Our Bodies, Ourselves

So I’m reading Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and I got to thinking about the way the body can be regarded. You can see the body and its urges as natural and correct, go the “my body is a temple” route, and treat it with care and all that jazz. Alternatively, you can look at the body as something base and vile, something that must be fought and mastered.
The former idea makes logical sense. We’re here on Earth; we’ve only got one body so we should cherish it. In this way, we can hopefully live long and fulfilling — or, at the very least, pleasurable — lives. And since this way of thinking leads most to consider the body’s urges as natural, there is no shame attached to such things as sexual desire.
Now take the latter viewpoint, something Christianity has been largely based upon. The thought process here is that we are imperfect creatures who should strive for perfection, a higher order of being that is nonetheless shackled with animalistic desires that must be overcome.
Take the first idea to the extreme, and you get hedonism. You follow your body’s desires, your id. You eat what you want, when you want it. You fulfill your sexual desires with abandon and an utter lack of shame.
Take the second idea to the extreme, and you get asceticism. You deny your body’s urges because they distract you from your spiritual path. You eat little, or you eat bland foods. And you sure as hell don’t go to a rave, take a little ecstasy, and find yourself a one-night stand. That would be wrong.
I certainly understand the purpose of, and the desire for, a spiritual life. We should all strive to be better people, and having a god or spiritual/moral leader to emulate gives us something to shoot for. But human beings are inherently imperfect, so while I firmly believe that we should all try to be better today than we were yesterday, we should never try to be perfect. It’s an impossibility.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we are spiritual beings and that the soul exists. If this is so, then why are we here in the physical world? Whether there is a Creator or not, surely our presence in the physical world means that we are meant to experience physical existence. Thus asceticism entirely misses the point. If there is a soul, then it lives on after death. This means we’ve got a bumload of time to experience a spiritual existence. So why not enjoy our body while we have it, rather than treating it like it’s something to be ashamed of, in some misguided attempt to reach a higher spiritual plane?
This does not, however, mean that we should eat, snort, and screw anything that comes within reach. If there is indeed an afterlife, then it is safe to assume that our actions in the physical world count for something. Rather than getting ourselves into eternal doo-doo, it seems smarter to enjoy our lives and our bodies, while at the same time conducting ourselves in a manner that is both responsible and considerate to others. So hedonism probably isn’t our best bet either.
This leads me to believe that, cliché as it sounds, the path of moderation is the wisest path. Sure, you can occasionally get trashed and have crazy monkey sex (preferably without the involvement of an actual monkey), just so long as you balance it with the knowledge that you should not devote your life to said activities. And by all means, go to Mass, Temple, or whatever it is you’re into, but keep in mind that, just like everybody else, you’re imperfect, and that it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Of course, you could always argue that we are not, in fact, spiritual beings, that we are purely physical and that once we die that’s it. You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. Fair enough. If you take this view, then asceticism is the height of idiocy. Not much point in denying yourself pleasure if there’s no eternal pleasure to be rewarded with for doing so.
This might lead many to assume that hedonism is the way to go. I disagree. Atheism and morality are not mutually exclusive. The lack of an afterlife does not mean we should throw our morals to the wind; we should still strive to be good people. Thus, afterlife or not, devoting your life to snorting blow off a midget’s ass while screwing high-priced Dutch-Japanese hookers and eating handfuls of foie gras and powdered tiger wangs still means you’re a douche. You’re better than that, man.
So I guess that what I’m trying to say is this: our bodies and their urges are nothing to be ashamed of, and we do no harm by accommodating them at times. But spending too much time satisfying these urges is as much a folly as denying them.
Besides, you’ll go blind if you do it too much.