Hedonism

What is "fulfillment"? Is it sensory pleasure? Accumulation of wealth? Both?

>implying the meaningless sensual pleasures of hedonism are fulfilling

>Not being able to fully appreciate the pleasures of life, even the sensual ones.
>Lacking self-control to take what you need, and only what you need.

I bet you're the kind of people who would get drunk the same with cheap beer or old blended whisky.

>Will never reach ataraxia
>LaughingMuses.jpg

So you exist for the sake of pleasure? How can something that happens indiscriminately to both good and evil men regardless of their deeds be considered good or evil?

The world you pose without Providence or an ultimate justice simply isn't worth living in because the billions of people whose lives are characterized by suffering through no fault of their own will have no respite other than death. Epicureanism takes a combination of immense narcissism and material wealth in order to provide any semblance of fulfillment. Even then Epicureans believe that the soul dissolves upon physical death, so it is all for naught in the end.

Hedonist America was doing just fine from 1960 to 2000 desu

I think he's more pointing out that you're projecting your own political ideology onto Roman plebeians

>Very first line of quote on the pic.

Pleasure is just that, pleasure. Is neither evil or good, it just is what it is. And to some degree, yes, we do exists not so much to seek pleasure, but also to avoid pain, otherwise, why would we be here? Which lead me to another point: how an almighty, benevolent and omniscient being (let's call it Providence or God) and evil can co-exists? Whether we accept the mysticism of a greater scheme and lack of perspective (Hi, Leibniz!), or we pick the edgelord route of negating His existence or value, we ultimately face the fact we're surrounded by conditions that are outside our control (hey, I neither caused that tsunami, or have the means to actually improve the life of those affected), so we only have full control on our lives. So, let's try to get the best out of it.

>Soul
Give me convincing arguments why the soul is something pre-existing to our body, and will outlast our biological existence.

No. People have always indulged in pleasures.

>we only have full control on our lives
Not really. For the beginning of your life you're dependent on people who may or may not raise you or treat you properly, and you can get seriously fucked for the rest of your life if it's the latter.

yes but it doesnt matter even if we have an arbitrary aversion to it

>fulfilling
that's hedonism, you little troglodyte

lol

My own subjective experiences along with Pascal's wager convinced me to live my life as a Christian theist. I found hedonism to be wholly unfulfilling and my life is better by every objective measure

>Is hedonism more rampant todays world then in the past?
latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-millennials-less-sex-20160802-snap-story.html
forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/03/10/americans-are-having-less-sex-partnered-or-single/#6222b5bd68a5
mashable.com/2017/03/08/people-having-less-sex/#M9fJcFEB8Sq3

No, that's just an illusion thanks to expanding telecommunications making it easier than ever to record every moment of our lives, even the embarrassing moments. In reality, people are having less sex than they did in the past, mostly because they'd rather be sitting in front of a screen

hedonism always existed but now its rampant because of the invention od condoms, the pill and safe abortions.

I mean conservative in the behavioral meaning, not the political one.

I am not American, conservative does not mean a political party here.

>atheist/hedonist
No, not a single one, for very obvious reason you fucking brainlet.

>unsustainable resource exploitation will bring about the downfall of civilization in your life time
>people will instead blame it on dumb shit like "degeneracy"

They've been around since the French revolution told htem it was ok.

YOu don't read about them very much because they never do anything worthy of note. Hedonism is essentially doing the same shit an animal does. They just chase after shit htat makes the good chemicals in their brains go off as often as they can. Sex, sleep, food, and drugs.

No different than an animal, and not interesting or worth writing down what these people do as literally anyone can do these things.

>Is hedonism more rampant todays world then in the past?

Yes, Christianity was strong for 20000 years but degeneracy has returned from the depths of the human soul.

pretty much this

just because you cant afford being a hedonist doesnt mean you are not one

>the people that benefited were doing just fine

THICC nun

Almost makes me want to become a priest.

Daily reminder that hedonism is the ultimate cuck philosophy.

cosplaying with your THICC wife would probably be a more feasible and consistent means of scoring pussy

I wonder what a hedonist would do if he/she had to live in a third world country

Contract aids most likely

True

Modern society is actually really not degenerate. You only think old societies weren't degenerate because they hid it. If you read graffiti from that those times, the ugly truth rears its head. We've got more virgins and less teen pregnancies and crime than ever before.

>We've got more virgins

Impossible to determine

sex does not equate to hedonism. substitution effect, millenials are using screens and drugs which are just as debasing without the need for refractory periods.

