Ahedonism

It deserves to be a word if atheism does.

AHEDONISM: Disbelief in and doubt about hedonism.

AHEDONIST: One who practices or expresses doubt about the omnipresence of hedonism in the animal world, including humans; especially, one who expresses perverse views that malign hedonism and/or distort or tend to thwart a correct understanding of hedonism by equating it with gluttony, sensualism, avariciousness, rapaciousness, exploitation, lustfulness, lasciviousness, lewdness, vulgarity, lechery, debauchery, especially when conflated with excessive sexuality, or any activities that can be misconstrued as sexual, sensual, or commercial in nature.

You are a rare person in today’s world if you have not been indoctrinated with ahedonism. You have been misled into thinking of hedonism as wrong, dangerous, perhaps evil. You suffer because of that and lay the blame elsewhere. You have banished prurient longings from your mind and wrongly condemned them as hedonic lusts. The original sin, you learned from the biblical story about the Garden of Eden, was to disobey the god named God. In accordance with that, the second sin, you may have seen for yourself (as the persons who first told you this may have avoided acknowledging) was the lie of denial given expression in the failed attempts to hide themselves.

Whether or not you believe this great story verbatim, acknowledge that it forms an important basis upon which billions of people have founded their indoctrinated beliefs. From that, realize how important it has to be that the story had been taught and passed down as truth, that no mischief had been at work so that it required interpretation to explain it. It is, after all, a simple, straightforward tale about Adam and Lilith. What I am using as a source for this is the original King James Version of 1611, and the first chapters of Genesis.

Beginning in verse 26, after the creation of Earth, the lights and stars, all the plants and grasses, and the animals, replete with blessings and assessments of goodness, God decided to make man and woman: 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply…

Take note, if you will, how little difference the tale expresses in the creation of man and woman in comparison to the rest of the animals. All were given instructions to be fruitful and multiply. We can safely assume they were given all they needed to accomplish it, and the knowledge and initiative to go along with that. We still possess that knowledge and initiative, and can grant that, if we believe in a wise god and those things are truly sins, he would have removed them from us. As it is, the errant doctrines of ahedonism forbid obedience to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.

The second chapter of Genesis gives a detailed account of the steps God took to create a man, and a woman from his rib. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

They felt no sense of shame! Do we get told a real biblical reason for why that no longer holds true? On top of that, how did the concept of father and mother get into the picture before the original sins caused women to have to endure the pain of giving birth?

In chapter 3, we learn of the true original sin in verse 13: And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go…

The original sin, as you have read, is that for which the god named God punished the serpent. “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat,” the first on the concatenating list of sins, is that of which those priests, those thousands of preachers, those millions of parents, all of themselves beguiled by an original lie of deception by omission, have laid as a heavy burden upon all the backs of humanity.

  Were this story taught according to its telling, students would know a more natural morality wherein priests and teachers would be bound by their beliefs to present, always, the truths as they knew them, without omissions and without perversions and with no need for apologia to twist these tales to their liking or to suit their agendas.

Many people explain the vast differences between the two Old Testament descriptions of how God went about creating the unnamed man and woman by appealing to ancient tales of God’s creation of Lilith, often referred to as a ‘demon’, easily understood, after you’ve read about her, to be the kind of woman nowadays castigated as a bitch.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith : “In Jewish folklore, from the 8th–10th century Alphabet of Ben Sira onwards, Lilith becomes Adam’s first wife, who was created at the same time (Rosh Hashanah) and from the same earth as Adam. This contrasts with Eve, who was created from one of Adam’s ribs. The legend was greatly developed during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadic midrashim, the Zohar, and Jewish mysticism.[3] In the 13th century writings of Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, for example, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with archangel Samael.[4] Go to the Wikipedia link for references.

After reading that quote, reread the end of the first chapter and the first verses of chapter two. It appears the story of Lilith’s misbehavior could have been cut from there, as easily as not. I know of no evidence to support that notion, but the existence of many ancient myths, along with demonstrated inclinations of religious leaders to ‘adjust’ their sources, heightens suspicion.

From http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1513/whats-the-story-on-lilith-adams-first-wife.  “When God created Adam, he was lonely, so God created Lilith from the same dust from which Adam was molded. But they quarreled; Adam [the proverbial domineering male] wished to rule over Lilith. But Lilith [a militant feminist] was also proud and willful, claiming equality with Adam because she was created from the same dust. She left Adam and fled the Garden. God sent three angels in pursuit of Lilith. They caught her and ordered her to return to Adam. She refused, and said that she would henceforth weaken and kill little children, infants and babes. The angels overpowered her, and she promised that if the mother hung an amulet over the baby bearing the names of the three angels, she would stay away from that home. So they let her go, and God created Eve to be Adam’s mate [created from Adam’s rib, so that she couldn’t claim equality].

