...just imagine reaching peak satisfaction; not even all the pleasures in the world put together can tempt you at that point, because you don't want anything, you're satisfied...
I've been wanting to write a bit about this topic for a while. Just to put it out there, and out of my head.
We humans tend to do most of our animal experiments using two main ways; the first of which is the reward based cycle, where a given test subject (which is of course a lab rat; who are we kidding?) is put in a dingy little cell, and given a little treat every time it does what we want it to do. The second method is quite similar in the rat part and the dingy cell part, but uses a little punishment, like a taste of a taser gun, every time the animal does something we want to condition it not to do.
So, I've been thinking a bit about these elegant little training methods, and the genius idea dawned on me that the popularity of these procedures are mostly due to our gravitation towards them, and not the rats'. And I think the reward punishment cycle is something that goes far beyond our sadistic satisfaction of putting a ribbon cable directly into a live rat's brain.
You see, all our tales and fables always have one thing in common (well, mostly); which is their tendency to lead us in the path of virtue, and teach us to ward off the evil. They often depict goodness being ultimately rewarded, and evil punished. By wisdom or by instinct, our ancestors were actually puppetteering us.
Who doesn't like being rewarded? In fact, human mind is so objective that virtually everything we do is with an ultimate reward in mind. Even love is a coverup for the reward of self satisfaction. We're in it to win it; we as a species is hardwired that way. And if you ask me, making people believe that doing what the greater community regards as a good deed will get them rewarded, and that doing what is considered "bad" would get them ultimately punished, seems like a pretty good way to teach a barbaric community to behave as a society. Thus arose the "good" and the "bad". All a hoax, but a clever one nevertheless, as it succeeded -more or less- in keeping a bunch of smart apes from stepping out of the line.
This all comes back to optimistic nihilism, I guess, because it's about time we reiterated our understanding of goodness and satisfaction. Our elders told us that if we do good, we will be rewarded. So we do good, wait long years for the rewards to roll in, and when hard times come, we complain about the overdue rewards that never arrived at our mailbox. But one thing our elders did not tell us is that when you do good, you get rewarded instantly. Have you ever felt the satisfaction you get out of lending your umbrella to someone else on a rainy day, out of helping an injured person to the hospital? Right there is your reward. In that moment of indecision, it is the tasty prospect of that angelic feeling that makes you do the deed you do, and you get your satisfaction instantly. But we often underrate it and search for the gift from the shooting star.
To put it into perspective, just imagine reaching peak satisfaction; not even all the pleasures in the world put together can tempt you at that point, because you don't want anything, you're satisfied. Every time you do good, you taste a bite of that cake. Just learn to cherish it, to do good for the sake of the smile that plays across your face right after. Humans may still be a reward loving ape, but aleast we're an ape that can be trained.
Very good
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