It goes hand in hand. Ruining the family and turning people into little consumers

Dude, just go outside for a minute.

The ever expanding belt lines of society as well as more and more sex shops pretty much proves that hedonism is more prevalent now than say 60 years ago.

The joke is that if they're atheist they don't believe in hell

But it wouldn't be a nun pussy now, would it?

Yup. Every girl i see everyday in public have very tight clothes etc and alot of makeup. Boy wear very unmodest clothing too
Todays pop music is degenerate as fuck too

This.

Prior to the abundance of birth control couples had a lot of sex for a short burst then less and less as time went on.

The average couple had around 6 or 7 kids and most sex was for the purpose of reproduction. Enjoying it was a nice side effect.

My argument isn't along those lines although those could be included certainly.

My argument regards the fact that things like fast food and porn consumption are becoming more and more common and more and more cases of obesity and pornography addiction are occuring.

The fact that a majority of American children are obese should show you that the majority of American children are hedonistic in terms of diet.

this
hedonism just means you seek pleasure and avoid pain and think that's a valid end unto itself

Rampant hedonism is dangerous for the individual as well as society though.

To maintain good things requires hard work and diligence.

>millenials
You mean everyone: Gen X, Baby Boomers, etc. Every generation is experiencing this phenomenon, and even couples who have been committed to each other and no one else for their entire lives.

>muh degeneracy
The reason people had 6 or 7 kids was because they were rural farmers who needed all the hands that they could get. For as long as there have been cosmopolitan areas children have been an investment of resources, rather than an extra pair of hands helping around the land, so people had 2 to 3 instead, because they could invest limited resources maximizing their chances for success in a strenuous, intellectually demanding urban setting.

In the days when urban poverty was a thing, households having that many children meant packs of uneducated hooligans and orphans roaming the street committing petty crimes and getting into trouble.

It just so happens that the vast majority of people in this day and age live in urban or suburban areas so they're spending more time enriching themselves and pursuing interests than they are being bred for simple minded obedience and unflinching obedience and unlimited patience for rote bitch-work, which is what happens to rural folk who are able to socially isolate and dominate their children. Social movement is always in the direction of greater social mobility, and for a large number of people that meant giving up their subsistence farm and moving to the city in search of better paying factory work.

I'm pretty sure that other than weed and maybe alcohol, drug use is going down.

Come on, man. I drink on a budget.

>In reality, people are having less sex than they did in the past
Misleading horseshit.
Define "the past".
No shit post-AIDS generation are having less sex than Pre-AIDS post "Sexual Revolution" generations.

That doesn't magically mean though that people aren't living like debased whores when compared to the social norms pre-birth control.

Your point on urban Vs rural falls apart when you consider the fact that urban families still had far more children in the late 19th into the mid 20th century then they do now.

The main game changer was birth control which allows sex at any time to purely be about pleasure since there is little to no risk of pregnancy.

>Define "the past".
Why don't you actually read the articles instead of shitposting about how much you disapprove of their conclusions?

>It just so happens that the vast majority of people in this day and age live in urban or suburban areas so they're spending more time enriching themselves and pursuing interests than they are being bred for simple minded obedience and unflinching obedience and unlimited patience for rote bitch-work,

I don't know if this is deliberate dishonesty on your part or you're just so ideologically blinded by whatever bullshit koolaid you've swallowed that you don't consider our public education, system, which spends more time raising urban children than their parents do, to be a system whose entire purpose is anything other than to train young minds into simple minded unflinching obedience and unlimited patience for rote bitch-work.

Hopefully you're just a troll because the alternatives are too depressing to consider.

Nigga, please.

Subsidizing pharmaceutical companies R&D is not the same as legislating BANS on medicine for only one particular group (women), based entirely on religious guidelines.

because I've read the articles dumbass and that's exactly what they do, they compare the promiscuity of our post-AIDS generation to the pre-AIDS generation and claim that kids are prudes nowadays because less of them are taking part in anonymous gangbangs than in the past.

Who the fuck is legislating bans on medicince for women based on religious guidelines?

>Your point on urban Vs rural falls apart when you consider the fact that urban families still had far more children in the late 19th into the mid 20th century then they do now
And these were in impoverished slums to families who could barely afford to feed the children that they already had, leaving a desperate underclass which is prone to violence, crime, and revolutionary thinking.

More urban poor having children just means more driftless hooligans and more youth crime. The people you want having more children are your educated professional elite: your doctors, professors, lawyers, business leaders, police officers, and these are the kind of people who are easily able to squirrel around socially repressive laws.

