Roosh V - Daryush Valizadeh - The Danger Of Hedonic Adaptation (Kingmaker Podcast)

Feb. 14, 2017 - Roosh V - Daryush Valizadeh

32:03

The Danger Of Hedonic Adaptation (Kingmaker Podcast)

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	Welcome to Kingmaker.
	I'm your host, Rush V, and today's episode is on the hedonic treadmill.
	What is the hedonic treadmill?
	Let's start with a book definition first, and then we can explain it through examples.
	Wikipedia says, quote, the hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative effects or life changes.
	According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness, end quote.
	That is a fancy way of saying human beings adapt.
	Breaking news, right?
	Because we already know that.
	We already know human beings adapt, but academics need a fancy term to justify their salaries, their positions, their research papers, and their books.
	So human beings adapt to stimuli, both good stimuli and bad stimuli.
	So now let's go through a few examples so you really understand how this hedonic adaptation is going on in your life and what it's causing you to do.
	And after these examples, we can get into what we can do about it.
	The first example and the easiest example is getting laid.
	Now think back to the first time that you got laid without a condom.
	And this is assuming that you've done that.
	Now, the first time that you put your phallus in a vagina, raw skin on skin contact, do you remember how you felt about that?
	I don't know about you, but I almost had a seizure because it felt so good.
	And I remember the girl.
	I remember it more than when losing my virginity.
	And, you know, after that, I never have been able to duplicate the intensity of the feeling, the intensity of the first time that I felt such a pleasurable thing.
	One thing I've tried to do is duplicate that first feeling, that first time feeling by having more challenges.
	So I would have, okay, I want to get a one-night stand now, and I want to bang a girl within a short amount of time, and I want to bang a girl in this way and that way, and I have to bang a foreign girl by meeting her in the day, but doing an incidate, which means that it technically was a one-night stand.
	So I kept trying to change the parameters of getting laid to just try and simulate that pleasurable dose of the first time I had sex without a condom.
	But as you can see, it's a dead end because you always have to increase the dose.
	You're like a drug addict.
	So you're increasing the dose to get that first high, but it never works.
	Why?
	Because you adapt.
	Human beings adapt to whatever stimuli, a stimulus they encounter to the point where if you experience something the first time, that's it.
	That was your time.
	That was the moment.
	And some people use their entire lives.
	They structure it to chase that initial feeling of goodness, but you can't do it.
	We are made by nature, by God, to really only fully enjoy, to feel a maximum amount of dopamine, release, and pleasure to something only once.
	And if you decide to keep on going, if you decide that, you know, I'm going to get a threesome now, I'm going to, you know, or something, some guys even do crazy stuff.
	There was a story, actually, I met a guy in Eastern Europe.
	He's from Germany.
	And what he did was, I think I've mentioned this before, but it was a guy who received a blowjob from a girl while taking a dump.
	And there's a name for it.
	And I didn't even know you could do that.
	I didn't even know that maybe your prostate doesn't work well or something.
	But that just kind of says how this man, and I'm not blaming him or judging him, but this man to up the dose of sex, which is just a normal feeling, he tried to really make it as extreme, as novel as possible to duplicate the initial high that he used to receive when he first had sex.
	Now, if you ask a Buddhist or a Taoist, anytime you feel pleasure that's very intense, they call that making karma.
	And when you make karma, you have to give it back.
	And usually that means that on the back end of this adaptation, you're going to feel suffering and pain and depression from the burnout.
	So all the pleasure I have received from sex and putting in all these crazy scenarios abroad, mostly traveling, I then had it give it back starting in around 2014, 15, when I was no longer getting this high from normal sex and I was struggling.
	I was just going through the motions like a robot.
	You know, I was bringing girls home and not really enjoying it.
	So then I suffered during that stage where I just didn't know how to receive the pleasure that I became addicted to when I first started.
	Now let's look at a second example.
	And this is going to the gym and increasing your muscle mass.
	Let's say you start off as a wimp.
	You have noodle arms.
	You are skinny fat or you just look unsightly in general.
	And then you decide to adapt to a training program like starting strength or convent conditioning.
