Granted the existence of evil, the obvious expedient is to improve out World rather than to make it even worse by adding to the sufferings. Desires springs from a lack and consists in a dissatisfaction. When it meets with hindrances, it produces noting but frustration, because it cannot attain its object; when it does attain its object, it produces nothing but boredom, because desire ceases with fulfillment and leaves one with an undesired object. Since desire necessarily involves dissatisfaction, frustration, and boredom, the only escape is by annihilation of all desire in order to achieve liberation from this World of pain. If we escae were desirable, there is no guarantee that the ascetic life would actually lead to freedom. A good example to illustrate this is the story told of a wealthy but elderly gentleman who showed his devotion to a young actress by many lavish gifts. Being a respectable girl, she took the first opportunity to discourage his attentions by telling him that her heart was already given to another man. “I never aspired as high as that,” was his polite answer. His actions were a desire for the sexual sense which could easily escape the unsuspecting person. It was a double meaning with illusion.  

Asceticism is the doctrine that one ought to deny one’s desires. In practice, denial means refraining from the fulfillment of desires and sometimes mortifying the desire by inflicting upon oneself the very opposite of what is desired. This involves abstinence from genuine goods, the frustration of unfulfilled desires, and even self-inflicted pain (sometimes it can be emotional as in the case above). If ascetic practices are to be recommended, the must be a necessary evil to something better. One might regard the ascetic life as a means to something better. One might regard the ascetic life as a means to liberation from this World of suffering. It would be unrealistic to deny that we all suffer from time to time and there are those for whom life is mostly suffering. It would be equally unrealistic, however, to deny that for most of us the evils we experience are more than balanced by the genuine values we enjoy. Is there an immortal soul to be rewarded or a God to do the rewarding? Even the believer may reject asceticism on religious grounds. However, some may seem to have no choice, but to accept it.  

Nonetheless, a benevolent deity would hardly have created us with natural desires and then commanded us to deny these very desires and to suffer the consequent evils of frustration and pain. Unless reason is thought of as a disembodied spirit—in which case it is hard to see how the body hinders reason in the first place—it would seem that ascetic practices make one less, rather than more, capable of the clear and sustained reasoning that is required for obtaining knowledge. The ascetic life might be advances means to virtue. It must be admitted that desire sometimes cause one to act wickedly, but these same desires also cause one to act virtuously. The sexual desire that can lead to adultery more often leads to conjugal fidelity. Hence there is a double error in regarding sexual desire as evil. It does not always, or even usually, expresses itself in sinful actions; and if adultery is a sin, that is because it does violence to the institution of marriage, which is itself an expression of the pleasures of the flesh. 

 There is a morbid fascination in any survey of the ascetic practices of humans. Fasting, the virgin priestess, and the mutilation of the body are common features of ancient religions. In monastic Christianity the austere ideals of celibacy, obedience, and poverty have been both practiced and admired. The most accomplished ascetics have been the wanderes (sunnyasins) of ancient India and the anchorites of fourth-century Egypt. One sunnyasian held his arms above his head with fists clenched until the muscles in his arms atrophied and the nails grew through his palms. It is said that the anchorite St. Simeon Stylites tied a rope tightly around himself until it ate into his body and his flesh became infested with worms. As the worms fell from his body he replaced them in his putrefied flesh, saying, “Eat what God has given you.” Asceticism is a sort of unnatural moral discipline and the principle idea is to deny one’s desires. Asceticism may be partial or complete. Partial asceticism is the theory that one ought to deny one’s lower desires, which are usually identified as sensuous, bodily, or Worldly and are contrasted with more virtuous or spiritual desires. 

Complete asceticism is the theory that one ought to deny all desires without exception. Moderate asceticism is the theory that one ought to repress one’s desires as far as is compatible with the necessities of this life. Extreme asceticism is the theory that one ought to annihilate one’s desires totally. The belief that austerities (tapas) burn away sin was a product of the non-Ayran tradition of the ancient Greeks. Although Greek ethics were predominantly naturalistic, Plato sometimes argued that one ought to repress the bodily desires in order to free the soul in its search for knowledge. They believed that the desire of the flesh should be repressed in order to achieve moral virtue and the contemplation of God. We know that by some authority that one ought to deny one’s lower desires. One authority is the Bible, in which we find both express ascetic commandments and examples like those of the Virgin Mary and the celibate Christ. By undergoing the suffering of self-denial, one is taking up the cross of Christ. Since Christ came into this World as a model for all of humanity, all of humanity ought to share in his redemptive suffering.

