Most of us use the word hedonism by equating the term to vice, perversion, debauchery, etc... This is a misunderstanding and — unfortunately, without a proper introduction — we will live out our lives without benefiting from some of the most refreshingly honest and profoundly useful ideas regarding how to lead an ethical life. How? Through seeking to understand and maximize our experience of pleasure.

Endowed by Our Creator

In 1776, when crafting the United States Declaration of Independence, the authors wrote into its preamble their best interpretation of the rationale for separating from England:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…

“An Unalienable Right”

As it is apparent, the Declaration of Independence submits the pursuit of happiness (endowed by life and enabled by liberty) as a justification for war. The revolutionary text articulates a radical political system not regulated by an obedience to any arbitrarily granted authority or humility before any god, but by an ethic powered by the happiness-seeking desires of each individual citizen.

Hedonism

‘Happiness’ From wikipedia:

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.

‘Hedonism’ from wikipedia:

Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure is the primary or most important intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain).

Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them, assuming that their actions do not infringe on the equal rights of others.

Indeed, the Declaration of Independence — prescribing the pursuit happiness as not only the most important good, but our birthright — is a hedonist manifesto and here it’s argued that this is a good thing.

Conventional Wisdom

Over the last few millennia, human cultures have evolved and branched out into a wide variety across the dynamic surface of the Earth. As life forms developed in structure or function — adapting to their climate, availability of resources, geographic isolation, neighboring populations, etc. — each culture has developed specialized organizational structures, systems, processes and technologies to improve their self-preservation and multiplication.

Unlike the ethic which is outlined in The Declaration of Independence, many of the world’s organizational systems (i.e., religions) have enforced the suppression of our individual pleasures for the benefit of the group. But, is the tension between our individual experiences of pleasure and the greater good necessarily a zero-sum game?

Hedonists say ‘no’, that if we cannot maximize an individual’s experience of happiness, how can we possibly maximize the happiness of the world? Happiness is not something that is given to us, but is something that we develop within ourselves. Therefore, each of us needs freedom (and therefore should not impinge on that freedom) to create a happier world.

What Gives Us Pleasure?

This seems like a simple question, but is it really? Even after a fulfilling meal, you may look at that slice of chocolate cake with a lusting desire which, after overindulging, transforms from pleasure into physical pain or even regret when your mirror reveals man boobs now qualifying for a trip to Victoria’s Secret. We may first find an elation in the company of a new lover that — after spending more time with them — has a similar castrating effect. We may spend money we don’t have in a splurge of shopping, a month later find ourselves asking ‘why did I waste my money on this shit?!

Brain Candy

Serotonin, endorphins, testosterone, estrogen… there are a bunch of chemicals produced by the body to regulate our metabolism and mood, but — since our prime interest is (as it should be) pleasure — we’re going to want to focus on dopamine. Dopamine is the happy hormone. The release of this neurotransmitter is triggered when we fulfill our thirst or hunger, taste something sweet, take a dump, have an orgasm, etc… In a nutshell, it’s a signalling hormone that reinforces behaviors that are necessary for our survival and reproduction.

The “Pleasure Center”

The mechanics of how dopamine simultaneously provides us with pleasure and shapes our behavior are profound, but also incredibly simple. However, before we can explain how this simple mechanism does its business, we need to take two minutes to read up on a primitive little transmission system (shared by all mammals) within the brain: The pleasure center.

1. The limbic system (pictured here) is responsible for most of our instinctual (emotion-based) behavior. It is the driving force of the pleasure center.
2. A primary function the brain’s pleasure center serves is to help us learn important skills. How? When a release of dopamine is triggered a feeling of pleasure is ‘turned on’ reinforcing those of our behaviors which lead us to the on switch (e.g., foraging for food, mating, catching prey, etc.). This feedback loop awakens and strengthens our instincts, giving us curiosity to try new things and the desire to develop skill in the things that make us happy.
3. The last aspect of this system we have to understand is that dopamine is translated into pleasure by receptors within the brain’s pleasure center. Soon after experiencing something exciting, the work of translating dopamine into pleasure will ‘fatigue’ the receptors. If not given enough time to rest between doses, the next helping of dopamine will feel less pleasurable than the previous, preventing the second slice of cake from giving us the same amount of pleasure as the first. This is also known as as developing a ‘tolerance’.

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.
— Emily Dickinson

Remember your first kiss? Ever wonder why the very first time we do something new that we find really exciting / pleasurable, we tend to form a strong associated memory destined to haunt us for the rest of our lives?

