EU heads of stategathered in Rome on March 24 to celebrate the Rome Treatys anniversary and be received by Pope Francis. But what arethey celebrating?

Today Judeo-Christianity, on which the European leaders founded their civilizationwith Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman Law, has been banished from public life. In 2003, European constituents were even unable to insert the word Christianity in the preamble of the constitution.

The Church of St. James in Stockholm, built to host 900 worshipers, today on Sunday houses not more than 30.

In France, the most important daughter of the Church, less than 5% of the population regularly attends Mass.

The English national Church is an object of fun and ridicule. In Wales, most of chapels have been turned into private homes.

In the Netherlands, only the faith based TV channels remind the people of the existence of a religion.

A weak will, a spiritual inertia, a religious fatigue and a lack of self-confidence are leading Europe to a psychological diagnosis of a defeated ego. Culturally, todays Europe sees the triumph of nihilism in a hedonistic uncultured form, spiritually miserable, but full of rights and social acquisitions. No matter how often European values are invoked and praised. Because a weak will, a spiritual inertia, a religious fatigue and a lack of self-confidence are leading Europe to a psychological diagnosis of a defeated ego.

Material prosperity in Europe has created a "shy" society, avoiding allconflicts and trying to ignore all the warning signs that it perceives as harmful to its own hedonism.

The example of Eastern Christians in Iraq and Syria is there to remind us that if we do not want to replace the cross with the crescent over Saint Peters dome, it is important to put an end to this voluntary suicide which, for almost half a century, led Europe to sacrifice everything important and rid itself ofevery form of authority, including that of Catholicism, to replace it with the dictatorship of the cool, the permanent injunction for pleasure closely watched by psychologists, hygienists and pornographers.

We rejoice unhindered, the heirs of the European hedonists of the 60s repeat for us.

But that is an expression of an infinite sadness, maybe a work of death: Europe is dying in celebrations and parties. But as the barbarians in Rome, Muslims are not the ones whoconvinced the Europeans that their own happiness hadpriority over everything else, or convinced them to have fewer children.

Radical Islam dreams of reaping the consequences of Europes fatal choices, but it is not their conquest, but the conquest of Europeans over themselves.

Europe is a civilization destroyed for a few seconds of pleasure, under the eye of barbarians who do not really from their non-Muslim fellow citizens. But, on their side, they have unlimited numbers.

Read more here:

Europe conquers itself - Arutz Sheva

Given the apocalyptic tone of the real news these days, Jose Cuervos new campaign, Tomorrow Is Overrated, could turn out to be positively prescient.

Lets hope not. But its certainly a direct, if tongue-in-cheek, attempt to tap into Americans current fears and need for an occasional release like a shot of no-nonsense liquor, ideally in the context of a madly romantic moment.

The brand describes the creative as seeking to resurrect the original intensity of tequila by celebrating Cuervos historic disregard for anything but celebrating the moment as contrasted with other tequilas focus on refinement and conformity.

advertisement

advertisement

But Kevin Jones, chief creative officer of Cuervos agency of record, Crispin Porter + Bogusky LA, cuts to the chase: This campaign bluntly points out that whatever awaits us tomorrow might not be that great of a reason to miss out the fun you could be having tonight, he says. And with all the uncertainty there is in the world now, this message seems particularly relevant.

The campaigns centerpieces are a two-minute video (below) and a 60-second TV spot adapted from it.

Directed by Ringan Ledwidge known for unnerving films like Gone and Voodoo in My Blood, as well as ads for Nike (Winner Stays) and Planters (Planters Holiday Party) the video depicts a handful of people who are in a bar out West somewhere when an announcement comes over the television: The end of civilization is upon us. Hold your loved ones close.

As a powerful wind (nuclear firestorm?) blows fellow citizens past the bars windows, one handsome, be-jeaned dude puts Elviss Its Now or Never on the juke box and makes like Astaire with the woman nearest him. (Luckily, shes gorgeous, in an unpretentious, cow-gal kinda way.)

Other watering hole denizens are inspired to follow suit and enjoy Cuervo shots relishing the moment even as the roof blows off and the end is nigh.

Read more here:

Jose Cuervo's Apocalyptic Vision Encourages Hedonism 03/08/2017 - MediaPost Communications

On a quick jaunt away from tearing up American stages, Australia's favourite "s**t-pop" band, the Gooch Palms, arrive in Mandurah on March 10 to blow away Hooch punters.

Heres an idea: think about how many bands there are. The ones you know, the ones youve heard about. Now think about how many of those bands do something different. Really different. Possibly get-naked-on-stage different.

The Gooch Palms are one of those bands, and their weird and wacky take on musical performance built largely on on-stage stunts, bright colours and the aforementioned nudity. At this point, its only done them favours.

I dont remember the last time we stopped, Gooch Palms frontman Leroy Macqueen said.

At this point, its felt like two years since weve had any meaningful break. Weve probably clocked up close to 400 shows in the last two years.

Thats a pretty crazy number for any band, but for the Gooch Palms, its par for the course. The two piece partners Macqueen and Kat Friend, the symbioticparing somehow manifesting more energy than most full-size bands have a very definite, and much-loved, aesthetic.

Describing themselves as Australias pre-eminent s**t-pop band, Gooch Palms stage sets, video clips and all-around appearance drips novelty.

But this is only, really, the facade on what is a well-oiled machine; Macqueen and Friend live the Gooch Palms, the entire ship being steered by their ever-creative minds.

The release of their second LP, the revealingly-titledIntroverted Extroverts, also saw the formation of their own label imprint, as well as their shot at the stages of the US.

The first album we did, we made in nine hours in our front room, Maqueen said.

I dont wanna say it was half-arsed, but it was definitelypretty off the cuff. So going into a studio, with an actual engineer, was a huge change for us.

We had started building a bit of a base by that point, so we wanted to make something that reflected who we are, and what it is we do at our shows, which is basically have fun above anything else. It was definitely everything we wanted from the second album.

The jump to American audiences seems like a given for Australian bands these days, but it arguably makes more sense for the Gooch Palms: their raucous sets basically built around Friends pounding drum beats, Maqueens riffs from a crotch-covering guitar, and both of their anthemic calls to action, or to party, or to sit around in the living room seem tailor made for US audiences.

They love it, they eat it up, Maqueen said.

I mean, if you show initiative and passion in what youre doing, audiences will respond anywhere. You cant be lazy about it; youve gotta show the fans that youre as into being there as they are.

The rest is here:

The Gooch Palms are a handful of hedonism - Mandurah Mail

TAKE a look around the exclusive Mayfair wine shop Hedonism, which counts some of football's richest men among its clients.

TAKE a look around the exclusive Mayfair wine shop Hedonism, which counts some of football's richest men among its clients.

1 / 25

Take a look around the Hedonism wine shop in Mayfair

The Sun claim that this is the place where Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha recently boasted about sacking Claudio Ranieri after a 500,000 spending spree.

It's also one of Jose Mourinho's favourite places to buy his wine.

Bottles are sold for as much as 100,000 each in the west London joint.

The Manchester United boss was spotted with a bag from the shop the day before he was confirmed as manager of the Old Trafford side.

Click through the gallery above to take a look around Hedonism.

See original here:

Look around the wine store where Ranieri's future was decided Mourinho loves this place! - Daily Star

Leicester City chairmanVichai Srivaddhanaprabha boasted of axing Claudio Ranieri whileon booze spending spree

JOSE MOURINHO celebrated landing the Manchester United job in the same exclusive wine shop where Claudio Ranieris future was decided.

The Sun exclusively revealed Leicester chairmanVichai Srivaddhanaprabha boasted of axing the Italian during a 500,000 spending spree.

Getty Images

Here is everything you need to know about pricey Mayfair vendor Hedonism Wines used by some of footballs richest men.

Keep up to date with ALL the football news, gossip and transfers

Sir Alex Fergusons love of fine wines saw him label Chelseas collection of plonk as like paint stripper.

So when Mourinho prepared to visit Old Trafford he tried and failed to impress the picky Scottish connoisseur.

Fortunately the Special One learned his lesson and started frequentingHedonism to avoid upsetting legendary Old Trafford chief Fergie.

Getty Images

News Group Newspapers Ltd

Getty Images

Mourinho was then spotted with a bag from the posh retailer a day before he officially became the third man to try and replace Ferguson.

Off Licence News installed the merchant as the fifth best in the country as itchallenged industry experts to make their picks in 2016.

Hedonism is owned byRussian exile and fierce Vladimir Putin critic Yevgeny Chichvarkin.

Getty Images

News Group Newspapers Ltd

Getty Images

A simple Halloween prank caused chaos in 2015 as a fake crime scene complete with blood and body line was reported as a murder.

Several Russian media outlets reported thatScotland Yard detectives were at the scene investigating, withChichvarkin hitting out at the coverage.

The outcast opened his shop which has over 5,000 bottles of plonk in 2012.

Cheaper varieties include a 2014 Rose going for just 11.60 while a rare Penfolds Block 42 Ampoule will set punters back a staggering 120,000.

See the original post here:

What is Hedonism wines? Mayfair vendor owned by Russian exile counts Jose Mourinho among its clientele and ... - The Sun

The worldview of unhindered pleasure in life is often called hedonism, a word derived from a Greek word that means pleasure or delight.

