Total abstinance

Hello friends!
Recently, I decided to dedicate all my life to the pursuit and accumulation of knowledge, so in consequence I had to eliminate all sources of pleasure from my life, including sex, porn and masturbation.
It all worked well for a time, but for some reason I convinced myself that I can watch porn without any kind of pleasure, which unsurprisingly wasn't the case.
I don't think that sensual pleasure is inherently wrong in any way, but I want to eliminate it from my life.
In your opinion, should I avoid any kind of vaguely sexual material for a period of time, should I come in contact with it so often that I develop an immunity for it or there is another solution?
Thank you for your time!

 

Thank you for your advice! After a few years of total abstinence I plan to study human behavior to make sure that no pleasure seeking desire that isn't correlated with the obtainment of knowledge exists in my mind.
It would be hard to compare myself with a monk, but I admit that there are some aspects that are pretty similar. My imperative is to dedicate fully to the cultivation and augmentation of my intellect, so much so that the mere observation that I advanced in my journey would provide me with satisfaction, it being the only way for me to feel any kind of pleasure, all else being inconsequential.
In other words, I plan not to have any king of positive reaction or desire towards anything but knowledge, carnal pleasures being detrimental in this case.
This applies to food as well. I already consulted with my nutritionist some time ago and came up with a strict food schedule that offers me all the nutrition I need and and no chance to obtain pleasure from it. For example, I can't consume sugar, coffee, tea, alcohol etc. under any circumstance.
There are plenty more factors to describe, from social life to the way to maintain calmness in all circumstances, but I can write a few books about that and still not finish. It is an entire way of life.

 

Thank you for pointing that out for me!
At some point I red a study showing that multiple and repeated exposure to pornography can lead to insensitivity towards sexual stimuli and anhedonia, which is my goal. I guess that study wasn't reliable.

 

Thank you for your advice!

 

Thank you for your support!
Everyone should be able to chose what goal to pursue and how to live their life.
Good luck in making your goal a reality!

 

To me, it was not much different from a math problem. Firstly, you must go to a qualified nutritionist to find out the necessary quantity of nutriments that you need per day, depending on your age, muscular mass, daily effort, etc. Next, you need to decide a maximum daily budged for food. Generally, you will want 3 types of food: ones that gives you vitamins, ones that gives you minerals and the ones you fats and carbs.
Using the nutritional value of every produce you can make a list of the foods that satisfy your needs, the restrictions being your maximum daily budged and your stomach maximum capacity.
This is the method that I found the most effective and intuitive and of course, you don't need to cut on sugar or coffee like me if you don't want to. I hope this was helpful to you!

 

I will respond to your question in order.
First regarding hunger, I found out by experimenting on myself(without any harm of course) that if you don't eat for a period of time and then keep a very strict schedule on what and when you eat, the sensation of hunger disappears completely.
Second,please correct me if I am wrong, but I think that we might refer to different things when we use the word "knowledge". From what I can tell, you use the word to designate processed sensory information in the form of memories from which you can make associations, conjectures, comparisons, etc. I use the term to designate conclusions obtained from an axiomatic system of thought after at least one internal logical law was successfully applied, which is on an entirely different plane from emotions.
Basically, it is the difference between the perception of the physical world and the perception of the conceptual world, between what exists empirically and what exists noetically.
Please tell me if my explanation wasn't clear.
I hope you will achieve your goal!

 

Thank you for your support and information!
Every time I find out a new thing is a good day for me.
I hope you also reach your goal and have a good time!

 

I think I understand you questions and I will try to the best of my ability to answer them. If I don't succeed, please tell me.
First, I need to specify that I don't consider pleasure to be something malignant and incompatible with learning. Like you described, pleasure can even be a catalyst and an augmenting force in acquiring knowledge. One of my reasons for wanting to distance myself from it is because its subjective nature. All people have different ways to obtain pleasure. Some are voluntarily acquired, some are indoctrinated into them from when they were young. As such, by its own nature, there is no such thing that is objectively pleasurable(and if there was I would probably undergone a lobotomy by now). Exploring the conceptual world requires extreme precision, a very clear mind and most necessarily, objectivity. By cultivating your affinity to the objective approach, you will gradually grow unaccustomed with subjective matters like pleasure due to brain plasticity and our limited "computational" ability, if you permit this terminology. So, I just decided to consciously speed up the process and actively sculpt my brain to the path that I have chosen.
Also, as I mentioned before, my ultimate goal is not to avoid those things that provide me pleasure, but to become apathetic and anhedonic towards them, avoiding them being an intermediate step.
There are also the reasons of fortifying my willpower, rebuilding my consciousness, obtaining information about my subconscious and some other reasons that will take a fortnight to explain.
As an observation, I will like to remark, at least in my opinion, that while pleasures and other things can prove to be sources of inspiration and creativity to great thinkers, this is not due to some special properties of the specific objects, but only the great genius of the thinkers. There is an old persian proverb that says something like:"You can look at a leaf and discover all the secret of the world, but you can also read all the books in the library and not know from where the Sun rises."
Thank you for your support and kind words!
I hope you succeed in your path too!