The moment we experience something extraordinarily pleasurable, our brains effectively record to memory a high-resolution, multidimensional snapshot of all of our senses: what we smell, see, hear, touch, taste. The evolutionary functionality of this is to allow us to spontaneously identify circumstances in the future that seem familiar to that memory so we can modify our behavior and increase our chances of reliving the ‘high’. (e.g., your dog running up to you and drooling after hearing you opening a can of dog food from the other room). We call this recording a trigger and the automatic sense of opportunity intuition.

Food for thought:

• Identify your dopamine triggers as such.
• Prepare when you can predict experiencing those triggers to add sophistication to your automatic response

Appetites

Along these same lines, as we mature, we find that the things that gave us pleasure as children no longer do the trick. We need new and stronger experiences to trigger our interest: powerful flavors, designer shoes, exotic travel, “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll”, etc... Why? Just as these dopamine receptors get fatigued by small pleasures, they can become worn out by extraordinarily exciting / pleasurable experiences. The effect this severe fatigue has is to reduce our ability to experience pleasure in general. We develop a new object of desire, all other desires taking a back seat. We’ve thus acquired a new appetite.

The appetite building process follows our growth and development from infancy to adulthood. As Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual development model focused on sexual desires, here’s my vulgar attempt at articulating that progression in terms of appetite building:

1. metabolic desires (i.e., ‘needs’): security, sleep, nourishment,excretion,
2. experimental desires: curiosity, exploration, discovery,
3. social desires: companionship, inclusion, sex, communication, self-expression

This is a natural evolution of desires that stems from being new to the world, facing certain pains and becoming skilled at overcoming them, then seeking new challenges to up the game.

We develop new appetites over time in a layered fashion. I.e, we continue enjoying and refining our basic appetites, but — like rising courses of bricks in a staircase — we build new appetites upon old ones. The way we accumulate these new appetites will differ between us as we go through life with less or more exposure to the various stimuli available in our environment (e.g., the farmer’s child more likely to enjoy skeet shooting while his cousin in the big city develops an appetite for Jazz).

Of our appetites, we share most of our desires with the rest of our mammalian relatives, even birds. We share metabolic desires with all other life forms including plants and insects. But, in order to understand the difference between the human experience of happiness and that of other known life forms, we need to focus on one appetite that we have become particularly obsessed with.

Communication

Over the past million years or so, as social animals, we have been developing a very special tool to help us work together: the ability to communicate complex ideas. Through communication, we are able to imagine / visualize shared information through description, instruction and story telling.

Early human communication likely had the same practical purposes that many animals gain from communicating. They helped us call to our parents for food, alert each other of danger, coordinate hunts for bigger and tastier game (e.g., mammoths, buffalo). Later, they helped us hand down useful technologies and agricultural methods from generation to generation.

Just as we, individually, build highly expressive vocabularies — from childhood — upon simple phonetics and words, each generation of evolving humans built new vernacular structure on the work of the last. Sentence structures would emerge, then story telling architectures, and later, the propensity for dramatization, plot twists then background music. Dramatic stories would evolve into legends, epics, myths, folk songs, movies, etc.

As language developed, it would move from a practical means to a desirable end to an end in itself. In a cultural explosion, humans would give rise to a spectacular diversity of art forms seeking to titillate the senses in different ways.

Informing Perceptions

Stories originally served to explain the world and perpetuate culturally encouraged behaviors. By invoking fear, stories would discourage ‘bad’ behavior. By inspiring ambition, stories would encourage and inspire model behavior (courage, honesty, chivalry, etc.).

Those early experiments of story telling have now evolved into an advanced and deliberate science. Political propaganda would replace ghost stories, advertisements would replace our desire to become heroes with a desire to buy the latest iPhone.

“We are governed… largely by men we have never heard of.”

At the turn of the century there arrived an innovator to story telling which would take selling products and politics to a new state of the art: Edward Bernays.

From wikipedia:

Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”. He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

In his book Propaganda, Bernays says:

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.

He called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the ‘engineering of consent’. In his book, Bernays posits:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Bernays revolutionized the art of advertisement and propaganda. The lessons he incorporated from his uncle Freud’s toolbox (which he helped popularize in the US) into his framework remain canonical within the industry of public relations and advertisement.

“Image is Everything”

Edward Bernays understood that our natural inclination — whether we like to admit it or not — is to idealize or internalize images promoted or villainized by those we trust and that we are inclined to trust the news, which he would often leverage for his promotions.

Just as we can be triggered to climb a tree if we believe a story from a friend that there’s a tasty bundle of bananas at the top, we can be compelled to haul our jiggly ass to Mickey D’s by the sight of someone slow-mo chomping into a juicy double cheeseburger. By framing information in a certain way, we are able to compel others behavior.