The worldview of unhindered pleasure in life is often called hedonism, a word derived from a Greek word that means pleasure or delight. Its main concern in life is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. We know from history about the orgies and drunkenness in the ancient world in Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. And we see the same thing in our culture today.

But what does the Bible say about pleasure? Hedonism can be traced all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There, Eve was tempted by the devil to eat the forbidden fruit, seeing that it was good for food and a delight to the eyes. Ironically, her pleasure led to pain in childbearing, pain in toil for Adam, and pain in husband-wife relationships.

In contrast to this godless life of pleasure that many hedonists pursue today, Ecclesiastes 9:7-10 tell us that certain pleasures in life are approved by God: Food and drink, delightful possessions and romance. But in all the writers talk of enjoying the pleasures of life, God is the center. Eating, drinking, possessions and finding enjoyment in our toil under the sun are from the hand of God (Eccl 2:24-25; 3:13; 5:19). The Bible even says, Enjoy life with the wife whom you love (Eccl 9:9).

These pleasures are Gods good gifts, so we are to give thanks to God for them (1 Timothy 4:4-5). Even work is given by God for our pleasure. Our toil is not in vain when we find enjoyment in the fruits of our honest and diligent toil because it is from the hand of God (Eccl 2:24).

Enjoy all these pleasures today, because life is very short, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun. These pleasures will one day come to an end, to which [we all are] going.

The pursuit of pleasure is not a sin in itself. But it becomes sin when it turns into hedonism, the priority in your life, apart from serving and living for God. When this happens, real pleasure becomes only temporary, fleeting pleasures. Life is so short that God-less pleasure ends in eternal death and pain. After death, there is no pleasure or joy for those who have no fear of the LORD. Instead of joy, there is only fear of a future judgment (Hebrews 10:27). Instead of gladness of heart, there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth.

So why enjoy pleasures that are godless and meaningless? Our lives become meaningful only when we know the salvation that Jesus Christ gives. We can only eat bread with joy, drink wine with a merry heart, enjoy the love of our wives, husbands and children, and find joy in our labors, when we know that these earthly pleasures do not come to an end at death.

Continued here:

Pastor's column: Hedonism: Self-driven life of pleasure - Gridley Herald

The earliest Arctic Monkeys tracks were brimming with a fast-paced, frenetic energy thats hard to match. Their later effortsSuck It And SeeandAMwere a different beast; mature, considered and wholly held together by Alex Turners commanding baritone.

Somewhere in between the two, sprinkled with a smattering of church organs and and an even more palpable vigour is the latest EP from The Byzantines,You Pull It.

Michael, David, Jose and Johnny are the lads from Adelaide who have pulled together this thrumming release. Listening to the EP, you have to wonder exactly what this foursome have been getting up to on tour, but that pervasive, pitch-black and often perverted underbelly givesYou Pull Itcharacter beyond the bands years.

Lyrically The Byzantines adopt the adept philosophy of the practised hedonist. Brutally honest, provocative and even spine-chilling at times, the EP is a murky swamp of vice from start to finish. But ifmusical history has taught us anything, a little high-end degeneracy goes a long way. The band sculpts their wickedness for the better onYou Pull It, employing their character as a draw-in rather than any sort of repellent.

The music is uniformly interesting, a consistent metamorphosis that keeps you on edge. The way the Byzantines employ fills, key changes or the introduction of a new layer is unswerving in their effectiveness its the furthest youll possibly get from boring instrumentation.

Closing trackBefore I Go Under demonstrates this consideration. At times a dancehall, Brit pop singalong, this track reaches into the abyss of psych rock raunchiness for an almost out-of-place breakdown. The singing, tremolo chords come out of nowhere, but ripthe song and EP into a different state of mind with their introduction.

The British influence is worn on The Byzantines sleeve, Arctic Monkeys have been mentioned but the sonics of Kasabian consistently rear their head. That being said, the heavily employed organ, adaptive musicality and lyrical impurity of this record carve out something unique for this four-piece from Adelaide.

WithYou Pull ItThe Byzantines have carved their names into their genre-scape and the Aussie scene. No longer a simple of imitation of music which hascome before, this EP speaks volumestowhatever will follow.

You Pull Itis out now.

The Byzantines are on tour right now. Catch the dates below, and head to their Facebook page for the details.

Fri Feb 24 The Karova Lounge Ballarat, VIC Sat Feb 25 The Workers Club Geelong, VIC SunFeb 26 The Workers Club Melbourne, VIC Wed Mar 1 Rad Bar Wollongong, NSW Thur Mar 2 Transit Bar, Canberra, ACT Fri Mar 3 The Brighton Up Bar Sydney, NSW Sat Mar 4 Clipsal 500 Adelaide, SA Fri Mar 10 The Currumbin Creek Tavern Gold Coast, QLD Sat Mar 11 The Milk Factory Brisbane, QLD

See more here:

How dirty do you like it? Revel in hedonism with You Pull It, the new EP from The Byzantines - Happy

The 90s saw a huge surge in drinking, but alcohol consumption has been in steady decline since 2002. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The behaviour of this nation, its relentless heeding of expert advice, the stiff downward curve of its self-harming habits, must be the cause of intense frustration to the hell-in-a-handcart lobby. It has long been observable that the youth of today act the way the youth of two decades ago used to be told to act, when they arrived at the GP with astomach ulcer and an anxiety disorder. They go to the gym, they have personal bests, they count their steps, they walk up stairs. They spend less on alcohol and more on coffee. Their behaviour is so different, so pronounced, that it has affected the entire cohort known as adults. The family-spending data from the Office of National Statistics reported last week that average weekly spend on alcohol, cigarettes and narcotics had fallen below 12 for the first time.

Generation X has of late cast itself as the buffer of decency between the righteous self-interest of the baby boomers and the fragile solipsism of the millennials. But the really salient development, incremental in its arrival but sudden in its obviousness, is the total rejection of hedonism, which was all we X-ers were ever good at. Alcohol consumption has been in steady decline since 2002. The 90s saw a surge, among young men in particular; between 1994 and 1999, they increased their intake by an incredible eight units a week (young women were less dramatic, starting from a lower bar, but female drinking overall increased by a third over the same period). These spikes are understood to be spurred by economic booms, although the relationship between those and a kind of cultural exhilaration must surely be symbiotic, each driving the other. To recap for the younger reader: these were the years when binge was a compliment; William Hague would show off about drinking 14 pints at a sitting; whole sitcoms would be built on the assumption that you could drink wine in the morning and that would be funny. It was the era of ladettes and self-parody, hangovers and fags, gleeful personal failure. All of that has been comprehensively rejected; nobody even staged a rebellion. They just thought we were silly.

There are other things happening here, sometimes in parallel, sometimes bisecting. People spend what they can afford, and other costs have gone up. Wages have stagnated, rents increased. Credit is tight and viewed with suspicion. As Reni Eddo-Lodge, a 27-year-old activist turned writer, explains to me, rather wearily: Its really just about money. When I was a student, I drank more heavily than I do now. Ihavent smoked since 2012. It wasnt a puritanical thing; I just couldnt afford to. Everybody who I was friends with when I was 18 is limiting nights out because the cash just isnt there. The economic circumstances since the crash have been most punishing to the young, and their behaviour has changed the fastest.

Yet their drinking attitudes reveal motivations beyond frugality: Heineken polled 5,000 21-35 year olds in five countries this year, and found that self-awareness and staying in control were two considerations behind the fact that three-quarters of millennials limited the amount they drank on the majority of nights out. The alcohol industry has been wise to this for at least a decade. Bruce Davis, an anthropologist turned, briefly, consumer-whisperer, remembers seeing this anxiety in the 00s: Its the one thing thats constantly worrying drinks companies; all profits are based on volume. If you make beer, you only make money when you sell lots of it. They get really worried when they see volumes decreasing. But as soon as the millennials came of pub age, volumes did decrease, and at that point, it was more about self-fashioning than it was about cash. In the past, you didnt go drinking to be individual, you went to be the same as everyone else. Volume drinking is driven by people trying to keep up with each other. Millennials behaviour was always much more individual. People dont buy rounds as much. People are nomadic, they might not even stay with one group for the whole evening. Its a much more liquid, modern social life. But it would be a mistake to take modern as an unalloyed good; its partly modern because its atomised, insecure and precarious. Even among working-class millennials, theyre not going to the same workplace, so theyre not drinking in the same place. The big volume push for alcohol was drinking in groups.

Eddo-Lodge reminds us not to elide these new working patterns with adeliberated individualism. Theres this significant uptick in the number of young people freelancing. Its not achoice, thats just us making the best of a bad situation.

Swerving off the labour market and back to the pub, the industrys response was to devise interesting spirits, drinks that would generate income even in relatively small amounts. Davis invented Monkey Shoulder whisky and Sailor Jerrys rum, brands that consciously sought to disassociate themselves from the generations that drank in order to get drunk. The signature drink of this trend is craft beer, which partly through international cross-fertilisation the Antipodeans with their more distinctive hops, the Americans with their entrepreneurialism, us with our romantic attachment to beer has become the ultimate drink-as-self-expression, definitely-not-drunk-to-get-drunk drink. Chloe MacDonnell, 30, who works for the fashion title InStyle, lives the niche alcohol dream. We spend a lot of money getting the best gin, or the best beer. But at the same time, I will buy a bottle of wine for a fiver in Tesco. Its like fashion, the high and low element, designer to highstreet.

