1 month ago
23
One thing that I struggle to understand is how collectively the human race manages to keep the show on the road despite being surrounded by abundance which should in theory keep everyone sated all of the time.
I have wondered for a while now - why does anyone do anything anymore? Or find the motivation to be out there in the world?
Everything we know about human nature and psychology suggests that the human animal will always prefer the line of least resistance. So the tendency is almost always to maximise comfort and minimise discomfort.
The driving forces of human motivation have always been food and sex above all else. Now most in the west have near constant access to the first one and a reasonable facsimile of the second in the shape of internet porn.
So surrounded by food and porn (which btw like lots of fast food is actually more intensely pleasurable than the thing it is mimicking) and all kinds of other forms of instant stimulation - why do people stay motivated to do other stuff?
Surely everything we know about human nature indicates by now we should all be staying at home playing video games, scrolling our smartphones, watching porn and ordering takeout - and yet many people choose to forgo this path for some reason. Are the classical models of human behaviour wrong?
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