Pleasure Makes Us Human?

It was all about Greed being good during Ronald 'the Traitor" Reagan's tenure as President during the 1980s. The Capitalists of the time took that as a license to do what they wanted with our economy. Things got way out of hand and the economic upheaval of 2008 was a direct result. Now, less than 20 years later, unbridled greed not only stuck around, it is now worse than it ever was. The national coffers are being picked clean by an elected government who is now out in the open doing the bidding of the Robber Barons from around the World.

Agree with me or not, there is no denying the fact that sleazy acts and despicable policy have once again put their stamp of approval on immoral and unethical actions from both the private sector and the government sector. There is no longer any pretense. The folks we put in charge through our votes and our pocketbooks are out in the open and in many cases laughing at us as they begin to pick our bones clean.

Greed and Hedonism have been normalized, mainstreamed, accepted.

I am no prude. I have and still incorporate what I consider a moderate amount of hedonistic activities into my daily consumptions. Of course now days, my hedonistic pleasures are vicarious mostly. And to be truthful, most of what I once thought were good times, now only bore me or often disgust me. So yeah, I guess I am becoming a prude of sorts. Assuming others my age are in similar circumstances, I would call my change, a normal evolution that comes with being an old fart. But I still look back upon the careless pleasures I partook in my young and numb years with fondness for the most part.

I found the kernels of this post in a commercial I saw on Morning Joe this morning. It was an ad about coffee, but when I saw the commercial, it meant more to me than that. In my mind, it represented the major shift in the morality/ethical index of our culture. The moral codes I used to laugh openly at and privately may have felt some guilt over; well, they are gone now like they never existed. Now the code of behaviors we used to often actually follow are nothing but lies that come out of two faced lips trying to convince us there is morality in greed; there is morality in exploitation, there is morality in hating anyone who is different. Not only is it okay, we are now allowed to derive pleasure from these previously immoral and unethical actions.

Just how the Fuck did we end up here?

I don't have an answer, but I do have an opinion on how we ended up here: Selfishness.

And as to the idea that Pleasure makes us Human, well, that is just advertising Bullshit. If you buy into it, you are one of the 8 billion reasons we are where we are.

Later ...........................................

___________________________

In a first for my blog, today I present "The Greedy Python", an animated audio kid's story I think. The connection to my post should make itself clear a moment or two into it. The whole time I was watching this, I kept thinking, this is a kid's story? Really? Wow! It presents an idea in terms all ages might enjoy. So enjoy.

For those millions of fans who stop by the BoZone for the music, here is also, "Greed", by A Killer's Confession, a metal band I have never listened to before; which just proves, there is so much untapped music out there, I will never hear it all.