There is a health element that, again, occupies that uncomfortable space between individualism and insecurity. If you look at gym membership and gym frequency among millennials, its higher. You drink water and you take pills because it doesnt make you fat, Davis observes. (Gym-going, interestingly, may drive spending in all kinds of areas going out to eat, clothes shopping but it doesnt drive people to drink.) Narcotics spending has probably gone down not because of abstinence but because drugs are cheaper and purer and altogether better, proof if any were needed that market forces do work especially well on non-essential commodities. Yet both the surge in legal highs and the spate of clubs turning into bars makes me wonder whether the majority of people just prefer not to break the law. As a footnote, notions of indulgence and masculinity have changed: it used to be signifier of something or other, something good, if you could drink 10 pints without soiling yourself. That doesnt impress millennials so much.

MacDonnell names the defining generational difference: brunch. Me and my friends would go out for brunch at the weekend; older colleagues think thats just weird. Why not wait for lunch, so you can drink? For a short time last year, Ilived on ahill in the semi-suburbs of south-west London where young people would queue down the street on aSaturday morning to go to cafe/brand the Breakfast Club. I kept wanting to close-question them about it youre waiting in line, for an egg. Who does that? but they all looked so fit.

Both eating out and event spending minibreaks, day trips, experiences have peaked this year, which illustrates that its not leisure that has dropped off so much as hedonism. Spending on experiences is variously characterised as a new wisdom people realising that memories are more important to ones identity than things and a new self-fashioning people deciding that mindless enjoyment didnt add much to Project Me. Eddo-Lodge says: Once you get out of the habit of big nights out, theyre no longer attractive. If Ihave a bit of disposable income, Id rather go for a day trip. Ive actually decided to go to Maldon.

Sara Mahmoud, 30, is an economic analyst in the housing sector. Im aprivate renter, as a lot of young people are. When youre renting privately, no matter what your income is, you feel that you are being made poorer by having such high rents. And you feel your life is insecure because of the instability of renting. But I know how lucky I am, because I look at household-income data all day long. What really shocked me was how many renters have no savings at all. Zero in the bank, totally hand-to-mouth. And that is really serious, because obviously, people have very limited prospects of being able to get themselves out of whatever insecure situation theyre in.

Beyond that, it is incredibly unusual for those under 30 to think of themselves as saving to buy a house; its unrealistic, for anyone who doesnt have help from their parents. Shelter did a study that showed 50% of first-time buyers, rising to 60% in London, had help from their parents, Mahmoud continues. One of the things that concerns me is the concentration of wealth that that implies. But also, there is a real tension; were increasingly moving towards asset-based welfare. People have to rely on the value of their homes to pay for their care, while also paying for their children to get on to the housing ladder. This colours all other decisions where to live in the long term, when to start a family, whether to eat or put the heating on. It has a different effect on social behaviours across the income distribution. At the affluent end, there is very little point saving 50 on any single decision, since those 50 quids are not as they would have in the 90s ever going to add up to a deposit on a flat. At the low-waged end, there isnt any flexibility at all, and there is more pre-loading at home, Scandinavian-style.

Yet Mahmoud, being also in a punk band, doesnt see her generation as particularly abstemious or reserved. If anything, she thinks youth culture is rediscovering its rebellion, an antipathy to the mainstream not seen since Thatcher. Young is really defined by social constructs over time. I wouldnt necessarily count myself as young, but someone in the government would aim a scheme at me. Because Im not on the property ladder, my life has only just begun. All our lives have been characterised by the financial crisis, and it is really interesting to see that feeding through to actual youth culture, how they think about the world, how they go out and enjoy themselves.

Theres never much national mourning when unwanted, smelly, disease-causing behaviours decline; and nobody, probably, would be sorry to see the back of smoking, although I will add here that the e-cigarette technology partly driving that has left me more addicted to nicotine than Ive ever been in my life. But large-scale restraint in the booze arena, while it may shave a few off the cirrhosis register decades hence, has implications for the present reality that we should take seriously and not cheerlead: plain lack of disposable income, for one; reordering of power between renters and rentiers, which cannot, I dont think, be waived away with acasual, everybody rents in Berlin; a growing economic insecurity and intensifying personal perfectionism that cant possibly be unrelated. All this clean living is driven by some dirtydata.

See the rest here:

When did Britain stop being a nation of hedonists? - The Guardian

Photo courtesy of Leonid Afremov

At 18 years old, a sixth of my life is quite possibly already over, maybe even a fifth. Never again will I be absolutely absolved from responsibility, the way I was when I was three and had all the time in the world, sparing not a thought to matters that did not involve Clifford the Big Red Dog. All that stretches before me is a sea of taxes and Social Security and grocery shopping truly an appealing prospect.

My God, how fleeting and fragile life is! But to my thinking, while were here, theres no reason not to enjoy ourselves. Ive never bought into the existence is futile and meaningless crap. It seems like such defeatist thinking. Doesnt perpetual bitterness get tiring after a while? Isnt constant cynicism exhausting to maintain?

I would call myself a hedonist, though that invites negative connotations. A hedonist is, to many minds, someone who engages in mass debauchery: wild orgies and gross overindulgence and the like. The word hedonism is evocative of sex, because sex is the highest and purest form of pleasure, right?

Thats not what I mean. The ticket is to appreciate the simple things: the smell of rain, loose leaf jasmine tea and Leonid Afremov paintings. Yeah, its cliche, but its true. Finding beauty in the mundane, putting a positive spin on whatever crosses your path, because thats just so much more fun. Being alive wasnt a choice, but youll sure get a hell of a lot more out of it if you stop taking it so seriously. Dont you want to feel good, genuinely good, rather than the perverse pleasure derived from hunkering down in your basement and festering in your own misanthropy, secure in your self-perceived superiority over your fellow human beings?

I simply cannot fathom why one would choose to commit suicide. Why cut your life short, when its still saturated with potential droplets of pleasure? Youve never ordered a crepe in a Paris cafe or bathed in the crystalline Reykjavik hot springs or stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon and shouted your name to hear it reverberate against the rust red ravines. There is so much yet to explore. If I could, I would snatch up all the time you relinquished when you decided to end it all and add it to my own stockpile. I would never have enough to check off everything on my bucket list.

Of course, I grew up am growing up surrounded by a dense layer of packing peanuts, safely cushioned from the crushing blows life is capable of dealing. I freely admit to my naivete. But I have only my own experience upon which to base my philosophies, and I find it incredible that people would choose to throw away the greatest gift they have ever received.

I want to travel this world and experience everything it has to offer me, soak it all in. I want to milk every last droplet of pleasure from my existence, wring it dry, until it crumbles into a powdery dust. Except I cant. In this capitalistic society, free spirits and independent thinkers are actively discouraged; all America wants is another automaton to join the workforce. Id need money to carry out my dreams, and to obtain money, Id need to work, and by the time Id have retired, my bones will creak and my joints will ache and any opportunity of carrying out my dreams will have slipped away quietly while I was preoccupied with the daily nine-to-five grind.

Read the rest here:

Living Like a Hedonist - Daily Trojan Online

One of the great gifts we have received from God is the gift of pleasure. Some might think that pleasure is wrong but the truth is it has its rightful place in our lives or God would not have provided it for us nor given us the capacity to experience it.

Pleasurable experiences in life are sort of the desert of life. But sadly what God meant to be a blessing can, when used incorrectly, become a curse. This happens when pleasure becomes a persons primary focus or pursuit.

When seeking after pleasure becomes the emphasis in ones life, love of God becomes totally corrupted. The bible tells us, If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but from the world. 1 John 2:15b-16 (NAS) The desire for worldly pleasure nullifies ones ability to be in a true loving relationship with God. Though a person can maintain their outward form of godliness, in reality their spiritual life is missing the power that comes from godly living. It is the life that is well balanced with prayer, bible reading, church attendance, acts of kindness, giving to God, and other healthy spiritual staples of life that will be a life that has true love for God and can enjoy pleasure as a gift from God.

A careful examination of Christianity today demonstrates the sad fact that it has fallen in line with our culture as more and more Christians simply maintain an outward form of godliness but are actually lovers of self and pleasure rather than lovers of God. The technical term for this is hedonism which simply put is living life to please oneself. The typical evangelical will avoid obvious sins that would identify him/her with the world and yet all the while the lust for the things of the world thrives in his/her heart. I think it is safe to say that this is becoming more and more prevalent with each new generation since each new generation becomes more and more tolerant and accepting of hedonism.

We must realize the only power to break the hold of any sin, including hedonism, comes from true intimacy with God. And until a person makes a resolute decision that obedience to God and submission to His will are going to establish the course of his life, he will never get free from the addiction to pleasure. Paul told us, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2 (NAS) Every true believer must heed this word.

Here is the original post:

Pleasures: the desert of life - Tulsa World

When I was at primary school out in the boondocks the "bad kids" fell into one of three camps when it came to the bands they claimed to love. They were either fans of old- school rockers AC/DC or notorious hedonists Guns N' Roses or the new raw-power kids on the block, Nirvana.

Casual day would see them donning their band shirts and having heated arguments about whether the ''best guitarist in the world" moniker should be awarded to Angus Young or Slash - anyone who advocated for Eric Clapton would be laughed out of the playground.

As the school nerd I never participated in these debates and when I went to high school I ended up being a Nirvana acolyte - complete with T-shirt, hole-pocked jersey, torn sweat pants and long hair.

