1. Welcome to NoFap! We have disabled new forum accounts from being registered for the time being. In the meantime, you can join our weekly accountability groups.
    Dismiss Notice

An eye-opening article about modern stimuli

Discussion in 'Self Improvement' started by Deleted Account, May 18, 2019.

  1. https://www.mediavsreality.com/medi...-stimuli-how-the-modern-world-ruins-your-life
    <EDIT> It has been brought to my attention that the header in this article contains triggering imagery. Please, take caution. I apologize for not noticing this before.

    It isn't just the porn messing us up. Everything nowadays, from food, to TV, to video games, to social media, is engineered to make us addicts.

    The segment about the goose eggs is fascinating. An animal acting on superstimuli like that could lead to the extinction of a species, and yet, we do it.

    Our brains are wired for us to enjoy living how we did up until a few hundred years ago. That's why we find things like fishing, camping, hiking, and going to the beach so therapeutic when we're depressed or anxious. That kind of thing is meant to be our way of life, not a vacation. Our species was never intended to live in enclosed areas with air conditioning and flashing lights/sounds that affect us emotionally and screw up our circadian rhythm. We're not actually content in our modern lifestyle.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 19, 2019
  2. Maybe we should stop getting easy to bait! Partly, the fault lies with the consumers of such stuff too. Because ultimately, we can't control everything else except our own selves.
     
  3. Exactly! @Revo47 I wish I could give your post 10 likes! What the article says is so very very important. Humanity is right now on the complete wrong way. We need to get back to more traditional values and get in touch with nature again. Life was better 100 years ago. Hell, life was better 4000 years ago.
     
  4. Indeed, this is going to be one of the last things I reply before I close my account. I'm starting anew!
     
    Deleted Account likes this.
  5. elevate

    elevate Fapstronaut

    1,133
    5,566
    143
    People in the modern world are conditioned to seek easy, certain, convenient, and instant gratification.

    Everything is at the tip of your fingers with instant feedback. You can have as much as you want, as often as you want, and as fast as you want it.

    So why deal with the painful, uncertain, scary, difficult, problematic, and delayed gratifications of the real world?

    We don't have dinosaurs hunting us down anymore, but we have businesses / media that are highly trained at grabbing your attention and sucking the life out of you. We pay them for that as well. They heighten your expectations of how things are supposed to be and show you that reality can't ever meet those expectations without their product.

    It's a good way to weed out the weak from the strong in the modern world I guess. The bigger the obstacles, the bigger the rewards. Not many people are willing to go beyond their convenient comfort zones where everything is designed to give them pleasure.

    It's only going to get harder as time goes on and technology improves. Children in elementary school have all sorts of gadgets conditioning them to be addicts from the start.
     
  6. Being a human is all about cultivating things. It's what makes us humans and not animals.

    Go back and look at fruits and vegetables from thousands of years ago before we began cultivating them for crops. We changes nature to suit us. We often do this to our own detriment, but in general, I would say the trend is favorable toward us. People on the earth today are, in general, healthier and live longer and have less poverty than ever before in human history.

    In every generation, the older folks warn the younger ones against the dangers of new and modern techne. in every generation, the new techne more or less replaces the old, and the cycle repeats. What is a constant is the people. We have not changed fundamentally in all that time. The hierarchy of our needs has never changed. it is the same today for each individual as it was ten thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago.

    We decide what is helpful for meeting those needs and what is not. We cultivate the world around us to suit our minds and spirits. We often choose wrongly, but in general, I would say the trend is up. I find the modern era a fascinating time to be alive, and I look toward the future with a great hope for even better things to come.

    Of course, I very well may be wrong. Just my $0.02. :)
     
  7. That's it for me, guys. I'm quitting online socialization, and don't know when or if I will be back. I'm starting a lifestyle in which these stimuli are not a part of. If I do come back, it'll be in limited fashion. Thanks for all of the support I've received from all of you over the past year.
     
    Deleted Account likes this.
  8. Best wishes to you. I also need to cut back my time online.
     
  9. R2DToy

    R2DToy Fapstronaut

    127
    161
    43
    I agree that we are 'conditioned' from the start to want things quickly and easily. But then again I think humans were always like that. Bunch of thousands years ago we trained ourselves to save energy and go for shortcuts. We had to. But now, businesses just take advantage of that wiring. They know about humans their 'weaknesses' and they will play into them. Hell, even ran my own online business and did that myself. Feel kinda guilty about it these days, but you know, I was just a young adult and dreamed of the Dollars like most do at that age.

    But that's just it. You see other people have stuff, now you want it too. Then you join the rat race and compete with others and throw your ethics overboard. We are our own enemy, we know it, but we can't always change it. They know it, and make money off of our human weaknesses. Such is the cycle, has always been, will always be as long we still populate this earth.

    Most of this stuff is kinda pointless to talk about really. Because when you and I close this NoFap browser tab life hasn't changed much, but hey, it's fun to talk about for a moment.
     
  10. Anew2019

    Anew2019 Fapstronaut

    What a great article. The timing of me finding this is great. Thank you for sharing. Just realised yesterday the pull that screens have on me. Time to get back to things like books and walks in the park.
     
  11. Awedouble

    Awedouble Fapstronaut

    This thread and the last post reply I made in another just made me realize this aspect of temporal disorder - in fact, temporal clutter.

    I don't think the third point from the article goes far enough. We actually have natural stimuli that's available to re-entrain our pattern - most people just don't pay attention to them or control it. This goes beyond just getting pleasure from eating healthy foods, because it's not a match up and association with some list we learn is good for us, there's proper timing and it happens cyclically. Even if someone never ate junk food, you don't think there are some foods that work better in the body in the morning vs. at night? Or all this business about intermittent fasting where you stop eating early PM?

    While the intensity and volume of super stimuli may be overwhelming, it is possible to become aware of the circadian rhythm and maybe even ultradian rhythm. Tying it in with mindfulness, it's not an arbitrary awareness of some mental objects during a carved out time slot measured by the clock, it's continual awareness of your overall pattern. I bet there are people who are very faithful in a meditation practice but never even think about the bigger picture of how things work, the context. Also it is helpful to outline phases of progression rather than just a straight linear measure of number of days or minutes. The former is a natural measure, the latter is an artificial arbitrary measure.

    BTW, related to sugar - I haven't tried it but a book I have but haven't finished, Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life mentions a drink that stimulates the six tastes according to ayurveda with 5 simple household ingredients. The idea being that people are addicted to things like sugar salt and fat because they actually are out of touch with the other tastes like pungent etc and this little drink serves to wake up the tastebuds.

    And I wonder if that same principle might apply to sexuality and romantic relationships: What aspect might be dulled so that we are simply not experience the full range palate while being obsessed with the few (one?) thing(s) that pornography stimulates?
     

Share This Page