Seeking Pleasure: Is It Possible To Satisfy Our Needs, Wants and Desires and Avoid Pain?
Recently I sat in an audience where Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth declared his favourite word was “pleasure”.
It turns out pleasure is hard to define. The dictionary definition is “gratification”, but when I looked up gratification, that definition is “pleasure”. That is unhelpful and not pleasure.
Google, which uses Oxford Languages, states that pleasure can be multiple things. It can be the feeling of happiness, satisfaction and enjoyment. It can be sexual gratification, and it can also be the experience of doing something for fun, not a necessity.
Pleasure can be satisfying our basic human needs for food, sex, exercise and sleep. It can also be the feeling we get looking at art, listening to music, watching dance and performance or reading for our entertainment.
At the time, I cringed at hearing Thurston’s favourite word. That’s not his fault. It’s mine. I later realised my adverse reaction to his love of pleasure was because I was living in a pleasure deficit. I didn’t prioritise it, and I was jealous of someone who did because I didn’t feel enough of it in my own life. I’d become OK with ignoring pleasure in favour of stability and avoiding pain. Yet, in reality, ignoring pleasure as an ingredient to my happiness had made me feel unstable and was causing a lot of pain.
The pleasure principle
Psychoanalysis founder Sigmund Freud held that the pleasure principle drives the Id component of personality to satisfy our needs, wants and desires. Freud’s view was that unsatisfied needs result in anxiety.
The Id is primal and focuses on fulfilling our basic instincts. The development of the Ego and Superego helps us control the Id so that we can strike a balance between pleasure-seeking and socially acceptable, moral behaviours.
Embracing the Id and leaning into pleasure is often mistaken for living recklessly and in excess. The Seven Deadly Sins of Roman Catholic theology make us feel shit about the pleasure-seeking activities of gluttony, pride, greed and lust. We’re bashed into us that everything is good in moderation but overindulging in life’s pleasures will make us overweight, unattractive, addicted and promiscuous.
It makes it difficult to lean into these pleasures and embrace the wonderful feeling of needing, wanting and desiring when we’re taught to fear and suppress it. This act of living in fear and suppression might make us feel like a good person for a while, but is it worth the sacrifice of feeling satisfied?
Do humans need pleasure?
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs considers how the fulfilment of human needs contributes to our life satisfaction.
Maslow’s hierarchy — physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualisation — are all pleasures we seek out of life. As we fluctuate through these life stages, so does our happiness, life satisfaction and ability to enjoy and appreciate the joys of life.
Making time for pleasure is seizing the opportunity to increase your overall happiness.
Neuroscientist Dr Marwa Azab wrote about the need for wanting and pleasure in Psychology Today. Azab’s view is that wanting is human’s psychological oxygen that keeps us motivated to carry on through life’s up and downs.
How do humans feel pleasure?
The way humans feel pleasure is complicated.
The neurotransmitter dopamine is released when we seek pleasure. It’s what we feel as we crave and chase our desires to satisfy. It’s the glorious feeling of anticipation before reward. Dopamine helps motivate us to get off our arse and seek pleasure, but it is not responsible for how and why we feel it.
When we finally get pleasure, the reward, our endorphins kick in to help us feel satisfaction, enjoyment and happiness. Endorphins are neurochemicals that allow the body to naturally feel both pleasure and pain. It is triggered by life’s experiences such as sex, exercise, eating and drinking, laughing, being physically touched, meditating and being creative. Because endorphins are responsible for pain and pleasure, we’re unable to experience both simultaneously. Psychologist Paul Rozin coined the term “benign masochism” to explain why humans can feel pleasure while doing painful things such as eating a spicy chilli, watching horror movies, having rough sex or riding a roller coaster.
Our natural mood regulator serotonin and the love hormone oxytocin also influence how we experience life’s pleasures. Anhedonia is the unfortunate inability to feel pleasure. It is a treatable symptom of depression, schizophrenia and other illnesses.
Is there a better way to experience pleasure?
The world of neuroscience and psychology continues to unlock the secrets to pleasure-seeking.
While there’s no right or wrong way to do it, neuroscientist Gregory Berns told CBS News that the easiest way to experience pleasure is to do things for the first time.
“There’s a reason why people say the first time is always the best. The first time you experience something, whether it’s your first kiss, your first bite of sushi, whatever you like, it’s always the best, it’s always the most memorable,” Berns said at the time.
This thinking suggests that risk-takers are more likely to experience pleasure. The consequence of risk-taking is a higher chance of pain. While we are unable to feel pleasure and pain simultaneously, our pleasure-seeking can be painful for others.
Meanwhile, being risk-averse may mean avoiding pain, but experiencing less pleasure. Finding the balance between risk-taking and being mindful of the pain it could cause ourselves and others, is a tricky moral dilemma we are all faced with regularly.
Another pleasure investigator, psychologist Paul Bloom, holds that seeking knowledge is an easy way to experience pleasure. Bloom’s view is that there is much joy to be had in learning more about something. This theory suggests that we can hijack the feeling of pleasure and find satisfaction in anything if we take the time to learn more about it.
After more reflection, I think Bloom is right. Thurston Moore’s love of pleasure triggered my feeling of pain at the lack of it in my own life. That feeling led me to spend the last few days mildly obsessed with pleasure — my latest splinter interest — learning as much as I can, how to experience more, and talking about it to anyone in my life who will listen.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s my favourite word, but it’s certainly been a pleasure.