As a grunge fan, Guns N' Roses formed no part in my thinking - some band with a shaggy-haired guitarist and an erratically behaved lead singer who'd been big once but by the mid-1990s were a joke outfit to be lumped together in the same 1980s crowd as hair bands like Poison and Mtley Cre, the only vestiges of their existence occasional news stories about the bad behaviour of their increasingly pudgy lead singer Axl Rose.

But as Mick Wall's definitive biography Last of the Giants: The True Story of Guns N' Roses shows, there was a time when GN'R were the biggest band in the world, the last of the great hedonistic, sex drugs and rock 'n' roll groups who grabbed the baton from The Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin and took it kicking and screaming into the 1980s before strangling it to death and claiming their place as the murderers of a lifestyle and attitude that no longer exists in the music world.

They did this not just by virtue of their drug-fuelled hedonism, but through their commitment to the music in a career trajectory that saw them push themselves from hustling street kids in LA in the early 1980s to headlining the biggest venues in the world in the early 1990s, before drugs and personal rivalries tore them apart.

Wall, who was singled out as a traitor by Axl Rose in the song Get in the Ring, was once a close confidant of the band and here, through his years of interviews with Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan, Steven Adler and - up to the point at which they were no longer talking - Axl, paints an intimate, multi-faceted and easy to enjoy portrait of what it was that elevated the band above their LA contemporaries, drove them to the top of the world stage and then plunged them down to the bottom.

The arguments on playgrounds in faraway South Africa were the result of a lot of hard work, a lot of egotistical vision on the part of Rose and a lot of other things that few of the band members can remember thanks to the copious amounts of substances they consumed.

With all the thrills, spills, horrors and unfortunate tragedies that used to be the staple of the golden age of rock it's a book that makes an excellent argument for Wall's case that there never was a band quite like GN'R and there may well never be again - hungry young men with axes to grind and chips on their shoulders who never gave a damn whether you liked them or not but still can't believe that so many did.

Read it and shake your head in disbelief or replay the albums in a wave of nostalgia or just to regret that your kids are wearing nothing more offensive than Justin Bieber T-shirts to school on casual day.

'Last of the Giants: The True Story of Guns N' Roses' by Mick Wall published by Trapeze, available at Exclusive Books for R323.

This article was originally published in The Times

Read the original here:

Book review: 'The True Story of Guns N' Roses' will rock your world - Times LIVE

If you're ready to shed your inhibitions, you've found what you're looking for at Hedonism II, a world-renowned Negril beach resort. Eat, drink, play and party 'round the clock, all while enjoying the services and amenities of a first-rate resort... without any rules.

When you book, choose either the "nude" or "prude" side of the resort. While some may be a-ok with shedding all inhibitions (and clothing), if it's your first time, you may want to check out the more moderate version. Whether you dare to bare all or play it safe, there's windsurfing school, snorkeling and sailing. Work on your tan at one of three freshwater pools, or enjoy the spectacular beauty of the 500-foot-long beach, where you can choose to go au naturel or wear your sexiest bikini.

Entertainment is paramount at Hedonism II, and there's no shortage of amazing things to do during the day and after the sun goes down. Theme nights keep it interesting, and every evening brings a new party. Be prepared with a mask, toga, sexy PJs and rock-star duds to join in the never-ending festivities. Nightly entertainment includes live bands and shows, and the bars, lounges and a nightclub stay open 'til the wee hours. In need of relaxation after a hard night of partying? Blue Mahoe Spa offers spectacular treatments, including the Sea Me Glow, which removes dead skin cells, unclogs pores and revitalizes skin.

Such delightful debauchery works up an appetite, and Hedonism II delivers with a variety of choices. Start the day with breakfast at Planter's Punch, grab sushi at Harrysan, or head to Beach Grills for burgers and snacks. And with premium-brand cocktails flowing day and night, you'll never go thirsty.

For more than 30 years, Hedonism II has delighted guests and shattered preconceived notions. As an adult-only getaway, this place is second to none, and guests come back year after year to delight in the no-rules atmosphere and exemplary service. Sleep all day. Stay out all night. Go skinny dipping. Try wind surfing. Dress in costume. Whatever strikes your fancy, Hedonism II answers the call.

This resort is All-Inclusive. Features include:

Harrysan Type: Japanese Hours: Sat-Mon, Wed-Thu, 6:30pm-10pm Description: Harrysan is an open-air restaurant with teppanyaki tables and a sushi menu. Reservations are required. Dress code: Men are required to wear dress shorts or long pants and collared shirts.

Pastafari Type: Italian-Jamaican Hours: Mon-Thu, Sat, 6:30pm-11pm Description: Unique Italian with a Jamaican accent brings a magic touch to pasta. Reservations are required. Dress code: Guests may wear tailored shorts.

Terrace Room Type: Buffet Hours: Breakfast - daily, 7:30am-10:30am; Lunch - daily, 12:30pm-3pm; Dinner - daily, 7:30pm-10pm; Midnight snack - daily, midnight-2am Description: Dine buffet style in the constantly changing Terrace Room, a large, open-air main dining room serving creative Caribbean surprises and tradition favorites.

Beach Grill Type: Grill Hours: Daily, 11am-6pm Description: Hamburgers and other treats sizzle all day at both Beach Grills for lunch and snacks. One is located on the main beach (also called the "prude" beach) and one on the nude beach.

All hours are subject to change.

Club Hurricane The world-famous nightclub has been completely refurbished and is open from 10:30pm-5am or until the last person leaves.

Jezebel Disco This glass-front bar has TVs and underwater windows looking into the swimming pool. DJ music is offered nightly. Open 10:30p-3am.

Main Bar The Main Bar is located in the hotel and is open nearly all day from 11am-2am.

Piano Bar The Piano Bar is a great air-conditioned late-night spot with two levels, an aquarium and a large-screen television. Sing along with the pianist and new found friends. Karaoke is at 10pm on Mondays and Tuesdays. Daily, 10:30pm-1am.

Swim-up Bar Located at both pools.

Nightly ThemesNightly themes and PJ Party (on Tuesday night), and Toga Party (on Thursday night).

Exciting weekly themed parties:

Live Music Live band 8:30pm to midnight each night (except Fridays) in dining/entertainment area. Performers and floor shows every night in the open-air entertainment area of the Main Terrace.

The main beach is connected to the main pool entertainment area by way of the Jungle bridge.

Water

Land

Golf Negril Hills Golf Club, an 18-hole course, is a 15-minute drive from Hedonism II.

There is a minimum of a 3 night stay. For couples who stay 7 nights or longer, SuperClubs will absorb the government fee.

Location Hedonism II is situated 55 miles west of Montego Bay and approximately one hour from Montego Bay Airport.

Check In/Check Out Check-in: 3pm Check-out: noon.

Age RequirementHedonism II is for couples and singles, adults 18 years and over.

Minimum Stay A 2-night minimum stay required at this resort with the following exceptions: A 3-night min stay is required for travel June 1-June 14, 2017. A 5-night min stay is required for travel August 5, 2017 to September 29, 2017 and Dec 26-Dec 29, 2017.

Nude Bathing The private beach is divided into two sections; one is for nude bathing. One pool is completely nude, while the other is located on the "prude" side of the hotel.

Smoking Advisory Effective July 15, 2013, Jamaica's Health Minister banned smoking in all covered public places on the island.

All hours, fees, amenities, information and services are subject to change without notice.

The rest is here:

Hedonism II | CheapCaribbean.com

Thursday Food

highlights five more chefs who are charged with introducing visitors and locals alike to the best culinary offerings in Jamaica.

This weeks featured chefs are from Hedonism II, Negril

Davey Thomas

Lead cook, Pastafari Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

At age six, Davey Thomas would study the ingredients as his mother cooked. Then he would try and replicate her cooking to see how his compared. All that practice still did not lead him to a six-burner stove. Actually, he took what he thought was the safe road by becoming an auto mechanic. But the passion for cooking had already taken root and Thomas eventually heeded and enrolled in the Petersfield Vocational Training Centre, where he studied Food Preparation.

I love trying new flavours and taking traditional recipes and adding new stuff. I take pride in my cooking as it reflects on me as an individual; its my pride, he says. Thomas spends a lot of his time surfing the Internet for new ideas and says, No matter what area you are in, you have to have a passion for it, otherwise it makes no sense.

Thomas likes preparing anything with seafood and he continues to hone his skills by cooking at home daily.

Milton Paltie

Garde manger, Hedonism II Resort

An ice-carving genius, says Executive Chef Anthony Miller of Milton Paltie.

Paltie was 14 the first time his aunt asked him to prepare a meal. Having no idea what to cook he enlisted the help of a friend, who added thyme, escallion and butter to the pot. The final result steam fish got rave reviews. To this day his aunt has no idea that he was not the cook.

Briefly sidetracked by carpentry until that income stream slowed, he found himself at Couples Tower Isle, the result of hearing about a vacancy in the stewards department.

When he arrived with a friend the only jobs available were for cooks. Certain that they would not qualify, they got the jobs nevertheless and started in the pantry. After a few months we was awarded Cook 1 (the highest level team member). Every day I was working from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm for about two years. The financial controller asked why I was working those long hours. I told him its not what I was putting in but what I was getting back, and what I was getting back was a salary and experience, so I felt that I was the one winning.

Paltie realised that he could make this his profession after travelling to North America and seeing the respect accorded chefs.

