Pleasure. Does it sound like a dirty word to you? No wonder, given how relentlessly it's been attacked not only by puritanical conservatives but by liberals who uncritically accept the Reaganite equation of pleasure with greed and callousness. (I think, for instance, of a recent newspaper article that described our society as a snake pit of "crime, violence, poverty and hedonism.") Yet life without pleasure-without spontaneity and playfulness, sexuality and sensuality, esthetic experience, surprise, excitement, ecstasy-is a kind of death. People deprived of pleasure don't get kinder and gentler but meaner and nastier. Indeed, it's not an excess of pleasure but pleasure-starvation on a mass scale that we have to thank for the rampant piggishness and urban violence that plague us. (Epilogue: The Neo-Guilt Trip)

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Pleasure. Does it sound like a dirty word to you? No wonder, given how relentlessly it's been attacked not only by puritanical conservatives but by liberals who uncritically accept the Reaganite equation of pleasure with greed and callousness. (I think, for instance, of a recent newspaper article that described our society as a snake pit of "crime, violence, poverty and hedonism.") Yet life without pleasure-without spontaneity and playfulness, sexuality and sensuality, esthetic experience, surprise, excitement, ecstasy-is a kind of death. People deprived of pleasure don't get kinder and gentler but meaner and nastier. Indeed, it's not an excess of pleasure but pleasure-starvation on a mass scale that we have to thank for the rampant piggishness and urban violence that plague us. (Epilogue: The Neo-Guilt Trip)" in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.