It is one thing to say that, in the main, people welcome their own pleasure and are averse to their own pain, but quite another to say they live only for pleasure, as psychological hedonism, in effect, maintains.
Far from pursuing only pleasure they seem, in fact, to do so rather rarely and often with reluctance.
Likewise they seem often to remain in pain, not because efforts to end or escape or diminish it would lead somehow to a worse future net of pleasure minus pain but only because they are busy or for some other reason choose not to bother.
We are as inconstant, amateurish, slipshod, and careless about pursuing our own happiness conceived hedonistically as any other way.
Which is not to deny that our concern for or benevolence toward others is, compared to the number and neediness of others, so slight as to be practically non-existent.
Exactly as it also appears when compared with our self-love.
But I digress.
As I said at the outset, people do not live for pleasure or even much pursue it.
But that is not to say they live for something else.
In the main, people do not live for anything at all - regardless of what many might say.
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