What do Real Hedonists believe?

Definitions:

It might be useful to start off on the same page.

  • Hedonism is the belief system built around maximizing pleasure. 

    Versions of Hedonism have popped up on their own across continents and cultures and millennia. The tree of hedonism is tall and old and has many branches.


  • Pleasure is a signal inside our bodies, passed down by our human and nonhuman ancestors, which tells us something is good. 

    Pleasure comes in many forms including things as far ranging as quiet contentment, ecstatic elation, spiritual rapture, intellectual epiphany, and that feeling pigs get when they roll around in the mud.


  • We could focus on happiness or joy or contentment instead of pleasure.

    People often associate pleasure with exclusively sex at worst and exclusively physical experience at best.

    Since all of the different possible positive experiences happen in the body, they are all inherently physical. 

    The common association of pleasure with the physical is a great reason to consider pleasure a good umbrella term for other inherent good feelings.

  • Obviously some pleasures are mixed with pain.

    Working out hurts in the moment while filling us with endorphins and increasing our health. Heroin feels amazing in the moment but creates a dependency that saps pleasure from your future self.

    Net pleasure = pleasure - pain

    We must apply this equation to all of our actions to figure out how best to maximize pleasure.

Explore our main beliefs:

  • We believe that pleasure is good.

    Not just my pleasure or your pleasure, but all pleasure.

  • Relationships are where most pleasures come from. Prioritizing pleasure requires us to value other people's pleasure like we value our own.

    We can only know what makes others feel good by asking and listening to them.

    We practice self-reflection and self-awareness to uphold our own boundaries and to honor each others’.

  • We are bodies, not souls inside of bodies.

    All of our thoughts and dreams and feelings happen within our bodies.

    Everything that matters is physical in nature.

  • You may be a body, but you cannot survive and live a pleasurable life without relationships with countless other people and species.

    We are interdependent. If the self you are maximizing pleasure for is just your body, you are missing out on the vast majority of pleasures.

    We believe in something greater than ourselves. It's all of us.

  • We believe that each of us only lives one life. We may be wrong, but there is no evidence for an afterlife, past lives, or future lives, so we believe we should act as though death is final.

    We soak up all the pleasure we can get while we are here.

  • For one of us to feel maximum pleasure, all of us must.

    There is so much suffering in the world, and much of it is caused by purposeful systems of oppression.

    We seek to destroy those systems wherever and whenever possible. This includes, but is not limited to fascism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, imperialism, classism, and speciesism.

  • We believe that there are many ways to be a hedonist, as well as many ways to be a good person without being a hedonist.

    Other people’s pleasure deserves our utmost consideration, even when we experience the world differently.

    We wish to work with our neighbors and friends from all walks of life to create paradise on earth.

  • Maximizing our pleasure requires us to create paradise on earth for everybody.

    This starts immediately and locally.

    This includes a devotion to the care of our environment and all the the creatures that we share this planet with.

    Paradise is a place where it is easy to feel good most days. We deserve it.

Do you have questions?

Thoughts? Feeling Skeptical?

We would love to chat!