(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
(I CAN’T GET NO) SATISFACTION
John Stuart Mill: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
Despite my contempt for Utilitarianism, I had always taken this as axiomatic. But no longer. I recant this view and I extend my apologies to pigs and fools. Though surely neither pigs nor fools troubled themselves over my disapproval of their reluctance to philosophize.
Being human is burdensome and being a human compelled to seek wisdom is more burdensome still. While I have never been acquainted with a pig, I have known many satisfied dogs and cats. I do not think I have ever appreciated a patch of sunlight on the floor as much as any of them.
This should not be so. I can appreciate that patch of sunlight in more ways than can a dog or cat. My appreciation can be aesthetic. I can admire the play of light on the hardwood floor. My appreciation can be emotional. Perhaps I will associate the patch of sunlight with warmth or comfort or peace. Perhaps I will be inspired to write a haiku or paint a Hopperesque interior.
My appreciation can be scientific or mathematical or architectural. But I do not think any of these modes of appreciation can rival the pleasure of a dog or cat soaking in the sun and nothing else. Not wishing for the pleasure to continue. Not worrying that the pleasure will be cut short. Not comparing this patch of sunlight to yesterday’s patch of sunlight. Just feeling the sun and nothing else.
I am an animal too and like the dog and cat I can appreciate the pleasant sensation of lying in the sun, but my sensual appreciation is never solely sensual. There is always something else. And it is this something else which makes my appreciation less than that of animals who do not seek wisdom, for I will indeed wish for the pleasure to continue. I will worry that it will be cut short. I will compare today’s patch of sunlight to yesterday’s and I will wonder about tomorrow’s.
Moreover, too many lovely days of lying in the sun will reduce my pleasure in the experience. I will come to take it for granted. But not so Fido. He will lie in that patch of sunlight everyday and it will never get old. My superiority consists entirely in my ability to be dissatisfied with that which satisfies the rest of creation, including a great many of my fellow humans.
These satisfied humans, or fools as Mill calls them, take their pleasures where they find them. They lie in the sun. They drink beer and smoke weed and eat pizza. They listen to music. They dance. They have sex. And tomorrow they do it all over again.
But what of the intellectual pleasures? Shakespearean sonnets and Aristotelian logic? Poetry and philosophy, history and art, science and mathematics – all those pleasures without which we are less than human? The fool cares not for these pleasures. The sitcom makes him laugh and The Tempest makes him yawn and he would rather laugh than yawn.
I have danced enough with fools to know that the unexamined life is absolutely worth living. Who would be a dissatisfied Socrates when he could be a satisfied fool?