Should Asceticism be relevant for the modern world (practiced for non-religious reasons)?
In order to, say, focus on the higher meanings of life, aside from the worldly pleasures.
asceticism is just the other side of decadence
t. neechee
>>915454
Asceticism comes naturally from obsession. Those who are obsessed with so called higher meanings tend to be ascetics even if they don't know it.
>>915478
This. Both obsessive hedonism and aestheticism represent a society that is incapable of having a stable hierarchy of bodily needs. In one side they all go all out on the other side they completely reject their own bodily will, which is essentially a longing for death.
The idea of a wide-spread asceticism movement also directly harms the nation since the economic game is now done on a global scale. People need to have strong material desires in order to the better paying, more important, harder jobs.
Asceticism is probably superior to hedonism in terms of looking for happiness. That's one of the reasons why most people that thought really deeply about this were somewhat ascetic (even Epicurus).
But in the end, the Stoic position is probably the best one. Pleasure is neither positive or negative, you should neither look for it, nor flee for it, but being aware of how pleasure can make you a shitty person (for example, becoming a glutton or having casual sex).
>>916042
>being aware of how pleasure can make you a shitty person (for example, becoming a glutton or having casual sex)
>casual sex
>bad
God bless America
>>916086
I'm not American.
People who have casual sex are shittier people.
>>916097
God bless American cultural imperialism
>>916109
Do you think America created opposition to casual sex?
>>916117
>marriage
God bless religion
>>916129
What problem do you have with marriage?
It shouldn't because ultimately it is intellectually lazy doctrine that provided easy answers. What should be relevant is theory of consumption that can help everyone to understand what pleasures and material values are worth pursuing and what are worth nothing and will ruin your life. Desires exists and they are real. What you need to do is to know how to deal with them and find solution. Asceticism trying to ignore problem and propose magical unlimited self-discipline as some sort of ultimate answer. Real people doesn't works like that so asceticism ended up as being irrelevant. Personally I believe if you are trying to find some meaning in life then the worst you can do is just to say that something is meaningless. Ascetics say that about pleasure so they kind of sabotage themselves in their quest for meaningful life from the step one. Pleasures are big part of every life. There is no intellectual honesty in ignoring them.
>>916313
You are just a naive hedonist. Epicurus thought further.
>>915454
no, Asceticism is just hedonism turned into your faith that you can be something else than an heodnist while you are a full-on hedonist.
this is the typical move by women who try to appear as not histrionics in public, like caring about the poor, while all they crave is devotion from men.
>>916606
>tfw you'll never be felt up by irish qt
>>916593
Epicurus operated without any understanding of basic psychological mechanisms so it is better just to figure brand new one theory from scratch.
>>916313
You are just taking hedonism as an obvious truth. Your whole post is "hedonism is right, they are intellectually lazy and dishonest and what they should do is maximize long term pleasure".
That looks like the point of view of an economist uneducated in ethics.
