Happiness

The Guardian fails to demonstrate the utility of self-indulgence (or maybe it succeeds):

"Pleasure and happiness are not the same thing, but they are close relations. Indeed, if Epicurus is to be believed, "Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily." And John Stuart Mill believed that "Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends."
But before we raise a glass and a spliff to philosophy's endorsement of indulgence, we need to remember the sobering qualifications that come attached. First, both Aristotle and Epicurus argued that for pleasure to be good we must not be its slave. The trouble with drugs is that when we take them, we give up sovereignty over our experiences and let the chemicals rule us. You might think that is the point, but don't expect the wisdom of the ancients to back you up.
Second, philosophers such as Mill distinguish between pleasures of the mind and pleasures of the flesh. We need both, but the former are superior and a life with too many of the latter is not commensurate with human dignity. If we give in wholly to bodily pleasures, we live the lives not of humans but of feral animals (which, again, you might think is the point).
Third, there is the difference between authentic and inauthentic living. There is something to be
said for facing reality, even if that makes us less happy. Thinkers such as Sartre have argued that if the price of happiness is self-deception and delusion, it is not worth paying. But yet again, you might think the so-called great minds of history have again missed the bleeding obvious: no one ever got drunk in order to remember the pain of everyday life.
So there are reasons for not smoking dope, but they are nothing to do with it simply being pleasurable. Its main drawbacks seem to be that it shortens your life and turns you into a bore. But then so does spending all your life sitting on your arse reading philosophy."

This may not be the usual kind of post for this blog, but I attended the Sunderland-Aston Villa match on Saturday, which naturally steers one's thoughts in the direction of philosophical futility. It is all very well for old J-P Sartre to argue that self-delusion invalidates the price of happiness, but I don't suppose he was a regular at the Stadium of Light.