Ep. 9: Can Pleasure be Trusted?

Listen to this episode on Spotify here, or Apple Podcasts here. The key points in this "speaking":

• Why is our culture so suspicious of pleasure?

• The darkness of the other's body— that the other remains uncontrollable and uninhabitable—reveals a fundamental separation, is a source of anxiety. In response, we try to control the chaos of the other's free and sovereign body.

• And there is a sense in which all objects of pleasure are infinite. Human desires are beyond the simple desires of other animals, and we seem dangerously driven towards insatiable pleasure.

• All our idols (food, sex, love, learning, even God) must die on the way to reality, though everything real resurrects in new ways.

• My "miraculous" experience with intuitive eating.

• Most of us live with a psychological rift between the disciplinarian and the child in our head.

• Developmental ethics: where do rules end? Can intuition be trusted? How do we know our desires are "good"?

  
  

Other Notes:

I've been thinking about this topic a lot since recording this episode. I want to add an important caveat that we can trust the desires that truly belong to us. But then we face another issue, one posed by a listener: How can I know whether my desires belong to me and which are inculcated from society, some of which may be harmful?

Perhaps we begin with "pure" desires, like the basic desires for food, sex, and sleep most linked to the immediate body. Nevertheless, desires for food are amplified and distorted by processed foods and unnatural flavors. Desires for sex are amplified and distorted by social stories. (Sleep is usually quite a neutral desire, though I would be interested to hear if you have found that issues like insomnia are affected by these social channelings of anxiety/ expectations).

What do we do with desires for things that may be toxic?

Listener Insights:

A: How can I know which desires belong to me and which have been inculcated from society? If you want your insights to be shared (with your name or anonymously), comment on the blog post page corresponding to the episode, email me, or answer the Spotify questions attached to the episode.