When we see a horror film as children, we become afraid of imaginary monsters. As adults, we see the images of a murder on the local news creating within us fears of our neighbors. The exploitative objectification portrayed in pornography encourages us to approach sex partners as sex toys. Every girl’s gotta buy what the Olson twins are wearing. We thus accumulate unnatural fears and nurture unnatural desires.

This brings us back to a hedonist’s (as well as a pragmatist’s) perspective, and is why it’s best to steer clear of too much fiction or staged ‘reality’. Real life is more rewarding when we approach it with realistic expectations. This is not to say that we shouldn’t dream, but first seek to know yourself, then create your personal dream. Don’t let someone else (especially “men we have never heard of”) determine what that dream should be. You could be robbing yourself.

Don’t Believe the Hype

As the technology for communication evolved from spoken, to published, broadcasted and now socially curated / user-generated modalities, so has the political / cultural impact any one person could have. From the information brokering of Alexander the Great’s psychological warfare, the Vatican’s monopoly on god’s ear from ancient Rome, to our modern struggle for Net Neutrality, when a saavy opportunist becomes the gatekeeper of a popular channel of communication, they hold sway that no other tool of power affords.

Fox News — during a trial over obfuscation of facts — asserted that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports. To be prudent given this and other cases of misuse of such power, we must be careful when receiving information from religiously, politically or commercially motivated gatekeepers.

Food for thought:

• Don’t believe the hype. By looking for ‘clean’ information (from reputable sources), we are more likely to react in an appropriate manner to the world and — thereby in our OWN best interests.

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

One of the pioneers of hedonism, Epicurus, was a strong critic of advertisement’s then rudimentary forms. Even in the 4th century BC ancient Greece, Epicurus saw the destructive potential of advertisement at its early stages attempting to take advantage of our pleasure seeking brains by promising us one or more of the three things that we need to be happy: an analyzed life, freedom, and friends (sound familiar?). He felt so strongly against advertising that he proposed counter-advertisements (imagine a billboard showing a 400 pound ass next to a double cheeseburger) as an ‘antidote’.

In another triad, Epicurus categorized three types of desire:

1. natural and necessary desires: food, clothing, shelter, etc..
2. natural but non-necessary desires: luxury items. Epicurus was a vegetarian and practiced mild asceticism.
3. “vain and empty” desires: power, wealth, fame, etc… These are difficult to satisfy, in part because they have no natural limit.

In a very similar approach to life that the Buddhists teach, the hedonist Epicurus encouraged the elimination of pain caused by the last two types of desires in order to attain tranquility and maximum pleasure. He was able to relish simple pleasures every day and — he argued — this was the way to happiness. How do we relish life in this way?

In order to maximize our pleasure we must actively engage in those of our behaviors which prove ultimately pleasurable (more pleasure returned than pain cost/invested). If we are thus constantly engaged, all of our waking hours will give rise to pleasure. Yet, knowing what what we find ultimately pleasurable is not so straight forward.

No Pain, No Gain

We either pay for pleasure before or after we benefit from the experience. For example going for that morning run SUCKS getting out of bed an hour early to do it, but it pays off in having more vitality / energy the rest of the day (note: I don’t run, I hate running, but I’ve done it a couple times… and that’s basically how it went). When taking drugs, lying or stealing, it’s the opposite payoff sequence, we get the pleasure immediately, but ultimately suffer for it.

Jordan Belfort: Before

Jordan Belfort: After

Many addicts will tell you that they feel like they have a ‘hole inside them’ that can only be filled by their habit. More often than not these ‘negative’ pleasures are not ‘fixing’ our pain, but are contributing to them in one way or another.

When faced with a suspicious desire, the appropriate hedonist questions to ask yourself is: “Do I really want this…?” or “Is this worth the trouble?” and — as a hedonist — if we estimate the aftermath of the pleasure will amount to more pain than it’s worth, the answer to the question should be a definite ‘No’.

So, how can we choose the behavior that will maximize our pleasure? Unlike the objective world, pleasure varies subjectively from person to person. But, we can still discuss subjective nature of happiness in a productive abstraction if we understand that anything that will bring us enduring happiness / pleasure will require one thing:

Challenge

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, wrote a book about what he calls ‘flow’. In a nutshell, flow is achieved when one — who is practicing a skill they enjoy — experiences when the challenge is just above their current ability. This enables them — with just a bit more effort than before — to succeed in meeting the challenge. Flow is what we feel when we are participating in an addictive and healthy behavior. Just as we can build appetites of consumption, we can also build appetites for performing an activity.