He took certification courses through Johnson and Wales in Kitchen Management, Sanitation and Garde Manger. His true passion, he decided, was fruit, vegetable and ice carving. Its like a painter with his canvas. For me, my canvas is the ice or the produce.

A recipient of many awards, Paltie has copped: the 2002 JCDC silver medal for ice carving and fish platter

2004 Curry Festival gold medal for fruit, vegetable and ice carving

2008 Wow Festival Master Ice Carver

2015 & 2016 Taste of Jamaica gold medalist for the ice carving

2106 Taste of Jamaica silver medal, lamb platter

I think cooking chose me, he tells Thursday Food.

Rashane Reid

Harry San Japanese Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Twenty-one-year-old Rashane Reid says, Cooking is in my genes; my father is a chef (in Nantucket) and as a child he always had me in the kitchen. My uncles are restaurateurs and bakers, my grandmothers gizzada, grater and toto cakes were amazing and famous.

As a child I was in awe of my fathers knife skills and knew I wanted to follow suit.

My first culinary expression was a fried egg which I overcooked. I was instructed by my mother to repeat the process until I got it right. To this day I am still fascinated by how many ways a simple egg can be prepared and, also, there is nothing about an egg I cant tell you. My mother continues to be my motivator. A few years ago she had a stroke and I made a promise to always make her proud.

My driving philosophy comes from my favourite book You Can Work Your Own miracle by Napoleon Hill. It says: I am who I am, where I am, because of my daily habits.

Hedonism is Reids first full-time job. He started as a trainee and through dedication and hard work now enters competitions like Taste of Jamaica. Hedonism took me from a baby to a man, and the best part of being a chef is seeing peoples faces when they taste your food. There is a bond between the diner and the chef.

Reids favourite meal to cook is chicken back with pumpkin served with cornmeal dumplings.

Odiane Whitelock

Pastafaria Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Odane Whitelocke remembers, as if it were yesterday, the day in 2005 when he decided he wanted to become a chef. My family members had a restaurant and I had started to work in there. I fell in love with it. That same year he enrolled at HEART Petersfield, where the love affair continued.

In 2009, in a quest to further his culinary skills, he attended George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. For me, cooking is an art and I love art. Its an area where I am very confident in my abilities and not afraid to challenge myself through competitions.

In 2015, Whitelocke placed third in the Taste of Jamaica Chef of the Year and in 2016, he placed first in the beef category with a dish he called authentic beef roulade.

Being from a family in which both parents cooked, food and cooking were always a part of his socialisation.

His favourite dish to cook is chicken and beef pasta in Alfredo sauce.

After 12 years his passion has not waned. Indeed, he is fully aware of just how much more there is to learn.

Oshane Powell, cook

Flame Chop House, Hedonism II Resort

At the age of seven Oshane Powell was cooking curried pork. Not that he intended to. But one day his stepfather, the cook in the family, had an emergency. It was left to Oshane to handle dinner. Thankfully, the pork was a hit and a chef was born.

Powell, who studied Food and Nutrition in school, nevertheless went on to work as an auto mechanic but would continue to cook at home for the family. The neighbours would always ask: Who is cooking? as the aroma wafted through the yard.

Deciding to give cooking his full attention, Powell arrived at Hedonism as a trainee and, through hard work and love of art, started fruit and vegetable carving. Using YouTube and cooking shows to practise and improve he eventually ended up cooking in the main kitchen.

In 2016, Chef Anthony Miller entered Powell in the Taste of Jamaica cooking competition. Powell copped the Junior Chef of the Year title with his chicken breast wrapped with sausage and a sweet potato tower, as well as a seafood chowder.

I love food. I am passionate about food, so I am willing to learn everything! he shares with Thursday Food

.

Originally posted here:

Chefs to Watch for 2017 - Hedonism II, Negril - Food ... - Jamaica Observer

(Fade to Mind) US: 24 Feb 2017 UK: 24 Feb 2017

In the 21st century, theres an increasingly sad and desperate quality to pop culture hedonism. Oddly, this is perhaps most evident in the way that R&B has given way to club music. When former R&B producers and performers embraced dance music, you might have expected an increase in euphoria, an influx of ecstasy. Yet the digitally-enhanced uplift in the records by producers such as Flo-Rida, Pitbull and will.i.am has a strangely unconvincing quality, like a poorly photoshopped image or a drug that weve hammered so much weve become immune to its effects. Its hard not to hear these records demands that we enjoy ourselves as thin attempts to distract from a depression that they can only mask, never dissipate. A secret sadness lurks behind the 21st centurys forced smile Drake and Kanye West are both morbidly fixated on exploring the miserable hollowness at the core of super-affluent hedonism. No longer motivated by hip-hops drive to conspicuously consumethey long ago acquired anything they could have wantedDrake and West instead dissolutely cycle through easily available pleasures, feeling a combination of frustration, anger, and self-disgust, aware that something is missing, but unsure exactly what it is. Mark Fisher, The Secret Sadness of the 21st Century, Electronic Beats

Tears in the Club is a provocative title, and not only because the last few years have seen far too many actual tears in music venues from Bataclan to Pulse to Ghost Ship to BPM Mexico to a massacre in an Istanbul nightclub only a few weeks back. Clubs are supposed to be safe spaces, places where communities can form. They shelter those already feeling isolated and alienated from society by gathering their patrons together as part of a singular event. Clubs are allegiances and unions of listeners, linked to each other through common sound, but its easy to overlook kinks and vulnerabilities in this bond, the desolation, and conflict that often does not dissipate at the door.

The DJ, who up until the recent advent of the celebrity hand-waver set maintained a structural need to be integrated into the scenery of the club, may be the clubs loneliest attendant. He stands outside of the action because hes the master of controls, orchestrating fun for everyone else, but only participating in the party from the sidelines, behind the wizards curtain.

Unlike the secret sadness that the late Mark Fisher alludes to in the quote above, Kingdom, and the battalion of like-minded producers he has cultivated for his groundbreaking Fade to Mind imprint, have never hidden their malaise. Perhaps thats because their vernacular is 21st century pop, even if they ostensibly make experimental club tracks. Kingdom (aka Ezra Rubin) is no stranger to the format of slowed trap-inflected R&B/pop. He has worked wonders behind the boards of several hyper-contemporary tracks for Danity Kanes Dawn Richard (DWN) and Kelela over the past few years. Now, he has upped the ante on Tears in the Club, an immersive new conceptual experiment centered around four dour pop tracks, spaced out across the breadth of the record.

These songs are exactly the kind of gorgeously constructed, intimate, and melodically rich pop songs someone from the recent past might have thought wed be listening to in 2017. Theyre futuristic, sophisticated, catchy, and psychedelically wrought. However, theyre also deeply depressive.

The decision to focus on a canvas of future-pop/R&B may lead many to think that this represents some kind of permanent realignment for Kingdom, whose past work, while still deeply expressive, was mainly targeted towards feet rather than heartstrings. The lyric sheet doesnt exactly dissuade this theory either. Nothin featuring Syd of the Internet even goes so far as to paint this fluctuation as capitulation. My real art is amazing / Aint that a shame?, she intones, giving the false impression that perhaps this whole attempt at the pop record is half-hearted and more about staying financially afloat than charting new territory. Nothin is a deep, boozy reflection on the choice to go overground, but made from a nihilistic resolve and, ultimately, a vantage of practicality: Somethings got to give right now / So this is what it is right now / All or nothin / Nothin / Didnt work this hard for nothing / So Im gonna act up, gonna act out/ Gonna stack up, and then cash out. These cues exist elsewhere on the album too. Mostly instrumental, the transitional track Into the Fold begs to be interpreted as an invitation to the dark side, its lyrics limited simply to Come / Come / To me. Where? Into the fold, one would guess.

One might even see the trajectory of the entire album in this light. It opens with the forlorn breakup tune What Is Love, whose rhetorical question SZA answers by offering a compartmentalization: Break it down / Fuck it up / Now I see / What is love. Her tenor in this verdict is not aggressive, but anodyne, if a bit dispirited. Throughout the track amidst the slinky synths are two chants: NBA Jam style grunts on loan from Jam City and SZA herself distorted and hiccupping back it up. The latter functions as a literal placeholder (i.e., these are backup vocals) and a detached mechanized force for that compartmentalization, as if she is attempting to download somehow the data set for love. Broken through romantic misfortune, the album sets off in existential crisis, attempting to find solace in the club and finding that it cant fill voids which seem to have no bottom. The corresponding bookend to What Is Love is a Club Mix of Nothin, but one with a simple house beat rather than the abstract contraptions of Kingdoms previous EPs. That its the least interesting piece on the album seems to confirm the sellout/cash-out cycle alluded to in Nothin. Its surrender.

The easy riposte to the idea that this is a sellout album itself rather than an album tangentially about selling out is the music itself, still a little too odd for the charts even when its way too wound down for the clubs. Nothin easily rivals as the Internets Girl as one of the best things Syd has done to date, while vibrant neon jaunt Down 4 Whateva might be the best thing SZAs been involved with to date. Even better still is Breathless featuring unknown singer Shacar, an evocative performance in grimy hues, wild breadths of emotion sputtering throughoutconfidence, melancholy, pain, desire, and isolation all in the span of three minutes. It too concerns the creeping changes of success (Im not sorry because Im / Blowing up) and becoming guarded by its trappings (No weapon formed against me shall prosper / Tied up and alone I get haunted by my pride / So I can sing in front of my phone), eventually slicing open the surface to display the ache underneath. I bleed/I bleed/I bleed, Shacar sings in a sonic interpolation of Beyonces I slay / I slay / I slay from Formation. He resigns to hiding in the work, trailing off his final lines to face this suffering alone: Constantly grinding out hereyou cant see that / Im still trapped, and Im still hurting.

