Self-Rejection, Self-Sacrifice, Self-Denial VS Egoism, Earthly Pleasures, Hedonism

[Belacqua]

These sets of phrases Ahri said are pretty revealing.
“Always quit doing something…can’t make money doing it” + “Don’t have hobbies anymore” means Ahri has given up.
Don’t worry, neither of us knows each other in real life. All I can say is that the phrasing of words can reveal a ton.

I don't know if you or @Ahriman has read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, but the situation here reminds me of something in that book.

For Aristotle, virtue is always a middle path between extremes. In the case of eating it's obvious: a healthy balanced diet is good, but both too much (gluttony) and too little (anorexia) are bad. Likewise misers and spendthrifts are both bad because we should spend our money appropriately. 

In the case of temperance, he says that we should indulge our passions and desires appropriately -- not too much not too little. People who have no self-control become overly indulgent or self-indulgent and harm themselves. The interesting thing, to me, is when he says that very few people are on the other side of the middle way. That is, a lot of people's passions and desires are so strong that they lose control, but no one's desires are so weak that it's a problem. If temperance is in the middle, and self-indulgence is on the left, there is no word for people on the right. 

But I'm thinking that these days there may be quite a few people whose desire is too weak. And I'm not judging Ahriman specifically -- obviously I don't know him well enough for that. But I think there is a type of person who has given up, who isn't full enough of desire to, for example, go out and find a lover. Or get up off the sofa and make money so that he can take a trip or buy a sports car or score cocaine. 

So an insufficiency of desire may also be a thing. And we can think about it as kind of the opposite of self-indulgence, with the ideal being temperance -- appropriate indulgence. This would mean a certain amount of self-rejection, self-sacrifice, etc., but not too much. Naturally Aristotle doesn't tell us what is too much and what is too little -- he just says that if you're wise and good you'll figure it out.