>d that you don't consider our public education, system, which spends more time raising urban children than their parents do, to be a system whose entire purpose is anything other than to train young minds into simple minded unflinching obedience and unlimited patience for rote bitch-work.

No matter how badly you want to squeal about a changing world and go cower in a forest somewhere clutching your guns and bibles, the plain truth is that we are increasingly a world dominated by robots and technology, and in order to be a society which remains competitive in this rapidly changing global economy we need to be ready to invest in educational resources which are going to put our future labor force ahead of their peers in China, Europe and other places which aren't dominated by self-serving jackasses when it comes to making investments in education.

We are already at the point where automation is starting to take over farm work, so why would we restrict education and force people back into some rural paradise just to appease a ruling class which would rather be out shooting things in the woods? Because that worked so well for Qing China?

>your life fulfillment is based entirely on pleasure and sensory pursuits

untermensch tier desu

Then you need to work on your reading comprehension skills.

It's not just "kids these days", it's everybody: old people, young people, middle aged people. Technology is the driver of social change, not the bullshit morality of forest apes in camouflage underwear

>No matter how badly you want to squeal about a changing world and go cower in a forest somewhere clutching your guns and bibles

Nice rant ideologue, what does it have to do with the objective fact that factory model schooling's entire purpose is to mold young minds into simple minded unflinching obedience and unlimited patience for rote bitch-work.?

Teen pregnancy isn't degenerate. Riding the cock carousel with no consequences from your 13th birthday and having one children at 35, when women have lower quality eggs, is degenerate. Women valuing their """career""" over building a family is degenerate.

>It's not just "kids these days", it's everybody: old people, young people, middle aged people

Yeah no shit, it's called life in a post-AIDS world dumbass. Nobody wants the fucking monster.

>Homicide rate as proxy for violence in a society

Really relevant:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1124155/

>Medical advances mask epidemic of violence by cutting murder rate

Murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are but for medical developments over the past 40 years.

According to new research, doctors are saving the lives of thousands of victims of attack who four decades ago would have died and become murder statistics.

Although the study is based on US data, the researchers say the principle applies to other countries too: “There is reason to expect a similar trend overall in Britain,” said Dr Anthony Harris, the lead author of the study.

>what does it have to do with the objective fact that factory model schooling's entire purpose is to mold young minds into simple minded unflinching obedience and unlimited patience for rote bitch-work.?
Because you obviously live in an area with shit schools, that's why.

Where I live, the public schools have the money to invest in separate departments, sending the lesser preforming students to pick up a trade and be ready to enter the labor force as a welder or auto mechanic by the time they get their High School diploma, while the higher achieving students are sent to advanced placement classrooms to prep them for college. In fact in my area there's a public STEM academy for underprivileged minority students.

Neither the blue collar nor white collar professions are rote unskilled bitchwork, they require workers who are capable of thinking on their feet and coming up with creating solutions to problems independent of authority.

You get out of education what you invest into it.

>a post-AIDS world dumbass. Nobody wants the fucking monster.
Try to wrap your head around a committed couple, who have never nor ever will touch another person, not having as much sex for various reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with "MEGA SCARY NIGGER FAGGOT AIDS" and try to keep up

You talk like a liberal pundit or an empty-headed exec

And you talk like a slack jawed hoohaw from thje sticks who listens to too much AM radio

>implying people haven't been having sex for pleasure since the dawn of mankind
>implying taking away birth control would make people have less sex instead of just increasing the numbers of unwanted children
nevertheless, the so-called "sexual revolution" is essentially permanent no matter how much bible-bashers/prudes may wish this were not so

>Because you obviously live in an area with shit schools, that's why.

Per pupil spending in the US is actually among the highest in the entire world.

Past a certain point, educational spending is pure waste on primary and secondary level students. It accomplishes nothing. It is actually a textbook case of diminishing marginal returns.

Look at PISA results. Western countries get absolutely BTFO'd by East Asian ones that spend far less per pupil.

>You get out of education what you invest into it.

Discipline > Cash, as far as education goes. You need a culture of discipline, hard work, self-sacrifice. The average western liberal simply isn't prepared to even contemplate the massive societal changes that would be required to make our societies more disciplined and self-sacrificing. They actually require real work and pain to accomplish, not just blank checks and smug self satisfaction.

>Really relevant:
Oh, and I suppose the concurrent drop in non-violent/property crime is just a wild coincidence?

