Why has society become so Hedonistic?

Question

If you look around you, gratification and immediate pleasure is stressed by the media. Why is this and what are your thoughts on it?

Answer 1

While I am an agnositc I still have the feeling we may be living in modern day Rome and we all know what happened there...

Answer 2

If people have become godless, then what is the incentive for living a moral life? Also, if people believe that this life is all there is, why not seize the day & live for immediate gratification?

If God and religion go out the window in a society, so do the morals.

Answer 3

The media is directed toward the youth and the youth are just starting to explore the realities of growing up, they want to experience everything, especially pleasure and gratificiaton! Media plays to this I think. Oh, and I agree that we are a very hedonistic society, if it doesn't feel right then you don't have to do it! That's just one of life's lessons that all of us will learn from time to time, real life isn't easy and it is rarely gratifying.

Answer 4

Because we live in an society obsessed with instant gratification and we live in an age of accessible, unprecedented luxury. The Western "me-culture" has fostered mentalities that value short-term pleasure over long-term constructive development.

Answer 5

Because many people believe that gratifying their senses is all there is to life.

Even 90 year old people still want to have sex and gratify their senses.

Sense gratification, the "path" of the tongue, touch, etc is never fulfilling nor satisfying... ever.

The desire just bubbles back.

A person with highly advanced consciousness ignores sense gratifaction completely and focuses on the spiritual self.

It's a losing game, chasing the desires of the senses... it's impossible to win that one.

Hare Krsna.

Answer 6

It is a marketing ploy the media has just picked up on what we want to sell us things. I think that eventually this will change and the pendulum will swing back the other way because Hedonism is not really a good thing :0

Answer 7

Consumer society... what else do you expect?
If we turn non-hedonistic..... society will break down, World Trade goes crap..... and there would be more justice in the world, I am sure of that.

We are rotten from inside out with this crazy hedonism..... hope we will pay for it in a not too destructive way..... hm!

Answer 8

Because hedonism is a very big bussiness: the hedonists consume, consume, buy, buy, everything that the great enterprises and marks sell them, thinking that if they spend more money or wear more expensive clothes, they automatically turn in better persons... ¡augh!

Answer 9

...Hedonism is a belief that happiness (pleasure) should be a primary goal in life. The basic concept is that all actions can be measured on the basis of how much pleasure and how little pain we, as individuals, produce.

Don't confuse it with self-gratification, which emphasizes obtaining one's own desires immediately, nor with narcissism's egocentric view of the world spinning around ourselves, our needs, and our desires, nor with the stereotypical view of hedonism.

What sane, rational human beings don't desire happiness rather than pain?

What the media stresses is not hedonism. It is self-gratification and narcissism in its most egocentric and materialistic form.

As a hedonist, I want to be "awakened" and made "alive" by experiences I have in life. Those experiences may include reading a great book (try "100 Years of Solitude" by Garcia-Marquez), listening to a great piece of music (try the "E lucevan le stelle" aria from Puccini's Tosca), tasting something unexpectedly estatic (try a perfect red, juicy strawberry on a hot summer day), smelling a whiff of something sensual (try the scent of a great cigar or perfume), seeing something beautiful (try watching a sunset from the Golden Gate Bridge) or touching the body of someone with whom you are in love (try gliding your fingers along the side of your lover's neck).

For me, all of these experiences (and many others) have brought me great pleasure. I can assure you that I am not sexually promiscuous, as the anti-hedonists would assume. I am monogamous and, to me, sex is about attaining mutually erogenous sensations. True hedonists are neither sluts nor whoremasters.

I would bet that if you compared my charity giving and volunteerism with that of the typical audience most media target, you would find them too busy caring about themselves and their images to care about others. Observe the work ethic, values, and sense of responsibility to society in the media's target group. It's all about them; it's all about what they can get from others.

If you really want to know what has happened to society, don't blame the hedonists. We're trying to reduce the pain for everyone, not just ourselves. We're trying to bring happiness to others, not just ourselves. Perhaps the problem lies with the "Gimme, Gimme" generation. The generation that believes so firmly in nationalistic supremacy, image makers, apathy toward anyone else's suffering but their own, narcissistic foreign and domestic policies, freedom of speech and religion (except for anyone who disagrees with them) and, of course, the one true religion: money.

The media only feeds people what they want to eat.

Answer 10

This is a message that has been drummed into our heads for 40-50 years. People used to be taught to respect others and to be a good citizen. The forcing of religion and God from our culture, whether you believe in them or not, has allowed us to do whatever we damn well please.