In our age we witness the near universal acceptance of the principle that a mind must adopt two distinct roles: a “professional” role devoted to disciplined intellectual work, and a “personal” role devoted to pleasure. The mind is divided into a producing part and consuming part. We strive to perfect each part in isolation, becoming ever more efficient in making money in the first part, and ever more efficient in procuring pleasure in the second. Such a divided mind, far from eliminating pleasure from its intellectual ecology, has made pleasure its defining principle.
The marketplace offers us tasks that seem serious and dignified, until we consider more carefully what their purpose is. Often these tasks demand intellectual rigor, and in this respect they might be helpful to a mind that seeks to perfect itself. But eventually we're bound to ask, if the desired end result is determined by whim rather than intellectual rigor, what’s the point of exerting intellectual rigor in fulfilling it?
Indulging my body’s desire for pleasure is sinful not only because it distracts me from the task of perfecting my mind, but also because it condemns those who produce the tools of pleasure to tasks that don’t help them perfect their minds either. Ten dollars I spend on pleasure, if they were instead used to fund a scholarship, would allow a Third World student to spend one day less in the factory and one day more in the library.
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