Hedonism is overrated – to make the best of life there must be pain

theguardian.com

6 points·terrycody··2 comments

I found this read pretty disappointing, mainly because the author fails to define hedonism. Instead, he uses it as a crutch and catch all for pleasure and calls it bad.

A fair assumption is that he defines hedonism as heavy indulgence in sex,drugs, and rock n roll.

If this is the case, the article is basically a ‘don’t do drugs kids’ type of article, with a Viktor Frankl reference to add depth.

That said, as cliche as the article is, it is a nice reminder/PSA that doing hedonistic things isn’t always as fun as it seems, especially not for long.

... so the article is disappointing, but it tells a story which is true?

What if the article isn't disappointing, and you just didn't like it? I feel I often have this problem: an example is "learn you a haskell" which many many people rave about and stylistically drives me crazy. So I too would say (of it) disappointing. But as you have here.. if you say "still: it told the truth basically, even if I did not like it" You're implicitly giving it at least some value? So the disappointment is in the "how", not the "what".

Cliche is often in the eye of the beholder. Kurt Vonnegut thought that there are only 7 story arc in all literature. Does this make every instance of the Oddessy a cliche?

[Edited for tone.]

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