The energy of Breathless bleeds nicely into one of the albums six non-pop tracks, Tears in the Club. Tears in the Club is not only the track most reminiscent of Kingdoms older works, but also comes with specific sonic callbacks to one Kingdoms most well-known hits, Stalker Ha off of his 2011 Dreama EP. The pop cuts wallow in a kind of boozy attachment. SZA assumes an elegantly wasted stance on her two contributions, at first sounding wine-drunk and disoriented on What Is Love, slithering on and off the beat, and then predicting before a kind of skin-shedding hook up that Im gonna take a sip and lose my way tonight on Down 4 Whateva. Tears in the Club, comparatively, is all paranoia and dark feels, a cinematic second act of perpetual anxiety and rootlessness with its sinister piano and trap-does-70s horror film vibe.

The rest of the cuts are nothing to skip over either and lend extra weight and resonance to the songs surrounding them, making Tears in the Club an experience best listened to as a whole. Each and Every Day is almost off-puttingly centered and well-postured around a traditional beat, perhaps taking cues from Sophie in its minimalism. Its simple rhythm-based chorus cuts out melody altogether and then resumes for mantras of the words Each and Every Day while the pitched-up voice of Najee Daniels chirps ok, ok, ok. The self-betterment routine continues into the uncomplicated and swoony cut-ups of Nurtureworld which beg the listener to take me away, as the listener and producer drift together.

Although three years in the making, its increasingly hard to hear this or any album without 2017 ears. In the wake of Trumps despicable first few weeks, I found myself listening more and more to a playlist Id constructed of intensely melancholy music, realizing that Id done so because I hadnt yet given myself permission to be sad. The main takeaway I get from listening to Tears in the Club on repeat is the overwhelming feeling of you cant go home again. Somethings gotta give right now, Syd says. SZA takes this a step further saying, Ill be into you even when you aint around me / Ill be missing you even when you been around me. For every transcendent feeling of closeness in the clubs this year, therell be plenty others where one couldnt feel any more distant from whos standing right next to you. The urgency of being here now vs. the creeping sense of slowly becoming an island haunts this moment, with our interconnected sociality simultaneously culling common causes and confirming our isolationist biases.

Walking back into the club after having all thats on Kingdoms mind is like getting jolted by the nightmare trap of Tears in the Club. Its all darkness and anxiety now. Its visceral grip is as pulsatingly real as it is synthetic. The escape that the nave EDM pop that the turn of the decade offered now seems like the infamous K.C. Green strip On Fire, the flames burning around us as the nihilistic fatalism of #YOLO truly sinks in. The only way through is forward, and well need plenty of forward-thinking pop to help with that. Well need lots of songs that can help reform the bonds of community that a club can offer, and which pop can alleviate. Solidarity in suffering, a shared loneliness. We cant deny ourselves the right to be sad any more than we can deny ourselves the right to dance. Kingdoms album confronts this from a place that, if not deeply personal, at least feels so.

Rating:

Read the original:

Tears in the Club - PopMatters

Berlin Film Festival 2017: Berlin Syndrome | Review

Berlin can be such a transitional city for many people. Backpackers treat it as a destination for unbridled hedonism, the likes of which is not seen in many other cities. Even those who opt to move to the city will find that it can be a solitary place, since the typical Berlin party and tourist lifestyle is not sustainable. So many people leave Berlin once the enchantment has worn off, leaving the population of the city in a constant state of flux. Clare (Teresa Palmer) is an Australian backpacker who would dearly love to leave Berlin, if she wasnt imprisoned in the apartment of the man shes just met in the type of swirling, heedless fashion that can happen while on holiday.

Director Cate Shortland made her feature debut with 2004s Somersault, which married dreamy visuals with heftier emotive themes, and Berlin Syndrome delivers her most sure-footed work yet. Berlin is certainly not depicted as dreamy, and Director of Photography Germain McMicking has given the city a stark, austere beauty, which (fittingly) seems ominous at times.

While not quite in pursuit of unbridled hedonism, Clare is still travelling alone, with the imprudent decisions that can often occur in this situation. It was not a foolhardy decision for her to go home with Andy (Max Riemelt), since for the film to be effectively chilling, sympathy for Clare could be minimised if there was a true sense of recklessness.

And it is chilling, more so when the action shifts to her confinement. The canvas of the story is reduced, though not minimised, and there can be easy comparisons to mainstream horror (which should help the film to find a wider audience). While the outline of Clares jeopardous circumstances might seem like something that has been done a million times before, rarely has it been done so intelligently.

Oliver Johnston

Berlin Syndrome is released nationwide on 9th June 2017.

For further information about the 67th Berlin Film Festival visit here.

Read more reviews from the festival here.

Watch a clip fromBerlin Syndrome here:

Continued here:

Berlin Syndrome - The Upcoming

This is how it all goes wrong.

Six years ago, the state Department of Education put together a panel of teachers and professors from around South Carolina to update social studies curriculum for schoolchildren.

The group determined sixth grade is the time to introduce students to early cultures, from nomads and hunter-gatherers all the way up to European explorers.

The years lessons include the beginnings of civilization, the origin of governments as well as events and beliefs that influenced these folks. Youve got the Egyptians, the Greeks and even the Ming Dynasty which may or may not have something to do with Flash Gordon.

Of course, religion played a big role in all that history and the curriculum mentions Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism even Confucianism.

Which, like the rest of history, is apparently pretty Confucian to some adults.

There is one section that focuses on the Crusades, the role of the Roman Catholic Church in medieval Europe and how the beliefs of Islam spread in early Africa.

From this simple directive in the curriculum, Explain the origin and fundamental beliefs of Islam and the geographic and economic aspects of its expansion, a teacher in Dorchester County gave students a worksheet on the Five Pillars of Islam.

Just as the country is losing its mind over a travel ban on some Muslim countries.

You see where this is going, right?

A parent recently complained to local TV about the Islam worksheet, noting that schools should get permission before teaching religious tenets.

Thats a really good point.

Explaining the history of the world in social studies class is appropriate. And, to invoke religion, God knows wed be better off if more people were actually educated instead of simply scared and hating on each other.

But lets keep it academic. Schools dont need to teach the Five Pillars of Islam, the Ten Commandments or 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Save all that for Sunday school.

The weekdays are for just the facts, maam.

Of course, this story got picked up by the conservative press and right-wing bloggers and suddenly it looked like South Carolina of all places was caught trying to indoctrinate children. Which is ridiculous.

This same conspiracy pops up around the country every few years, which is evidently about as often as uninformed parents actually look at their kids homework. The internet is filled with similar stories of outrage and conspiracy.

Which shows just how much some people's schooling has stayed with them.

The state Department of Education started getting angry calls and emails, mostly from out-of-state activists who have nothing better to do than stick their noses in our business.

The department told these folks the standards are being reviewed, which they would be anyway. But to some it now looks like theres a cover-up and South Carolina educators have been caught.

In fact, they are guilty of nothing more than being book smart instead of street smart.

School districts should probably pay closer attention to current events and realize that handing out detailed homework on Muslim beliefs is just asking for trouble.

Not to mention stepping over the line into mixing church and state. Teaching kids something about the world is a noble goal, but if they wade into religion its going to come back to bite them.

It would be good if the next generation understood the past that led us to this divisive present, and that includes an accounting of religion's role in history, as opposed to simply quoting the doctrine, Kill em all, let God sort em out.

But then, that probably won't fly. Some people believe all education is a liberal conspiracy, which is a convenient excuse to remain ignorant and watch swamp people on TV.

Well, guess what? One of the developers of South Carolinas curriculum is from Bob Jones University, which educated folks know is not exactly a bastion of liberal hedonism.

So rest assured these professional educators were only thinking about history in the academic sense, not the lunacy of todays politics. That was their mistake.

But it could turn into another lesson.

When future sixth-graders one day study the 21st century in social studies, this hysterical little period in history will be called the return of the know-nothings.

Read the original here:

Hicks column: Schools should stick to the facts, as should everyone else - Charleston Post Courier

Thursday Food

highlights five more chefs who are charged with introducing visitors and locals alike to the best culinary offerings in Jamaica.

This weeks featured chefs are from Hedonism II, Negril

Davey Thomas

Lead cook, Pastafari Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

At age six, Davey Thomas would study the ingredients as his mother cooked. Then he would try and replicate her cooking to see how his compared. All that practice still did not lead him to a six-burner stove. Actually, he took what he thought was the safe road by becoming an auto mechanic. But the passion for cooking had already taken root and Thomas eventually heeded and enrolled in the Petersfield Vocational Training Centre, where he studied Food Preparation.

I love trying new flavours and taking traditional recipes and adding new stuff. I take pride in my cooking as it reflects on me as an individual; its my pride, he says. Thomas spends a lot of his time surfing the Internet for new ideas and says, No matter what area you are in, you have to have a passion for it, otherwise it makes no sense.

Thomas likes preparing anything with seafood and he continues to hone his skills by cooking at home daily.

Milton Paltie

Garde manger, Hedonism II Resort

An ice-carving genius, says Executive Chef Anthony Miller of Milton Paltie.