>nevertheless, the so-called "sexual revolution" is essentially permanent

Doubtful, in part it exists now because a lot of its costs and negative externalities are socialized. If they weren't and this status quo were maintained for a few decades, then you'd quickly find girls far less willing to take the risk in the first place. The forseeable costs, even for a relatively high time preference individual, would simply be too great.

>implying people haven't been having sex for pleasure since the dawn of mankind

Who has ever claimed otherwise?

That runs from 1998 to 2014. I'm not sure what point you're trying to prove here. What levels were non-violent/property crime at in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s by comparison?

Did you even bother to read the abstract of what I linked you to, out of interest?

>Per pupil spending in the US is actually among the highest in the entire world.
>Past a certain point,
That's a complete half-truth which doesn't even begin to address how efficiently (or inefficiently) we spend our money, how a small number of elite schools can suck up a disproportionate amount of the wealth leaving a thinner, more shallow pie for the public schools in rougher areas which invariably result in poorer performance.

When you look at places with the most successful educational programs, the ones which preform the best are the ones where most of the money is going back to the students in terms of better salaries for more teachers (which attract superior talent which can focus on more manageably sized classrooms) and better educational equipment for the classrooms, rather than flowing into the pockets of middlemen and bureaucrats whose main job is presenting society with the illusion of choice

The meaning of your own life is whatever YOU want it to be. If someone wants to be a hedonist then that's their choice. If you want to work like a slave because muh morals than have at it hoss. So long as your actions or anyone else's do not impact others negatively you can fuck off and mind your own business. That's called freedom you fascist.

>That's a complete half-truth which doesn't even begin to address how efficiently (or inefficiently) we spend our money

What exactly is a half-truth? The fact the US spends well above the OECD average and among the largest amount in the world for primary and secondary education, on a per-pupil adjusted level? See picture.

>how a small number of elite schools can suck up a disproportionate amount of the wealth leaving a thinner

There have actually been studies assessing it in terms of per pupil spending -by race-, and traditionally viewed "disadvantage groups" like black children have very little difference with white children in terms of per pupil spending.

>better salaries for more teachers

Let's actually test the veracity of this:

>JAPAN: The salary of a median age 45-year-old full-time public school teacher in Japan is about ¥7 million, though a 2010 OECD survey found that Japanese teachers made on average the equivalent of $44,337 a year, which is $7,000 more than the OECD average.17 Nov 2014
>US: The BLS reports the median annual salary for high school teachers was $57,200 in 2015. The best-paid 10 percent in the field made approximately $91,190, while the bottom 10 percent made $37,800. Compensation is typically based on your years of experience and educational level.

Hmmm.

>which attract superior talent which can focus on more manageably sized classrooms

Actually that isn't true. You see Shanghai, which completely dominates in terms of academic attainment and results at a PISA level? It has average class sizes FAR larger than what they are in the United States.

>everyone is equal and everyone should be able to do what they want
Fuck off with your kindergarten-tier logic, libshit normalfag

> I'm not sure what point you're trying to prove here.
That by any metric crime rates are plummeting to historic lows despite a minor statistical blip in the worst urban ethnic neighborhoods recently despite the hysteria of AM radio and paranoid fearmongering country bumkins afraid of the big, bad city

usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/us-crime-rate-rises-slightly-remains-near-20-year-low

>every choice is equally good

that's not fucking true. Just because I have freedom doesn't mean all the choices I have now are equally fulfilling.

The meaning of life is that you are a temporary custodian of someone else's genetics, and that these people fought like hell so that you could survive and exist on this planet in relative peace. This is why ancestor worship is the most common religious meme across wildly different racial groups.

>not wanting to live a painful life in piety in a poor feudal or com-block shit-hole makes you an ebil degenerate hedonist heathen

I wonder who's behind these posts?

>20 year low
>historic lows

One of these things is not like the other friend. Isn't the nature of progressivism that we, you know, progress? Why is liberalism seemingly impotent and incapable of delivering a level of urban security which security services 60 years ago, with far less funding and technology, were capable of delivering?

And you've completely ignored my question. Did you read the abstract?

hahahaha and the /pol/nigger IMMEDIATELY starts name calling when he gets BTFO. Fuck off to your containment board.

