Stately Pleasure

I feel a post coming here that will be disjointed if not scatterbrained. If you can't stand "stream of consciousness" surf on, and find continuity. I have been under the weather and spent a few days in bed. Yesterday I was up and about and considered myself well. I was sluggish and dull though. I chalked it up to the bed rest getting me way out of shape. Today I really feel fine and I am surprised at how much better I feel. A bigger surprise though is my judgment about yesterday as far as thinking I was well. Why didn't I know I wasn't well yet? I just assumed that the way I felt was to be expected after being sick. I didn't even know how my own body is supposed to feel when I'm OK. When I'm sick I lay in bed and sleep or watch TV. I watch old movies mostly. I don't have the energy to read. Reading is thinking. It's surprising how much energy it takes to think. So I read a bit today. That means I'm back. I was sitting here reading the introduction to "The Portable Atheist" by Hitchens when my wife walked in my room and said here is a present for you. She had bought me a new book called "How Pleasure Works". It's by a Yale psychologist named Paul Bloom. It's pretty interesting. He tries to figure out what gives us pleasure. And why. Is it an instinct? A survival tool? Pure sensory? Is pleasure happiness? Looking at a great painting is pleasurable. The great painting might be worth a million dollars. A perfect print copy of that painting might be worth next to nothing. He talks about "endowment value". This is where the longer you own something, the more valuable it becomes to you. This is where the pleasure hypothesis crosses into the hoarding syndrome. The author said that if someone offered him 100 bucks for his wedding ring he would say no of course. If they offered him $10,000 he would sell. What makes something valuable? Is there anything you own that you would not sell at any price? I can think of two things I would not sell. The sentimental value is ridiculously high. When I was four years old I was hospitalized with a nerve infection that was thought to be polio. My parents had three other young kids to worry about in addition to me. They couldn't sit with me all day and night at the hospital. My father was working long hours to support this family. The first night in the hospital my parents stayed until visiting hours were over and I remember not wanting them to leave and feeling scared and sorry for myself. My father gave me a teddy bear. My father was not a teddy bear kind of guy. My mom was the soft one, to make up for his harshness. I still have the teddy bear. And I would not give it up. I would like my son to keep it after I am gone. The other item was also a gift from my father. An airplane propeller. That came from the airplane that carried him on his first solo flight, in July of 1937. In a 40hp Taylor Cub which had the name "honeychild". The airplane was later in a minor crack up and the prop was dinged. At that time my father was instructing and the boss came by the desk my father was sitting at and set the propeller down on the desk and said something like "you'll want this". Then Pearl Harbor happened. I've got a couple of old guitars that I'll never get rid of, that have been in the family. But I would sell them if someone offered me ten times what they are worth. Dr. Bloom could not explain the pleasure of music in human development as far as natural selection. It is possible that music lovers got to reproduce because they cooperated with others more successfully and got more done. Or in general, skills and talents demonstrated by males can be selected by females for reproduction, and vice versa It's a mystery. Unlike pleasures in food or sex or warmth which have obvious payoffs in reproduction. Dr. Bloom seemed to discover that all of us are "essentialists", in that we always get our pleasure in the full "essence" of what we're eating, listening to, looking at, desiring as a mate. The pleasure is on a deeper level than one might think. We want the real thing. Not fakes, copies, forgeries, knock offs. Our brains are complicated, and so are our pleasures. My Ibuprofen is wearing off. It's time to seek pleasure. Take two pills, print the Post crossword puzzle, make some tea and curl up with my ill- mannered Beagle mix. Jake, the "teddy bear". LLITTY :::::+:::::