What makes you feel good? Is it expensive underwear? Expensive clothes? Is it the latest Xbox game? Tickets to see your favourite band? The things that make us feel good are specific to the individual, as the old saying goes “one person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure”, and as such should not be judged by others. Recently, however, I had a conversation with a fellow student about the luxury underwear brand Agent Provocateur that quickly descended into quite a heated debate about the ‘point’, as this particular student worded it, of the brand and the people that buy and enjoy it. As a fan of Agent Provocateur myself, I was quick to defend my right to enjoy such underwear and the legitimacy of the enjoyment and pleasure one can receive from buying a silk and French lace thong for instance. My compatriot, however, continued to ridicule the idea of any enjoyment experienced by wearing the expensive underwear and, to my horror, declared it a “waste of money”. His enjoyment of attending concerts, on the other hand, was a perfectly understandable and reasonable way to part with his cash (even if a ticket to see Green Day or R.E.M can cost up to £200). This got me thinking, can pleasure and enjoyment be measured and placed in categories or are all pleasures equal? Is spending money on concerts superior to spending money on underwear? The philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that pleasures could indeed be distinguished and categorised as being ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures. Mill argued that the things that made the general public happy: gossip, scandal and raucous plays (which in our day, roughly translates to the enjoyment of Eastenders and, for my companion at least, the enjoyment of Agent Provocateur), should be considered to be ‘lower’ pleasures due to their lack of intellectual development and purpose. The ‘higher’ pleasures were then, of course, the pleasures of the intellect. Being an intellectual himself, it is not difficult to see the foundations of Mill’s theory. Bias. It is inevitable that each person will view their method of enjoyment and pleasure as superior to, or ‘higher’ than, others, but it appears that this is a fallacy. If even the renowned philosopher John Stuart Mill is not immune to subjectivity when talking about pleasures, it seems almost impossible that we can objectively measure pleasures against one another. My enjoyment of lacy underwear, therefore, can be considered equal to my companion’s enjoyment of attending concerts as there can be no way of measuring which is ‘better’, so to speak. So the next time someone attempts to ridicule the things that make you feel good, or you feel the urge to mock another’s enjoyment of something, remember that their pleasure is the ‘higher’ pleasure and yours the ‘lower’ in their mind and vice versa.
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