As crazy as it may sound, pleasure can make you successful. Mostly, because we are wired to move away from pain and towards pleasure. We do this instinctually.
Pleasure and pain rule our lives in ways that we are not always fully aware of. They can explain so much of our thought pattern, decision making and behavior. Even when we seem to act irrationally, our behavior can often be explained through the pleasure-pain principle.
All Animals are Wired to Seek Pleasure
Studies have shown that the pleasure-pain motivation is bigger than us. Human beings are not the only ones wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure. The entire animal kingdom is also wired to do the same. Pleasure influences a lifetime of choices, simplifying everything into two decisions, labelled as either pleasure or pain. At any given stage we are moving away from pain or moving towards pleasure. It is not an exaggeration to say it affects everything we do.
Without pleasure there is no chance of happiness or well being, we face depression and a dimminished will to live, which puts our survival is in danger. That is a topic all on its own. See my blogs on loss of faith in oneself, in humanity and in your dreams.
For this article, whose aim is to make you successful, I propose we focus on what we are moving towards, namely pleasure. What we are moving towards is the life we are building every day. For the most part, like the rest of the animals, we do this without thinking. But that is not manageable. We want to bring that power to the foreground and put it in your hand. If you examine it closely, you might get a handle on it, take the reigns and ride this force of nature towards your chosen goals.
Twelve Ways Pleasure Rules Our Lives
When you think of pleasure, you probably have a certain category in mind. The usual suspects are a life of leisure, the proverbial food, wine and song with sexual encounters and recreational drugs. But that is just a portion of the first category out of the 12 ways to succeed with pleasure. At face value, you might not consider the following to be pleasures, but they are, and we instinctually move towards them. I would like to think of them as the buffet of pleasures spread out on the dinner table of life.
- Pleasure of the senses
- Emotional pleasure
- Mental pleasure
- Social pleasure
- Moral pleasure
- Pleasure of power
- Pleasure of wealth
- Pleasure of progress
- Pleasure of technology
- Pleasure of freedom
- Spiritual pleasure
- Pleasure to die for
I invite you to walk around the buffet table sampling the different pleasures before settling on the ones that mean more to you, which can drive your success further than anything else.
Pleasure of the senses
Pleasant sights
From the moment we open our eyes we cannot help taking in the sights around us. The more beautiful sights get our dedicated attention. It should not surprise you to know that we have a bias towards good looking faces and bodies. Those who won the lottery of birth and good breeding who have natural beauty and looks are the beneficiaries of the bias.
We find pleasure looking at beautiful people therefore they get away with a lot. We are likely to believe that a handsome man wearing a suit is not dangerous. That is why con men pay attention to grooming. Good-looking people receive more votes, are trusted as leaders, are paid more for the same job, are believed to be intelligent. When something is easy on the eyes, we associate the visual pleasure with other positive attributes which may not be there.
Pleasants scents
When something smells good, we assume that is clean and safe. That is why detergent and soaps have a lovely scent to make us feel clean. Wearing perfume and cologne sends the message that we are clean and safe. People feel comfortable in our presence.
Pleasant voices
People with beautiful voices, be they sweet or deep can make us attribute other good things to them. They may seem more confident and knowledgeable. We can trust them better than a scratchy, and squeaky voice. Pleasant voices win our approval and trust. A Morgan Freeman voice is more trustworthy. He can pull off playing the voice of God in movies. The tone of voice also communicates meaning as much as the words themselves.
Delicious food
When it comes to eating what is good for us, by simply following our taste buds, we are often off the mark. Our taste and the pleasure we draw from food tells a different story from that known to dieticians. The foods and beverages we enjoy eating and drinking are not always good for us. The pleasure instinct is not a good guide here. Following it, only worked while we were in our natural habitat in the African bush.
The food industry’s success in producing high volumes of food means that there is too much of all kinds of foods. In the competition to sell more food, they use pleasure to hook us. They created additives that enhance the taste of food, making us eat too much of the wrong kind just to make the sale target. By feeding our cravings for pleasure they get us to buy and consume far more food than we need, including junk food. So, the quest to eat healthy is a constant battle. It is easier to eat comfort foods that feed our guilty pleasures.
Pleasant Touch
Physical touch of course can express caring, love and intimacy including romance and sexual encounters. Studies have shown that children need human touch to grow up healthy. Beyond human touch, the comfort and feel of clothes over our bodies, their warmth in winter and coolness in summer, is delightful. When pleasure goes beyond feelings to looks and image, we can spend more money than we need to clothe ourselves.
We can pay to feel special. Fashion houses know this, and they push the pleasure of fashion on us, so that old clothes that are still functional to wear are discarded because they are out of fashion. However, when words fail us, the pleasure of touch can be the only language to communicate with someone going through trauma. This touches much of the first category of pleasure, namely pleasure through the senses. The second one is that of emotions.
