Culmination of Hedonism? Not Quite - Part I

While most would regard the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything else as the greatest unsolved mystery plaguing mankind, it's vagueness causes me to differ. What about "P=NP?" ? Surely, it's exceptional brevity would earn it the top spot? Alas, the associated pre-condition of sitting through a mightily rigorous one-semester course just to gain enough knowledge to be able to comprehend the problem goes against it. Let's try something simple. What say thee to the deceptively simple, infinitely profound problem of 'classifying human actions as right or wrong'? A large chunk of the human population has given up on this and an even larger chunk is lost to reason and logic (they being the followers of extremely dogmatic schools of thought called 'religion'). The remaining are those that study the science of Ethics.

Now 'Ethics' interested many of the 'Wise', and a multitude of approaches were devised, but none withstood the test of time, when it came to distinguishing between virtue and vice. (Poetry caught you by surprise? You just witnessed the birth, of a new literary device!).

Then came the wisest of them all, and he said something, which made them gall:

That, which gives you pleasure, is right
That, which takes it away, is shite (as the British pronounce it)

(It is a common affliction. You compose a couplet, you become Wordsworth's equal. You write CRAP poetry. You realise that in the next couplet. No two sentences you ever utter/pen/think of in the rest of your life have any semblance of a rhyme. Congratulations, you have successfully (and thankfully) murdered the (mediocre to the core) poet within you).

And thus was born Hedonism.