Why Is Pleasure More Dominant Than Love?

Pleasure is dark hypnosis if we really think about it…

Today we’re pondering the biggest dilemma of humankind, which is the too often disastrous (long-term) consequence of the quest for immediate pleasure.

Yet we get caught in this polarity most of the time when the motion that affects the outcome is the fear factor. This is a paradox because awareness can only expand in the now.

The problem, you see, is that pleasure always comes with many strings attached created by short-term thinking, which is generally motivated by fear. Borrowing pleasure from the future is always compelling because the present moment is rarely as rosy as we’d like it to be.

We all know that Love requires long-term selfless and creative involvement, making it less attractive. There is the tendency to always look at the dark cloud in the picture, which we hope to see fading away.

That very dark cloud represents what the Ego fears the most and is always connected to the finitude of life itself. We can’t avoid such a thought because one of our primary purposes is to go through life and master our fears.

It is a daunting challenge because the consensus perceives existential finitude as a constant threat to individuality.

Over the millennia society has been very good at hiding such a piece of knowledge but cynically had an easy solution since day one.

To keep us all distracted.

Therefore pleasure was invented and instantly became a product in high demand. On the other end, society also continually entertains the need for pleasure as it is the first source of trauma. Pleasure is thus sought after as a bandaid.

We all see traumas (in others and ourselves) but prefer to focus on elusive materialistic achievements with the hope of buying our way to freedom. Intellectually or financially, one way or another. As a result, we spend time fighting our shadow self with the same tools that feed it.

Minds are hooked on pleasure to forget about our societal malaise. It works like a feedback loop, a vicious circle.

Dr. Gabor Mate is not the only one who recognizes that the most significant threat today is society making us sick. His work establishes the connection between stress, trauma, and disease.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that people have much longer lifespans but depend more than ever on pharma to stay alive. Metabolic diseases are skyrocketing globally, even among young people. Let’s not forget that nearly 80% of people hospitalized with COVID are either obese or overweight.

So rationally speaking, what is the actual life expectancy, do you think?

Nevermind.

What we attempt to convey here is that existential stress has turned humans into pleasure addicts and that profound dissatisfaction has grown exponentially and is about to reach epic proportions.

Moreover, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to notice that pleasure needs a projection into an object. Pleasure is dark hypnosis if we really think about it, as it comes with the dreaded idea that it won’t last. Instead, it is the intensity, the fluctuation between the pleasure rush and the aftermath, that fuels anguish and depression.

On the other end, Love requires self-esteem and self-confidence. When it doesn’t, the mind falsely convinces us that pleasure equates to Love, and this cognitive blindness generally ends with a rude awakening. But since the mantra is insidious, the focus on pleasure eventually moves to another target.

Being in a state of love is a “state of being” that’s not preoccupied with what will happen in the distant future because such a mind accepts the ever changing reality of existence.

Any decisions motivated by fear will get us more of the same that we try to escape. This is an inescapable natural law that, more positively, allows any “for the greater good intentions” to be magnified quickly. That alone should encourage a system change and promote benevolence as a model.

Monetarism and competition induce the need for pleasure and falsely lead us in the wrong direction. What Krishnamurti doesn’t explicitly say in this video below, but it is rather obvious that we are left with the only option to change Humanity for the better.

As a reminder we wrote earlier, the now cannot be fixed in the future, and external solutions are an illusion.