If It Feels Good, Do It

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"If It Feels Good, Do It"
By Charles Wellborn

[Dr. Charles Wellborn is Professor of Religion Emeritus, Florida State University and for 20 years was Dean of the Overseas Campus in London.]

Years ago, in an introductory university class in Christian ethics, I asked my students during the first days of class to write a personal response paper answering from their own viewpoints the two most pertinent questions in any ethical discussion: how does one decide the difference between good and bad, and what is the good life?

As one would expect, since a number of the students were from a north Florida conservative Christian background, some gave the expected orthodox answers. One determined what was good or bad according to the Ten Commandments or, in several cases, by answering the question, "What would Jesus do?" Other students presented the fairly common. response: what helps people is good; what hurts people is bad.

And there were other answers. Many were superficial, but the paper submitted by one young man attracted my particular attention. Three things were evident: he was not an orthodox Christian, he had given some serious thought to the questions, and he had been exposed at some point to a bit of philosophical thinking. He argued that the difference between good and bad came down to the question of pleasure. The good is pleasurable; the bad is painful. Therefore, the good life is one which produces pleasure and personal satisfaction to a person and avoids pain. He ended with the comment, "I want to live a life I can enjoy. That would be a good life."

That incident occurred long before the modern pop slogan, "If it feels good, do it" became a catch phrase. But my student`s ideas were a prelude to what has become a widespread phenomenon: the elevation of pleasure to the position of primary arbiter in decisions about human conduct.

Arguing against that moral stance presents some difficulties, at least to many moderns. Is there a sustainable reason why men and women should not do what is pleasurable? Does it make sense for human beings deliberately to submit themselves to pain, or at least to the deprivation of pleasure? My former student was a harbinger of things to come, but he was not an original thinker. In the 4th century BC a minor school of Greek philosophy, called the Cyrenaics, headed by Aristippus, taught that all moral knowledge is unreliable and useless. Therefore, the pursuit of immediate pleasure is the chief purpose of life, and sensual enjoyments are preferable, both to the more complicated and subtle joys of intellectual life and to the rigors of moral restraint. Indeed, one of the disciples of Aristippus, Hegesias, taught that since pleasures are rare at best, the avoidance of pain should be the main concern of the wise, and that suicide is by far the most efficacious way of avoiding pain–the ultimate philosophy of despair.

I mention the Cyrenaics, not as a kind of academic showoff, but simply to emphasize that there really is "nothing new under the sun." A Greek contemporary of Aristippus, and a far more respectable philosopher, Epicurus, embraced the same idea of pleasure as the principal aim of life, but sought to refine the idea by arguing that some pleasures are better than others–that intellectual pleasures, for instance, are more desirable than purely physical ones. From him we get the term "epicure," which the dictionary defines as "a person of refined and fastidious taste." Thus, for Epicurus, a "good man" was someone who lived for pleasure but was smart enough to know which pleasures were most desirable.

This kind of "feel-good" philosophy did not, however, vanish with the Greeks. In the 19th century, the influential English thinker, Jeremy Bentham, worked out a complicated system which, while still embracing pleasure as the main aim of life, sought to classify all pleasures. Bentham, a mathematician, devised a complex and, finally, impractical scale by which he thought that all pleasures could be measured–evaluating such things as intensity, purity, certainty, and fruitfulness. Bentham, along with John Stuart Mill, his most influential disciple, refined this philosophy into a social one, positing that the "greatest good for the greatest number" was the ultimate aim of all good social policy. Good, of course, means pleasure, and pleasure is then defined as that which is most "useful," that is, that which produces the most pleasure for the most people. Thus, their philosophy came to be called "utilitarianism," and that sort of thinking is still with us in the present day.

Of course, the great majority of people today do not pause, while making their moral decisions, to think about philosophy. And exactly at this point arises the prime defect in the approach of high-minded thinkers such as Bentham and Mill. The man of integrity in his cloistered study may take time to weigh out carefully the consequences of his actions, seeking to find "the greatest good for the greatest number," but the man or woman in the street tends, by and large, to look only at the immediate payoff in terms of pleasure.

