When the prison door closes behind Boethius, he does not yet know that the cell walls are almost entirely of his own making. As the lock clicks home, he looks around desperately, blind to the fact that the key is in his own hands. Accused of a crime he did not commit, Boethius descends into despair, believing there is nothing good left in the world. He is wont, like most of us, to view life as good or ill, just or unjust, upon our external conditions. In other words, we believe the secret to happiness is found in fortune. But fortune is not found entirely—maybe not even primarily—in wealth, as we often assume. We all have the survival instinct to create our own fortune, and perhaps the strongest among us can truly will our desires into reality. We grope and fight and push as hard as we can to make our fortune good. And the more we do, the smaller our prison cell becomes. It is, then, unable to bear the weight of reality, we turn inward. We seek out, stealthily at first, the small distractions and the little highs to balance out the lows. If justice is imbalanced, then we may steady the scales through titillating evasion. If the prison cannot be torn down, it can be waited out through pleasure.

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Disney’s Pinocchio depicts the titular wooden puppet-turned-real boy distracted from his quest for reality. Granted a partial humanity, the boy nevertheless rejects his kindly father Geppetto’s ambition of humane education, leaving the demanding life of learning to perform in an exploitative puppet show. Freed by the Blue Fairy only to become a victim of puppet trafficking, he chooses a life of hedonism on Pleasure Island. There he and another disobedient boy, Lampwick, spend their days riding roller coasters, playing games, and drinking beer. He unexpectedly receives the transformation he and his father long for—but he is turned into a beast. Pinocchio’s allegory is a sobering reminder that the unbridled pursuit of pleasure turns all of us into jackasses.

Such a reminder is always necessary in a dissipated age. But the message tends to overplay its hand—or loses its translation in the hands of the untrained or accusatory. Pleasure is as natural as breathing, and its ubiquity among the human experience is proof not merely of man’s desire to be happy but of God’s desire that we be happy. It is not, however, the highest route to happiness—which means our analysis must be all the more subtle, neither embracing all pleasure as good nor refuting it all as evil. Nuance and moderation are required here, and we must urge happiness without indulgence, and uphold morality without moralizing.

In a previous post, I noted that Nietzsche’s vision encourages a hedonistic ethic. If traditional morality is seen as an oppressive force that dominates the people, then it is only right that we reject the immoral constraints of morality and each follow the desires of our heats. If his vision is accurate, then Freud also is correct, and we should throw off the now-useless constraints of society; restraining our impulses will only inflame boiling cauldrons of subconscious danger. The danger in this psycho-social narrative is labeled harm, and 150 years later it is now a cultural commonplace that restraint actually hurts one’s self. (Only in such a luxurious and unserious time might words be considered “violence.”) Curiously enough, many of our modern societal cataclysms use an apocalyptic language of despair, concluding that if people do not indulge desires, they will run headlong into suicide. Tossing a colossal fit off a cliff seems a poor answer to one’s problems, to which a much deeper psychological problem exists than mere desire. One might surely conclude that a person may be happy seeking pleasure for a time, but only the naïve or obtuse think such happiness shall be permanent. As Lady Philosophy tells Boethius: “what do we have but the pains of longing followed by the regrets of satisfaction? One indulges the body and for this one gets pain and disease” (III.7). Obeying the self-rule of pleasure makes one a servant to his own body (III.8), and giving in to one’s selfish inner child makes one a slave to his impulses.

This does not mean that pleasure itself is the evil. God’s first commands to man and woman were to be multiply and to exercise lordship over the earth (Gen. 1:28). Creation and recreation both of fellow human beings and of civil society are pleasurable actions designed to beget more fruitful, pleasurable actions. The Lord busies himself with the proliferation of joy that comes through human connection and human community. But only he as Creator knows how best to prompt joy. Thus, in the two-fold command is premised the dual impulses of responsible liberty and delightful authority.

Here we must pause, taking care not to play the part of the moralist, who would prohibit all pleasures for the sake of authority. It was the Pharisee who accused Jesus of drunkenness, as he ate and drank with sinners (Luke 7:34). It was David’s wife who accused him of appearing undignified with his dancing (2 Sam. 6:20). It was the gnostic who persuaded the Colossian church to maintain an appearance of worship through total abstinence (Col. 2:20-23). Each example here attempts the exercise of power of one group over another to fit individual, not universal, definitions of righteousness. The moralist adapts the virtue of self-control to the vice of other-control. An alcoholic must rigorously control his impulses for the drink; given too much control, however, he develops an overexaggerated sense of ambition, which easily slips into narcissism and megalomania. Even righteousness unchecked can become a hedonism of self-righteousness, impotent substitutes for the joy intended by God.

Yet neither is joy absolute. Freedom and play must be virtuous, firmly fenced by the bounds of reality if they are to flourish. To cross those bounds, to violate the limitations of the eternal order, is to act in a way contrary to our created nature, in a way that will do actual injury to ourselves and others. It is, as Boethius mentions, like a man trying to walk on his hands. He might accomplish his goal, in part, but not efficiently or sustainably. Far from causing harm, order preserves our dignity and that of our fellow man. To do less makes us “the instrument of our own torments” (I.5)

How, then, to view pleasure? How to use it reasonably without falling under its spell? It may help, first, to consider the ends of pleasure. I, for one, tend to think that the pursuit of pleasure is often a coping mechanism rather than the end goal. The man who loves the drink surely desires to feel good, but the feeling good is the means by which he avoids the bad. The mother without her child, the employee without labor, the lover without the beloved all struggle to accept the pain of reality. Pleasure numbs the ache, or, to use another metaphor, it is the fluid that fills the cracks in our broken psyches. Yet it cannot be a glue, and its presence is only temporary. If this is pleasure’s end, then one hopes to escape reality, not confront it.

Further, we should also consider pleasure’s effects. Does it lead us toward the good of people or away from them? Pleasure is frequently self-reflective, and when consumed by it we turn not outward to the community of others, nor even upward to prayer, but inward into self-pity. The prodigal is not profligate because he spends his money on riotous living; this is only symptomatic of the greater loss of being estranged from the Father. He indulges in hedonism because he mistakes pleasure for happiness. The Father, wisely knowing that pleasure, ironically, brings emptiness, imposes on us behavioral limits, a series of Thou Shalt Not’s for our own well-being. To live in the Father’s house means a life of holiness—a life worlds away from hedonism.

Love God, said St. Augustine, and do as you please. If our desires, in other words, are ordered under the lordship of Christ, then we may feel at liberty to do all things pleasing and beneficial. Happiness, which is pleasure at its apex, allows us to overcome suffering. Pinocchio does not discover happiness at Pleasure Island. It is only during the harrowing journey into the belly of the beast, into the death of Jonah, that Pinocchio can experience true transformation. He becomes a real boy not through the freedom of riotous self-rule but through the humility of selfless suffering.

And, at last, we begin to arrive at an answer to one of humanity’s greatest questions by debasing idols falsely claiming to bring happiness. Yet how, then, might we truly become happy?