The Meaning of Hedonism

Young men (and women) think that when they come across a “Bible Zealot” or “hardcore Christian” which is what most would assume I am (they would be wrong because I am not a Bible alone moron and what passes for both “hardcore” and “christian” today is laughable) that talks about “hedonism”, we are imagining young people are on some orgiastic drunken revelry on the daily.

Allow me to correct that misguided view.

First of all I am GenX not a boomer so I neither resent nor hallucinate the situation of millennials and zoomers. In fact I mostly pity them, at least when they are not completely pathetic, in which case I am mostly frustrated by their lack of animus.

More importantly, I understand better than most that hedonism today is not really the orgies of the collapsing Roman empire. It is more a wasting of time while waiting and hoping against hope for “something better” to come along.

When you are raised with no understanding whatsoever of what Catholicism actually was and has always been and continues to be in those small number of families who still hold to it, you cannot help but go wrong in life.

The only sense of “the right way” I had in my upbringing was a code of honour that can best be defined —as John C. Wright did— as being that of the noble heathen. That is a man who keeps his word and does as his personal honour commands. It is a far cry from Catholicism and possibly the best level of civilisation that sort of way can aspire to is that of feudal Japan.

Possibly Imperial China too, but my understanding of Japanese codes of honour is superior (and closer) than the Chinese version of it. The Roman Empire too fas founded on it on arguably surpassed both Japanese and Chinese achievements, but in any case, no one can deny that all of those systems were far more brutal, uncharitable, and lacking in mercy and kindness when compared to Catholicism.

The point here is that absent the framework of what a good life actually is, meaning the proof of it, the reality of it you can see and verify for yourself, how is any young person to decide on how to best approach life?

If you DO know, things become a LOT simpler. But if you do not know, what a good life really means, you’re almost certain to get lost in all sorts of distractions.

I never saved really. I did buy some property (land) at age 26 after writing the first edition of the Face on Mars, and some 25 years later it helped me to sell it and put a deposit on a house in Italy. But as I had no intention to make any children (until I was 40 and gradually I had realised a lot of life’s “givens” were contemptible lies spread by boomers) I spent most of my time indulging those interests that caught my attention. And unbelievable as it may sound, the main one was a search for true love. Which resulted in much heartache and a lot of women. After a while it got so I sort of stopped believing in it but carried on enjoying the women. The rest of my time was filled with doing what I liked or interested me. Reading, martial arts, studying the human mind, ancient things and places, writing, visiting places I wanted to see… but always also that search for that one woman.

And eventually I found her.

But it was a very long, tortuous and far more painful and difficult road than it needed to be.

Had I been taught, and more importantly, shown, that family is the main point of life. Had my own family I was born into been less of a shitshow, how many years of distraction would I have saved. How much more could I have done and thus be leaving my children?

I don’t regret my life at all, because every part of it brought me to where I am now, married to the right woman finally and with enough children too. And if I had not taken this particular road I would not be with her or have the children I do, and as was very cleverly shown in a delightful film called About Time, that reality is inconceivable to me.

But the point is that if you are say in your twenties, or even thirties, (and yes, even 40s or 50s, I am living proof of this: It’s never too late) and you realise deeply that the main purpose of life is actually to create a family that is as happy and prosperous as you can make it, then, regardless of your actual situation, your priorities, your actions and your activities will be radically different than if you think having the latest iphone, knowing the latest political gossip, or cheering for this or that sports team, or traveling to see X place for the instagram cred, or getting another notch on your belt, matters at all.

And the kind of actions and activities that you will focus on will be such that, yes, perhaps you might have less “fun” (or time wasted on things that ultimately don’t matter, depending on your perspective) but you might also have a more concrete base from which to start that family.

Had I aimed to built something for the future starting in my early 20s, I would probably be able to live off rental income even with six kids by now. It’s also true that for my particular character that was never really going to be a likely road, so there is that to counter, I have always been too curious, and probably, as a good friend pointed out, too capable, to ever worry about the future, and indeed I am not especially worried about it now either, but it certainly is a lot harder than it could be.

