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The Illusions of Pleasure
An exploration into desire and anticipation of suffering in the pursuit of a fulfilling life
Built within each of us is a desire to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. This is, as the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom summarized, one of the most simplistic views of human nature.
Evolutionarily speaking, however, pleasure was our original way of determining how to survive — what foods to eat, how to reproduce, what to seek and what to avoid.
But in our current day living, all of the basic survival needs are met. And companies understand this. By understanding our basic hardwiring (find what people find pleasurable), companies are able to exploit our nature and build products that ride off of our biological desires for survival. These items are then byproducts of our natural desires for pleasure.
Pleasure today therefore is a treadmill we all gleeful jump on. It is around every corner and built into the majority of the lives we live today.
- The technology we consume is created with dopamine hits built in.
- Youtube feeds you videos you like and has auto-play features so you continue watching content on the platform.
- Even the food we consume is purposely modified with sugar, salt, and fat as a way to…
