Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.

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Just because the solutions of problems are not visible at any particular time does not mean that those problems will never be alleviated -- or confined to tolerable dimensions. History has a way of changing the very terms in which problems operate and of leaving them, in the end, unsolved, to be sure, yet strangely deflated of their original meaning and importance.

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