Everyone wants to enjoy life, to engage in pleasure fulfillment of various kinds. All people are distracted by the pleasure trap. But many people focus mostly on enjoyment and put other things second, like morality.
There is a pleasure-trap of “feel-good” comfort that is desired as an inner state to be attained and sought after, as “well-being” is highly desired. This leads to believing in the need to follow your feelings at all times, to trust only your feelings that lead you to “feeling-good” or put you in a state of “well-being”. There is also the pleasure-trap and obsession with emotions and avoidance of the negatives through outright denial of truth that isn’t what people want to hear. Many people live in a positivity mask as a result. The desire to achieve and maintain “well-being” overrides other higher-order considerations like facing a hard truth about the world or ourselves.
We all fall for the pleasure trap to various degrees because pleasure is an automatic positive association for us that we have an affinity towards, while we avoid pain be it physical or psychological (like worldview altering information). We avoid facing or seeking out the hard truths about reality because we don’t want to upset ourselves, as it takes us away from that default affinity of feeling-good or at last not feeling-bad in some way such as being upset.
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The “Feel-Good” Pleasure-Trap Focus
Do what “feels-good”.
If it “feels-good”, then it is good!
Don’t think about it more, just feel it and do it!
To be motivated primarily by what “feels-good” to the the ego-self above rational or moral considerations. It puts us in a lower and baser consciousness focus that motivates our choices in life. If we’re “feeling-good”, then all is “good”. It’s about “feeling-good”, gratification, amusement, enjoyment, satisfaction, ease, comfort and convenience that drives behavior, not higher-order processing to understand aspects of reality to help us on our path in life.
Truth and falsity, right and wrong, are not properly discerned and what “feels” good to us personally is what we believe to be what is “good/right”. This is due to an infatuation with the illusory aspects of our sensory and emotional perceptions that have us accept things on face value and not dig deeper. We accept appearances and don’t uncover the substance. We accept many of these illusions because they “feel-good”, so they can’t be wrong! Why bother to dig deeper when we already have the answer that “feels-good” and possibly appeals to our sense of self/self-view and worldview? We often fool ourselves all too easily.
Anything that “feels-good” is desired and maintained. We become attachment to feeling good. We avoid letting go of that thing we depend on to makes us “feel-good”, whether it is alcohol, taste-buds, sex, parties, endorphin rushes, TV, drugs, plant substances or meditation. We want to “feel-good”, so we focus on “feeling-good” as the most important. We want to escape our stressful lives rather than working to understand the root causal factors in order to change it.
Remaining attached to “feel-good” desires has us avoiding the real, hard, great, inner-shadow-work to evolve, because it involves much effort, time, energy, dedication, determination and persistence. This is not easy, comfortable, convenient, pleasurable, etc. So instead, just be happy, enjoy your life, have fun, etc. No serious reflection and contemplation on our way of living, being and behavior in life. Don’t try to understand how our actions are responsible for creating harm. Delude ourselves by ignoring and denying reality that doesn’t “feel-good”.
Many people prioritize making others or themselves “happy” to “feel-good”, as if that’s the main goal in life. Many also wear positivity masks. Many interactions are faked/false as a result.
Pleasure-Trap Life Mottos (video elaborates here)
“Pursuit of happiness”. “Enjoy life”. “Live life”. “Follow your passion”. “Follow your bliss”. “Live in the Now”. “Experience the Now”. “Experiences are all valid”. “We are here to experience everything”. Ok as part of life, but a detriment as a primary focus for life that limits seeing beyond ourselves.
The latter forms are descriptive of a mind-virus to accumulate experience. The former are also rooted in our infatuation to continually replenish our repository of experience (doings things) to keep us from boredom and truly having to take the initial outsider, isolated and solitary journey of self-discovery and reality-discovery. The substantive, authentic, examined, realized and actualized life is one where the mind-psyche-self of the experiencer goes through renewal and rebuilding, not simply the renewal of experiences.
The “lost” and consciously “unawakened” are asking for more stimulus, distractions, and things to be provided to them for the continued avoidance of boredom or unsatisfactory conditions, and ultimately avoidance of the quest to know thyself, to self-realize and actualize ourselves. Engage in all the many “passions” of the external world and ignore the confused and clouded internal state, letting everything keep going on as it is, conditioned to accept the status quo.
Let Go of the Feel-Good Focus and Face Hard Uncomfortable Truths
Stop avoiding the truth that removes the illusory “happiness”, “feel-good”, comfort, convenience and ease of living. We have many crutches that produce sensations in our body or minds to fill us with “feel-good” comfort or “happiness”. This allows us to escape facing the dark side of the reality before us, or escape from our current life choices that brings us stress and discomfort. Realize the real lies with real eyes.