It’s important to remember that the goal has to be almost within reach, just as Epicurus knew 2400 years ago, if we find that we are desiring more than we are able to attain, we will will always find ourselves wanting. Improvement is a rewarding, but slow process and should be enjoyed one step at a time.

Food for thought:

• The lesson is to not compare ourselves to ideals, but to ourselves yesterday. What can you add to the formula you used yesterday to improve your experience today?
• Find out your flow.

Learning How to Practice

Learning is the only truly higher pleasure we are left with after our primitive needs are satisfied. However, learning how to learn is something school usually doesn’t teach us (very unfortunately). It’s a personal skill that we will have to pick up along the way. The reason we must take this on ourselves is because it is a very personal matter and therefore difficult to teach.

Operating within the enigmatic flywheel of pleasure and pain can be confusing if not completely dumbfounding for some. Getting to know ourselves and what activities / behaviors will give us maximum pleasure takes time and it’s a challenge in and of itself, both because our surroundings change and we change (we grow up, we go through puberty, moods, hormone imbalances, etc.). But, there are ways we can enhance our everyday pleasurable experiences through practice.

What do Epicurean Hedonists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Buddhists and almost every other religion on Earth have in common? They all stress the importance of introspection and reflection in leading a happy life. Some call it meditation, others prayer, but the value of this practice cannot be stressed enough. In order to make sense of the world and our changing place within it, we must sort out what is working for us from what is not. This is how we learn and build our skill including with life itself.

Food for thought:

• What motivates you? What gets you excited and why? Think about it. Try new things.
• Find something you enjoy doing for the practice itself not just in the hope of accomplishment.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results — Ben Franklin

A quick way to tell if someone’s full of shit is if they tell you they don’t regret anything. If they didn’t regret acting like an eight-year-old monkey up in that tree that they fell out of, breaking their arm, they’d be a 40 year-old banana sandwich. Regret is our most eloquent teacher. So try, fail, regret, but think about why you failed. Just try not to regret the same thing over and over again. That’s insane.

Patience is a Pleasure

In some situations, nothing is the best thing to do: silence, patience, fortitude, non-participation, etc… There are a number of these kinds of behaviors that many of us must deliberately practice as they are not instinctual. When faced with this problem, we are typically asked to ‘buck-up’, ‘pay our dues’ or ‘just deal with’ these experiences as a sort of necessary evil.

Now, let’s look at this from the hedonist’s perspective. The real opportunity for happiness comes from an understanding that certain types of pain can be enjoyable as they enable the improvement of our capacity for pleasure. If we see struggle as an exercise, hunger as an appetizer, the lesson in failure — we can improve in skill and thereby success/happiness now and in the future.

At the center of almost every ‘unnecessary’ or ‘unnatural’ desire you will find a seed of impatience. Not wanting to wait for hunger to appetize and so resort to uber-sweet, salty or luxury foods. Not wanting to spend the time earning / developing real friendships and so buy a fancy car to impress people leading us into ‘friendships’ based not on a respect of the person, but of their possessions. It leads us into thinking that the meal is more important than the company it’s shared with. It leads us to rush into partnerships without trust / respect, sex without intimacy, obesity without nutrition.

Foreplay can be fun not only after it’s over. Patience enables us to enjoy both the emptiness and the fullness of life, the hunger and fulfillment, the seclusion and the party, the silence and the music. It is THE skill of happy living and we should also enjoy the practice.

Conclusion

The difficult part of making the right decision comes not from self-denial, but radical self-awareness. If you are anything like me, you’re weak to your desires. If this is the case, you’ll struggle with them. Pleasure can be a beast and if we don’t take the time to understand it, just as a beast, it will tear us, our families, friendships (and I argue, the world itself) to pieces.

If watching Sex and the City makes you really want to buy something that would stress your bank account, stop watching it. If you’re tired of your kid whining that he wants McDonald’s every time he sees a commercial on TV, cancel your cable. If you start fucking strangers after the fifth drink, stop at the fourth.

Understand these choices as self-rewarding, not self-punishing. When indulging, try to savor each pleasure. Pay attention to every moment with friends, every sip of whiskey (if you’re not an alcoholic). Don’t multitask. Focus. Focus even on the space, the emptiness. Enjoy these moments. Anticipation, with the right mindset, can be a wonderful part of the pleasure and, when matured, makes the consummation of the pleasure even better.

As The Most Interesting Man in the World says:

Stay thirsty my friends.