Mirth's Easy Glory

At just the mention of the moral relaxation found in wine, women, and song, a power of eagerness and longing surges up within us. No sales talk is required to draw us into this

engagement. Rather, it is the experience of

every man that he inclines by nature toward the luring, the exciting, the morally risqué. Our

problem is to resist, to throttle off momentum, to deviate from this path. In fact, we are already committed to pleasure. Yet, we have an uneasy feeling as we embark on the voyage.

A. Solomon's Experiment

If ever a person threw both himself and his resources into the labor of finding whole

perspective values, it was King Solomon. He

had the acumen to recognize the alternatives plus the financial resources to undergird his commanding authority. He occupied the rare position of being able to put values to an

empirical test, for at his meanest nod armies moved. And in the book of Ecclesiastes there is a picture of the soaring spirit of Solomon,

seeking some place to rest. In the entire corpus of religio-philosophical literature it would be

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difficult to discover a more disciplined search for values. Something within Solomon, some power of self over the self, taught this wise king that man possesses depths of vital resources

which are not easily satisfied within him. With all the gaudy splendor about him, Solomon was yet uneasy with himself. He felt that there

was more in life, and he meant to locate it. Since the happiness of his own person was at stake, he prepared to pay whatever price might be levied for the gain of ultimate security. What else

mattered if he himself was unhappy?

Interestingly enough the first option he put to the test was mirth. "I said in my heart, Come now, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure." (Ecclesiastes 2:1) Who can read this without entertaining both interest and sympathy? If the lure of pleasure in the heart is not reality, what then is? Flesh and wine exhibit their own prima facie claim to finality. Their shimmering sparkle is sufficient advertising.

And yet Solomon quickly recoiled from his systematic venture into hedonic indulgence, discrediting the option as deceiving. "Behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad;

and of mirth, What doeth it?" (2:1-2)

There is something enticing (almost irritating) about this Biblical experiment, however, for one has a feeling that a page in the argument has

been torn out. Solomon is clear when he

describes both what he was searching for and what he actually found out; but he is very

unclear as to the reasons for his conclusions. He announces no middle premises. The reader is

given clues, as it were, and then he is left to draw his own inferences.

If the problem is not too hard, however, — and this one is not — a good teacher does

well not to tell too many answers. The geometry instructor who passes out answer books along with the questions is an accomplice in the

softening of the student's own spirit. In the maieutic art (which Socrates followed so effectively) the purpose is to give birth to

knowledge in the reader or hearer, not impart a finished product to be memorized by rote. When the student agonizes through a

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problem for himself, he develops the muscles of his own person in the process. The solution

becomes part of himself. And surely Solomon is seeking the same thing: He wishes the reader to mediate the solution through his own person.

And a cursory reflection upon the elements in

the problem shows actually how easy this mediation is.

B. Immediacy

If pleasure is defined as anything which makes a man happy, then obviously every individual is a hedonist by trade, for no man so hates his own flesh as to seek unhappiness deliberately. If one is to make it mean anything, therefore, the

hedonic ideal must of necessity be limited. And when the process of peeling away is completed, the irreducible element left is immediacy.

Pleasure is immediate satisfaction, however broadly conceived. Pleasure is that which sustains the individual during the actual

engagement. The seeker after pleasure never postpones, never suffers, for self-denial is entertained only when spirit delays present possession in favor of future prospect.

Instantaneity, accessibility, and intensity give initial plausibility to pleasure. Self-denial is not the course which we choose by nature. Our first

— though hardly our purest — inclination is to give in, to let go, to indulge. The immediate is real, it is gratifying. For this reason it naturally seems to merit a higher place in the hierarchy of values than the things which are not seen. Why exchange the real values of the here and now for the presumed values of eternity?

One can appreciate why immediate

satisfaction is a plausible ultimate in life when he recalls that the masses of the people

generally gravitate in the direction of hedonism.

The Pax Romana was no accident. It came through the skillful deploying of centers of

power, plus a generously distributed quantity of bread and circuses. There is nothing essentially new about the welfare state, therefore. The

politician realizes that the masses greatly enjoy the path of least resistance.

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A proof of the lure of immediacy is the way pleasure overpowers even those most set on

conquering it. One may think of King David, for example, a man of great spiritual stature and a prototype of Jesus Christ. His consistent ways in uprightness and self-sacrifice remain exemplary for all generations. From the time of his musical triumphs in the court of King Saul till the hours when he penned the sublime utterances of the Psalms, he deliberately tried to shun the intrigue of the immediate whenever it conflicted with higher values. And yet fleshly immediacy reduced this mighty monarch to a piece of

bread. For one hasty moment the enflamed king forgot God's law and lay with Bathsheba. The king could rule armies, but he could not resist the contours of a woman. The penitential Psalms are an everlasting monument to the power of the immediate over even those most devoted to

eternal values.

For I know my transgressions;

And my sin is ever before me.

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And done that which is evil in thy sight.¹

The satisfactions of immediacy cannot be dismissed as an illusion, unworthy of freedom and rationality, therefore. It is true that the brute seeks the pleasures of eating, drinking, rising up, lying down, copulation, etc. But it is not possible to make an easy identification of the hedonic rites of man with any counterpart in the animal kingdom. The external act must never be identified with the inner experience. The

spiritual height of man's freedom converts the simplest form of pleasure into an ecstasy which engages the whole person. Freedom raises

intensity to the nth power. For this reason, freedom permits man to fall into the easy

delusion of believing that the potential offerings of pleasure are far more elegant and gratifying than the facts themselves can support. The

sexual impulse is never the result of a purely moral urge to propagate the race. Freedom converts its simplicity into a complexity.

Through imagination man is tempted to presume a

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finality and exhilaration in sex which the elements in the situation cannot sustain.

Freedom encourages man to expect more than is actually there. If the sex act is consummated

within the bonds of marital love, an atmosphere reigns in which spiritual vitalities and

sympathies are exchanged. And if not,

disappointment reaches back with its arm of regret. The spiritual heights of man make it

impossible for him to remain tranquilly confined within the limits of natural form. Through the powers of imagination the child exchanges the wooden blocks in front of him for a towering skyscraper of pure gold. Through freedom the adult converts the simple sound of a motor into a noise of a torrential downpour.

C. The Crux

Solomon is extremely up-to-date in placing mirth first on the list of alternative options, for the gnawing urge within one to yield to

immediate pleasures is powerful. Soul and body are so intimately related that spiritual

satisfactions are carried along when the physical side of man is aroused. Modern man

understands this no less than Solomon with his company of minstrels and dancers. Our

contemporary culture is choked with machinery to make devotion to immediacy more efficient and satisfying. The tavern is arrayed with

glittering plastic fixtures and drawn shades,

while the cinema displays imaginary worlds for freedom to daydream in. And now, alas!

through television the combined resources of many entertainment agencies march through the living room. Our castle has become a stage.

Regardless of how plausible the hedonic ideal may initially appear, however, the essential

issue remains unchanged: Is immediacy that value for which I should live and die?² In

gaining momentary pleasure have I struck rock-bottom values in life? Is the full height of my free potentialities exhausted?

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Mirth may be both easy and natural, but is man true to his own nature to reject the things which are unseen for the easy and the natural?

Solomon concluded that mirth is vanity and emptiness. And the moment one examines

immediacy in the light of his own nature, he will see the grounds for the Solomonic conclusion.

There is an unmistakable incompatibility in the final union of the self with the immediate.

II. Boredom