Imagine a man. He’s in his apartment and his apartment is filled with laughter, but he hasn’t said a word all day. He’s watching streamers chatting or maybe a podcast. He sees a thirst trap online, pulls up porn to help him relieve himself. His screen time is 7 hours per day, but he does well enough at work, so it doesn’t really matter. He got a few ranked games in today. Maybe someday he’ll get to masters. His win rate is 51%. He eats a protein bar. It tastes better than anything he can cook and it’s easier. ‘No dirty dishes either’, he thinks as he wipes his hands on his shirt. His friend from the east coast just sent him a reel. He’ll need to get around to reacting to those at some point.
This man is following his instincts. He relieves himself of loneliness, horniness, boredom, hunger. And yet the life he lives does not scream ‘happiness’ so what is going on here?
Humans have instincts, desires and pains that are meant to steer our behavior in a beneficial direction. The problem is that we have changed our environment.
Hunger used to lead people to eat whole foods because cheap, convenient, tasty, nutrient-poor, calorie-dense foods weren’t available. Horniness used to lead people to courtship and marriage instead of porn and casual sex. Birth control, std control and abortion have never been so accessible. This is why you’re having sex with a guy who wouldn’t be a good father (and might not even want to be exclusive either). Boredom used to lead people to create, explore, learn and play. Now we have endless scrolling, which entertains us but leaves us unfulfilled, unaccomplished. Loneliness led to socializing but now we have hollow forms of socializing, such as social media or watching content creators. We don’t practice body language or speaking in these contexts, which means our social skills are worse. Desire for status used to lead people to climb useful status hierarchies that benefited their community, but now we have fake status hierarchies like in gaming.
And what happened to community? Community is not all sunshine and rainbows. It takes hard conversations sometimes. You can’t avoid ‘being perceived’ or being ‘cringe’ and ‘losing aura.’ Community means hanging out with people who are different from you. They don’t always agree with you. They don’t always like you. There’s drama and gossip. We don’t have tolerance for these things anymore. People are cutting off their own mothers for voting wrong or being ignorant of geopolitics in the middle east. I promise she doesn’t have Netanyahu on speed dial. Also, shut the fuck up about third spaces. We still have parks and malls. There are free places to exist with your friends. The real problem is you don’t have friends.
You are reward-hacking yourself. You are fulfilling your instincts in empty ways that don’t bring the happiness and fulfillment they are supposed to bring. Just because you have an opioid receptor in your brain doesn’t mean you should take fentanyl.
We can easily avoid overcoming our anxieties and fears. There is nothing strong enough to push us out of our comfort zone anymore. We had to be friendly with our neighbors because we relied on each other back then. Now, we don’t need each other. Survival has gotten easy.
Our subsistence hunter-gatherer instincts just don’t work in the modern world. You want to eat a lot of food and minimize burning calories. That was a winning strategy for thousands of years. In the age of abundance and technology, it is not. You crave salt because that was the thing that was hard to find and potassium was in lots of whole foods. You didn’t crave getting ten thousand steps per day or getting sunlight because there was no way to avoid doing those things.
Good Things To Do:
- Sunlight in the morning, sunbathing at noon for ten minutes, avoiding blue light at night
- 8,000 steps per day
- Strength training, cardio, sports, dance
- Make small talk, socialize, plan events, attend events, call your family
- Conquer your fears and anxieties, develop a thick skin and high self esteem
- Eat whole foods, be an omnivore
- Be grateful, find beauty in the world, never let a compliment go unsaid
- Take pride in your appearance, put effort into beauty and health
- Find a life partner, start a family, have ranked sex
- Create, learn, play, explore. Make lasting memories and things you’re proud of.
- Acquire status in ways you are proud of
- The time will pass anyways. Who do you want to be in ten years? What do you want to do?
- Feel your feelings, think the scary thoughts/worries, you need to untangle this stuff and gentle parent yourself. You are enough and you will be ok. You can do it.
- Keep thinking about what you want, and why.
- Take baby steps. Perfectionism is the enemy of action. Do it at all, then do it better when you have the capacity.
- Take action. If you can’t decide what to do it’s because nothing is genuinely urgent. Don’t waste all your time deciding what to do first, just do the first thing you think of. ACT
Avoid:
- Being fat, nutrient-deficient
- Being sedentary
- Being addicted
- Watching porn, having casual sex, avoiding commitment
- Being socially isolated (Find in person interactions that fuel you! Find people you like and connect with. Nurture fading connections, reach out, try your best, own up to mistakes)
- Accepting your flaws (everything is a skill issue. You can get better, get help. Dare to have hope and believe in yourself.)
- Negative thought patterns. Only you can change which paths in your mind are well-traveled vs not. Only you can turn the thought-train around. Your mood is often more a reflection of what you focus on, than the true state of the world.
- Being an ipad baby, screen addict. Leave it in another room sometimes and lock in
- Excuses, coping, staying in your comfort zone
- Numbing pain…Pain is a call to action. When your finger burns on the hot stove, you don’t need pain killers, you need to move your hand. You can change your environment, change the people in your life, change your habits, change yourself.