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Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure...

What is pleasure? What do I mean when I say that the pursuit of pleasure doesn't lead to a meaningful life?

From an evolutionary perspective, pleasure is a mechanism that evolved to incentivize beneficial behavior. When an organism does something beneficial for its survival and reproduction, nature rewards it with pleasure. Because pleasure feels good, this mechanism reinforces that beneficial behavior. When you feel pleasure, you are doing something right. This is how all life evolved.

But here lies the problem: the modern world evolves so fast that our biological evolution lags far behind. This is why our ancient pleasure mechanisms — these incentives for beneficial actions — no longer align with the world around us.

It means that in the modern world, you can do something and get pleasure, even if that action is not beneficial. Nowadays, you can do dangerous, damaging things and still get a hit of pleasure. The entire purpose of this evolutionary mechanism is now broken. The mindless pursuit of pleasure leads to a dead end. It’s just like drug addicts chasing their next high. Where does that path end? Nowhere. It doesn't lead to a meaningful, interesting life.

But when you pursue truth — when you chase the question, "What is the purpose of life?" — your life can branch out in so many interesting and unique directions. This journey leads to progress. It makes you grow, it makes you smarter, healthier, stronger, more resilient, and wiser. You start to experience your existence in a much more interesting way.

The pursuit of pleasure makes you less sensitive over time, leading to dullness and, ultimately, a kind of death. But the pursuit of truth and progress makes you more sensitive. The more sensitive you become, the more interesting your life becomes, because you experience it even more vividly.

The ultimate purpose of life is progress and experience. The closer you get to that purpose, the more interesting your life becomes. You feel greater, better, and you get better results.

So, just from the standpoint of living an interesting life, it is worth pursuing progress and purpose far more than pleasure. You can try to pursue pleasure, but that path is very short; you can exhaust it in a matter of months. The pursuit of truth, however, can last forever.

You can choose your path. https://video.nostr.build/d38c1e37ccfcb57e512ef47e8fc3da26dad0aa945f3a81b622f8f7bdfd5cca3c.mp4

Carey Hudson 7mo ago

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