Friendship

Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more humans. This article focuses on the notion specific to interpersonal relationships. In this sense, the term connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection along with a degree of rendering service to friends in times of need or crisis. Friends will welcome each other's company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of altruism. Their tastes will usually be similar and may converge, and they will share enjoyable activities. They will also engage in mutually helping behavior, such as exchange of advice and the sharing of hardship. A friend is someone who may often demonstrate reciprocating and reflective behaviors. Yet for many, friendship is nothing more than the trust that someone or something will not harm them. Value that is found in friendships is often the result of a friend demonstrating on a consistent basis:

• the tendency to desire what is best for the other,
• sympathy and empathy,
• honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth, especially in terms of pointing out the perceived faults of one's counterpart
• mutual understanding.

Friends in Nazareth, Israel. Friendships are often the most important relationships in the emotional life of the adolescent, and are often more intense than relationships later in life.

In a comparison of personal relationships, friendship is considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association can be thought of as spanning across the same continuum. The study of friendship is included in sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and zoology. Various theories of friendship have been proposed, among which are social psychology, social exchange theory, equity theory, relational dialectics, and attachment styles. See Interpersonal relationships

Friendship is considered one of the central human experiences, and has been sanctified by all major religions. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Babylonian poem that is among the earliest known literary works in history, chronicles in great depth the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The Greco-Roman had, as a paramount example, the friendship of Orestes and Pylades. The Abrahamic faiths have the story of David and Jonathan. Friendship played an important role in German Romanticism. A good example for this is Schiller's Die Bürgschaft. The Christian Gospels state that Jesus Christ declared, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."(John 15:13).

In philosophy, Aristotle is known for his discussion (in the Nicomachean Ethics) of philia, which is usually (somewhat misleadingly) translated as "friendship," and certainly includes friendship, though is a much broader concept.

Cultural variations: (stub-section) A group of friends consists of two or more people who are in a mutually pleasing relationship engendering a sentiment of camaraderie, exclusivity, and mutual trust. There are varying degrees of "closeness" between friends. Hence, some people choose to differentiate and categorize friendships based on this sentiment.

sensuality

It is that vital, intrinsic, pulse-beating passion within us, our feeling natures, sensuality, that gives us creativity and a sense of joy. Through our feelings we experience our purpose and the special, ecstatic moments in our lives. It is through our feelings that our lives are given meaning and worth. It is our romancing one another in loving, ecstatic ways that helps us to discover that we are ALL sensual beings.

What everyone really wants:

• Intimacy
• Sex
• Love
• Nature
• Friends
• Pleasure

Modern beliefs

Modern day hedonists strive firstly, as their predecessors, for pleasure. But also, hedonists feel that people should be equal, and that the way to achieve that is through allowing much more personal freedom. Hedonists, in the words of an organization known as Hedonist International, "want joyful togetherness, anarchy, epicurean ideas, multifaceted joy, sensuality, diversion, friendship, justice, tolerance, freedom, sexual freedom, sustainability, peace, free access to information, the arts, a cosmopolitan existence, and a world without borders or discrimination, and everything else that is wonderful but not a reality today. "(Hedonist Manifesto)

Basic concepts

The basic idea behind hedonistic thought is that pleasure is the only thing that is good for a person. This is often used as a justification for evaluating actions in terms of how much pleasure and how little pain* (i.e. suffering) they produce. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize this total pleasure (pleasure minus pain). The nineteenth-century British philosophers John Stuart Mill
and Jeremy Bentham defended the ethical theory of Utilitarianism, according to which we should perform whichever action is best for everyone. Conjoining hedonism, as a view as to what is good for people, to utilitarianism has the result that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. Though consistent in their pursuit of happiness, Bentham and Mill’s versions of hedonism differ. There are two somewhat basic schools of thought on hedonism:

• One school, grouped around Jeremy Bentham, defends a quantitative approach. Bentham believed that the value of a pleasure could be quantitatively understood. Essentially, he believed the value of a pleasure to be its intensity multiplied by its duration - so it was not just the number of pleasures, but their intensity and how long they lasted that must be taken into account.
• Other proponents, like John Stuart Mill argue a qualitative approach. Mill believed that there can be different levels of pleasure - higher quality pleasure is better than lower quality pleasure. Mill also argues that simpler beings (he often references pigs) have an easier access to the simpler pleasures; since they do not see other aspects of life, they can simply indulge in their pleasures. The more elaborate beings tend to spend more thought on other matters and hence lessen the time for simple pleasure. It is therefore more difficult for them to indulge in such "simple pleasures" in the same manner.

Critics of the quantitative approach, however, argue that there are several problems with it. They assert that generally, "pleasures" do not necessarily share common traits, besides the fact that they can be seen as "pleasurable." Critics of the qualitative approach argue that whether one pleasure is higher than another depends on factors other than how pleasurable it is. For example, the pleasure of sadism is a more base pleasure because it is morally unpalatable, and not because it is lacking in pleasure.

While some maintain that there is no standard for what constitutes pleasurable activities (for example, those with an interest in sadomasochism), most contemporary hedonists believe that pleasure and pain are easily distinguished and pursue the former.

In the medical sciences, the inability to derive pleasure from experiences that are typically considered pleasurable is referred to as anhedonia.

Philosophy

Pleasure may also be defined, at least in some

contexts, as being the reduction or absence of pain. Epicurus and his followers defined pleasure as the absence of pain.
The 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering.
Utilitarianism and New Hedonism philosophies both attempt to increase to the maximum the amount of pleasure and minimize the amount of pain.

HEDONISM

Pleasure can be brought about in different ways, depending on how every individual senses the feeling of pleasure.

People commonly feel this phenomenon through exercise, sexuality, music,

usage of drugs, writing, accomplishment, recognition, service, and any other imaginable activity; even pain (known by its medical terminology masochism). It also refers to "enjoyment" related to certain physical, sensual, emotional or mental experience.


Neurology

The Pleasure center is the set of brain structures, predominantly the nucleus accumbens, theorized to produce great pleasure when stimulated electrically. Some references state that the septum pellucidium is generally considered to be the pleasure center while others mention the hypothalamus when referring to pleasure center for intracranial stimulation.. Certain chemicals are known to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. These include dopamine and various endorphins.

hedonism

Pleasure can be brought about in different ways, depending on how every individual senses the feeling of pleasure.

People commonly feel this phenomenon through exercise, sexuality, music, usage of drugs, writing, accomplishment, recognition, service, and any other imaginable activity; even pain (known by its medical terminology masochism). It also refers to "enjoyment" related to certain physical, sensual, emotional or mental experience.

Philosophy

Pleasure may also be defined, at least in some contexts, as being the reduction or absence of pain. Epicurus and his followers defined pleasure as the absence of pain.

The 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative sensation, as it negates the usual existential condition, that of suffering.

Utilitarianism and New Hedonism philosophies both attempt to increase to the maximum the amount of pleasure and minimize the amount of pain.

Neurology

The Pleasure center is the set of brain structures, predominantly the nucleus accumbens, theorized to produce great pleasure when stimulated electrically. Some references state that the septum pellucidium is generally considered to be the pleasure center [1] while others mention the hypothalamus when referring to pleasure center for intracranial stimulation.[2]. Certain chemicals are known to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. These include dopamine and various endorphins.