Scholars also point to Isaiah 34:14 as the first of many verses that refer to Lilith as a screech owl: “The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.” http://witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/7evelilith.html : “In the Latin Vulgate Bible, Lamia is given as the translation of the Hebrew Lilith (and in other translations it is given as “screech owl” and “night monster”).”

Upon this base ahedonism makes its stand. Adam and Eve get wrongly accused by ahedonists of performing the original sin. That horrific honor belongs to Satan for his beguilement of Adam’s second wife, Eve. Her sin, to succumb to Satan’s spell and not heed Adam’s admonishment about the tree’s fruit, was small in comparison, even, to Adam’s violation of a direct order. They erred by hiding themselves out of shame. It was covering their nakedness that informed God about their disobedience. It was never the fact of their nakedness that God considered a sin. It was that they knew about it, felt shame for their exposure, and tried to hide it. They had lost their innocence. It was not nakedness God considered a sin, but knowing about it and feeling shame. Priests and preachers everywhere perpetuate Satan’s original sin by defiling innocent minds they fill with the knowledge proclaimed as of good and evil. They wrongly point to nakedness as being the sin, and cover over their own sin of doing so by not acknowledging they are doing the same as Satan. However they deny his sin as the original, still, they are doing the same as Satan.

From chapter 3: 21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

Ahedonists would have us believe that nakedness is a sin. No, by knowing about it to the point of shame, they offended God in the story. God admonished them about the desperate conditions that knowledge would cause them to endure, and made garments of skins to protect them from briars and thistles before their banishment. God did not ever tell them that nakedness is evil or a sin. The story makes it plain that knowing about it to the point of shame definitely is. By whom were you taught shame?

Ahedonism’s messengers arrive bearing diverse messages in support of conflicting belief systems or to promote commercial interests. All share certain features in common:

1. They state in error that hedonism is about sexual interests.
2. They state in error how that interest is somehow always condemnable.
3. They state in error that hedonism is only about physical pleasure.
4. They state in error that pleasure is somehow always condemnable.
5. They support in error body covering and so increase prurience.
6. They state in error that hedonism is only about self-interest or self-gratification.
7. They state in error that hedonism does not represent a moral process of high degree.
8. They state in error that religion does not apply hedonism in its doctrines.

Why they err is told in the matching numbers below:

1. Ethical hedonism, as founded upon the philosophies of Epicurus, is about maintaining a pleasant, balanced existence. In modern terms, reward gets balanced against penalty (gain versus cost) to assess an interest’s worth.
2. As part of existence as a live animal, sexuality deserves the same considerations as any other natural process.
3. Epicurus specified that mental pleasures were “higher” than the physical pleasures, and I know of no one respectable who disagrees.
4. Sports, the rewards of hard work, exercise all promote health and well-being. Oh, you’re still stuck on sex as physical? Sex perpetuates the human species. A threat of overpopulation does not arise because of sex, but because we have made ourselves into poor targets for hungry predators, and certain kinds of ahedonists have worked to perpetuate deep ignorance in backward lands.
5. I believe prurience sells garments. As a one-time nudist, I can testify that naked human bodies become old-hat soon after the initial curiosity gets appeased. Those guys hiding in the bushes are always dressed.
6. Reciprocity as proposed by Epicurus as a basis for moral actions, sets a standard of behavior that must always include consideration of others. Reciprocity proposes balance be maintained in social give and take, that no one should feel cheated. Generosity gets praised and cheating condemned, as in a system of justice.
7. Justice is a child of reciprocity’s philosophy. Concerns about maintaining personal and social balance require that attention be paid to every involved element and be assessed according to expected outcomes and the results of previous experience.
8. Religion as I know it plays the promise of Heaven against the threat of Hell in a blatantly hedonic scheme. 

The point to take from this is not to disparage anyone for their beliefs, but to learn how to defend from attacks against your own or, if it comes to that, discover how to verify their evidence if they seem correct. It is to doubt the human purveyors of belief that states our duty to ourselves. To take it upon ourselves to always read their references, we will assure ourselves the context matches their usage of a quote. Practice critical skepticism, make sure you are getting the whole story, never take for granted your messenger has done it for you, with honest intentions and with nothing more than your best interests in mind.

Only dead people have no beliefs. What do you think is true? What, if it should change, would make the world a better place for you and the rest of humanity? Most important is to learn how to describe your own beliefs, and to dare to change your mind about them when time arrives for self-correction. You will sooner or later discover that what others have decided would represent your best interests will seldom ever be what you would choose. Life is too short and too precious for anyone to waste serving someone else’s interests. Keep this slogan in mind: “If God made me this way and declared it good, who are you to declare otherwise?”

Copyright ©2014 by Lloyd H. Whitling. Permission to excerpt is granted if accompanied with credit to the author. Permission to reuse unchanged is granted only if accompanied with this notice and proper credit. All other rights reserved.