	And you get muscles that are pretty dang big.
	And you look in the mirror and you're like, damn, I'm jacked.
	I'm huge.
	And your thighs are huge now.
	You can't even fit in jeans anymore.
	And you just are really happy with how you look.
	You look in the mirror and you get satisfaction from your image.
	And of course, you get benefits to your sex life too.
	But then you're going to hit a wall.
	You're going to hit naturally.
	You're not going to be able to cross a certain point.
	So what do you do next?
	Then you start taking supplements.
	You start taking protein powders.
	And then some of those supplements that you're taking, even ones that you can buy over the counter, have pharmaceutical effects.
	And some men actually start to buy pharmaceutical drugs.
	And I don't know what is common because I don't use them, but I'm sure you've heard of many different substances that you can take that allow your muscles to get way bigger than what it can in natural just using meat diet.
	And then you start putting your body under a strain.
	You put your joints under strain, the injuries start to rack up.
	And even when you get bigger from your natural peak, the satisfaction from looking at your image is not higher.
	You're not getting the boost that you first got when you went from a noodle to a man who was strong.
	So this is another way that you adapt to something.
	And then you hit that point of diminishing return where further work in it to receive pleasure from it doesn't work.
	And instead, now you have to deal with all the side effects.
	And in the case of taking supplements and working out, that could mean damage to your liver, kidneys, things that don't really show up until you get older.
	I even know some men that they turn into kind of, I don't want to say freak, but they do because they tack on this body dysmorphic disorder where they're not happy ever.
	You know, they don't even, they get just a little bit of pleasure when they look in the mirror.
	And then they have to get bigger and bigger.
	They're injecting things.
	And so that just tells you that once you have that first experience or moment where you're satisfied with something, where something gives you pleasure, going beyond that, trying to duplicate it, trying to keep it, keep it going, often ends up giving more pain than the pleasure you sought in the first place.
	Now, so far we talked about adaptation to good things, but how about adaptation to bad things?
	How about adaptation to things that you don't want?
	So one example that I have encountered is going from living in comfort to having a negative living situation.
	In other people, it would be living, having a middle class income and then losing a job and having to endure a situation of poverty.
	For me, in 2015, I had to go back home for a couple months.
	And during that time, I didn't rent an apartment.
	I stayed with my with my dad.
	And I knew it was short term.
	But the first two weeks were very hard.
	It was very hard because I had my apartment in Eastern Europe and just living on my own, inviting anyone I want, you know, not having to have to share a living space.
	To now I was in the suburbs.
	I didn't have a car.
	I was not as mobile, couldn't go out as much, didn't have as many friends that were near me.
	So for the first two weeks, I was in a little depression.
	I was not really happy about it, even though my family is great and I love them.
	Still, just going from a living situation where you're on your own in this middle of a city to now having to live with maybe a lot of roommates or your dad, it wasn't fun.
	So I felt that pain.
	But then after two weeks, I adapted to it.
	I adapted a new routine.
	I got used to talking to my dad every day, to talking to other family members every day.
	I got used to my stepmom's cooking.
	I saved a lot of time not having to cook dinners anymore.
	And so after, by the time I had to leave, I got used to it.
	I mean, I didn't, I can't say I loved it, but I got used to it to the point where it wasn't that bad.
	It wasn't as bad as the first two weeks when I first got there.
	And then I left and then I went back to my flat in Eastern Europe.
	And it's like, oh, I have to cook now.
	And it's so lonely.
	So I had to actually readapt the good things that I was initially sad about.
	You know, I had to make more time to cook.
	I had to go to the supermarket more often.
	I was feeling a little, I don't say anxious, but a little antsy that there was no one to really talk to.
	There's no one that I can just, no one's room I can just pop into and see what they're doing.
	So this is, so it's having to adapt back and forth.
	But after a couple weeks of being back on my, on my own, I was fine again.
	And it's like I didn't even leave in the first place.
	And the last example is with travel that is very similar to sex in that the first time I left the USA on my own, it was amazing.
	I was like, wow, everything is so different.
	The novelty is non-stop.
	It's exciting.
