Tolerance
What are we to do with tolerance? By tolerance, I mean the inevitable normalisation of all inputs — the process by which you ‘develop a tolerance’. Caffeine is the obvious example, being something that delights the mind and stimulates the ganglions but only until the body develops a tolerance. The only way to bring back that original sensation is to stop taking it for a period of time. Is the same thing true of all things that make you happy?
I remember visiting my Gran in Christchurch and remarking on the dramatic sea views from her flat. The air was so pure, the breezes so invigorating, and that view was sublime. It must be great to live here, I told her. “You soon tire of it,” she said. It was clear from this that human beings are irascible things, never satisfied with what they have.
For me, it means that each day the things that made me sublimely happy — the fresh juice in the morning, the vigorous physical workout, the daily mental workout — are now normalised, tolerated, put up with. Without self-denial it is easy to develop anhedonia. Pleasures must be earned, spread out, and not over-indulged if you are ever going to appreciate them without getting jaded. The idea of hell as the place where you get what you want forever, is easier to understand in this light.
Now, perhaps this is just my neo-puritan streak coming through, but I would be interested in how you decadents (who I know make up a significant portion of my single-figure readership) avoid anhedonia and jadedness. Do you indulge in more and more depraved acts in order to get your kicks? Or what?