Tending towards Pleasure and Evading Suffering

Tending towards benefit and evading harm and tending towards pleasure and evading sufferings，are bases of ethnics. Man has an innate tendency to seek pleasure and evade suffering，which is a self-evident truth. Joy is man’s ultimate pursuit. Unlike other things which are all means, it is man’s purpose, man’s final aim in itself. Buddhism specializes in sufferings, but what Buddhism discusses about sufferings is for extrication, for the final aim of Elysium. Bearing sufferings, working hard or struggling hard, is just for joy essentially, namely for tomorrow’s joy，and a long-term joy.

Pleasure economy is increasingly becoming a bright spot in economy, and represents a trend of future economy more and more obviously，just because seeking joy and evading suffering is a fundamental demand in human nature. Jeremy Rivkin, Chairman of Washington Economical Development Foundation, said: “The major means to earn money now is to transform cultural resources into personal experience and amusement that requires payment of money.” US’ journal Times predicts：Around 2015, developed countries will enter a leisure age, and leisure consumption will account for a half of the gross national product (GNP) of USA. As a matter of fact，leisure industry has already become the primary economic activity of America. According to the statistic of the department concerned in USA：Americans have 1/3 of time for leisure，use 2/3 of their income in leisure and use 1/3 of their land for leisure activities. According to experts’ forecast, in the next few years, in America’s economic structure, the employees in the leisure industry will account for 80% ~ 85% of the total work force of the society. The leisure industry or entertainment industry that can meet human demand for pleasure will become an industry with the greatest potentialities, and will sweep the whole globe.

In his book Pleasure Economy, Wolf points out, in whatever the consumer buys, he is seeking the pleasure element from it. Driven by such a trend of “fun-oriented consumption”, products and services in the market will also offer an amusement function or be combined with amusement activities, forming a pleasure economy. And he believes, the key to success of most future industries will lie in whether they can combine their products or services with amusement.

The show world full of flickering stars, the game industry as glorious as gold ore and the Hollywood like a dream factory can achieve great successes and earn big money. Why? Just because they have met people’s demand for pleasure. But all those have only met the low-leveled demand for pleasure. The future economy is a high humanity economy，and the demands it meets are high-leveled demands for pleasure, and what it seeks is a transnormal pleasure and enjoyment. On the one hand，the flying progress of the virtual reality technology enables us to have all kinds of wonderful experience vividly true to life.

Nowadays, some US corporations have already worked out a technique called “digital odors”: You may smell an attractive aroma when seeing a film or watching TV. Other aspects, such as sense of taste, sense of touch, imagination, intuition，and information of numerals, lettering, sound and image can also find a boundless prospect through the virtual technology, so, in the new era, we may feast our eyes, ears, nose, or mouth to a miraculous effect! On the wall of Bill Gates’ private room, there is no artwork at all, only an ultrathin screen connecting to the art museum, but you can enjoy the thousands upon thousands of art treasures in the art museum at your will.

In future, everyone may move a world-class art museum, cinema, or amusement park into his own house, so the enjoyment level will be far and away above the previous level. What is more important，by dint of high technology，we may keep a person happy in all the 24 hours of a day, especially in work and study (after all，work and study occupy most parts of our life).It is one of the most challenging topics of high technology research, and is also where the very promising market of future economy with great potentials lies.