Risk-as-Pleasure
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proposes a conceptual matrix ^^ilich remedies and retrieves the missing
“genetic” conditioning lost since industrial “specialisation” and the multiplying
of divisions of labour.
The Anderson matrix grids Epicurus’ leisure experiences in a
hierarchical order, much like Maslow’s hierarchy of need or Bloom’s taxonomy.
Emotional satisfaction is perhaps optimized through a rotation of vital activities
at the depth and breadth most appropriate for the human ecological niche: e.g.
eating, bonding, mating, exploring, hunting, learning, contemplating,
innovating. The lateral partition differentiates the external versus internal realms
of experience; the three columns characterize differing intensities of volitional
effort. The resulting categories (sensation, adventure, mission, imagination,
communication, and speculation) Anderson regards as representing the six
flmdamental routes to pleasures ^\bich invigorate the human soul.
Thus, the Anderson diagram represents the grid of pleasures according
to Epicurean principles:
•
Spontaneous presentations: the sensuous pleasures are derived from any
sensory experience that we find to be gratifying in and by itself Of these
pleasures, quenching our sexual and stomachical appetites is paramount on
the list of human preoccupations.
Epicureanism:
For my part I find no meaning which I can
attach to what is termed good, iff take away
from it the pleasures obtained by taste, iff
take away the pleasures which come from
listening to music, iff take away too the
charm derived by the eyes from the sight of
figures in dance, or other pleasures produced
by any of the senses of man as a whole. E I
have often asked men who were called wise what
they could retain as the content of goods if
they took away those things I’ve mentioned.
Unless they wanted to pour out empty words, I
could learn nothing for them; and if they want
to babble on about virtues and wisdom, they
will be speaking of nothing except the way in
which those pleasures I mentioned are
produced.
(From Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, 3.41)