Slow Hedonism
Gentle fascination, soft vigilance, and the politics of feeling good
Intro: my inner Pleasure Curmudgeon
After reading Pleasure Activism, while visiting pandemic-ravaged San Francisco, while feeling a particular sliding-into-middle-aged sense of out-of-touchness, of the-kids-are-not-alright-ness, of defamiliarization with the world and a sense that things are becoming quite deranged aren’t they, I wondered if pleasure is what civilizations shrug into when all grander central projects have been lost. “Not sure what else to do; we might as well feel good?”
Intro #2: not overwhelm, but fascination (child-likeness)
There’s that Bible verse: wanna be the greatest in the kingdom? Become like a child. Then people talk about how humble kids are. And like, maybe? But I also love kids for their fearlessness. For their lack of overwhelm.
When my now-6-year-old was first starting to speak English, I started "learning" Chinese. I put "learning" in quotes because I was more accurately just "playing the Chinese game" on Duolingo. (Their recent replacing-humans-with-AI announcement aside, I mean no shade on Duolingo! I have loved it! I think it's probably most effective when used as one part of a complete language-learning program, but I didn't need my Chinese exploration to to be most effective, I just wanted to have fun. Anyhow.)
At the beginning, I was picking up words in my new language faster than she was in hers, but I knew she'd surpass me at some point (it didn't take long!). I remember scrolling through the still-greyed-out part of the Duolingo course, seeing how far I had to go, and feeling sort of overwhelmed by it. Defeated.
But then I'd look at her. She never felt that way. Call it humility, call it ignorance, but kids have so much to learn! And they never feel overwhelmed, at least when they're very young, by the frankly-quite-overwhelming journey before them. They just throw themselves into the next thing with delight; with fascination. "What will the next lesson hold??"
Intro #3: hard focus vs soft vigilance (returning to breath)
Buddhist meditation says: don’t use the vice-grip of your willpower to clamp your attention to your breath, yelling at yourself, “focus! concentrate!” until your jaw is sore. That’s “challenging and boring at the same time.”
Instead, experience the world through your breath; with your breath. Find something interesting about your breath. Let it draw you gently into yet something else interesting about it. Let there be a cascade, a momentum of attention, of interest, of vigilance.
This is what’s meant by the “right concentration” aspect of the Eightfold Path. Not “hard focus”, but “soft vigilance.”
down with the pleasure hierarchy! ain’t we all hedonists?
Back to my Pleasure Curmudgeon moment in SF—what a celebrated cultural impulse! I’ve stumbled across this perspective all over the place. Recently I came across it in some conservative blog post. “Trans people are bad,” said the regrettable post, “because their highest ideal is mere desire fulfillment.”
As if the writer’s isn’t!
Their issue isn’t with desire and its fulfillment, it’s the kind of desire. It’s the social class or people group doing the desiring. It’s that certain groups’ pleasure challenges the dominant power structure.
One is only supposed to desire the things the author desires. Like, I don’t know, going to church, or a fundraiser auction, or, you know, a friggin’ amusement park.
We build entire multi-million dollar industries around entertainment, amusement, fun, and pleasure, but you’re going to say that “just” trying to get desires fulfilled is a base impulse? That we should all pursue some higher purpose? What is this “higher purpose” of which you speak? Is it something that you just happen to find… desirable?
fuck yeah, slow hedonism
Am I saying that all pleasure is equal? That there’s no objective way to measure one pleasure against another? That one person’s genuine enjoyment of church-going is as morally pure, or morally bankrupt, as someone else’s genuine enjoyment of a drugged-out rave?
Maybe! Applying morality to these sorts of things feels fraught, to me.
What’s helpful, to each person? And whose job is it to determine that?
I know church-enjoyers who aren’t hateful; who don’t get off on self-righteous indignation and dominance hierarchies. And I know ravers who use their drugs conscientiously, who are stable and skilled at their work, who aren’t falling into self-destruction.
For me, right now, at my life stage, I want to embrace slow hedonism. Do things for pleasure! Pleasure is good! But I don’t need the easiest, fastest return on investment. Some of life’s most rewarding experiences require time; commitment; persistent exploration. Like a small child, follow fascination. Like the Buddha, practice soft vigilance.
A Slow Hedonism lens on:
• Church
If you’re going to church out of obligation or fear, maybe stop! Go again when/if you can find the joy in it.
To be swept up in some holy cause; to feel a part of a collective; to lift glad voices together; to care and be cared for in a web of reciprocity—of course this feels good.
The Happy Show, a traveling museum exhibition that changed my worldview in 2013, had a graph I’ll never forget. How happy did people report being, when engaged in various activities?
In case you can’t see it, the happiest activity is “going to a religious service.” Rated much higher than “having sex” (3rd place) or even—2nd place—“working”!
And of COURSE there’s also a bunch of trauma that happens in religious spaces and of COURSE lots of people participate out of a sense of obligation and fear. But for every one of those, I wonder if there’s an equal or greater number of people who participate in organized religion because they genuinely enjoy it. They’re not allowed SAYING that’s why they do it. They’re not ADMITTING even to themselves that that’s why they’re there. But is that the actual truth? The actual draw?
