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what is this eudemonic pleasure you speak of?

Nov 30, 2018 | Matters of the Heart, Personal, Power Dynamic | 0 comments

I don’t feel eudemonic pleasure.  I volunteer a lot because I can’t find paid work and don’t get pleasure from it.  The pleasure I feel is hedonic like when I listen to a good song or are with friends enjoying tea or a chai latte.  I think there are a few reasons for this, first being that I’m on the bottom so any time I help people it’s not happening by my own free will, it’s happening because disability based prejudice is keeping me from fully functioning in society (via getting a job).  Also generally classes that have been oppressed (such as African Americans) get less eudemonic pleasure out of uncompensated labor because it was forced upon them in the past.  The second being I have untreated depression and I think depression (at least as a male) makes you feel your station more at the expense of anything else you could be feeling.  So if you’re volunteering you’re thinking you are on the bottom instead of how much you are benefiting people.  Thirdly I can’t read social cues so when people are grateful it doesn’t often reach me.

Society likes to denigrate people who only feel hedonic pleasure labeling them as selfish and entitled.  I don’t know what to say to that other than a lot of times it is something out of our control.

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