The Punishment For Refusing to Grow Up And The Balance of Pleasure and Responsibility

The Andreia Philosophy

3 months ago

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“THIS HAS BEEN a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed—run over, maimed, destroyed—but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular lifestyle the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. “Take the cash and let the credit go,” as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.”

A Scanner Darkly | Philip K Dick | 1977

Playing in the street may kill you.

Those who witness street death, or hear about it from their circles, may become less interested in a life of play, of which play is undisciplined action for pleasure that has no reward other than pleasure, which for children is very well the meaning of life. Or you see street death and think it won’t happen to me. It happens to everyone who plays in the street long enough.

For children, play is figuring out how to interact with the world. For adults, play is a respite from the path, a distraction from the path, or an excuse to not embrace the path.

Most children will one day find something they want, even if that’s something they want to avoid, and they realize that play does not make movements down the path toward what they want, or move them away from some terrible monster.

Finding purpose via the path is the rite of passage for all humans, even if that purpose is surviving in the world; the most unfulfilling purpose available to us. True fulfillment comes from finding multiple mastery paths that can be followed until your end, and maybe after.

Paths are obsessions and the obsessed have no care nor availability of mind to obsess over pleasure, which could be thought of as the avoidance of death. The Samurai embraced death and mastery.

The avoidance of responsibility is childlike. Responsibility is a monster to the child-mind. The child’s mind cannot tolerate being responsible, even for themselves. Think about people who are constantly other people’s problems. This is borne from the child’s mind refusing to grow up and adopt a path. The path of basic survival is not enticing.

Adult-children who refuse the path of basic survival may walk the path of pleasure, searching for meaning which cannot be found through pleasure.

Children want the responsibility to go away. Responsibility becomes a monster to run away from and the child-minded does everything it can to avoid responsibility. Pure pleasure activities like drug use, entertainment, and being lazy–which may be the greatest pleasure of all–prevent us from moving forward on a path.

Pure pleasure is on the opposite spectrum of pure responsibility.

Pleasure – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Responsibility

Responsibilities can be pleasurable. This is ideal. This is the place in the middle. The path of survival is entirely to the right of the pleasure/responsibility spectrum.

Drug addiction, adult-content addiction, entertainment addiction, any addiction or obsessive pleasure activity that does not have a responsibility component–which can be thought of as a mastery component–are on the far left of the spectrum.

Balance is a requirement for forward movement for all things. A car, cart, human, horse, literally anything, cannot move forward if it is unbalanced and uncoordinated. Finding your way in the world is finding a balance.

The pursuit of pleasure is often not for the sake of pleasure, but an attempt to nurse a spiritual wound with a daily ointment when what you need is antiseptic and stitching. You have to clean out your wounds. The addict hides from their wounds. They don’t wanna see the pain again because that will make them feel pain again. So they are stuck in a dark circle chasing pleasure. Not going anywhere, but aging forward.

The pursuit of pleasure becomes a religious faith that demands prayer, but no amount of dedication will ever fulfill pleasure; pleasure can not be fulfilled. The path is where we find fulfillment. The deeper the path, the more fulfilling it will be. This is not an empty statement. Path depth is how meaningful the pursuit is to your spirit. Simply surviving is not meaningful to the higher conscious being.

Survival for the sake of survival is shooting arrows into the woods with no target. It’s wandering in a desert with no meaningful destination. You will face pain and setbacks and they won’t have any meaning.

Every path has difficulties and setbacks. The childlike path of pleasure has the most amount of difficulties and setbacks. The child-minded does not deal with their setbacks because responsibility comes at the price of pleasure.

A path with deeper meaning has difficulties and setbacks, but a path with meaning makes the difficulties mean something. This is what keeps your spirit burning hot and spurs your will to overcome any obstacle.

A path of survival or pleasure is not fulfilling and will end unexpectedly with regret, like children playing in traffic, watching as one by one they pass on to the next stage.

“There had been a time, once, when he had not lived like this, a .32 under his pillow, a lunatic in the back yard firing off a pistol for God knew what purpose, some other nut or perhaps the same one imposing a brain-print of his own shorted-out upstairs on an incredibly expensive and valued cephscope that everyone in the house, plus all their friends, loved and enjoyed. In former days Bob Arctor had run his affairs differently: there had been a wife much like other wives, two small daughters, a stable household that got swept and cleaned and emptied out daily, the dead newspapers not even opened carried from the front walk to the garbage pail, or even, sometimes, read. But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn’t hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that. Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe. All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected. It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all.”

A Scanner Darkly | Philip K Dick | 1977