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The world is full of them, the peddlers of pleasure. You
cannot move one inch today without encountering one of them. They assault you from
every pulpit they have.
Am I the only one to feel surrounded by them? It seems that
no matter where I look these days, I find one of them. I hope this is a
temporary affliction.
Yes, I find them even in the church. Whenever they preach
the goodness of God, and separate it from the justice of God, be careful. They
are selling you the God of Pleasure.
You meet them in the aisles of your supermarket.
Merchandisers, of course, sell you very little that does
not promise great pleasure. The worst in my book are car salesmen who cannot
show you a bare car without a woman wrapped around it.
Why, why women are tolerating such an affront?
You meet them while you are passively watching your very
favorite TV program. Yes, I mean all the TV commercials interruptions are all
peddling some pleasure or other.
But I do not mean only commercials; I mean also the content
of most TV programs. Reality shows, it seems to me, are the
most adept at it. Even the pain of the contestants is provided to you as
a titillation for your short-lived pleasure.
The show casters soon switch to the image of the grin of
the winners. Damned be the losers. They are out of sight in a jiff.
All other shows clearly are shows. Nobody expects anything
out of them but light pleasure. And now we even have light beer!
Pay attention to this preference of our world today and you
can soon make up your favorite list. Just be aware of this reality, though.
They are not innocent peddlers of pleasure. While they pretend to offer you
pleasure, they steal away your money and, most of all, your time.
Were this the end of the story, despicable as it is, it
would not be worth much attention. There are a few other aspects of this tendency
that are really worrisome. Let me first give a look at some political
implications.
Peddlers of pleasure are there to distract our attention
from, and thus hide away the harsh reality of the life of most people today.
The hungry, the homeless, the unemployed, the underemployed, those who manage
two or three jobs to eke out a living, all become invisible.
Worse than that. Peddlers of pleasure, by hiding the harsh reality not only
make reality disappear; they make you feel isolated. You must be the only one
to worry. All other people are just enjoying themselves.
But wait. By hiding the reality and making you feel
isolated, peddlers of pleasure make you feel impotent at the same time. In the
back of your mind you know that there is a circle of corruption enveloping the
world today. We have all known of the military-industrial complex ever since
President Eisenhower pointed out its existence to us. Politicians who need to
be elected accept contributions from members of the military-industrial complex.
Can they be expected to break that circle?
“We the people” could and should; but we will not until we
reject the feeling of impotence.
The peddlers of pleasure do not do damage only to our
social, economic, and political structures. They cut deep into our psyche. And
they do that in a hundred subtle ways, even when they are not aware of causing
damage.
The first question they raise in our minds is this: What’s
wrong with me? Why am I not enjoying myself as all other people do?
And that is the lie to which we succumb. Other people are
not necessarily enjoying themselves. It is at this juncture that peddlers of
pleasure re-double their efforts.
They not only deny that pain exists. Some go to the extreme
of asserting that pain SHOULD not exist. At that moment, from impotent
individuals, they transform themselves into all powerful creatures.
They invent a world in which there is no pain.
Worse than that, when they notice the impossibility of
their creation, they inveigh against God. God was all wrong in creating the
world as it is. What gumption!
Read writers like Nietzsche with this understanding in mind
and you realize what stands in the back of the reality they attempt to
re-create. At first, one can settle on this explanation: these are people who
are afraid of pain.
But even this turns out to be only a partial and charitable
explanation. There is a deeper and more painful reality that envelops these
people. They are people without love.
Why do we love each other? That is the question that burst
into my head the other day when I found myself among a congenial company of
people. The answer I gave I find truly interesting. Because we sacrifice for
each other, I said.
A still deeper issue arises out of this silly question: and
why do we sacrifice for each other? The answer, the inscrutable answer, the
mysterious answer is that when we sacrifice for each other out of love, the
pain automatically, inscrutably, mysteriously disappears.
Carmine
Gorga, PhD, is president of The Somist
Institute and author of numerous publications in economic theory and policy. Mr. Gorga can be
reached at cgorga@jhu.edu.
Warm thanks go to Peter J. Bearse and David S.
Wise for invaluable editorial assistance.