The Pursuit of Loneliness: America's Discontent and the Search for a New Democratic Ideal by Philip Slater

Author:Philip Slater [Slater, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Psychology, Social Aspects, Social Psychology, Social Science, Technology & Engineering, Violence in Society
ISBN: 9780807041789
Google: ejZbCwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01AEPR4DQ
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2016-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Futility of Utility

Reactions to the counterculture in the sixties made it quite clear what traditional American culture is all about. One automatic response of older people, for example, to the casual sexuality, clothing, and lifestyle of young people, and to their fascination with altering consciousness through drugs, was to ask, “What is it for?” Sometimes various utilitarian motives were imputed: the clothes were to attract attention, the sexual freedom was to produce better marriages (the term “sexual experimentation” captures this utilitarianism nicely), the drugs were to test themselves. The idea that pleasure could be an end in itself was so threatening to the structure of our society that the mere possibility was often denied.

In our society pleasure is allowable only as a means to an end. It must in some way or another yield energy for the economy. Hence the society has developed some special mechanisms for creating scarcity. Pleasure is made scarce, for example, by making it illegal. This makes it expensive and more difficult to obtain, and forces people to compete for what would otherwise be plentiful. Making liquor, drugs, prostitution, pornography, or gambling illegal also opens up new career pathways for the aggressive and ruthless.

Utilitarian assumptions even control our attitudes toward idleness. In public places one is suspect and at times subject to arrest if he or she is not engaged in at least a minimal activity—going or coming, fishing, getting a tan, reading the paper, smoking, window shopping. One must always be able to make a case for one’s acts having some vague utilitarian value—“broadening the outlook,” “keeping up,” “making contacts,” “keeping in shape,” “taking the mind off work for a bit,” “getting some relaxation.”9 The answer to “what are you doing?” can be “nothing” only if one is a child. An adult’s answer must imply some ulterior purpose—something that will be fed back into the mindless and unremitting productivity of the larger system.

This utilitarianism also underlies traditional attitudes toward pornography and drugs. In both cases the society fosters what it condemns. And both of the condemned practices threaten the harnessing of pleasure with a kind of circuit overload.

If we define pornography as any message from any public medium that is intended to arouse sexual excitement, then most advertisements are pornographic. But when we examine the specific rules concerning what is considered pornographic, we discover that the real issue is one of completion: the body can be only partially nude, sexual organs cannot be shown, a sexual act cannot be completed, and so on. The reason for this is that a partial arousal can be harnessed for instrumental purposes, while too strong an impulse might distract the audience from these purposes—might lead them to forsake buying for direct experience.

This leads to a self-defeating cycle. The more successful we are in generating esoteric erotic itches that can only be scratched in the world of fantasy, and thus lend themselves well to marketing—the stronger becomes the desire to obtain pure and uncontaminated gratifications. Our senses are numbed

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