Modern Autonomous Imaginative Hedonism

Abstract

Campbell identifies modern hedonism as seeking pleasure via emotional rather than sensory stimulation, with images imaginatively created by the individual for self-consumption. Campbell calls this self-illusory hedonism. He employs the experiences of two fictional characters (Walter Mitty and Billy Liar) to show how day-dreaming can be pleasurable, before demonstrating how the maximum pleasure is likely to be obtained by modest modifications to imagined forthcoming events. Such day-dreaming becomes interfused with desire to generate longing, while consummation inevitably involves disillusionment. Campbell then uses this understanding of modern hedonism to craft his ‘spirit of modern consumerism’. This emphasizes that consumers do not so much seek satisfaction from products as pleasure from the self-illusory experiences that they construct from their meanings, with consumers desiring novel rather than familiar products because these are seen as offering the possibility of experiencing in reality some of the idealized pleasure already consumed in imagination.