"With time, as with money, avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect you."
I think Paul Graham is an amateur philosopher and the problem with philosophy is that it is not actually easy to do. This is so as it is very easy to speak of a truth in one particular focused narration, which very much contradicts with other circumstances. The quote above being an example in point.
Why would anyone want to avoid pleasure, let alone be protected from it? I think watching telly for two hours can be pleasure, it is more difficult however to find out of when it becomes not self indulgment but not pleasure.
The riches of the world are useless entirely if they do not grant you access to pleasure. The entire point of existence is pleasure. Making money is pleasure, disciplining yourself to not waste time is done so as to gain more pleasure later than very little now, spending a lot of money is pleasure, as is making them, and of course the greatest pleasure of them all is sex so have plenty of it :P
My point Paul is that we do not need protection for pleasure. To the contrary, we need protection from non pleasure. It is however extremely hard firstly to identify what is pleasurable and secondly to acquire it. Investment for example can be pleasurable but only if you make a profit out of it and you feel comfortable with making the investment. That is, you can afford to loose what you invest and thus can only gain pleasure either way. When, however, large sums of money are invested, outside of that comfort zone, you are not protecting yourself from pleasure, you are instead denying yourself pleasure and giving in to its enemies, such as envy, irrational hope, lack of discipline, too much confidence in yourself or others while the alarm bell inside does ring so very softly that this might really not be right.
Thus perhaps, time and money should not be our currency, but pleasure.
I would also like to point out that I feel pleasure after working through a day in a disciplined way that doesn't waste time. So "disciplining yourself not to waste time" isn't always to gain pleasure later, but can also generate direct pleasure. At least for me. (my $0.02)
"... avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect you"
I think that can not reasonably be interpreted but to suggest that avoiding pleasure is a way of protection. That is, that we need protection from pleasure.
However, I would be interested to know how do you think that Paul was saying exactly that which you quoted?
P.S. I must say that the behaviour of individuals in this community is very interesting and perhaps predictable. I have seen time and again before a comment being upvoted until someone makes a contrary comment, at which point, the original comment begins being downvoted. It is strange and perhaps makes me naively think that people's opinion can be so very easily entirely changed let alone influenced, even "intelligent" individual's opinion.
I think Paul Graham is an amateur philosopher and the problem with philosophy is that it is not actually easy to do. This is so as it is very easy to speak of a truth in one particular focused narration, which very much contradicts with other circumstances. The quote above being an example in point.
Why would anyone want to avoid pleasure, let alone be protected from it? I think watching telly for two hours can be pleasure, it is more difficult however to find out of when it becomes not self indulgment but not pleasure.
The riches of the world are useless entirely if they do not grant you access to pleasure. The entire point of existence is pleasure. Making money is pleasure, disciplining yourself to not waste time is done so as to gain more pleasure later than very little now, spending a lot of money is pleasure, as is making them, and of course the greatest pleasure of them all is sex so have plenty of it :P
My point Paul is that we do not need protection for pleasure. To the contrary, we need protection from non pleasure. It is however extremely hard firstly to identify what is pleasurable and secondly to acquire it. Investment for example can be pleasurable but only if you make a profit out of it and you feel comfortable with making the investment. That is, you can afford to loose what you invest and thus can only gain pleasure either way. When, however, large sums of money are invested, outside of that comfort zone, you are not protecting yourself from pleasure, you are instead denying yourself pleasure and giving in to its enemies, such as envy, irrational hope, lack of discipline, too much confidence in yourself or others while the alarm bell inside does ring so very softly that this might really not be right.
Thus perhaps, time and money should not be our currency, but pleasure.