	And the people are different.
	The foods are different.
	The languages are different.
	And I felt free because I didn't have to work.
	And after the first trip, and my first trip abroad was to Italy in 2005.
	And then my next two trips were to Venezuela in 2006, I think.
	And after those three trips, I told myself, I have to do this permanently because I'm getting so much pleasure from it.
	And the novelty, the stimulation, it feels like you're a child again, playing with toys that you've never seen before, eating candies that are colorful and new and tasty and sweet.
	So I then structured my life to accomplish this task.
	As you know, I left the USA pretty much for good in 2006 in that I hadn't, I haven't lived permanently since then.
	And I am recording this abroad still.
	But I can tell you one thing right now.
	I cannot even bear to get on an airplane.
	I can hardly bear to go to a new city, find out how to get a cell phone, SIM card, how to find the supermarket, where's the good places, having to deal with a new language.
	Now it's a burden.
	So what used to be the source of intense pleasure is almost now, I don't want to say it's a source of pain now, but it's a source of something that I don't care about.
	You know, if you look at my travel itinerary in 2011, 2012, I was hitting a lot of a lot of countries.
	I was barely staying anywhere for more than three months.
	Last year, I visited two.
	And so this just says that you adapt to whatever good comes at you.
	And travel, sex, these are very similar things because these are novel things that feel good.
	But everything novel, anything that is extremely new to you will become old.
	And it's just a matter of time until it does.
	So what is the implication of this?
	What is this telling us from the four examples that I gave?
	And the implication is this.
	If something is in the material world, if it exists outside of you, you will adapt to it.
	You will adapt to anything and everything that you can feel or sense.
	And the good news in that is that pain, any pain you feel from maybe a situation, a disease, or some other source of pain will eventually stop being painful.
	The bad news is that any pleasure you can feel from your senses that exist in the material world will eventually stop being pleasurable.
	Human beings adapt to anything.
	They adapt to sex on the pleasurable end, to eating great foods and travel, but they adapt on the negative side to even torture, to living in misery and poverty.
	That's what humans, that's what the nature is.
	So anything new is something that can give you an acute dose of pleasure and pain, but anything chronic, anything that you adapt to, that you get used to, now it starts to drive you into the middle, into a zone of apathy, where you don't really care, where it's not doing anything for you.
	So at least one thing you have noticed is in Western culture, it's the pleasure that people really seek, material pleasure.
	And when they adapt to it, they have to keep upping the dose.
	And then there's this avoidance of pain to be really fearful of experiencing anything uncomfortable, anything that can be a source of tension or anxiety.
	So people, they don't adapt to any pain during their lives because they're so obsessed with feeling pleasure instead.
	That when pain does come, and pain always comes in any human's life, pain comes.
	When pain does come to someone who is, say, 22, 23, but they've never really experienced pain in their lives, their body goes under a shock.
	It's like a seizure where the mind is, now this is the first time I'm experiencing pain and I can't deal with it.
	So if you look at how millennials are, the psychology of them, how they're creating safe spaces, how they don't even want to hear words that are different than what they believe, then they cry out in pain.
	And it's not their DNA is not different than ours.
	It's just one generation away.
	You can't argue that evolution has changed them.
	It's because while growing up, they were bathed in pleasure and comfort.
	So they've never adapted to the downsides in life.
	If you want to find a man who is really capable of dealing with pain and hardship, you need to find a man who has already dealt with that starting at a younger age.
	Now, if I had a child, I wouldn't consciously make it suffer and experience pain.
	But on the other side, I wouldn't conceal that from him too, because I'm not doing my child a favor.
	Because when he gets into college, he's going to be a limp-wristed homosexual who needs coloring books and crowns and earmuffs to essentially shield himself from what the world gives him.
	So anything that you work hard for, now I know we live in a goal-oriented society, goal-oriented culture.
	You are trained to have goals.
	You have to have goals to get your gains.
	Now, the problem with that is that anything you work hard for, anything that you slave over, anything that you covet will be something that you get tired of.
	You crave women right now and you learn game and you get good with them.
	Guess what?
	You'll get tired of them.
