Description
The Pursuit of Pleasure is a thoughtful, witty, and provocative celebration of our ability to experience pleasure and our need to seek it out. Here, pre-eminent social thinker and anthropologist Lionel Tiger maps the route from our ancestors' world of pleasures to the present day. In the process, he poses a startling new idea: that pleasure is not a luxury but an evolu-tionary entitlement. Sex, food, travel, pets, plants, power: not only do we enjoy these things need them, and they are good for us. we
But why? Where does pleasure come from? What kinds of pleasure are beneficial? Who or what controls pleasure, and how can we get more of it?
Exploring the evolutionary origins of our enjoyments, Tiger combines superb reporting, fascinating facts, and voluptuous description to show how our behavior has been shaped by the past. Just as pain has influenced human behavior by teaching us what is dangerous, we actively seek out what makes us happy. In our ancient forefathers' forest, unripe fruit was sour, and eating it could be fatal; sweet, ripe fruit was safely edible. Voilà - the modern sweet tooth. And we still respond, physically and psychologically, to the warmth of the fire that kept us alive in our hunter-gatherer pasts. Hence our taste for barbecue, or our profound enjoyment of a stirring blaze in the fireplace on a chilly evening.
Tiger also tackles some contentious social issues the historic link between religion, public policy, and the control of pleasure, for example; why addictions to different substances should be treated differently; the lifelong preoccupation with sexuality that has animated our evolution, and the confusing consequences of contraception; how our evolved pleasure tastes have caused dietary havoc in modern societies where salt, fat, and sugar are freely available. In doing so, he shows how our tendency to seek out pleasure can cause widespread social and economic problems. But he also demonstrates where, when, why, and how our need for pleasure is positive and desirable necessary, even, for survival. This is in many ways an intellectual guide to understanding and easing the stresses in our lives.
Lionel Tiger has always predicted our society's next trend: his book Men in Groups invented the concept of male bonding, Optimism presaged the dawn of the Reagan eighties, and The Manufacture of Evil appeared just as American business went into ethical convulsions at the end of the decade. In The Pursuit of Pleasure, he has given us both an eloquent ode to enjoyment and our next -- and most rewarding -- agenda.
