Pleasures - The Downfall of Civilizations

“In American today the popular word for good life is “happiness”…The American pursuit of happiness can often look like a compulsive, joyless effort to escape boredom… a people blessed with far more material advantages than any other society has ever enjoyed is not clearly the happiest on earth.” –Harold H. Titus & Marilyn S. Smith

The material advantage is a curse more than a blessing. Most of those things promises to make our lives easier by helping us or saving time. One would think that those improvements would allow us to focus on more important endeavors but it only “free us” to pursue more things.

Materials are a curse when the people buying it have no sense of values (as in what’s really important in life). When this occurs, the things he owns-owns him.
We buy things because it’s pleasurable and we too often confuse pleasure with happiness. Like Orrin Woodward said, “Pleasure doesn’t bring happiness, only an increased hunger for more pleasures.”

Happiness comes from following our values. Joy, which is the ultimate form of happiness, comes from being at peace with ourselves and is often attained through religion or spirituality (along with following values) – It’s a sense of belonging to something bigger than us.

Pleasure is like a quick burning fire, it often can’t be controlled even if we think we can. Pleasure is short lived and has been the caused of the downfalls of previous civilizations which will include our own if we don’t understand it and attempt to move away from it.

*This post can also be found on Men 2.0