It's a sin

Even though my conservative religious upbringing was comparatively mild, and ended when I was 12, I think I still have some lingering fuckery from it even now. In particular, I have ongoing wars with myself over anything I enjoy, especially food or leisure-related stuff, because I still feel like it's sinful/wrong/immoral to indulge in something pleasurable without paying for it with subsequent pain. Bleh.

Realized this because I was just thinking about the Puritanism involved in the anti-gay/anti-abortion crowd, and how their greatest fear is the idea of pleasure without painful consequences. Poke the "but the baybeez!" anti-abortion arguments, and you'll get to the root of it: believing that the pain and risk of pregnancy and birth is a just consequence for a woman's sin of enjoying sex. (Some will even put it in so many words--birth is a woman's burden because of Eve's sin. Bleh.)

But even among the non-religious, there's still a lot of lingering Puritanism of other kinds. In secular society, we've mostly accepted the idea of consequence-free sexual pleasure--we're down with contraception, pre-marital sex, etc. But we seem to have transferred that idea that pleasure is a sin onto other things. We can't rail against Lust, so we're railing against Sloth and Gluttony instead. (And Greed, but that's a different thing, as there are consequences beyond oneself for Greed-inspired acts. Same with Wrath. Envy is more or less victimless, unless it leads to stealing, and excessive Pride just makes you an asshole.)

( Practical advice v. moral righteousness )

Now, the practical stuff still applies, of course. Saving for retirement, for instance, is a smart move even entirely unconnected from ideals of morality, and too many rich people don't understand exactly how connected their bottom line is to the well-being of the working class. Sometimes indulging in short-term pleasures can have exponentially worse long-term consequences, and shooting yourself in the foot in some sort of ill-advised rebellion against people telling you what to do is just stupid. But if you've already done the practical analysis, and know at which point you need to stop before you hurt yourself or someone else, there's no sense whatsoever in denying yourself pleasure just for the sake of doing so. Live it up.

Of course, some people will get on your case for this. Some have so committed themselves to such righteous suffering that it makes them furious to see someone who isn't also doing the masochism tango. They also consider your wanton displays a cavalcade of temptation for them to sin. Why else would half those Family Values sorts get caught with their pants down?

( Cultural bulimia )

The thing many (including yours truly) need to learn is that as an adult in this earthly life, you don't get gold stars for being a martyr. Yes, some folks are still true believers in the idea of earning heavenly Brownie Points, and will continue to deny themselves any pleasure in order to make a sadistic deity happy. But if that's not your personal theology, why let your behavior be driven by what boils down to the same motivation?

Of course there's some courtesy and compassion involved. It's rude to grossly enjoy oneself in a way that rubs it in the face of others who are suffering. But, assuming you're not being a mocking jerk, if you didn't have a hand in that suffering, and what you're doing has no bearing on whether it will end? Go to it. It's not inherently mean to indulge in a passion for painting just because some are blind. If you got in their face and said, "neener neener! I can see all these cool colors and you can't!" then sure. You're being a total dick and deserve a slap. But the mere open enjoyment of something you love is not a mockery of those who don't have that thing. Enjoying a pint of ice cream doesn't mean you don't care about starving kids in third-world countries. Driving to work because you get claustrophobic on buses doesn't mean you don't care about global warming.

What it all comes down to, I think, is this: for most of us, life kinda sucks fairly often. Unless you're born into every privileged class imaginable, you're going to suffer on some level. And because there's so much suck in life, why on earth would you voluntarily increase that suckage if there's no benefit to doing so aside from some vague sense of moral purity? The only people who will be impressed by such wholly voluntary suffering are assholes, sadists and control freaks. They are not worth it.

And on that note: I think I'm going to go take a nap. ;)