″ Even with more “neutral” topics like a junk food tax, arguments like “I don’t want the government telling me what to eat” seem far more common than “But some people really like deep fried lard!”
I think this is mostly rationalization:
In a practical sense, we have a very strong drive to pleasure and enjoyment, but our Judeo-Christian tradition (like most other religions as well, but let’s keep it simple) makes a sport of downplaying pleasure as a factor in human happiness, even making it into something dirty or at least suspicious.
Fortunately, when the time of enlightenment came, it did not reestablish pleasure as a desirable goal, but opened a great back door for rationalization: the very concept of freedom. The long ascetic tradition going back several thousand years put a very strong barrier to publicly admitting this significant part of our driving force. Freedom was promoted instead. Of course “freedom” is a very fuzzy word. It can refer to several more or less disconnected fuzzy concepts like independence of foreign power, free practice of religion, personal liberties, etc.
Still “Freedom” is also a wildcard for saying: “Don’t mess with my hedons!”.
Of course, I won’t admit that I am softie and care about all those nice convenient or exciting stuff, but don’t dare to dispute my freedom to do whatever I want! (Unless it harms anyone else.)
So the concept of freedom is an ideal invention for our anyways irrational and hypocritical society: it allows public discussion to covertly recognize the value of individual pleasures by referring to this established, noble, abstract concept that fortunately made it into the set of few keywords that command immediate respect and unquestioned reverence.
″ Even with more “neutral” topics like a junk food tax, arguments like “I don’t want the government telling me what to eat” seem far more common than “But some people really like deep fried lard!”
I think this is mostly rationalization:
In a practical sense, we have a very strong drive to pleasure and enjoyment, but our Judeo-Christian tradition (like most other religions as well, but let’s keep it simple) makes a sport of downplaying pleasure as a factor in human happiness, even making it into something dirty or at least suspicious.
Fortunately, when the time of enlightenment came, it did not reestablish pleasure as a desirable goal, but opened a great back door for rationalization: the very concept of freedom. The long ascetic tradition going back several thousand years put a very strong barrier to publicly admitting this significant part of our driving force. Freedom was promoted instead. Of course “freedom” is a very fuzzy word. It can refer to several more or less disconnected fuzzy concepts like independence of foreign power, free practice of religion, personal liberties, etc.
Still “Freedom” is also a wildcard for saying: “Don’t mess with my hedons!”.
Of course, I won’t admit that I am softie and care about all those nice convenient or exciting stuff, but don’t dare to dispute my freedom to do whatever I want! (Unless it harms anyone else.)
So the concept of freedom is an ideal invention for our anyways irrational and hypocritical society: it allows public discussion to covertly recognize the value of individual pleasures by referring to this established, noble, abstract concept that fortunately made it into the set of few keywords that command immediate respect and unquestioned reverence.