Procrustes and Eden 2

Eden

My list of distractions included things like video games, junk food, fantasy sports, and alcohol. They keep me away from my priorities. Last time I wrote about how the only reason my list of priorities looks like it does is because we've made so much progress that our lives have changed into something we aren't built to handle. We make all of our technological and cultural advances and for what?

XBox. Text messaging. Terrell Owens. CSI: Miami: Brazil: Round Brown Asses. Cheetos. MTV. High Fructose Corn Syrup. Lazy Boy. Coors Light. McDonalds. Marlboro Reds. Prison Break. Pro Wrestling. Soap Operas. Girls Gone Wild. Las Vegas. Diet Coke.

Cheap thrills. Empty enjoyment. Artificial stimulation.

Our minds and bodies evolved pleasure mechanisms to reward behaviors that increased our chances of survival and reproduction, the prime example being the orgasm, the ultimate physical pleasure payoff moment, so pleasurable that men spend all of their waking (and many of their sleeping) hours trying to get to their next payoff. But nature made that payoff so strong that we found a way to trick our bodies into giving us that pleasure payoff without earning it by successfully finding a reproduction opportunity.

All of our distractions are various forms of masturbation. We evolved a taste for sweet and fatty foods because such foods were rare enough that they were nutritious for us in the quantities that we were likely to encounter them. Now we can pick up a Big Mac on every street corner and take 12 days off our life expectancy. We enjoy exchanging tidbits of news about the personal lives of the people around us because that information was valuable to our decisions about who to trust or be wary of in trade, battle, or sexual situations. Now we have tabloids and The Real World. We use drugs and video games and online chat rooms to stimulate some pleasure center in some way that is easier to achieve than nature intended.

Eden is of course a reference to the biblical garden of Eden, specifically the story of the 'apple' and the fall of man. The story more or less goes that God creates the first people - Adam and Eve - and gives them a wonderful place to live where they'll be quite happy. He specifically tells them not to eat fruit from one tree, a simple instruction that Adam and Eve ignore. Once they eat it, all hell breaks loose and God kicks them out of paradise and dooms them and all their descendents to a life of pain and inevitable death. All because of a stupid apple. And the thing is, Adam and Eve were perfectly happy before they tried that stupid fruit and realized how much else they were missing.

I've never smoked, but that's the best example of a behavior that gives people pleasure while inflicting damage upon them. And the weirdest thing is that smokers never knew they liked or needed cigarettes until they tried them. They could have gone their whole lives never needing a cigarette if they just didn't have that first one. Adam and Eve could have gone their whole lives happy as pigs in shit if they never tried the damn apple.

And the real beauty of the Eden myth is that the tree they got the fruit from was the "tree of knowledge." It opened their eyes and showed them that there was more to the world than their little garden, but that also opened up pain and suffering and poisonous snakes. I've written before about how freedom to choose isn't always such a good thing. Often times people are a lot happier if they don't have choices.

But I can't let go of the simple economic concept that options have value. Choices are supposed to be good! Where is the disconnect? I think it is that people don't usually understand the full meaning of the choices in front of them. If I've got the option to read a book that would educate me on the legal system or to sit in front of my TV and watch 4 straight Law & Order reruns, I reach for the remote control. TV is more entertaining. It is easier.

But what if I didn't have that choice? What if my options were to read the book or to stare at my wall? Now the book looks like a lot more fun. Plus I'd learn a lot more and be better for it. But when I'm confronted with the choice of how to spend my time, my stupid stone-age brain chooses the TV. Our fucking genius space-age technology is built for the specific purpose of tricking our minds into making us completely worthless.

We as a society are so damn good at producing highly effective entertainment. We make booze and reality TV and video games. They all push our pleasure buttons more effectively than the stimuli by which our pleasure buttons were made to be pushed, except we don't get the same rewards. Pretty much everything on my personal list of distractions is man-made, fake pleasure, cheap thrill, Garden of Eden fruit, masturbatory emptiness.

So my hope is that by realizing and openly acknowledging the problems these distractions cause, it will help me to be at least somewhat less distracted by them. By fully calculating the costs and benefits of my decisions, I'll be able to happily chose the more valuable option, even if it isn't as immediately gratifying. So that is my hope.

But my concern is that those calculations in the rational part of my brain won't be enough to override the other pleasure mechanisms already in place. That ends up sounding a lot like addiction, which is why I've cross posted this entry to my laziness addiction support group.