Why do pleasurable things have consequences?

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If you notice, everything in life that gives us pleasure or fulfillment has consequences. When you eat good food, you risk gaining weight and having health problems. When you smoke, you risk getting lung cancer or other health problems. When you have sex, you risk getting pregnant or STDs. When you do drugs or drink, you can do damage to your body and your mental health. It seems like everything that gives us pleasure in the moment has risks to it that can affect the rest of our lives. Why can't we just enjoy things and not have consequences for doing them? Why does everything in life have to be difficult? I'm not saying that all of those things are pleasurable, but we just can't seem to enjoy anything without risks being involved.

I believe all of those things can be risk-free and that my problems either with them or from them came from not knowing the parameters.

I think some of this boils down to a difference in philosophies.

I eat my fill of ketogenic foods, which I do like, to my satisfaction. When I go to buffet, there are all different colors and flavors of things, on my plate. People, who accuse me of being boring, have mostly white and beige things.

I am probably a larger and hungrier person than most, yet tend to lose fat and maintain muscle.

I've kept a simple garden, using simple techniques, and got to a point, where the food would not even come inside the house. I could eat for hours.

I exercise, because I like it, and would not turn up my nose, at something not-dietic, that was expensive, or from a cookbook.

Someone once offered me $100+ chocolate, and I learned the reason why.

I intently watched foreign cooking shows, in which people proudly showed the best their countries had to offer.

Or, was cheap, gas station fare supposed to be good.



I think that smoking is therapeutic and medicinal, in moderation, and, when I do, I find that there are limits. You are satisfied, or it doesn't seem good, anymore. This applies to drinking and soft drug use.


I'm somewhat of a hebephile and polygamous, but would not turn down honor and hospitality. I don't think it's bad to be like the Duggers or Ziona Chan.



What are your standards, or what makes it good. Is there some kind of quality control. Maybe drives can be wholesome or natural.

Another perspective, is those people who know it's bad and make peace with the consequences. At least, they're being intentional, about it.

Going for a nice walk and enjoying the countryside. Having friends round and playing a silly board game and having a good laugh. Playing with a puppy. Making cards and giving them to people. Listening to your favourite music. Reading a good book.

I could go on. There's lots of pleasures in life that have no bad consequences.

Plus eating a balanced diet can be pleasurable. It means you can at a range of interesting and tasty foods. Just don't pig out on donuts and stuff and you won't get fat.

Only the best donuts! How many can a healthy person eat, before doing any damage. After hiking in the mountains -- as many as you can hold.

I have heard that many eating contestants are fanatical about maintaining a high metabolism, for around 364 days of the year.

I think it's a narrow class - ie. stigmatized or tabooed pleasures can have negative repercussions. The difference between these pleasures and the ones hurtloam brought up is that they have a proclivity for abuse or excess, hence why their tabooed. They don't always end up in excess but they can depending on a given person's self-control, self-integration, or sometimes perhaps just plain old brain chemistry.

Another way of phrasing this is why are humans too stupid to avoid doing things that make them sick?

There are precautions that can be taken. Don't smoke. It makes you ill. It's not solely societal taboo that makes it bad. It is bad for your health. Same with drugs. Same with sex. If you're going to sleep with a lot of partners there is a risk. Use a codom and minimise that risk. Same with food. If you eat too much it makes you ill. But it can still be enjoyed in sensible portions without dramatic health implications.

Everything in life has some consequence. Going for a nice walk you could cross a busy road and get hit by a truck. Take precautions. Look both ways before crossing the road.

The helmet

Because, if they didn't, we would spend all our time on them and not do anything productive. That's just our nature (and that of most animals).

I might be a bit shallow in my understanding of this if I were to try to pin it down to one thing, just that the sense I get is that a lot of people who start bending their life out of shape with most vices (perhaps smoking to a lesser extent than the rest on it's passivity) is that they're life is enough of a meaningless hell already that even as the vice starts doing damage, for a while down that path it's still feels better than what they had without it and then when it seems to cross the threshold toward same as before or worse than before they start running into a combination of their own denial with 'great - what do I do now if I can't do this anymore?'.

There could be other reasons but I've noticed a lot of particularly heavy nihilistic depression with a lot of people who get pulled into addiction.

I lived with someone who had gone blind from drinking, was no longer muscular, and I helped to take care of his neglected kids, for a little.

I am considering certain piercings and calling it masochistic.

This person wasn't aimless or down. He was making an effort at self harm.

He received negative feedback, and continued, willfully.

The OP asks, "Why do pleasurable things have consequences?"

I don't believe it was pleasurable, past a certain point.

I think, we have reasonable, natural judgment, and it seems wrong, before there will be consequences.

well as the budda had pointed out, pleasure and pain are naturally connected and an attachment to the former with by this nature produce suffering.

Some people also might realize something they do is harmful and make efforts to be more careful. For instance there is a reason I don't drink a lot of hard liquor and usually stick to things like beer and cider. It is possible to be pulled into excessive use if you're suffering that sort of depression in efforts to self medicate without developing addiction. of course that is certainly one way some people become addicted to drugs/alcohol.

In theory, vodka has higher levels of wood or methyl alcohol, so should be moderated, but there is no telling what this person drank.

And, how much is really pleasant, and stays pleasant, with pleasant after effects.

running your hands through bubbles in water, they get wrinkly after a while and if a particularly frisky bubble floats into your eye it stings so even bubble baths can be problematic. Being kind is a pleasure but sometimes it is not appreciated or repaid, unlike dousing your insides with sugary crud, the kindness remains there on your conscience and the other party's memory, sugar is taken and converted and a toll is paid, sprinkles of kindness are left there floating around like the bombastic bubbles that escape out the window and thus never pop.

Risks are not consequences.

Being alive carries an inherent risk of death or injury. Pleasant activities don't eliminate risks. Unpleasant activities don't eliminate risks.

It's false to suggests that all pleasant activities have negative consequences.

It's false to suggest that sex always has a risk of infection with STDs. Unless your partner is infected, there is precisely zero risk of being infected by them, no matter how energetically or frequently you have sex, or how little "protection" you use.

It is likewise false to suggest that pleasurable things have some greater inherent risk that unpleasant things.
Pakistani Ship Breakers work in a really unpleasant environment, yet it's also one of the world's most dangerous. If the logic were true that pleasurable things were somehow singled out for negative consequence, then nasty jobs like that would be risk free, but it's just not the case.

The false idea that pleasurable things have particular inevitable consequences or even some higher degree of risk is false. I most often come across some version of this idea in people with a strong religious background in a faith that requires submission to designated representatives of their god or central idea. Such organizations see pleasure as destabilizing and dangerous to the groupthink and control they require.