The Joy of a Child

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is an often philosophical and inappropriate webcomic.

This comic about the lost pleasures of childhood can be understood as a thought experiment that shows us the difference between higher and lower pleasures.  Recall that Mill, who thinks morality depends on maximizing happiness, thought that some pleasures were of a better quality.  For example, intellectual pleasures such as playing chess or reading poetry are higher quality then merely sensual pleasures such as eating ice cream or snuggling.  Mill also notes that physical health is a higher pleasure.  Unfortunately, many people seem to prefer lower pleasures that actually harm physical health.  Mill would say that such people have forgotten how to enjoy the higher pleasures such as physical well-being, as, "Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance..." (Utilitarianism, Ch. II)