Humans ought to deny their lower desires to prove their virtue, for the ascetic life is a test of devotion to God, and those who pass the test will win a Heavenly reward. By denying the pleasure of the flesh, one balances the scales of justice and lifts the guilt from one’s soul, as all humans are viewed as sinners and this is a retributive theory. Self-denial is valuable because it develops in individuals certain character traits like persistence and self-discipline, which are essential to living well. The lower desires cost too much to satisfy. Gratification must be purchased with great effort, and perhaps these desires are insatiable, so than no expenditure of effort will gratify them. The lower desires are misguided, for their objects are really evils or, as best, indifferent things. In either case, no genuine value is realized by fulfilling one’s desires. Although the objects of the lower desire are good, they are much less good than higher values like virtue, knowledge, or Heaven. Since an individual’s time and energy are limited, one ought not to allow these lower desires to distract from the pursuit of what really matters.  

The lower desires are intrinsically evil. Since they turn humans away from God and his commands toward Earthly objects, they are infected with the sin of pride. Although not sinful in themselves, the lower desires do motivate sinful actions. You might wonder why people who have status and seem to be doing well and have greater careers are jealous of someone who has so much less than them and it is because when people are infected with pride, it makes them angry that someone with so little could possess more knowledge, love, and happiness. The lower desires interfere with the pursuit of knowledge, which is essential for the good life. They interfere either by causing an agitation that destroys one’s own power of reasoning or by fixing one’s attention on sensory objects that distract from the transcendent reality. Education that is lifelong and drawn from many sources, travel, private lives, public association, mentors, all the pleasures and pains of real life, revelations, flubs are raw ingredients of leadership. However, even if one has all that, only he or she can put it all together and make it work, which is just as well, or we would end up with robots or, worse, beings from some artificial reality. 

Why are we playing games at all? Why are we not acting to better the human condition? Do you not what to look at someone’s life and know that you contributed to their happiness and not their suffer and pain? It is out of the broad, deep kind of life, this profound sort of experience and education that one develops taste, judgement, curiosity, energy and wit, along with virtue and passion. Wit is the third rail of the intellect, enabling us to be simultaneously rational and intuitive, setting off that spark we usually call inspiration. Eros ad Logos in perfect balance result in a healthy balance of faith and doubt, too—faith in oneself and abilities and in the World’s possibilities, along with sufficient doubt to question, challenge, and probe, and thereby improve the World and oneself. A leader does not just practice one’s profession or vocation, one masters it. A leader adapts, imagines, reverses, connects, compares, rejects, incubates, plays, and then surrenders—in the way that an Aristotle, having mastered the work, surrendered to it, became one with it, so that we could not tell where Aristotle stopped and the knowledge and philosophy started. One might advocate the ascetic life as a means of pleasing God and winning the eternal bliss of Heaven.  

Instead of being a virtue, self-denial is actually a vice. Virtue requires at least prudence and benevolence, but the ascetic is imprudent in abstaining from available goods and in even inflicting harm upon himself. By concentrating on the cultivation of his own soul through suffering of others and to ignore his obligation to work for their welfare. The ascetic life is not good in itself because it some argue that it runs counter to the basic motives in human nature. However, I think there is a balance. While we should not suffer, we should learn to control ourselves. Those who are incapable of living well disguise their impotence and fear by inverting morality in order to excuse their own moral sickness and to restrain the strong men who appear dangerous. Self-discipline is a genuine virtue, but it denies desires only when it is necessary to achieve an inclusive and harmonious satisfaction.  This is basically an ascetic principal in which one maintains his own power over the sick heard. Obviously, leaders must be both competent and possess ambition.