It’s easy and convenient to simply continue living the same way as we already have been. There is no effort required in not changing. It takes real hard work to face a truth and align with it to change our behaviors. Embodying and living those values we want to uphold is a hard and long job. It’s easier to pretend we are already there, and go on living as we currently are, not facing our potential wrongdoings. This is why change for the better is truly hard: facing ourselves.
To face the immorality of our actions is to face the harm and trauma that our actions and behaviors are responsible for creating in other psychological beings. We have the power to do better. Pleasure and happiness happens in life. Emotions vary, we experience a range of emotions depending on situations. “Feeling-good” isn’t supposed to be the #1 focus in life.
Examples of Feel-Good Focus that Limit Perception of Truth
Negative emotions are signals for how things are wrong in the world or in ourselves. The default emotional state is neutral, not always happy or sad, etc. Emotions vary, they are not static. Emotions come from experience and tell us about what is happening as it relates to us. A joke is made, we laugh, and then the joke is over and the laughing stops, and you’re back to a neutral state at some point after the effect has faded. Some other stimulus can create sadness, but that passes too.
A positive emotional state doesn’t reflect something actually good occurring. If we “feel-good” doing something, thinking about it being wrong doesn’t often factor in unless we care to understand if something is wrong or not. Made money? Then whatever you did was “good”!
We can laugh and try to make things light and happy in negative situations instead of dealing with it in truth (bypassing the negative situation, not resolving it). We can laugh at other people’s harm. Just because something tastes good doesn’t mean it is good. Sugar, candy, etc. We only think something is good because it appears good to the senses. The pleasure trap focuses on what “feels-good” to sensory stimulus or capacities of consciousness.
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Excellent article. This has me thinking… we are all collectively bombarded with images of our fellow humans “feeling good”, it’s almost impossible for most of us to escape it. For the average person, images of humans indulging in pleasure far outweigh the images seen of humans doing something that is important yet meaningful. This is mostly due to the pervasiveness of advertisements, largely created by corporations who do not have our best interests at hearts.
Even for those of us who choose not to watch television, the images still appear. Go to your local supermarket to get something to eat and while standing in line you may see a wealthy couple on a dream vacation, basking in the sun on the cover of some magazine. Turn on your computer and there may be an image of a woman bursting with pleasure as she bites into an artificially flavored chocolate bar on the side of the screen. Try to load a YouTube video and you may be interrupted by images of Grandpa frolicking gaily in a field of poppies with his grandchildren after trying out a brand new antidepressant. It just goes on and on.
Coca Cola’s famous “enjoy coca cola” motto is a perfect example of a corporation telling you that you WILL enjoy their product. Never mind the phosphoric acid and heaping tablespoons of sugar… or the artifical caramel coloring… or the GMO high fructose corn syrup… forget about how shitty it’s going to make you feel when you crash from it all… just enjoy it now. Give it to your kids, bring it to parties, take it to work with you anf your co-workers will think you’re hip… (the manager at a grocery I worked for drank this cocktail almost every single day…)
When I look up the definition for the word “enjoy” the first thing that comes up is “take delight or pleasure in”. These nefarious entities will heavily suggest that something capable of causing all types of physiological maladies and distress is somehow enjoyable!
Worse of all is how much people will believe these exaggerated, feigned and unrealistic images. Another motto from Coca Cola is “taste the feeling”. Hmmm… the feeling of my insides being made acidic and syrupy???
Somehow Coca Cola makes it to the Interbrand’s annual Best Global Brands Ranking list and has held the number 3 spot for four years in a row! That’s incredible. How can people place such value on such a useless product? Well, sadly, the answer is that they’re simply voting with their Limbic Brains and not the Neocortex….
Overall, most people are indulging in whatever they can to appease that Limbic Brain, to drown out the fear they feel in their Reptilian Brain. As a result, the Neocortex largely goes to sleep as the being’s consciousness is so preoccupied with hedonism and thrills, too sensually stimulated to use critical thought and reasoning abilities. At the end of the night the cop doesn’t question him self, “Hm, taking that Marijuana away from those two young folks who were peacefully listening to music and having a chat at the park… was that wrong? Did I actually have a right to do that, to take their property without their consent.. or was I right to enforce the law in order to support my drinking habit?” Cop takes a gulp of vodka. “Ahhh.. I feel good now.”
LOL, ” “taste the feeling”. Hmmm… the feeling of my insides being made acidic and syrupy???” Funny 😛
Yes, the whole part of the pleasure trap is about lower conscious drives and motivations, not higher consciousness functionality. We’re unconsciously being led to focus on pleasure, not on what’s right, good or true and better for us.
Advertising reinforces it, but we’re all too glad to engage in pleasure regardless :/