Paltie was 14 the first time his aunt asked him to prepare a meal. Having no idea what to cook he enlisted the help of a friend, who added thyme, escallion and butter to the pot. The final result steam fish got rave reviews. To this day his aunt has no idea that he was not the cook.

Briefly sidetracked by carpentry until that income stream slowed, he found himself at Couples Tower Isle, the result of hearing about a vacancy in the stewards department.

When he arrived with a friend the only jobs available were for cooks. Certain that they would not qualify, they got the jobs nevertheless and started in the pantry. After a few months we was awarded Cook 1 (the highest level team member). Every day I was working from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm for about two years. The financial controller asked why I was working those long hours. I told him its not what I was putting in but what I was getting back, and what I was getting back was a salary and experience, so I felt that I was the one winning.

Paltie realised that he could make this his profession after travelling to North America and seeing the respect accorded chefs.

He took certification courses through Johnson and Wales in Kitchen Management, Sanitation and Garde Manger. His true passion, he decided, was fruit, vegetable and ice carving. Its like a painter with his canvas. For me, my canvas is the ice or the produce.

A recipient of many awards, Paltie has copped: the 2002 JCDC silver medal for ice carving and fish platter

2004 Curry Festival gold medal for fruit, vegetable and ice carving

2008 Wow Festival Master Ice Carver

2015 & 2016 Taste of Jamaica gold medalist for the ice carving

2106 Taste of Jamaica silver medal, lamb platter

I think cooking chose me, he tells Thursday Food.

Rashane Reid

Harry San Japanese Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Twenty-one-year-old Rashane Reid says, Cooking is in my genes; my father is a chef (in Nantucket) and as a child he always had me in the kitchen. My uncles are restaurateurs and bakers, my grandmothers gizzada, grater and toto cakes were amazing and famous.

As a child I was in awe of my fathers knife skills and knew I wanted to follow suit.

My first culinary expression was a fried egg which I overcooked. I was instructed by my mother to repeat the process until I got it right. To this day I am still fascinated by how many ways a simple egg can be prepared and, also, there is nothing about an egg I cant tell you. My mother continues to be my motivator. A few years ago she had a stroke and I made a promise to always make her proud.

My driving philosophy comes from my favourite book You Can Work Your Own miracle by Napoleon Hill. It says: I am who I am, where I am, because of my daily habits.

Hedonism is Reids first full-time job. He started as a trainee and through dedication and hard work now enters competitions like Taste of Jamaica. Hedonism took me from a baby to a man, and the best part of being a chef is seeing peoples faces when they taste your food. There is a bond between the diner and the chef.

Reids favourite meal to cook is chicken back with pumpkin served with cornmeal dumplings.

Odiane Whitelock

Pastafaria Italian Restaurant, Hedonism II Resort

Odane Whitelocke remembers, as if it were yesterday, the day in 2005 when he decided he wanted to become a chef. My family members had a restaurant and I had started to work in there. I fell in love with it. That same year he enrolled at HEART Petersfield, where the love affair continued.

In 2009, in a quest to further his culinary skills, he attended George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. For me, cooking is an art and I love art. Its an area where I am very confident in my abilities and not afraid to challenge myself through competitions.

In 2015, Whitelocke placed third in the Taste of Jamaica Chef of the Year and in 2016, he placed first in the beef category with a dish he called authentic beef roulade.

Being from a family in which both parents cooked, food and cooking were always a part of his socialisation.

His favourite dish to cook is chicken and beef pasta in Alfredo sauce.

After 12 years his passion has not waned. Indeed, he is fully aware of just how much more there is to learn.

Oshane Powell, cook

Flame Chop House, Hedonism II Resort

At the age of seven Oshane Powell was cooking curried pork. Not that he intended to. But one day his stepfather, the cook in the family, had an emergency. It was left to Oshane to handle dinner. Thankfully, the pork was a hit and a chef was born.

Powell, who studied Food and Nutrition in school, nevertheless went on to work as an auto mechanic but would continue to cook at home for the family. The neighbours would always ask: Who is cooking? as the aroma wafted through the yard.

Deciding to give cooking his full attention, Powell arrived at Hedonism as a trainee and, through hard work and love of art, started fruit and vegetable carving. Using YouTube and cooking shows to practise and improve he eventually ended up cooking in the main kitchen.

In 2016, Chef Anthony Miller entered Powell in the Taste of Jamaica cooking competition. Powell copped the Junior Chef of the Year title with his chicken breast wrapped with sausage and a sweet potato tower, as well as a seafood chowder.

I love food. I am passionate about food, so I am willing to learn everything! he shares with Thursday Food

.

Read the rest here:

Chefs to Watch for 2017 - Hedonism II, Negril - Jamaica Observer

Admirable aplomb Tiffanie Darke. Photograph: David M Benett/Getty Images

Its no easy task, writing a memoir of an era, constructing a narrative that your entire generation would even recognise, let alone sign up to. There are many people who would disagree on principle, of whom I think I am probably one. Tiffanie Darkes Now We Are 40: Whatever Happened to Generation X? sets itself a bold and daunting task, with a central question that is preoccupying us all: Democratic earthquakes are undermining much of the progress we made and fought to achieve. Or, even more straightforwardly: The political denouement to all of this was starkly illustrated in the Brexit vote. The inclusive, liberal, multicultural society we thought we had built was rejected by just over half the country.

It is, you have to admit, a head-scratcher: to find oneself having to argue, again, that grabbing women by the pussy is unbecoming behaviour for a head of state; that it is functionally impossible for Polish people to have caused the British housing crisis, or for Mexicans to all, or even predominantly, be rapists, or that Muslim children are no more dangerous than other children. How on earth were our values so poorly defended that wed have to go back to square one and argue them all over again? And yet, of Darkes diagnosis, I agree with almost none.

Its a very tricky form in which to ask these questions, moving from chatty personal reminiscence I began to rebel against my mums choice of wardrobe for me; she loved all those 80s bright colours to large statements about society, interspersed with interviewees of varying relevance. Martha Lane Fox makes elegant observations. Eleanor Mills is good at distilling causation for example, porn has changed the way young women see themselves even if you dont always agree. Ben Elliot, founder of the luxury concierge company Quintessentially, is less enlightening. They seem to have been chosen the way you would populate a newspaper feature: whoever will take your call when youre on a deadline.

The social observations are made with the glibness of a futurologist, except they are about the past so it would have been possible to interrogate them a bit more closely, and thereupon discover them to be incorrect. We currently have a female prime minister, Darke writes (leave aside for the time being that this was also true of the 80s). The US voted a black president into the White House and narrowly missed voting in a woman; senior political party members, heads of business and church are now openly gay. Race, sexuality and gender politics have come a long way, thanks to us.

Except no, it wasnt thanks to us; these identity politics battles were fought by the generation before us, by the GLC and the Southall Black Sisters, by Peter Tatchell, by Stuart Hall, by second wave feminism. If Generation X had any defining ideology, it was a sort of hedonistic indolence, a puckish refusal to take anything seriously, the adoption of irony as a creed, an MO and a style statement. While Darke namechecks irony, there is no serious attempt to square these positions that we were the pioneers of inclusivity and multiculturalism on the one hand, and we just wanted to get off our tits and dance to repetitive beat music on the other. Yet the only way to answer todays sense of political homelessness (as Tony Blair described it) is to confront the fact that we didnt build our political home. We thought the home was already built, and anyway, homes were for losers.

If Generation X had any defining ideology, it was a hedonistic indolence, a puckish refusal to take anything seriously

In a chapter entitled Clintons Cigar, Darke describes the process by which, via the internet, restrictions around reporting on authority began to melt, power fell victim to the truth. The US president was undermined, she says, by the new media (the Drudge Report), then the old media (the Washington Post), and was finally hoist on the petard of his own dishonesty. I agree that Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky marked a political turning point, but no further; the deeper relevance is that a billionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife, ploughed untold amounts of money into slinging mud at Clinton, some of which finally stuck.

This pattern has been repeated at key moments since, from the creation of Islamophobia by well-funded thinktanks in the US to the generation of a set of alternative truths about the EU by Arron Banks. Conceivably, it wouldnt have been possible before the internet, but it is far more complex than the creation of transparency by a sudden rush of democratised news. Its a story about wealth infiltrating politics in a completely new way, and might well tell us something about why we no longer recognise our civic terrain. Power falling victim to the truth this aint.

Sexual politics is perhaps the hardest thing of all to generalise about, and one could not, in good faith, ask of a single perspective that it do anything beyond starting a debate. However, lines such as there is a consequence to casual sex, and any girl who thinks she can sleep with as many men as she likes and not beat herself up is lying begin that debate in an unfortunate place, one that has never heard of sex-positive feminism, has no understanding of the importance of female sexuality in driving equality forward in the first place, and doesnt even have the curiosity to ask why, in the 90s, we explicitly retook the words slut and slag as compliments.

When young women today are facing open misogyny unseen since the 1950s, Darkes tepid half-morality isnot enough

When young women today are facing open misogyny unseen since the 50s, this kind of tepid half-morality sleep with whoever you like, so long as its not too many people, because thats dirty is just not robust enough. You need to allow for the possibility that not all girls are the same. As for there always have been and always will be men who take more than is offered, who fail to decode the semantics of when no means no (and, you know what, it is complicated), its certainly complicated the way Darke tells it. Someone goes further than the other person wants them to, allowing something to happen that is unwelcome at the very least.

