pleasure and the state

as Bentham posits and Tocqueville develops, one fall-out from a pleasure-based idea of leisure is that it softens the individual will and lessens the desire and ability to reckon with the difficulties and annoyances of existence.  this in turn creates a society ripe for virtual enslavement--not only literally, as we have seen increasingly in our country, but ideologically and practically speaking, as well.  a society without an awareness of others, lacking in a firm telos, has no protection from the power-hungry.  pieper writes exceeding much on this principle, that the only way to fight the enervating consequences of a pleasure-based people is to have a proper understanding of beauty and of leisure: that we exist for feasting, and that feasting is an incarnation of the divine into our daily lives.
Chrisus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.