UNABLE to find satisfaction in
the wisdom of the world, the Preacher dipped into the well of
irrationalism and turned to pleasure as a solution. "I said
to myself, 'Come now, Let's give pleasure a try. Let's look for
the good things in life"'(2:1).
To the average person pleasure is certainly the more promising
approach to life than ploughing through philosophical tomes. The
Preacher has tried the latter earnestly but found it to be a futile
venture. Now it's time to try pleasure and see if it holds the
true meaning of life.
It would be wrong to think that hedonism is just a matter of excessive
sensualism, as if it is a mere frivolity gone to seed. Hedonism,
in fact, has a long philosophical lineage that can be traced to
the Cyrenaics, a 5th century BC Greek philosophical school.
The Cyrenaics thought that religion, with its belief in punishment
or reward in the afterlife, places a great and unnecessary burden
on human beings, preventing them from enjoying their lives. Insisting
that there is really no afterlife to worry about, this school
of Greek philosophy advocates unbridled freedom and total abandonment
to sensual pleasures. Cyrenaic philosophy has been wryly parodied
in this motto: "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we
shall have gout, cirrhosis of the liver and delirium tremens"!
The Preacher explores pleasure at various levels, from light-hearted
pursuits to serious, wholesome ones in an effort to discover the
meaning of life in them. Why not take life less seriously? Why
not see its funny side and learn to laugh at it? Didn't someone
say that laughter is the best medicine?
Perhaps life's true meaning will reveal itself when one looks
at it this way. Perhaps this is the key to fulfilment. But alas,
this approach turns out to be just another blind alley. "But
I found that this, too, was meaningless. 'It is silly to be laughing
all the time,' I said, 'What good does it do to seek only pleasure"'(2:2).
There is nothing wrong with good
clean fun. Such activities can be meaningful and invigorating
when set in a proper context. What the Preacher has found, however,
is that pleasure alone, however wholesome, cannot inject true
meaning to life. Life's ultimate meaning must be sought elsewhere.
Perhaps the answer can be found in wine (2:3). Someone has said,
"When the books don't give the answers, it's time to pass
the bottle!" But although wine managed to cause the Preacher
some cheer, it ultimately fails to provide any answers (older
commentators are careful to stress that the Preacher was a connoisseur
of wine and never an alcoholic).
Unable to find neither the meaning of life nor its fulfilment
in laughter and alcohol, the Preacher turns to more substantive
activities that would bring satisfaction in the hope that therein
lies life's meaning. The catalogue of activities in verses 4-6
must surely impress any reader. It is important, however, to note
that these activities were not engaged for the purpose of philanthropy.
The ethical dative "myself", which occurs twice in these
verses, clearly indicates that these "great works" were
done not for the benefit or pleasure of others, but for his own
pleasure.
The grand cultural endeavours
of the Preacher include buildings, gardens, parks and irrigation
systems. But at the end of it all, the Preacher did not find true
satisfaction or meaning in these activities. Standing back and
looking at his great architectural, engineering and agricultural
achievements the Preacher experiences an awful, overwhelming and
sickening feeling of anti-climax. After all that effort, is that
all to it? Verses 7-8 show that the Preacher also enjoys tremendous
power and wealth. But the pleasure of power, the adrenaline rush
that sometimes accompanies its exercise is, alas, also fleeting,
and, in the final analysis, futile.
In all these experiments the Preacher never once lost his scientific
objectivity, and, in verses 9-11 he makes an honest assessment
of their result. As if suddenly bringing his relentless search
for meaning in pleasure to a halt, the Preacher reflects in verse
11: "When I survey all that my hands had done and what I
had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after
the wind; nothing was gained under the sun". The "under
the sun" metaphor is used to qualify his conclusions.
Under the sun and without God, such pleasures may provide momentary
satisfaction and even some superficial meaning, but they are unable
to point to what life really is all about. The Preacher has succeeded
in creating a kind of earthly, secular utopia for himself.
The Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner writes: "He creates
a little world within the world: multiform, harmonious, exquisite:
a secular Garden of Eden, full of civilised and agreeably uncivilised
delights, with no forbidden fruits - of none which he regards
as such."
But as verses 10-11 show, any attempt to create a world in which
nothing is forbidden and God is conveniently forgotten would yield
desperately unsatisfying results. Without God, such crescendos
of achievement will have an anti-climactic and depressing end.
Dr Roland Chia, a lecturer at Trinity Theological College, is
also the Director of the Centre for the Development of Christian
Ministry at TTC. A member of Fairfield Methodist Church, he worships
at Fairfield Preaching Point in Woodlands.