That simple observation underlines the principal problem with the utilitarian philosophy. Since "usefulness" actually means "pleasure," the interpretation of the term comes down to the individual. And here is where the hard-nosed understanding of the Christian faith comes into play. The Biblical Christian must insist on a fundamental understanding of human nature. To put it simply, in Christian terms, "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." This is not an optimistic or happy view of human nature, but it happens to be a realistic one. When the ordinary human being comes to make moral choices, the "man on the Clapham omnibus," as the British call him–John Doe–makes his decisions on the immediate, personal basis And those decisions are, almost inevitably, self-centered and short of social responsibility.

The obvious and most-used area of decision here is that of sexual activity. The steadily growing number of illegitimate children, the increasing incidence of abortion, the multitude of people who live together without benefit of any religious or legal ceremony of marriage–all these statistics supply ample evidence. For a huge number of persons in our contemporary society immediate personal sexual pleasure takes precedence over everything else. The social consequences–the "greatest good for the greatest number" play little real part in their decisions. "Pleasure" is the prime factor.

I happen to believe strongly in the right of a woman to control her own body and its reproductive functions, but, I must confess, the increasing incidence of abortion concerns me. If abortion is routinely seen as the "easy" way–though, in actuality, it is far from easy–out of unwanted pregnancy, we open up a Pandora`s box. Abortion, from an objective viewpoint, should never be seen as the escape hatch from sexual irresponsibility; yet that is what it seems to be for many today.

We must not deceive ourselves, however, into thinking that sex is the only moral problem area in our modern society. We live in an entrepreneurial age, and the self-made man, economically speaking, is our hero. To be rich–to "make it" economically–has been established as the ultimate hallmark of success. Our consumer-oriented society encourages us to value economic achievement–sometimes however brought about–as the most admirable of all goals. This means that material prosperity has been equated with the highest pleasure, and the "if it feels good, do it" philosophy reigns supreme.

In an age in which all of us are bombarded with television advertisements–and, indeed, programs-which constantly tell us that happiness consists in what we can buy, is it surprising that the underclass in our society who cannot financially afford all the luxuries they see paraded before them on television decide to steal or loot them? If "pleasure" is the end of all life, and if "`pleasure" means the acquisition of goods, then why not use any means to obtain them? Why should others have them, when you do not? The "greasy thumbprint" of human sin leaves its mark here, as everywhere.

Strangely enough, this kind of "feel-good" approach to matters of sexual and economic ethics does not lack its academic defenders. In a lecture last year at the University of Toronto the respected cultural commentator, Michael Ignatieff, argued that radical selfishness was an expression of moral virtue. Human beings, he said, have a prime duty to themselves and a prime right to individual freedom and happiness (pleasure). Ignatieff did not hesitate to face the consequences of his belief. We must , he said, accord respect to an individual`s needs "against the devouring claims of family life." It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how Ignatieff`s ideas can possibly jibe with the demands of such thinkers as Bentham and Mill for ""the greatest good forthe greatest number."

Ignatieff`s ideas seem terribly naive. When a fifty-year old man, struggling with his second adolescence, leaves his wife and children in cavalier fashion for the charms of a sexy, younger secretary, he has not exemplified legitimate human freedom. He has acted out of base irresponsibility. What he has done is not something that affects only him in the exercise of his freedom, but something which directly affects his wife–another human being, deserving of respect–and his innocent children. Beyond that, he has affected in a real way the society in which he lives, the community of which he is a part. (I do not need to say, I trust, that these words would apply to a woman who did the same sort of thing.)

The crucial fact about the "feel-good" philosophy is that it ignores any sense of an over-arching moral imperative which places limits upon the exercise of personal freedom in the name of community responsibility. Individual freedom is a precious moral right, but freedom without responsibility has no moral basis. To act with no understanding that one`s actions inevitably impinge, at some point, upon the freedom of others is the road to moral anarchy. And with moral anarchy there is no community.