Pleasure of Emotions
When it comes to delightful emotions, people on the spectrum from empaths to psychopaths experience them differently. Empath have mirror neurons in their brain and can take on the feelings of those around them. They experience emotional pleasure with deeper intensity. Those at the other end of the spectrum are apathetic, psychopaths, who lack mirror neurons in the brains. It takes extreme emotional states for them to feel anything if at all. Extreme sports may be necessary to feel something.
Among empaths, there are those who can evoke deep emotions from others. Be they happy, sad, ecstatic emotion or those full of awe. Strong emotions, be they positive or negative, can bend reality. Musicians, actors, comedians and speakers can evoke emotions in us that fill us with pleasure and bend our experience of reality. They can make us laugh, commit to a cause, feel compassion for someone, feel connected, bonded and patriotic. The emotional pleasure of all these experiences can sweep us away.
Mental Pleasure
Understanding things is deeply pleasurable. A taste of the pleasure of knowing and understanding things can motivate us to pursue knowledge. It fires up the spirit of exploration and quest for more knowledge. While we all love knowing and understanding the world around us, not everyone finds learning a pleasure.
Instead of seeking knowledge some people seek certainty. They cling to dogma, traditions and convictions. They enjoy the pleasure of certainty, even when it is false certainty. They become protective of their convictions against any idea that questions their world. In the past, as now, they have resorted to killing those whose ideas question their status quo.
The church burnt heretics who held a different view of the faith, and scientists who discovered truth about the universe that disturbed their neatly held world view. Throughout history, political rivals attacked and killed those who hold a differing ideology.
If your mental pleasure is focused on expanding knowledge and understanding rather than defending convictions and beliefs, in a bid to fossilize them against a changing world, then you are good. Finding pleasure by fossilizing knowledge does not serve us.
Those who find pleasure in seeking knowledge and understanding, who are willing to revise their ideas in the light of new evidence can adapt and surf the wave of change, driving the human quest for exploration to new discoveries and inventions. Knowledge is better when it is passed on, through genes or through communication and education. It leads to social pleasure.
Social Pleasure
We are born too young to fend for ourselves. Unlike other animals that learn to fend for themselves relatively soon after birth, human children take close to two decades to grow to independence, by which time some animals have grown to old age and even died. Man’s best friend being the case in point. Dogs are often dead by age 15. Therefore, f,or humans, the need for social connection is first on the hierarchy of needs. Without a caring adult, humans cannot live to reach adulthood.
We can connect and enjoy love through the support of fellow humans. Much of our civiliation grew due to our ability to collaborate with other humans at a larger scale and over long periods of time. We created social symbols such as language and money to exchange social pleasure. That is how we have endured and prevailed over the other human species, notably Neanderthals in the Eurozone, and Denisovans in Asia-Pacific as we migrated out of Africa.
Through the bonding that gives us social pleasure, we build communities and nations, special purpose organizations and others that help construct our advanced civilization. The pleasure of being connected and of belonging encourages us to stick together and develop complex communication and institutions to create our modern world. We order our social affairs through the pleasure of being right.
Moral Pleasure
The pleasure of being right is addictive. It turns out we are obsessed with being right. Granted that most of the time most of the people do not seek to do harm. They just want to be right and be known to have done the right thing. They are sometimes willing to disagree with loved ones and disturb the bonds between them just to be right.
Whistleblowers’ First Strike
At the other extreme, you can disagree with your company and government by blowing the whistle on corruption in the desire to right the wrongs and be on the right side. Whistleblowers expect those they expose to shrivel up in shame and fade into the darkness. It is a big surprise when the exposed go nuclear on the whistleblower leaving him or her so “radio-active” that no employer will touch them.
Of course, when you go against the big guns, your pleasure of being right is short lived. As the saying goes, “You blow the whistle, you blow your head.” Those in power are equally obsessed with being right. They want the pleasure of being right at all costs. Using their power to silence those who try to suggest they are wrong is a no brainer. As can be expected, they will punish anyone who makes them appear wrong.
Backlash Against Whistle Blowers
Typically, they retaliate by finding the whistle blower guilty of something, anything and punishing them. The whistle blower becomes a scarecrow to others who may feel the urge to blow their own whistle. That makes the timid majority concede that might is right and keep any contrary views to themselves.
Many whistleblowers are shocked by the hypocrisy when their righteous act is praised in public and yet somehow privately punished. They did not mean to become career suicide bombers. Taking down the careers of wrong doers was not meant to take down their careers too. But it does. No one hires whistleblowers after the stigmatization. Not even law enforcement agencies. They endure isolation in the social wilderness where all whistle blowers languish and count the cost. They did not understand the power of pleasure where being right was concerned.
Prisoners
The prison community is no different from the rest of us when it comes to the pleasure of being right. They won’t give it up either. In general, no prisoner considers themselves guilty of wrong doing. They can justify their actions to themselves in their own minds. That is how irresistible the pleasure of being right is.
Sacred Nature of Moral Pleasure
Moral pleasure is sacred. That is one thing an individual will cling to and take to their grave. They will defend the pleasure of being right at all costs. If you want to take it away from someone, expect a big fight. They will not give up ground easily.
