Thought of the Day 05.02.08

I’m beginning to suspect that the single greatest moral defect of people in this country is their ignorance of the difference between pleasure and joy. For instance, having sex brings me pleasure, but having children brings me joy. Watching television brings me pleasure, but reading books brings me joy. Eating out by myself brings me pleasure, but buying lunch for someone else brings me joy.

The difference isn’t always easy to define, but generally speaking the person who tries to maximize mere pleasure will end up miserable whereas the person who seeks joy will end up happy. It’s like picking a spouse based on physical beauty. You might get lucky, but the vast majority of the beautiful are not the most marryable, a deviation which becomes painfully obvious over time.

And such inability to tell the difference between beauty on the outside and beauty on the inside isn’t just an illustration of the problem, it’s one of its key features….a defect all parents must actively remedy in their children.