Pleasure and pain have long been a topic of discussion between people all over the world. Although, some of you may have thought that Hedonism was just a sexy resort, the reality is you have been thinking about this your whole life and maybe just not connected it to this particular school of thought.
“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.”
Anthony Robbins
Addiction has very clear and literal definition, but at we all know in our day to day life we are really not all that literal. We use this term to descripe more that just alcohol and drug related addiction. Addiction has grown to include things such as gambling, sex, internet, video games, eatting disorders, chocolate, and many many more. In fact often, people will seem addicted to their own disfunction or drama. For example, some people who have Bipolar disorder will very much enjoy the state of being manic. Yes they will chase that high the way a person who loves cocaine chases the fix. Then, there are people who just can't get enough drama. Their house could be falling down around them but they cannot help but find themselves in other peoples dramas or their own. They find roles for themselves within the drama and they need their fix for the day. You know who you are, you love a good peice of gossip.... of course you can keep the secret for about a 1/2 minute but it just kills you to not share it, you are also the helper, the one that people run to and lets face it, it does feel good to be the person in the know. My point, is that in todays society anything can be an addiction. For less clinical purposes one could say that an addiction is somthing that gives one a charge and they will continue to seek this at the expence of other areas of their lives. They are willing to endure the pain as the pleasure they derive from these activities outweighs the pain. However, you can also look at people who have the "addictions" and find that most of them have a very short pleasure menu
ie
Before the addiction
-Movies-Out with friends-vacations-bowling-golf-reading-swimming-exercise and so one and so on
People begin with very large menus generally for pleasureful activities. These become the way they cope with pain. However, over time the menu can shorten because the activities on the menu have become to difficult to use... for example the movies may be too expensive. The shorter the list becomes the more dependant a person becomes on one easy to do pleasureful activity. There you have it, how addiction begins in the Hedonic Model. If one is lucky they find something that is less unhealthy and costly but lets face it... if we only have one coping skill it just will not work effectively for everything.
"Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction. "
Edward Teller
Passion. We hear this word so much. What does it really mean to us in our lives? I think that just as the word can have positive and negative associations so to can we develop healthy and unhealthy passions. As well, in todays society where everyone is in search of the perfect way to live, the perfect opinion of life, it is easy to fall prey to a passion that leads us to addictive behaviour. However, it is important to love with a passion, believe with a passion, play and work with passion. For if we are not passionate we will have such difficulties getting through our lives. We all seek passion and drive. This is a fast paced world and we are all running to get someplace quickly. We as a society place too much passion on roles and less passion for the day we have at hand. This will be part of my project, to look at ways of doing everything with a passion for the moment. I hope that this is something that we can all discuss further.
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~Attributed to Howard Thurman
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