Some people do acknowledge that their actions may have caused harm and may feel remorse and even apologize for it. Dealing with them is so satisfying. Their honesty leaves a lasting impression on others. Unfortunately, they are in the minority. The majority would rather defend their actions, right or wrong.
Pleasure of Wealth
The pleasure of wealth should need no introduction. Having enough wealth to cover basic needs can alleviate financial stress, and anxiety caused by lack of access to basic needs such as food, shelter, and healthcare. Of course, the wealthy consume more of everything. They have it good. It is this excessive consumption that first attracts us to wealth. But there is more to it. So much more.
Wealth is like a super-power. In a real sense, the wealthy are the only ones who wield real power. They have enough money to influence the political system and legislation through their campaign support, and lobbying. Like super citizens they can sway public opinion and support, in ways far greater and disproportional to their size in the population.
Their wealth gives them access to the services of the best in every field, from health, law, engineering, technology, security, legal defense, friendly legislation, to government bail outs. They can pay people to consider their interest first in every endeavor. They can turn any system of government into a plutocracy – a rule by the super-rich. The smart ones don’t fall foul of the law, which makes them almost all powerful. That is the ultimate pleasure of wealth.
We are not going to dampen this by stating the usual “money can’t guarantee happiness” mantra, designed to throw cold water on wealth and make us lose sight of its power. Poverty does not guarantee happiness either. However, wealth can enable access to an excellent diet, comfortable shelter, better education, meaningful work, first-rate support in old age, all of which are important steps towards happiness.
The Pleasure of Progress
Pleasure is bigger than the survival instinct. The survival instict depends on it to motivate us to choose preservation. Still, long after we have avoided threats to our survival we continue to move towards pleasure. It guides us to the good life. It is the fuel of progress. Progress is such a pleasure because we have a love for novelty. Enough of us are early adopters of innovation. We enjoy being the first to use certain technology. We get bored with the old and we seek out the new. A few of us create the new and another few stand in line to be the first to consume it. Both enjoy the pleasure of progress.
The rest of society is usually skeptical about innovation. Tending to drum up anxiety about the likely problems the new technology might cause. The extreme laggard would even become doom prophets who fight against the new. Thankfully a small group of creators and early adopters is enough to allow new innovations to take root and grow. The majority soon follow suite in adopting it.
Pleasure of Technology
There are those who focus their work and draw pleasure from the advancement of technology. They replace a very human productive activity with machines and robotics while brainwork finds extension through computers. This allows humans to do much more than could ever be possible using humans only, no matter how many one employs.
The pleasure of technology is going to make us mentally lazy in some ways because we can use technology and artificial intelligence. However, in other ways it will require us to have advanced knowledge and skills to be employable. The pleasure of technology is that it will make us super human, and this was the fear of the gods of mythology, that one day humans will be all knowing. Hence the mythological stories about blocking the entrance to the tree of knowledge to stop human from eating its fruit and becoming like the gods.
Pleasure of Freedom
The pleasure of freedom is the ability to conduct and live one’s life as one desires. Doing what you choose, going where you please. Mentally, freedom is unrestricted thought and to live unconfined in a world that is not suffocated by dogmas, ideologies and limiting beliefs which they take as truth. People treat freedom like a high concentrated drink that is best enjoyed diluted. They limit it and dilute it because they are not comfortable with extreme freedom.
It leaves them feeling lost and that is why they choose to limit their freedom through religion, politics, philosophy, cultural beliefs. Having lost their freedom, they want to promote such freedom through charters. From the Magma Carta – the great charter- to the South African freedom charter, and bill of rights in many national constitutions including the human right charter of the United Nations.
Spiritual Pleasure
Spiritual pleasure is the joy of being in the universe that is not just atoms and waves but has a spectrum of consciousness from microbes to above that humans can be very comforting. It is faith in the universe that is alive in a mysterious way within and beyond our sphere of experience.
The pleasure of being in a universe that is warm and caring as opposed to one which is cold and harsh, where life forms are a fluke, is the ultimate joy. It is one where it will all makes when the big jigsaw puzzle comes together. You are growing in knowledge and understanding, but you do not have to understand it all to be happy and live and peaceful life. You can stand in awe of the mystery.
Pleasure To Die For
Some pleasures are bigger than life itself. They are to die for. Such are the pleasures for which we are willing to sacrifice all the others. There are a few people in history who had the ultimate sacrifice of laying down their lives for a cause or belief. They are defenders of freedom and martyrs who died defending their faith. The kind of people who choose to die so that others may live. People who paid the ultimate sacrifice. They experienced the pleasure so great it was worth dying for.
Conclusion
There you have it. The twelve categories of pleasure that rule our lives. Or should I say, the pleasures that guide us towards the good life. If you choose to grab this power of pleasure, and direct it to your goals, you can do amazing things with it. The next blog shows you how some of the best people in the world use pleasure to their advantage.