As someone who spent many years in a space where self-denial was the essence of virtue, it took (or is still taking) time to figure out how to deal with virtuous pleasure. My experience has been that when you aren't willing to find the better versions of desire, you end up falling down into the lower ones. Something about the inability to identify the better vs worse desires ends up pushing people to do the worse ones.
YES! I totally agree with that. This is why I see it as a slow learning curve, with lots of trial and error. It is, indeed, "easier" to just adopt a self-denial approach (but, personally, I don't think that that's what's best, at least for me).
As someone who spent many years in a space where self-denial was the essence of virtue, it took (or is still taking) time to figure out how to deal with virtuous pleasure. My experience has been that when you aren't willing to find the better versions of desire, you end up falling down into the lower ones. Something about the inability to identify the better vs worse desires ends up pushing people to do the worse ones.
YES! I totally agree with that. This is why I see it as a slow learning curve, with lots of trial and error. It is, indeed, "easier" to just adopt a self-denial approach (but, personally, I don't think that that's what's best, at least for me).