Sharp.

Likewise, they tell of the antisemitic gentile who asked to convert on his deathbed so that by dying he would grant humanity “one less Jew, and a nicer one at that.”

If by “pleasure” you mean a lustful, exciting urge with a dirty shade to it, then fine. I don’t know, you say “he has no life.” I truly wonder how a person not lacking in intelligence like you is willing to stone someone to death like the last of the savages from a prehistoric period, and still dares tell someone whose guiding light is truth and justice that he has no life. Where is the greatness? In someone willing to give up what he has been his whole life for the sake of what is right, even when this whole world is not worth a single sigh, or in clinging to psychological lies even at the price of inhumanity and evil? Let the heart break, let both my shoulders break, let all the dust of the earth be ground into fine powder—only let a person not give up what is his.

A.,
You keep repeating your pathetic slogans again and again. It really doesn’t make any impression on me. You also repeat your distortions every time, and that impresses me even less.

You amuse me, Michi. You dismiss me for the very flaw you have, time after time, and say it doesn’t make any impression on you. It doesn’t take any special discernment to understand how straightforward I am in practice, unlike you, twisting and slippery as you are. Even if I’m cynical sometimes. Either you’re right and I’m wrong, or I’m right and you’re wrong. But you’re not honest and brave enough, my friend. Not enough. It’s as clear to me as the sun that I’m not mistaken, and I’m desperately looking for something that will shake that certainty.

A., since even without Jewish law you’re moral (very moral), then you can simply steal water (and if it specifically has to be a high mountain because the pleasure of theft is proportional to the amount stolen, then steal a lot of water. Or betray your wife, or with a married woman cheating on her loving partner. And one could say more).

I see that verse as a figure of speech about the urge. And what can I do if that’s what religion creates?

And morality doesn’t create such mountains? That is, in your opinion, even as a righteous person (the earlier A.), is there a decisive difference between a religious transgression (forbidden and sweet) and a moral transgression (forbidden and not sweet)?

A, although I really have been amused since you started showing up here again and again (in complete seriousness), I truly don’t understand why you bother writing here at all. Really, I don’t.

If you’re so sure of yourself and know everything—then why are you asking?
And if you’re not—then with the method you’re using, you also won’t be able to learn anything.

So what for?
(Beyond venting anger at religious faith—speaking of therapy.)
I’m not trying to “drive you away,” just to understand this lack of logic.

M, if an interesting distinction comes out of this—that a prohibition (halakhic, moral, or other) can create, in the integral over pleasures, a greater total than the sum of pleasures without the prohibition, and/or distinctions between kinds of prohibitions—then the question is totally worth it (in my opinion).

I was talking about the phenomenon of A., and not necessarily about this particular question.

As for your point—well, that conclusion actually isn’t far from what psychological studies usually say. They all show that for the most part religious societies (of all religions) are happier (and healthier) than others (see, for example, King’s comprehensive book, Handbook of Religion and Health, and other studies).
Usually they connect this to meaning, but “stolen waters are sweet” is also a very plausible reason (that’s exactly the sticky common claim about the advantage of the prohibition of niddah), though it is discussed less in research (because most of it is done on Christians, who as is well known don’t have a huge number of prohibitions).
Either way, and whatever the reason, the fact that in the overall integral religion has a psychological advantage is known. (All this, of course, says nothing about its truth, and conclusions must be drawn with integrity.)

“Stolen waters are sweet” means that violating the prohibition intensifies the experience, not that the prohibition creates longing. And even in niddah it isn’t clear that the integral is greater; rather, perhaps a person is impressionable and remembers the peaks of the experience more than the average (Kahneman and Tversky, there there). So among ordinary religious people, who hardly ever knowingly violate prohibitions, this effect doesn’t exist. And does this trait (assuming it’s true) also exist with moral prohibitions? And with prohibitions of state law, for example? That’s not so clear to me (when I violate the law I feel a tiny thrill shading into indifference, stemming only from the risk of getting caught).

Hello M.

First of all, I’m A-dot. I’m mysterious and hard to understand even to those around me in real life, and I don’t do it on purpose. I’m a paradox even to myself. But that’s reality, so I’m not alien to it. But the opposite seems more plausible. I don’t know what “method” it is that you think you see, but I already said I don’t miss a word. I haven’t gotten angry here even once since I came onto the site—do you believe me? Maybe I joined the Other Side and its cohort.

A.,
What about the results—you promised to check into the stolen waters.