Whatever floats your boat m8. Pray to your eternal ancestors all you want. You do you boo.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

you're half right. asian parents do push their kids much harder in general, but there's something you've forgotten. the curriculum in many american schools is utter drivel. lack of proper sex ed, religious indoctrination, etc. they tried to fix this with common core but fucked things up even worse, albeit in different ways. and as you've pointed out, this isn't a problem you can fix simply by throwing money at it
I come from a country where the catholic church ruled with an iron fist for most of the last century. birth control, divorce and homosexuality were only decriminalised in the 90s and abortion is still 100% illegal no matter the circumstances. I can tell you that things are much better now than they were before. my point is that sexual promiscuity is more or less endemic to humankind (for better or worse), and trying to repress it through moral policing just leads to misery and suffering on a widespread scale.
>Who has ever claimed otherwise?
I inferred that viewpoint from your previous post. people had more kids back in the day only because they didn't know any better and didn't have access to birth control etc. you can still see this in developing countries where people are poor as fuck yet still have like 8 kids

>he thinks he's btfo anyone with his meme-tier interpretation of a philosopher that died ranting and raving because the only time he ever got laid it was a hooker and she have him syphilis

k. I'm gonna keep doing what makes me happy so stay mad.

>the curriculum in many american schools is utter drivel. lack of proper sex ed

Actually Chinese sex education is even less erm, "comprehensive" in this regard.

You're wrong to take this Jewish term of "prudishness" and ascribe it as some uniquely American or even Western thing. Most civilizations are sexually conservative. The United States of America and wider modern West is unarguably one of the most sexually permissive civilizations ever to exist on planet Earth, by a good margin. Certainly far moreso than the modern Sinosphere.

>What exactly is a half-truth?
It's when you take a statistic out of context in hopes of pushing a contrary theory before anyone notices the small inconsistencies of your logic.

>Let's actually test the veracity of this:
Like comparing median salaries without taking cost of living into account.

Perfect example

>You see Shanghai,
You see in Finland, which shares far more in common with western values of creativity, liberty, and self-expression, they've managed to generate much superior results without having to treat their students like unthinking drones.
hechingerreport.org/how-finland-broke-every-rule-and-created-a-top-school-system/
smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/

>hurr having enough self control to deny your animal desires = literal torture POL BTFO
You barely understood Nietzsche if you think he was pro-hedonist.

>my point is that sexual promiscuity is more or less endemic to humankind

Also this. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying the average number of sexual partners of any given individual in a western society has remained fairly constant from say, the days of classical antiquity until the present day?

>I inferred that viewpoint from your previous post.

I wasn't the person you were replying to, that was my first post.

but sex is icky and only for making babies and you should feel bad for enjoying it >:(
actually China just approved a brand new comprehensive sex ed curriculum including safe sex and LGBT elements but I suppose you have a point. but my comments about sex and education were basically separate there. I should have clarified that you have kids graduating from high school in the US who stuggle with basic algebra and couldn't even find China on an atlas, meanwhile Chinese kids are basically fucking rayman-tier at maths if memes and stereotypes are to be believed

>You barely understood Nietzsche if you think he was pro-hedonist.
I don't waste my time with philosophy. I have better things to do than read the writings of people who ask questions and then spend the next 200 pages never coming to any answers.

>you're half right. asian parents do push their kids much harder in general, but there's something you've forgotten. the curriculum in many american schools is utter drivel. lack of proper sex ed, religious indoctrination, etc. they tried to fix this with common core but fucked things up even worse, albeit in different ways. and as you've pointed out, this isn't a problem you can fix simply by throwing money at it
Literal reddit-tier talking points. Outside of the bumfuck South schools are extremely liberal in all these respects. Go back to watching CNN sheep

>It's when you take a statistic out of context in hopes of pushing a contrary theory before anyone notices the small inconsistencies of your logic.

Where have I specifically done this friend?

>Like comparing median salaries without taking cost of living into account.

But Japan's cost of living is even higher than America's....

>You see in Finland
>generate much superior results

Finland has actually been falling down the PISA rankings for a while now, back in PISA 2006 they posted some high results, and were the darlings of the western liberal press for a while. Then in 09 and 12 and 15 they fell and fell again.

Why should we pay attention to Finland and not to even more successful school systems?

>which shares far more in common with western values of creativity, liberty, and self-expression

Yes, Japan, which has the highest per capita rate of patents on earth and a soft power ranking second only to the US is "uncreative".

>self-expression

Can you define this for me objectively?

>liberty

This too.

Thanks.

>actually China just approved a brand new comprehensive sex ed curriculum including safe sex and LGBT elements but I suppose you have a point.

You're talking about that textbook you saw on the front page of plebbit I'm guessing? That's from one particular province, it doesn't actually reflect any general change in policy from the central government.