I would propose that perhaps it is not the pleasure itself that was far from sacred, but the circumstances or attitudes under which the pleasure occurs.

I think you are right. Like all good, it can occur simultaneously with evil, creating "gray" areas. The key is to properly tune oneself to not only be able to perceive the good, but also the bad. I think people - myself included - are pretty good at turning a blind eye to what they do not want to see. Sometimes people will ignore a whole bunch of bad to get a little bit of good .. and in doing so do themselves more harm than good.

What complicates this is that physcial pleasure is really so easy to elicit.

I'm not comfortable making a distinction between physical pleasure and "higher" pleasure

Actually, thinking about it more now, I think some distinction is useful, but not that distinction. I think recognizing the difference between spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual and maybe a couple of other kinds of pleasure is a useful one .. especially since physical pleasure is so easy.

The natural conclusion would be that experiences that elicit pleasure on all these levels meets that "higher purpose. It would also seem that it is in compromising on one level that pleasure is profaned.


As is likely obvious, I have not really given this a lot of thought and my ideas are forming as they are written.