Chapter 15 Anything that makes you feel “good” will surely make you feel miserable

The Essence of Happiness and True Freedom

2.2-The.Essence.of.Happiness.and.True.Freedom Chapter15 Happiness Freedom feel“good”

It's a basic human instinct, we depend on what makes us feel "good”.

So how does the “good” come about?

Our brain contains a neurotransmitter called dopamine, a chemical that enables cells to transmit impulses. When a person is stimulated by the outside world, that person’s hidden greed, desire, and avarice are satisfied, dopamine will burst out in large quantities. For example, a hug, a word of praise, and a fantasy could cause dopamine to rise. When the external stimuli are strong enough and greed is satisfied, the hidden suffering of ‘Not Getting What One Wants’ is temporarily relieved, the senses will experience a relaxing and liberating feeling of ‘goodness’.

Arvid Carlsson's identification of dopamine's role as a transmitter in the brain earned him the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Dopamine is associated with various addictive behaviours. Excessive secretion of dopamine can damage the human brain, heart, and blood vessels.

Experience Levels of ‘cool’:
A joke, food, flirting, praise, gossip, and even an intense thriller could bring out the ‘cool’ in the basic level of experience; the intermediate level of experience includes activities such as smoking, gaming, and undergoing a plastic surgery; the advance level of experience includes behaviours such as having sex, gambling, and drugs. For the comparison of these three acts, if sex increases dopamine levels by 100%, cocaine will increase dopamine by 350%, and crystal methamphetamine will increase it close to 1200%, so drug addiction is difficult to quit.

Nowadays, the world has become more open minded, to an extent of not imposing limitation. People have been entangled in internet activities, such as dating, entertainment, gaming, and participating in gossip and scandals, so to pursue various, diverse ‘good’ experiences. The concern is that anything that makes you ‘good’ must also make you miserable. For example, beautiful women, gourmet foods, flattering words, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs can trigger a ‘good’ experience, but at the same time they will cause harm: gourmet foods might lead to weight gain and health deterioration; flattering words might mislead the mind from reality; beautiful women could stir up desire and make people lose their minds; in addition, the side effects of tobacco, alcohol and drugs are indescrible.

This is what mentioned by the Tao Te Ching "the five colors are blinding and the five tones are deafening”.

What is even more frightening is that when people's dopamine is secreted excessively, the threshold for a ‘good’ experience will be expanded, and the experience of ‘good’ will be desensitized. When the threshold continues to rise, the degree of stimulation has to rise as well for a person to continually experience the ‘good’.

For example, a person who smokes one pack of cigarettes every two days in the beginning, has to smoke one pack a day, and then two packs a day, and finally, they may even have to smoke two cigarettes simultaneously to feel the full effect. For another example, people who enjoy spicy food, eventually, must eat even much spicier food over time. All addictive behaviours such as gaming, drug using, gambling, etc., all follow the cycle of this principle.

An Experiment can help conceptualize this: imagine an electrode buried in the brain of a mouse, the mouse steps on a pedal to discharge electricity. Each time the pedal is stepped on, the electricity will stimulate dopamine-producing neurons and bring excitement to the neurons. As a result, the mouse steps on the pedal with the speed of a few hundred times per minute, until it is dying of exhaustion.

The Onset of the Feeling of ‘good’ Could Be Predesigned

In this modern era, it is terrifying that modern technology and mathematical calculation could predesign the onset of feeling ‘good’.

For example, there are increasingly more entertainment applications available, what is the innate structure of most applications? There is a strong operation team behind each application; they use the most cutting-edge technology (AR+VR), which have great computing and data processing capabilities (cloud computing + big data), and with sound, light, interaction, feedback and other methods to achieve an all-rounded approach. Based on the various psychological, consumer behavioural theories, neuroscience and automation algorithms which precisely relay to a system to infinitely satisfy your desires which constantly bombards people with stimuli, so they would consistently submerge themselves in feeling ‘good’; the more they are into it, the better it is.

In the eyes of capitalists, only money and profits are important, not humanity and justice. Data is collected from the users, daily activities, monthly activities, and average time online that determines the value of an application. Nowadays, almost no application exists that does not use data in such a way as the standard of their measure.

If a person's greed is satisfied infinitely, one is not far from perishing.

The Internet is a double-edged sword: on one hand, it provides us with all levels of conveniences, on the other hand, it also provides all sorts of junk. Junk can consist on the following: vulgar and boring performances on live broadcast platforms; tricky talent shows or reality shows; and confusing, misleading fictional stories filled with no valuable contents, all planned around with the purpose of infinitely satisfying the human preferences.

The internet has such an in-depth insight of human nature; by no other means can one posses this power. In the preface of the book "Entertaining Ourselves to Death",

it states: people are increasingly passive and selfish, drowning in a sea of information [...] The truth is submerging in the boring, tedious and mundane world […]. Our culture has become a vulgar culture full of sensory stimulation, desire, and unruly games.

Those capitalists or businessmen take   advantage of the right of freedom speech to create an "information encapsulation" around you, such as through various holiday promotions, various brainwashing advertising slogans, numerous tricks and temptations, in order to entrap you in the world they have created for you.

In this era of freedom of information, vulgar messages are pervasive, and the dark side of human behaviours, such as belligerence, idolizing stars, stock trading, gossiping, violence, onlooking, abusive behaviour and etc., are stimulated and satisfied.

Everyone enjoys freedom, however, without legal and moral education it becomes bondage, and when people are not equipped with self-discipline to exercise freedom, freedom can only lead to depravity, diseases, and death.

The role of dopamine is to regulate various physiological functions of the central nervous system. However, when dopamine is excessively secreted for a prolonged period of time, it leads to the disorders of nervous system regulation, causing various diseases such as Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, tourette syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome and pituitary tumours.

Self-discipline and self-cultivation alone are not enough. There must be a regulatory mechanism in society to control the dark side and bring out the bright side of human nature. It is wise to firmly support the government to impose rules and regulations on internet and entertainment industries. Without these controls, people's lives become filthier and fall deeper and deeper in despair.

In Chinese culture, the fundamental teaching is about self-control. The essence of self-control is to properly control one's own desires. However, there are very few people who take the initiative to restrain their own desires. When most people choose to numb themselves, just a minute number of people choose self-discipline and patience. Only through overcoming inner greed and resentment by one’s willpower alone, can the soul be enlightened, transcended and sublimated. It is often this kind of ambitious person who would never follow the crowd but be an achiever.

Good medicine is bitter to the mouth and advice is hard to follow. Hope viewers of this analysis will be able to self-disciplined and not greedy for pleasure and stimulation. Rather, independent thinking firmly ground and value your innate. In doing so you could continue to cultivate and improve in the field of your own focus and be the pillar of future generation.

May you profit from this lesson!