Hi, hello, and hi again. I hope you are having a good day. I had an exam today, so I did not have a super great day, but I probably, hopefully, maybe at least passed. Which is what counts. Anyway! I would like to briefly summarize an argument that somehow entirely changed my perception of the world. This will set the tone for a very strange string of incoming posts, because hedonism is not the only thing I've learned about since then. But it is the first, and it is the one I understand the consequences of the most out of anything so far.
This is not a well made post, by the way. I am writing it without much editing because the topic will not stop bothering me, and all of my friends have suffered at least five explanations of how much it bothers me already.
In August, I got into a heavy debate with my roommate about the ethics of many BDSM practices, such as ageplay, rapeplay, choking, degradation, and more. I argued against it, and my roommate argued for it. The specific points of our argument do not matter. Instead, it led to me realizing the absolute hedonistic state that everyone lives in and perpetuates for each other. I consider the growing acceptance of BDSM to be part of hedonism, obviously, or else it wouldn't have led to this realization at all. BDSM encourages you to use your partner in order to farm as much dopamine from them as much as humanly possible, and cuts you off from genuine connection in the process. You fill roles of each other's ideal selves instead of your real selves. But if BDSM was all that was bothering me, then I wouldn't be writing this, of course! Almost all new, modern stuff is some form of hedonistic.
TV shows and movies are disproportionately made to be entertainment that offers no real value to your life. Netflix purposely makes shows and movies that are second-screenable, letting you entirely keep up with a show while you scroll on a phone.
Most modern books are made to entertain you, feed off of your lust, or bait you into a feeling of rage. You have probably heard of A Court of Thorns and Roses, and it does the first two perfectly. It does them so well that it blew up in popularity beyond any reasonable standard. Now, book stores have "spicy" sections, where they jump to steamy werewolf sex about 20 pages in. I truly would not believe this had I not seen it with my own eyes in the book store of a relatively conservative town.... and if I also didn't have someone in my operating systems class telling me about how they were scared of what people would think of them if their earbuds fell out while listening to this sort of book. Lessons in Chemistry is a rage-baiting book that preys on women scared of the state of sexism, and it proceeded to become so popular that it got a whole TV show of its own. It makes next to no contributions to the topic of sexism because it insists on setting itself in the 1950s (badly) despite being written in 2022. Instead, it baits you with how bad the state of sexism was in the 1950s instead of showing issues of today. The writing in both these and many other related books simply sucks beyond all measure, and offers absolutely no value to you. I'll cut myself short here and move on to other issues:
Food is made to fill your cravings instead of being nutritionally healthy. Music is made to fit moods and dead air, and Spotify is shoving playlists full of AI-generated trash in order to pay less in royalties since it knows you're not looking for anything more. Social media is... I don't even need to finish this sentence. Porn has been almost completely accepted as normal at this point, and it continuously pushes your interests to get you interested in more and more extreme stuff.
But wait! I said hedonism perpetuates itself. How does it do that? Through guilt-removal! You naturally have a sense of disgust after engaging in a hedonistic activity. If you binge-watch TV shows all weekend, you'll probably say "I did nothing useful at all" when Monday comes. If you use porn, you'll have a sinking feeling of disgust and regret until you move on from the whole thing and open up fucking Instagram again. And if you eat too much junk in a day and are above the age of 20 or so, your body will make you pay. You feel and experience all of these things, but might be exposed to constant messages saying that this is okay. Porn is normal and healthy, of course, and R*dditors will never hesitate to tell you. You deserved to get a stupid shirt with a dumb graphic after such a hard day at work. Your week was very difficult and draining, so you can reward yourself by sitting around all weekend. Where did this come from? We keep saying it to each other. We keep seeing it when we scroll. Advertisers push this to us all the time, but we don't need them to tell us anymore. We will happily tell our friends that they deserve to drink an 800 calorie milkshake after a bad day now. Once you learn how to ignore your feeling of guilt for one hedonistic indulgence, it's easy to apply it to everything and completely wreck your life.
And eventually, when someone asks you what you did all weekend and you only can say you binged a show that you can't even remember the plot of, you feel happy about it instead! When you have a single second of free time, you can't even think of anything remotely useful to do, and you just resort to the most low-effort thing you can. You, as a growing or full-blown adult, realize that something is wrong, but how many times have you asked someone younger what they do for fun and received the worst answers ever? They'll say they watch YouTube and play Roblox, and then can't say another damn thing about themselves. Sometimes the older ones give up on answering and just say they like to sleep. There is a real child in them being crushed into nothing because they simply cannot understand the consequences of what they are doing yet.
But you, the fully formed adult, should never forget this - Guilt is a useful feeling. Guilt is meant to tell you that you are doing something wrong, and you need to change what you are doing. If you have to convince yourself that it is okay to do something, your gut reaction might be right. Guilt is not trying to hurt you or make you feel bad for unfair reasons. By ignoring guilt, you lose the ability to improve.
