Emotional values and authenticity of pleasure

Have you ever lost anything that’s really dear to you? Things which might or might not contain monetary value, but are really important for other reasons? I came across something like this about six months ago I departed from my bag which contained my favourite pen (what is a dramaturg without a pen!), mobile phone with an old text message carrying emotional significance, purse that was given to me for my birthday years ago, and other kinds of nick-nack. I knew where I could buy all of those exact things but I didn’t rush back to those shops. Why? Even if the things would have looked the same, they wouldn’t have been the same items I lost.

Apparently the same principle applies to food, sex and other things and activities we take pleasure in. We need things to FEEL right, real and authentic to enjoy them.

Here’s an article explaining why that may be – On Pleasure (by Maywa Montenegro)

Humans enjoy food. And my dog enjoys food. And I’m sure that at some level, rats enjoy food. But humans enjoy food in a unique way. I don’t doubt for an instance that there are similarities—we’ve all evolved senses that correspond and respond to different chemicals, and that’s part of the pleasure and pain of food. But for humans and for no other creatures, your beliefs about what it is that you’re eating can have a profound effect on how it tastes.

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One of the key dimensions under which we think about food—and sex and morality—is in terms of “natural.” For many people, natural is good. If you believe something is natural—whatever natural comes down to—you’ll prefer it over something that’s artificial or genetically modified or whatever. The naturalness issue also has moral implications. If something is seen as pure, it is seen as morally good, whereas something that’s unnatural is somehow tainted.