	You crave to live in the middle of the city in a luxury condo to be able to go to the hot, happy hour spots that are at the ground level of your beautiful building.
	You will get tired of that too.
	You get tired of everything, even the bad stuff.
	That if I tell you right now that you're going to lose all your money and you're going to be broke and you're going to have to live in a homeless shelter for a month before getting back on your feet, you would think that that's the most horrible thing in the world.
	But when you go through it, if you actually have to go through it, you'll probably be shocked at how quickly you adapt to it.
	And when living through this hardship, it is not as bad as you thought that it was.
	And that's because we adapt.
	We adapt to the downside and we adapt to the upside too.
	So that leads to the ultimate question: how should we live?
	If I adapt to anything, if I adapt to the good or the bad, what's the point?
	Why should I try?
	Why should I have goals?
	Why should I self-improve?
	Why should I fear anything bad?
	Now, this is a spiritual question.
	This is something that I can't answer.
	I don't have the answer.
	I cannot tell you how you should live.
	And this is a question I struggle with too.
	And I'm continually seeking what the answer is.
	If there is an answer, if it's a question that's even worth us probing, because now we're getting down to what?
	The meaning of life.
	Why are we here?
	And that you know, that's something that is a little bit beyond the scope of a podcast.
	But, but we have understanding now.
	We have understanding of our nature to make better decisions.
	I do things because I'm curious, because I want to see what happens, because I want to try something new, because maybe there's a part of me, an invisible hand pushing me to do it, because I want to live, but not because I think it will make me happy.
	It will make me a fulfilled person, because I know that I will adapt.
	I have adapted to everything that has been put in front of me.
	Everything I have adapted to it.
	So, what is going to now cause me to do anything?
	It's going to be a natural urge.
	It's going to be an almost childlike curiosity, a childlike state of just wanting to discover what life is.
	But it's not going to be about trying to please other people.
	It's not going to be about showing up, showing off.
	And this is something that I have tried to do in the past, but that hit me with a dead end, just like Bang and Girls did.
	So it's not going to be based on what others want me to do.
	These external goals, these material goals.
	You know, whether it's the pursuit of money, which is just an abstract thing.
	I mean, yes, you need money for food and shelter, but money is an artificial construct made in a bank somewhere.
	And some men say it's worth this amount.
	Why am I going to dedicate my life to the creation that another man made?
	So I'm going to see what is inside me.
	Can I, is there a way to speak to myself?
	But sometimes I get a feeling just to try it.
	Sometimes I am really intrigued by a news story and I do a video on it.
	Sometimes I just feel passionate about a certain topic and I have to share it.
	So I try to do things based on what's coming outside of me instead of the value judgments and the opinions and the rules and the prescriptions of other people that are trying to impose it on me because those things are false and those things are things I'm going to adapt anyway.
	And those are things that wasn't a part of me too.
	So we just have to understand who we are and what will likely happen if we take on this path or that and ask ourselves, why are we taking this path?
	And is there that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if we get there or not?
	And I want to share a quote from the Taoist thinker Osho.
	And he has a thought on this, quote, That which is caused cannot be forever.
	That which is uncaused can be forever.
	Remember that always whenever you are happy, is it something uncaused or caused?
	If it is caused, then it is better to be sad because it is going to be taken away.
	It is already on the way.
	It has already left you.
	Sooner or later, you will realize it has gone.
	End quote.
	So what he is saying there is that whenever you think that I am going to do something that's going to make me happy and that something exists in the material world, it is caused.
	And therefore, it will not make you happy because it is something that you will adapt to.
	So what is uncaused?
	Happiness that is uncaused comes from within you.
	Now, I haven't mastered uncaused happiness.
	In theory, it could be you sitting in a jail cell, able to think, able to speak.
	And that should, in theory, give you the happiness and the fulfillment that a material object can't.
	I would like to get there, but that's still something that is not within my realm yet of capability.
	Now, that said, because we do exist in the material world, the only piece of advice I can firmly give you is that if you are seeking caused happiness, if you are seeking material happiness, I hope for your sake, it is something simple, something that cannot be taken away from you.