They’re feeling good. Pleasure-seeking. A deep sort of pleasure that we call “meaning.” A slow sort of pleasure that drips out over time, heightening life’s highs and softening its lows. A high-effort, high-reward sort of pleasure.
• Spiritual practice
I had a consistent meditation practice for a couple years, ended by a video game (Breath of the Wild, for all those who partake).
And the video game is fun too! I have no guilt about it.
In fact, for a very little while, the two overlapped. The meditating and the gaming. And I actually really liked the way the game shaped my subconscious! I would close my eyes to meditate, and I would still see swirling phantasmagoric colors. The whole world felt more vivid, more saturated.
Meditation also promises interesting brain states, but it takes many years of discipline to achieve those. Video games deliver instantly! And the “practice,” insofar as we can call it that, offers much more immediate dopamine.
But still, the video game brain state is a pretty low high. Easy to get to the peak, nowhere to go from there.
By contrast, I’ve heard the mental states you can achieve through meditation have a much higher high. Might be more like exploring a range of mountain peaks than climbing one summit. Sounds fun! Rewarding; pleasurable. Worth investing some effort to achieve.
It’s not that I compel myself out of guilt, or shame. I just get curious about what those higher highs would feel like; what sort of insight and meaning and pleasure await if I spend more time with the harder thing.
• Sobriety
This one’s obvious, right?
Drinking makes you feel like shit.
Ok, I’ll personalize it.
Drinking makes me feel like shit.
And ok, that’s not strictly true. And I’m not full-sober!
But I love this trend of being sober-curious, of watching how much we drink, of actually thinking about whether this evening’s slightly-enhanced pleasure is worth tomorrow’s headache, sluggishness, bloat.
If I abstain for the goal of increasing tomorrow’s pleasure, isn’t that still hedonism? It’s just slower hedonism. Hedonism with a different time horizon.
You can extend this to all sorts of healthful activities. Sleeping enough (aka “not staying out late, at least not often”). Eating foods that sustain. Not eating too much. Moving your body. (I often don’t feel like going for my run, and I’m annoyed at how fucking good it makes me feel. I wish there were an easier way to get that high.)
• World improvement
One reason to resettle refugees in your city is to raise the bar on your city’s food culture. Get new kinds of restaurants; new fusions between unexpected flavors.
Is this the best reason? Probably not. But even at the level of pleasure, of the aesthetic, it makes sense to work for a better, more just world.
This extends to other kinds of world improvement, too. At some point, improving only your own and your family’s well-being while allowing broad immiseration to deepen will eventually worsen your own experience in the world. No matter how rich you are, you cannot control the security detail at your bunker after the collapse.
I think about this when I think about how my (literal and cultural) ancestors deforested a hemisphere, destroyed its cultures, erased its languages, murdered its peoples: in the name of abundance, these fuckers truncated a bunch of my options in the world. There is cuisine I will never taste. There are languages I cannot learn. There are towering sacred forests I can never wander.
A world of empowered women who enjoy sex is a world where men have to worry less and have better sex.
A world where diverse people groups can thrive and create in safety is a world of better art; more interesting stories.
All flourishing is mutual. Our liberation is all bound up together. I want to summon a better world out of a sense of justice and rightness, sure, but also because it directly benefits me.
I suspect this lens can make the work of liberation more broadly appealing. It’s not some namby-pamby self-flagellation, it’s about our own experiences of pleasure and joy and thriving.
Pleasure Activism starts at this premise—working toward a world that will bring more abundant joy—and further asks how we can make the work itself the most pleasurable activity.
• Grand central projects
Do you think the illiterate workers who built the cathedrals felt awful the whole time?
Of course not!
They were thrilled to spend a lifetime carving one massive stone for one wall in one building. They were delighted to play a role in gifting a grand inheritance to future generations.
Curse my Pleasure Curmudgeon confusion. Pleasure and work—even or especially grand, courageous, generational work—are not at odds. Pleasure can lead us toward the grand project. If the grand project does not bring pleasure, it is not worth doing.
Will you be a hedonist with me?
Next time you spot a pleasure curmudgeon out in the wild—or feel the one inside you rising—look closer. Is the curmudgeon also pleasure-motivated? Is it just that their preferred pleasures are normalized, even sanctified, by the dominant culture?
I want to invite you to be a hedonist with me, but I think the truth is that you already are one. I think we’re all hedonists. We just disagree on time-scale.
We can still have a grand central project
Hedonism and pleasure have a reputation for ablating the future; for having the shortest-possible time-horizon; for seeking the quickest return on investment.
Quick pleasure can be fun. Quick pleasure can be a life-saving step on the path.
Quick pleasure can also be a blindfold. An endless procession of quarterly earnings statements can destroy a biosphere.
Give me a hedonism slow enough to consider the 50-year plan; the 100-year vision; the seventh generation. Give me hedonism slow enough to regrow the forests. Give me the meaning and pleasure of a future worth yearning toward.