Wednesday Wisdom: Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory Pleasures, Selfhood, & Second Mountains
March 13, 2024's Wisdom
Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I distill worldly advice for better living by presenting three quotes, three observations, and three questions.
This email forwarded to you? Are you reading the free version? Click below to adjust your subscription.
Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory Pleasures
🤨 Quote
“A natural pleasure is one thing; an unnatural pleasure, forced upon the satiated mind by the importunity of a salesman is quite another.”
Thomas Merton
Source: The Pocket Thomas Merton
Observation 🧐
Every day life holds two types of pleasure: satisfactory pleasure and unsatisfactory pleasure.
Satisfactory pleasure is a deep pleasure, it speaks to our true needs and desires, it fills us with excitement and contentment.
Satisfactory pleasures are things like gaining knowledge, perfecting a craft, pursuing deep work and being able to find a flow state in something we love.
These states of pleasure not only fill us, they bring us back for more, not for the pleasure itself, but for the process, the work we have to do, the stuff that seems to speak to our inner self.
The pleasure is, in other words, a byproduct of the pursuit.
Unsatisfactory pleasure is cheap pleasure—easy dopamine hits that spike our interest and emotions but that ultimately are empty and void of any true substance.
These states of pleasure include the comments and likes on social media (many of which are automated and bots at this point), junk food, or materialism.
These forms of pleasure, like satisfactory pleasure, drive us back to them but for a different reason—because they are cheap to produce and provide a quick boost of happiness, we are drawn back to them for quick jolts of happiness, like clicking an easy button.
The impact of unsatisfactory pleasure, however, is that it always requires more to get back to that original bliss of happiness.
“Not he who has little,” remarked Seneca, “but he who desires much is poor.”
When we pursue satisfactory pleasure, we allow ourselves to experience a deeper level of reality. We open ourselves up to the true colors of the world and in the process, pursue a life filled with vibrancy and depth instead of shallowness and regret.
🤔 Question
Is your life filled with more satisfactory pleasures or unsatisfactory pleasures? What would it take to move from unsatisfactory pursuits to satisfactory ones?
Selfhood
🤨 Quote
“The pleasure principle—the drive to gratify desire and avoid pain—keeps us in perpetual motion. These are the motivating "life instincts," the basis of selfhood.”
Matthew Crawford
Source: World Beyond Your Head
Observation 🧐
The famous Delphic Maxim of ‘Know thyself’ always seems to come to mind when we think of selfhood. It is through this maxim after all that we stop to reflect upon our inner-self as a way of navigating the world.
To know thyself is an attempt to better understand one’s thoughts and actions in daily life.