Having a much harder life is not necessarily a bad thing. It makes you more capable in many ways (assuming you survive and overcome). But there is certainly something to be said for not having to work into your 80s. Probably anyway. Then again, I have Jean Parisot de Valette as a somewhat inspirational figure; and he was swinging his two-handed sword on the walls of one of the castles of Malta, wounded in a leg and not wearing his full armour at age 71, so… if you have that kind of character, what I can guarantee is that your life might indeed be very hard, but not boring. The issue however is not you, but your children, and while for some the idea of swinging a sword at muslim invaders’s heads in our seventies might be appealing (and for some of us possibly inevitable!) the fact is that if you’re instead leaving your children a few well-stocked and well-defended castles, and yet have also instructed them in the proper running of a city-state, you’d be far better off.

My children on the other hand will have to learn on the job, as it were, and perhaps that is as fate or God ordained. After all, we do have an 800 year known history of doing things this way; and while my branch of the family is indeed the silver one (that is filled with curious explorers and war-like adventurers, of minor noble rank) and not the gold branch that had the much higher nobility titles and actual castles to their name, it is also true that our side of the family has some truly extraordinary people in it; several of whom have been talked about in history books or left monuments with their name on it for a time.

But… if I had somehow a crystal ball at age 20 that told me I would have six children all under the age of 14 at age 55, aside the utter shock, I probably would have worked like a possessed man (as I tend to do most things) towards securing far more land and property and wealth than I have done. And even without the crystal ball, if I had simply thought creating a family was the main aim in life, I would have done so too.

Instead, the boomer poison of “the world is horrible, why would you want to bring more innocents into it?” Infected me well into my early 30s at the very least. And that is a lie that is directly related to someone not having any belief of any real substance in a Loving God.

Generic Zen-Agnosticism tinged with Shintoism is not exactly ideal for the consideration of family creation. And there hasn’t been as much need for wandering samurai, thankfully.

It took until the end of my 30s to realise that having children was the right way to live. And I am not unintelligent, which is demonstrated by the fact that I had come to this conclusion even though I was still essentially agnostic, and very much aware of how the levers of power on this planet work, which is not a position a person as objectively rational as I am is likely to come to without having a belief in God.

In fact I had come to this conclusion based only on the possibly irrational belief that my capabilities were enough to protect a child of mine even under such dystopic conditions as we have on this planet. Whether you think that is arrogance or confidence is debatable, but I am basically certain it would have been true if I limited myself to one or two children.

Adding the knowledge of a Loving God has removed a HUGE amount of the concern about having more children. And no, it does not mean miracles fall unceasing from the sky, the practicalities of feeding six children instead of two, as well as clothing them, educating them and so on are real, but you tend to find a way as you reorganise your priorities. And yes, maybe they will not all have the latest iphone and brand name clothing, but guess what: that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It makes them more imaginative and capable if they need to work for things, and if you are a decent parent you will also be able to help them get over a truly noxious aspect of modern life: caring excessively what other people think.

It’s a little different for girls than boys, but generally speaking, it is always best to err on the side of NOT caring what other people think than vice versa.

The emotional scars left by being overly concerned about other people’s opinions can be a truly devastating thing, particularly for girls, but boys too. Luckily my three youngest children already exhibit many traits that make me pretty secure in the view that this will not be an issue for them. If anything, the main worry might be to keep them from being arrested or chased out of towns for being possibly too cavalier about social rules in general!

All the people I knew at school that were from wealthy families, as a very frequent general trend, almost invariably tend to become what I would consider less accomplished human beings that even some of the absolute social rejects that everyone assumed would amount to nothing.

As a rule they tend to hold on to their wealth but be rather vacuous creatures with little to offer in terms of interesting personalities or life stories.

These apparent digressions, are not meandering, meaningless recollections and reflections of my life, they are intended to show you, and hopefully help you, see different aspects of life from different perspectives so that you might realise several things:

• The nihilistic depressive narrative of the boomers is a lie.
• The aimless apathy of the millennials or zoomers who are afflicted by it is weak, pathetic and unseemily for anyone with an ounce of self-respect.
• The “hard” road may often be the better road, and even if not, at least you will have more cool stories and have seen a side of life the cocooned and perfumed princes of the planet will never know.
• In short, the old adage is still mostly true: wounds heal, and chicks dig scars

All that said… it is only a foolish or imprudent man that does not plan (somewhat loosely, to allow for life’s inevitable detours) for the future. Especially when he envisions a numerous family in it.

Plan accordingly young man, and realise that hedonism might just be your indulgence in fancy clothes and package holidays, without a single Roman orgy in sight.

[ X ]

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