Ramblings of a Thursday-Morning Insomniac

Can vice be defined broadly as pleasure/relief gained quickly and without effort?

When something is 'bad', it violates a timeless natural and/or religious law. Is that right? Maybe I should avoid that and get back to the question.

Let's see. Murder is the first item – usually. Why would you kill someone? If it's for personal gain, that fits nicely. If it's to help someone else, does that count? Let's see. The trolley problem is the go-to. I flip the switch and kill Jim to save five. What if this is a pleasure, a relief, a form of personal gain? I am performing the action that I deem more socially expected. Surely, my stock is higher if I save more people – because, or so I think, that's the choice most people would make. OK, perhaps that is vice. It gets tougher if my motives really were pure. But good intentions, as they say, guarantee nothing.

It's easier when I turn to petty things like eating a bar of chocolate. I'm eating it for no reason other than it tastes good. Could I not argue that its good taste boosts morale? Maybe I could, but then the context would have to merit a boost of morale, yes? Like in Harry Potter when the dementor gets him – eating chocolate is something of a cure. So, quick relief is necessary sometimes.

So, if I chop off the times in which quick relief is related to health and survival, then how close am I getting? Pleasure is the better word because it implies excess. Relief is more vital, as I said. The pleasures of the flesh rarely refers to anything essential – to put it mildly.

Vice is quick, effortless nonessential pleasure. Perhaps the word 'unearned' is worth a look. What does it mean, to earn something? I'm already thinking about the one-night stand that Jimmy spent five months carefully engineering. Does his effort for a meaningless fling render the fling moral? My instinct is no. You can earn bad things. Swap the one-night stand for a murder, and it's easy to see that.

But if I make this definition more specific, referring more to the mundane bits and pieces like an instance of lovemaking or a night of 3,000 calories, then I think it's on the right track at the very least. These are the lusts of the flesh, aren't they? They are impulsively done, quickly done pleasure-inducing activities that have little to do with keeping you alive. That's why I'm sitting on that nonessential-pleasure bit. When you're stuffing yourself with anything, it seems bad, but even treating yourself, as they say, does too. After all, is evil a matter of proportions?

Maybe it is. A punch to the gut that stuns is better than one that kills. But, then again, all punching is bad – maybe.

So, sex and chocolate and games and idleness – it's bad shit, yes? Vices, are they? It's a purity-seeking outlook and one, or so it seems, utterly absent in the people I encounter.

I suppose what I'm really getting at is an ideal. Aspiring to ideals, I think, is the way. You probably won't get there, but – since I mentioned degree – closer is better than further. How can I be clearer?

Instead of asking 'Where's the harm?' when you do something easy and gratifying, ask 'Where's the good?' Perhaps that's all I really wanted to say.