; maybe the Dalai Lama qualifies, but I’ll also take former supermodel, Kate Moss, whose famous quote, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” seems like it captures the paradoxical quality of asceticism’s appeal.
It also highlights the key point that asceticism is different than self-denial; ascetics don’t not do what they want to; they just don’t do what they don’t.
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