Small Pleasures

The SoL says they're a big deal. Given their ubiquity, doesn't that subvert one of the main planks of pessimism - that the world is sure to disappoint  us constantly, and dash even our modest expectations?

A change in the weather seems like a strange, almost quite surprising avenue through which to enter a philosophical mood. Yet as summer draws to a close and autumn announces its arrival, we find ourselves confronted with the inevitability of all that is central to the natural world. 

The deciduous tree has to shed it leaves when the temperature dips in autumn; the river must erode its banks, the cold front will deposit its rain. When we contemplate nature, we’re witnessing rules that in their broad irresistible structure apply to ourselves as well. We too must mature, seek to reproduce, age, and die. 

This is why we must take care not to overlook the more modest pleasures of life. A small pleasure may look very minor – eating a fig, having a bath, whispering in bed in the dark or talking to a grandparent – and yet be anything but. These low-key moments of quiet satisfaction, by being so easily within our control, offer enormous consolation in the face of those elemental forces which we simply cannot change.

We’re surrounded by some powerful ideas about the sort of things that will make us happy. We think that really to deliver satisfaction, the pleasures we should aim for need to be:

Rare – we’ve inherited a Romantic suspicion of the ordinary (which is taken to be mediocre, dull and uninspiring) and work with a corresponding assumption that things that are unique, hard to find, exotic, or unfamiliar are naturally fitted to delight us more.

Expensive – we like economic endorsement. If something is cheap or free, it’s a little harder to appreciate; the pineapple (for instance) dropped off a lot of people’s wish list of fruit when its price fell from exorbitant (they used to cost the equivalent of hundreds of pounds) to unremarkable. Caviar continues to sound somehow more interesting than chicken eggs.

Famous – in a fascinating experiment a celebrated violinist once donned scruffy clothes and busked at a street corner and was largely ignored, though people would flock to the world’s great concert halls to hear him play the same pieces.

Large Scale – we are mostly focused on big schemes, that we hope will deliver enjoyment: marriage, career, travel, getting a new house.

These approaches aren’t entirely wrong, but unwittingly they collectively exhibit a vicious and unhelpful bias against the cheap, the easily available, the ordinary the familiar and the small-scale... (continues)
==
And because Hugh Hefner, the Playboy Philosopher, has died...