	For me, I get a lot of pleasure every day waking up and having my morning cup of coffee using coffee beans that I like a lot.
	Even if I'm in poverty, it's going to be really hard for someone to take my morning joy away from me.
	A second thing I like is to, is how I feel after doing a workout at the gym.
	Now, I'm not going for muscles that are really large, but that feeling that I accomplish something, that I did work to counter me sitting on my ass all day because I'm staring at a laptop, it feels good.
	And it feels good for at least a couple hours.
	It feels good for longer than it took me to work out in the first place.
	And a gym membership is really cheap.
	And even if I don't have a gym, I can have, I can do calisthenic exercises in a playground.
	So this is something that is caused, but it's very hard to take that away from me.
	To meet with a friend at a coffee shop that's playing music that is good, again, that is caused, but it is very easy.
	If things that cause you happiness take a lot of money and take a lot of maintenance and upkeep and effort, you're probably not going to be able to keep it up.
	And you're going to hit that point of diminishing return where you have this huge debt to pay for something that's not giving you anything back.
	If you need to live in a luxury condo in New York City and buy $500 bottles of vodka every Saturday night, that's an expensive cause, right?
	That's an expensive way to feel good.
	Compare it to me where the cup of coffee that I make, I calculate it cost me a dollar.
	So what you want to try to do, the ideal, is to get that little dose of happiness and meaning from really simple things.
	I mean, it could be as simple as going to a park and sitting there and watching the people and watching the dogs play.
	The simpler it is, the easier your life will be because you will never be put in a situation where you cannot have those simple things.
	So now we've come to the end of the podcast.
	So I want to share a story.
	I recently broke up with my girlfriend and we dated for over one year.
	And it's been a little bit tough because I thought that this was going to go all the way.
	I thought this was going to be something that results in a family and kids, but it didn't work out.
	She went her separate way and I went mine.
	And my friend said, hey, Bruce, you're free.
	You could sleep with whoever you want.
	And I look outside and there are sluts everywhere.
	And, you know, I am getting older, but I still can manage getting some eye contact.
	So I am still seen as attractive by the opposite sex.
	Thank God.
	And it's probably because of my gym workouts and the beard that I have, which no other man has.
	And for a second, I agreed with him.
	Like, yeah, I'm going to bang some sluts.
	That's going to make me feel good.
	It's going to make me feel better because the variety of the sluts and the delicious slut meat, it's going to just make me feel good.
	It's going to make my heart feel good after kind of getting stabbed.
	But then I remembered my past, and it's not hard to since I've written about it too.
	So the past for me is a vivid memory.
	And I remembered banging sluts and how tired I got of it.
	How I adapted to what I was doing.
	How the last girl I banged, the last slut I banged, actually took pleasure away from me instead of giving me the pleasure that I sought.
	And I started to imagine all those nights I spent in the nightclub, all those dates I went on, and a lot of dates didn't result in bangs.
	A lot of dates were with girls who were not cool.
	They just weren't either respectful, they weren't kind, they were annoying.
	And I thought about that.
	And even though my friends and their intentions are good are pushing me to say, man, you're free.
	Just don't worry about having a girlfriend.
	Don't worry about anything.
	Just bang whatever you want, bang whatever moves.
	I can't go back to that.
	I just can't because it's a dead end.
	And I know it's a dead end because I already did it and adapted to it.
	Now, of course, I'll sleep with another girl that may not be my girlfriend.
	And I am a little bit curious how the game is now where I am.
	But there was a time and place for what I did.
	And I adapted to it.
	I squeezed the life out of it.
	I squeezed the life out of meeting a random girl and sleeping with her.
	And now it's time to move on to something else.
	So this is how knowing how you adapt, knowing how the hedonic treadmill works can allow you to make better decisions for you so you don't take that path, which leads you to a dead end.
	So that's all I have for this podcast.
	If you liked it and want to support it financially, click on the donation link in the show notes.
	You can also leave a rating on iTunes, share it with a male friend of yours who you think would get value from this, or drop me an email at rouche at ruchev.com to let me know what you have adapted to in life.

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