What’s wrong with pleasure?

Pradeek Mohandas
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

We are pleasure driven creatures. There is nothing wrong with pleasure. It is the reward we get for our action. But what if we could cheat it? Get a reward without the pain. Sort of going incognito mode and just imagine. If you get addicted to this instant gratification, Why would you want to date? Build a healthy relationship? All these are hard work right!

We want everything instantaneous. Instant gratification often manifests as procrastination. It’s a form of self-sabotage where you get caught up indulging in the temptations of life at the cost of your long-term goals. Most of us are addict’s of Instant gratification before we eat the food we want to post it on Instagram. This kind of pleasure is bad. The worst part about this drug is that people don’t believe it’s addictive. They believe it to be a harmless pleasure. Pleasure seeker in neurological terms is dopamine.

The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.

So what the fuck is dopamine? Today’s Opium?

Dopamine is a neurochemical created in various parts of the brain and is critical in all sorts of brain functions, including thinking, moving, sleeping, mood, attention, motivation, seeking and reward. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior.

In short, Dopamine is your brain’s reward juice. It’s naturally released when we do some work, for example, workout, finishing the paper you had to, cooking a nice meal. In today’s world, all we need to do to get a dose of dopamine is open the Social Media app and scroll. It has got the entire generation hooked. We are being drugged. Each like you get for your photo, it’s a teeny tiny happiness. We are abusing a useful and necessary system of the brain. It’s not just social media, “Lose 7Kg in 7days weight loss program” Fuck that shit, marketing is focused on instant gratification. Problem is once we get used to instant dopamine rush, why would we want to work hard for something? This is what makes us lazy. We need to learn to delay gratification.

How does our brain work?

What’s the most interesting part of a trip? planning!

You change the what’s App group name, google about the location, think about the things to carry, the date, hotel booking, dress…brain is full of impulses. I’m not saying the trip isn’t a pleasurable activity, equally pleasurable activity is ANTICIPATION. Sometimes anticipation can trigger more dopamine than the reward itself. All social media works on anticipation. Before you open that app you don’t know what you will see, the unknown always excites us.

Research on rats shows that if you destroy dopamine neurons, rats can walk, chew, and swallow, but will starve to death even when food is right next to them. They have lost the anticipation and desire to go get the food.

In reality, instant gratification promises everything but gives little. It is little more than an illusion. This constant stimulation of the dopamine system can be exhausting. And the constant switching of attention makes it hard to get anything accomplished. It doesn’t last long, so you will want to do it again and again. There you go down the addiction lane. Excess of social media, game, porn, its all making us fucking addict.

Pradeek Mohandas

Insta : https://bit.ly/instaPPM Tech Savy | Engineer | psychology enthusiast

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