The pursuit of pleasure and the desire for wholeness

The pursuit of pleasure aims to fulfill a fundamental human desire to feel whole and complete, but a misunderstanding of the nature of this wholeness can cause it to continually evade us

The pursuit of pleasure has always been a part of life, and with the loosening of strict cultural norms that we have seen in recent times, we find a prioritizing of seeking pleasure becoming more accepted. This increasing tolerance of the prioritization of pleasure ranges from everyday mundane pleasures like “binging” on Netflix, staying up all night playing video games, and indulging in good food all the way to more “intense” pleasures like the excessive drinking subculture of college campuses, unconsidered sexual encounters and hookup culture, and heavy drug use and abuse. Philosophers refer to this orientation towards pleasure as “hedonism.”  Although there are many who see these hedonistic trends as a sign of cultural degeneration, many of the philosophical giants of the Western tradition suggest that hedonistic pursuits may aid us in satisfying an innate human need. In his early work, The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche speaks of the Greek God Dionysus, the God of wine and intoxication, as a symbol of an innate primordial urge to break through concepts, ethical values, and everyday habits and join an immediate union with the senses. Nietzsche suggests that this openness to utter sensual abandon is one of the necessary elements of true creativity. In a similar vein, Freud suggests all humans have an innate Death Drive, a desire to annihilate the individual ego and return to the oceanic feeling of unity with the immediate sensory experience that is so prevalent to the infant. These thinkers' suggestions resonated with me both intuitively and intellectually. However, I had a hard time knowing how to make space for this need to return to a simple relationship with the immediate moment in an integrated way. For a time I thought the only answer was to periodically pursue hedonistic pleasure in the hopes that the pleasure and excitement would obscure my mind’s usual preoccupation with worries, plans, ambitions, and future-oriented projects.

 It was not until years later when I read Ken Wilber that I found someone articulating this same innate drive but within the context of an explicitly integrated approach. Wilber suggests that this fundamental urge towards union with the immediate senses is only one particular expression of a more comprehensive urge towards wholeness as such. Wilber explains that a young infant, who is always merged with the senses, is absorbed in a material unity. (It is widely accepted by developmental psychologists that a young infant lives in this material union. It is only after a certain age that the infant begins to separate out its body as the part of the visual field that is “me” and the rest of the visual field as “not me.”) It is this particular material unity that is the aim of hedonistic abandon/pursuit, a sense of felt synchronization with immediate pleasurable sensations that temporarily softens, or even completely dissolves, the boundaries between one’s own body and the rest of the sensory environment, thus bringing a quality of connectedness and wholeness to one’s experience. Wilber points out that to develop, the child must progress past this material union, taking this pure sensory field of experience that it once thought of as its whole world as part of a more comprehensive, “higher” unity. For example, for the child to mature enough to be disciplined about eating well, exercising, or doing homework, they must incorporate a sense of a larger context and future into their world; they must place the immediate present into a larger context/timeline across which they can live, plan, and execute projects. Another example of a unity the child will have to incorporate into their world in the process of maturation is the family unit. If the child is to have positive relationships with their family, they must learn to think of their own needs in dialogue with the needs of other members of their family. 

In his book The Atman Project, Wilber documents many levels of unity that we must incorporate into our lives as we mature and points to how these embedded layers of unity that mark our stages of development as human beings exist universally across all cultures. My intention here is not to comment on the truthfulness of his more comprehensive system or his claim to its universality. What we can take away from Wilber that is helpful for our purposes is his understanding of the form each movement to a higher unity takes, a form that is always the same. At each level of development, the human realizes that what had previously been considered to be its whole world is, in fact, embedded in a larger context. For example, when the child realizes that they are part of a larger family unit, they realize that the sensuous or material unity they had as an infant was only sustained because their mother was feeding them and keeping their body alive. The child may then later realize that their family only has its resources because of their standing in a community. Regardless of where we are in this process of development, Wilber counsels us to always “transcend and include.” Once the child recognizes their status as part of the larger context of the family, this does not mean they simply repress their own needs, but that they find a way of relating to the family that respects both their own needs and the needs of other members of the family. The growth becomes stunted when one does not include lower levels in the higher levels but instead represses them.

In Wilber’s map of development, the hedonistic drive towards pleasure is rooted in a desire to return to the material unity that we experienced as an infant. Thus, if we take on Wilber’s framework, we are encouraged to understand that a fixation on hedonism and sensory pleasure is a result of a failure to “include”  the union and intimacy with the immediate senses we had as a child in our relationships to time, family, community, and work responsibilities. We only yearn to “return” to this state of material union in a way that is compartmentalized from other aspects of our lives, because we have not learned how to infuse its presence within the other contexts in which we move in our adult lives. Wilber’s framework asks us to consider the possibility that an oscillation between abandoning all discipline and connecting with the immediate senses and then readopting discipline to maintain stability in our social and professional lives may not be necessary or fruitful. He asks us to consider if it is possible to incorporate the sense of intimacy, sensory vibrancy, and spontaneity we get from hedonistic exploits into our day-to-day existence.

That said, one thing Wilber does not acknowledge is the way in which our society often encourages a separation of these spheres. We are taught that the end of a job is to make money, or that the end of a romantic relationship is emotional comfort (or worse, some romantic ideal that has no basis in reality). We are not taught that our job can provide a platform for the spontaneity of sensual intimacy if it includes a creative outlet, or that a romantic relationship can provide the same if there is a strong basis of friendship (immediate enjoyment of the other's company). This culturally encouraged compartmentalization does make the work of “transcending and including” more difficult. Nevertheless, I think Wilber’s work is powerful in that it suggests that this oscillation between spontaneous/direct sensory enjoyment of life and the maintenance of stability in our relationships and responsibilities are not mutually exclusive. Wilber asks us to consider that although the urge towards wholeness contained in the hedonistic impulse does contain deep wisdom, a sustained feeling of wholeness is only brought to a mature fruition in our lives when we learn how to incorporate all elements of our personal needs and drives into our relational contextual realities and the responsibilities those contexts carry.

If you found this reflection valuable, please consider subscribing. Paid Subscribers have access to all four posts per month, while non-paid subscribers have access to two posts per month.

Please feel free to leave a comment if you have clarification questions, feedback, critiques, or anything to add. Philosophy is all about dialogue! I will do my best to respond to all questions and concerns.