{"id":104341,"date":"2026-08-22T05:00:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T09:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=104341"},"modified":"2026-08-21T21:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T01:26:11","slug":"no-pleasure-is-worth-giving-up-for-the-sake-of-two-more-years-in-a-geriatric-home-in-weston-super-mare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/no-pleasure-is-worth-giving-up-for-the-sake-of-two-more-years-in-a-geriatric-home-in-weston-super-mare\/","title":{"rendered":"“No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-Super-Mare”"},"content":{"rendered":"

On his Substack, Christopher Gage<\/a> discusses how to shorten your life (but not for the usual reasons):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

St George’s Nursing Home in Weston-Super-Mare. I’m sure the staff are fine, but this reminds me strongly of the hospice my grandmother ended her days in.<\/p><\/div>\n

My Dharma or reason for being is devilishly simple: to maximise pleasure and to shuffle off this mortal coil before the nursing home beckons.<\/p>\n

Fatally, at least for those with a yen for acronyms and self-hatred, my ultimate goal corrupts their hallowed SMART strictures. It is not quite specific. It is measurable. It is attainable. It is relevant. It is not time-based. I’m not resolved to stubbing out the fags, abandoning the booze, or chasing around Soho the doomed affections of neurotic artists. I refuse to wake at 5 a.m., invest in crypto, or bore my tastebuds with rainbow carrots.<\/p>\n

I’ll take my cue from the great novelist, ardent womaniser, and prodigious piss artist, Kingsley Amis: “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-Super-Mare”.<\/p>\n

\n

In an age which toggles between grind-culture puritanism and brain-rot hedonism, we must chart a more amenable path. So, the pursuit of pleasure, it is. I resolve to pursue pleasure deliberately, intelligently, doggedly, ethically and without apology \u2014 not to escape but to evolve.<\/p>\n

Pleasure gets a bad name. What, with all our competing isms and illities. Those journeys of immiseration and self-loathing. One cannot move for ice baths and magnesium supplements and alcohol-free and protein-rich and wellness retreats and fucking motivational<\/em> podcasts. Antisocial tech billionaires inject the blood of teenagers in a demented bid to live forever. It is a new secular puritanism. These longevity bros trade the profound depth of life for its mere length. They are terrified of death, yet terrified to actually live. It must stop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For myself, I’m not at all eager to die, but I don’t view the mechanical prolongation of life as a worthwhile end in itself. Living a bit longer, but at the cost of giving up some or all of the things that make life worth living seems a particularly bad bargain. I’ve never smoked, so that quick’n’easy “stay healthy” recommendation doesn’t apply, but I enjoy drinking wine and beer. Not to excess, as I don’t enjoy being drunk, but as a social relaxant, a pleasure in its own right, something to look forward to at the end of a long day. Matching the right wine to the food on your plate is a worthwhile skill to develop, as it increases two pleasurable things at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On his Substack, Christopher Gage discusses how to shorten your life (but not for the usual reasons): My Dharma or reason for being is devilishly simple: to maximise pleasure and to shuffle off this mortal coil before the nursing home beckons. Fatally, at least for those with a yen for acronyms and self-hatred, my ultimate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,66],"tags":[598,1073,139],"class_list":["post-104341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-health-science","tag-aging","tag-epicureanism","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-r8V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104343,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104341\/revisions\/104343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}