Perhaps no thinker has viewed the human situation with more pessimism then the 17th century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes, not himself an orthodox Christian, embraced a view of human nature which carried ultra-Calvinism and its doctrines of original sin and total depravity to their ultimate. Human life, in its natural state, said Hobbes, is a jungle existence. All individuals are depraved, brutish, totally self-centered, and interested only in their own survival and pleasure. Left in that state, all humans would be involved in a continuous war against each other–each seeking his own, victory to the strongest, the devil take the hindmost.

Given that human situation, what is the logical answer? Hobbes had no faith in the power of eternal moral ideals or of the grace of God to alter human beings in their conduct and moral choices. And so he followed his thinking to its logical conclusion. The only hope for human beings is what he called a "social contract," an agreement into which, for the sake of order and survival in the midst of chaos, human beings enter, entrusting their survival to the absolute rule of a political state, a "Leviathan," which will ruthlessly enforce order on all its citizens.

The shape of that order will depend totally on the will of the rulers in power, and, since those rulers are themselves, like their subjects, corrupted human beings, that order may well be tyranny of the worst order. Hobbes hoped for beneficent rulers, but the history of the 20th century has taught us that, in the name of order, dictatorial rulers like Hitler and Stalin may seek to impose the most diabolical kind of structure upon their people, all in the name of "the greatest good for the greatest number."

To move from the "feel good" idea to the extremes of Nazism and Communism may seem like a huge jump, but the logic is inexorable. Unless there is some limit upon the ideal of individualistic pleasure as a moral principle, the door is open for almost unimaginable consequences–which we have seen worked out in terrible detail in our own century.

Even in a democratic society like our own, still guided to some extent by a sense of moral imperative, the dangers are fully apparent. True, those less powerful elements in our society, whether they be economic, ethnic, or social, rightly feel that they have no alternative except to organize themselves into power blocs of their own, more nearly equipped to oppose discrimination and oppression. Yet, if these new power groups are concerned only with their own welfare–their own "pleasure," with no real regard for the rights of others, the result can only be a

continuation of injustice. The political, social, economic, or racial structure may be turned upside down, but one oppressive group will only have been substituted for another.

The "feel-good" ethic is finally and inevitably self-defeating. The individual who lives only for his own pleasure will eventually face the situation in which his "pleasure" is opposed by another individual or group with more power, and the individual`s pleasure will be replaced with misery. When power becomes the only ingredient in the social process, the weak must inevitably suffer.

I want to close this article by presenting an idea that deserves considerably more attention than I can give it here. If, as Epicurus, Bentham, Mill, Hobbes, and others have believed, pleasure is the prime motivation of all human beings, then there is a way to apply this philosophy to the Christian life. The word "joy" occurs in the Scriptures innumerable times. When Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount, that "the peacemakers, the meek, the merciful, those who hunger after righteousness" are blessed, I do not think he meant that their reward would come only in the after-life. "Blessed" can be translated as "joyful," and I believe that there is joy or "pleasure" for the earnest Christian believer in this life, as well as in the life beyond. I have often heard the Christian life preached as if it were inevitably full only of suffering, pain, and self-denial. I reject that picture. True, there can come pain and, certainly, self-denial, if one seeks to live the Christian life. But there is infinitely more. I know, from personal experience, that there is joy–pleasure–in believing that one is striving to do the will of God. I know that there is a joy that comes from expanding one`s moral horizons beyond animalistic self-interest to a concern for the neighbor. To love God, and to love one`s neighbor, is not a trial but a blessing. And the joy–the pleasure–that comes from that new focus of life and activity is something that cannot be measured on Bentham`s calculus.

For the Christian, who properly understands his faith, the axiom, "If it feels good, do it," can be a helpful guide to moral decision.