The syntax is wild. Nobody did anything, one person just allowed something to be done, although was it the person who went further or the person for whom that was too far? And the unwelcome thing, what was that? Did he sneeze in her handbag? Either party, and it is normally the woman as she is usually physically inferior, cannot always be in full control of a physical experience. Wait, what? Does that mean physical inferiority necessitates that one relinquish control? Is it just my triceps that are inferior, or could my reflexes use a little work? I cant figure out whether the mangled language makes these assertions more or less difficult to stomach.

I still applaud the aplomb; aggregating a lifetime is hard enough on ones own account, let alone on everyone elses. But these sure as hell werent the 90s I remember.

Read the original here:

Now We Are 40 by Tiffanie Darke review a generation lost to hedonism and irony? - The Guardian

NAOYA IKEGAMI1

The Miro Quartet will headline Chamber Music Tulsas Beethoven Winter Festival, performing the complete cycle of Beethovens string quartets over a course of six concerts. Courtesy

JAMES GIBBARD

Ronald Radford, former Tulsan and flamenco guitar master, teaches students about performing the flamenco during a workshop at Jenks East Elementary School on Tuesday. JAMES GIBBARD/Tulsa World

STEPHEN PINGRY

Ronald Radford, a former Tulsan and master of flamenco guitar, presents his program The Power of Practice for students at Tulsas Traice Academy on Wednesday. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World

STEPHEN PINGRY

Ronald Radford, a former Tulsan and master of flamenco guitar, presents his program The Power of Practice for students at Tulsas Traice Academy on Wednesday. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World

JAMES GIBBARD/Tulsa World

Josh McGowen (left), Liz Hunt, Jen Thomas, Steven Lambie, and Tasha McCabe in a scene from Avenue Q. JAMES GIBBARD/Tulsa World

Posted: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 12:00 am

Weekend Arts: Find the Beethoven Music Festival, 'Avenue Q' and more in Tulsa this week By James D. Watts Jr. Tulsa World TulsaWorld.com |

CHAMBER MUSIC TULSA

Your current subscription does not provide access to this content. Please click the button below to manage your account.

Thank you for reading and relying on TulsaWorld.com for your news and information. You have now viewed your allowance of free articles.

Joshua Gindele, cellist for the Miro Quartet, said in a recent Tulsa World interview: Quartets are somewhat renown for their disagreements. But we took a different approach. We made it our first priority to take care of the personal relationships first. We figured, if we can get along well with each other, the music making would follow.

And so it has for more than two decades as Gindele and his colleagues violinists Daniel Ching and William Fedkenheuer and violist John Largess have earned international acclaim for their work in classical and contemporary music.

The Miro Quartet has long been a favorite ensemble of Chamber Music Tulsa, which is why the Miro was chosen to headline the organizations Beethoven Winter Festival, performing the complete cycle of Beethovens string quartets in order, over the course of six concerts.

The first two concerts will be devoted to the six quartets that make up Beethovens Opus 18, his first forays into what would become an increasingly personal and expressive form.

Performances: 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday at the Tulsa PAC, 110 E. Second St.

UNIVERSITY OF TULSA, ARTS FOUNDATION

Former Tulsan Ronald Radford is the only individual to be awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in flamenco guitar and is a student of such legendary guitarists as Carlos Montoya and Andres Segovia.

Acknowledged as the American master of flamenco guitar, Radford regularly returns to Tulsa to share his music and story with students of all ages.

He will present a special concert titled The Romantic Guitar of Spain, sponsored by the University of Tulsa and the Arts Foundation.

Performance: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Lorton Performance Center, 550 S. Gary Ave.

Tickets: Admission is free.

And at the end of the day

Having to live on Avenue Q might not be all that great, but the musical that takes place along this fictitious street in New York City has been a smash hit with audiences ever since it debuted in 2003.

This satiric look at 20-somethings trying to make their way in the world most of whom are portrayed by puppets ended up winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, beating out Wicked for the honors.

Tulsa Project Theatres production continues through Sunday.

Performances: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tulsa PAC. 110 E. Second St.

NOTE: Avenue Q is for mature audiences.

Theatre Pops will present Andrew Lippas The Wild Party as the latest of its immersive dinner theater experience shows.

The production stars Tabitha Littlefield as Queenie and Rick Harrelson as Burrs, a pair of vaudeville stars who decide to throw a party that reflects the hedonism of the Roaring 20s but which soon degenerates into tragedy.

The Wild Party, directed by Meghan Hurley, will be staged in and around the audience, putting them right in the middle of the story. Music director Christy Stalcup leads a seven-piece band in swinging songs inspired by the era.

Start the party early with a special four-course dinner before the show, crafted especially for the occasion by Ludgers Catering and Events. Deco-inspired cocktails will be served by IDL Ballroom with a decadent backdrop befitting the era.

Performances: 7 p.m. Friday-Sunday and Feb. 24-26 at the IDL Ballroom, 230 E. First St.

Tickets: General admission, $25. Dinner and show, $60. 918-902-6339, theatrepops.org

A little-known bit of African-American history is the inspiration for the play Court-Martial at Fort Devens, which Theatre North will present as an entry in the Tulsa Awards for Theatre Excellence.

When a group of young African-American women are denied by a racist commander the training they were promised when they joined the Womens Army Corps, they go on strike. When two women refuse to return to their duties, they are set for court-martial.

Performances: 3 p.m. Sunday and 8 p.m. Feb. 24-25 at the Tulsa PAC, 110 E. Second St.

James D. Watts Jr.

918-581-8478

james.watts@tulsaworld.com

Twitter: watzworld

Your current subscription does not provide access to this content. Please click the button below to manage your account.

Thank you for reading and relying on TulsaWorld.com for your news and information. You have now viewed your allowance of free articles.

Posted in Arts, Artsandentertainment, Jamesdwattsjr, Arts, Artspage, Weekend on Wednesday, February 15, 2017 12:00 am. | Tags: Mir Quartet, Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, Classical Lounge, 918-596-7111, Tulsa, New York City, General, Womens Army Corps, Rick Harrelson, Music Director, University Of Tulsa, John Largess, Tulsa World, Andrew Lippa, Lorton Performance Center, The Tony Award, Spain, Meghan Hurley, Daniel Ching, Christy Stalcup, Carlos Montoya, William Fedkenheuer, Miro Quartet, Cellist, Ronald Radford, Wicked, Weekend Arts Joshua Gindele, Fort Devens, Racist Commander, Tabitha Littlefield, Idl Ballroom, Deco, Violinist, Arts Foundation, Andres Segovia, 918-902-6339, Quartet, Music, Classical Music, Concert, Theatre, Former Tulsan Ronald Radford, Chamber Music, Joshua Gindele, Era, Performance

See original here:

Weekend Arts: Find the Beethoven Music Festival, 'Avenue Q' and more in Tulsa this week - Tulsa World (blog)

In psychology, flow activities are ones that would presumably make us the happiest. They are activities like sports or cooking that require more work on our part but are characterized by full immersion and focus. A new paper argues that we are often faced with a dilemma - while studies show how engaging in flow activities would make us happier, we tend to spend more of our free time on passive activities, like Facebooking or watching tv.

In two studies, researchers L. Parker Schiffer and Tomi-Ann Roberts at the Claremont Graduate University and Colorado College, conducted a survey of about 300 people to find out what they thought of different types of activities. These ranged from passive like listening to music to flow-inducing like making art. As the paper explained, flow activities require clear rules, challenge, a high investment of energy.

The participants had to rate whether they found the activities enjoyable or daunting as well as how often they engaged in them. Another question related to which particular activities the participants regarded as providing lasting happiness.

The answers revealed that whatever people thought would require more effort would also bring more happiness. But people were still more likely to spend their time in passive activities because they found them easier to get into and more enjoyable. On the flip side, flow activities were seen as harder to start up, even if generally better for you. Its just easier to stay sitting on the couch than getting up to run, which might be quite tiring and even painful at first.

To be able to navigate this paradox of happiness, researchers propose techniques that could help reduce the initial effort required to get into a flow activity like going to the gym. They recommend you do things like choosing a gym near your house and preparing your workout clothes the night before. Or if you want to get into painting or have something to write - set up your writing or painting materials in advance. Just doing that much can help get the process underway and make it easy to start doing something you will find ultimately very rewarding.

The researchers also suggest using controlled consciousness - mindfulness and meditation techniques to get the ball rolling before a flow activity. While the paper advocates for future research to come up with more techniques that would help us engage in happiness-creating flow activities, they do warn that there are high stakes involved here that could prevent us from achieving happiness due to a pursuit of hedonism:

People know that flow activities facilitate happiness better than more passive leisure and yet they are not doing these activities because it seems they do not know how to overcome the activation energy or transition costs required to pursue true enjoyment. This disjunction perhaps leads us to assume that happiness is going to happen to us as an outcome of our pursuit of hedonism. Thus, we develop a more passive approach to happiness, opting for the easier pleasurable activities that require less energy and are less daunting than high-investment ow activities.

Cover photo:Indian schoolchildren, their face and bodies painted as tigers, run at a park in Bangalore on August 1, 2015, during an awareness programme about the endangered tiger species. (Photo credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/Getty Images)

See more here:

Science: How to Get into the "Flow" and Do What Makes You Happiest - Big Think