The rewards of pleasure; "magic buttons"
If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves,
I could have freed thousands more. —Harriet Tubman
Suppose a young man lives in a small town in a picturesque county famous for its annual treasure hunt. But one spring, well before the treasure hunt is to commence, he notices the arrival of a different sort of treasure. An attractive young woman has moved into the area, and often he observes her going to work, shopping, and bicycling about the town.
The young man notices that the young lady is never in male company. He asks some questions and discovers that she is a recent college graduate who has secured a job in a local office. When he learns that she is unmarried, he first feels a sense of relief, and then a sense of increased tension. The treasure may not be claimed.
He begins to dress more carefully, every day, on the chance that he might cross her path. One Saturday morning, he sees her in the grocery store. He silently congratulates himself that he is well-dressed and sports a recent haircut. He pushes his cart near to hers, observing her as she shops. He stands next to her as they both select apples. He feels his heart pounding with excitement, and when she glances toward him, he smiles. He delivers a well-rehearsed, witty compliment. She smiles and thanks him. His condition shifts from tension to a mood of happiness. They chat briefly, he expresses his delight at having met her, and then tactfully withdraws. Her smiles, demeanor, and body language indicate she is attracted to him, and he feels this is encouraging progress for a first meeting.
He finds himself in extended moods of happiness for the next several days. He encounters her at the local bank (not quite by accident), and they again chat amicably. He asks her if she plans to attend the upcoming dance, and he learns that she indeed plans to attend. He is thrilled that she appears to enjoy talking with him, and he delivers another well-rehearsed comment about how much he looks forward to seeing her at the dance. And he means it.
Though he spends many hours in a mood of happiness, he has some tense moments as well. For one thing, he is embarrassed about his old car. He is acutely aware that she may surmise that he is not competent at getting "stuff." This is not true, as he has a good job. He therefore decides that now is the time to buy a new car. He is reluctant to part with some of his savings, but he realizes it may be necessary. Though the savings are a useful buffer against unpleasant things such as unemployment or unpredictable misfortune, the money also represents resources he may need to risk in order to compete effectively, for he is aware that he is not the only young bachelor who has noticed her arrival.
At the dance, his competitors are out in force. He is nervous and tense at first, and he feels jealous when a handsome competitor is dancing with her. He observes her behavior carefully, and he concludes that she is playing no favorites. After a few more of her warm smiles, he feels a resultant relief and a new excitement. Toward the end of the evening, he tells her that he just bought a new car. She asks if he drove it to the dance. She expresses an interest in seeing it and he feels a tremendous mood of happiness, a mixture of excitement, pride, and anticipation as he escorts her outside. As they leave the dance, his eyes meet those of a rival who is clearly experiencing a mood of unhappiness. "Tough luck for you," he thinks silently.
As the weeks pass, the two young people come to know each other better. Moods of happiness are frequent experiences for both, and they acknowledge to each other that they are falling in love. And, although they come very close to making love, they have not yet done so.
Both are acutely aware that a moment of physical ecstasy is in the offing. And, although both are aware of its significance, it is unlikely that either could articulate the roots of that significance.
It is fascinating that our male gray shrike could spend weeks of intensive effort just for the opportunity to compete for sexual union. We now know why and how he could do so: it was because of instinctive reinforcement mechanisms—the moods of happiness.
It is equally interesting to observe our young man expending energy in pursuit of an exciting sexual union, but we can now see that it is not pleasure-seeking alone that steers this process. He is also guided by a complex set of reinforcement and punishment mechanisms—moods of happiness and unhappiness—that help him chart an effective course of action. And, while an intense pleasure episode is very much his conscious goal, it is the moods of happiness and unhappiness that provide critical guidance.
Although humans consider the pursuit of happiness to be a primary goal of life, these moods have rarely been life's primary focus. It is the twin pursuits of pleasure and pain avoidance that are, instead, the designed goals of our natural psychology. The moods of happiness and unhappiness are merely the feedback systems that tell us how well we are doing at these pursuits. Our young man, for example, never confused the good feelings associated with the young woman's smiles with his goal. His successful interactions resulted in moods of happiness, but these moods in themselves were never his motivation. The pursuit of pleasure was always his purpose, and mood states were just the guides to help him on his way.1
Moods of happiness are not concrete goals we seek, but are rather the result of incremental success at one of the important goals of life. Happiness is the result of making progress and of goal-attainment at any of the diverse aspects of life that are inherently important: romance, friendships, health, material comfort, security, family, and social regard. These are inherently important because each has been intimately related to successful DNA reproduction throughout the history of our species.
If our gray shrike was simply presented with a receptive female and never required to gather "stuff" to compete for her, would his life be better? If all he had to do was to sit in a cage and peck a magic button in order for her to appear, would this be the path to a better life? Or would he be missing something enormously important?
We believe that he would indeed be missing something important. While he would be experiencing as much sexual pleasure as his nervous system could tolerate, he would be experiencing little of the moods of happiness that are the natural guideposts to achieving that pleasure. And yet, if we were to give him a choice between these two ways of obtaining females, he would undoubtedly choose to peck the magic button, because he is designed by nature to seek pleasure while using as little energy as possible. If presented with a choice not available in his natural habitat, his motivational triad would generate behavior that would actually reduce his happiness. He would be trapped by his own motivational machinery into making his life something less than it could be. His senses could be fooled by artificial feedback, resulting in choices that seem right but are self-destructive. We call this type of mistake an example of "the pleasure trap."
But what about human beings? Are we, also, susceptible to this mistake? Of course we are. And the consequences of these decision-making errors are staggering. In our view, the pleasure trap is the root of the vast majority of disease, disability, and unhappiness in western civilization. This is a powerful statement, to be sure. But in the pages that follow, we intend to back it up. For starters, let's look at just one example of how the motivational triad can be fooled and how deceptive this process can be.
A Powerful Example In the late 1800s, a young physician thought he had found the key to happiness. After experimenting with many drugs, he came to believe that a newly synthesized substance, cocaine, was a wonder drug. He prescribed it to his friends and patients, and he took it himself. But after a time, he came to understand its danger. His patients deteriorated, and a friend committed suicide. He himself became miserable. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, had been seduced by cocaine.2
Cocaine is a popular recreational drug, and for understandable reasons. Its use causes powerful pleasure-system reactions. And we know what that means. It means that a key component of the motivational triad—the pleasure-seeking component—is being activated, and thus the brain is receiving a signal that says, "Something very good and valuable for our survival and/or reproduction is happening; keep doing it!" If this is not incentive enough, another component of the motivational triad also comes into play. The use of cocaine is an easy way to obtain pleasure. Little effort is needed, and thus the energy conservation component of the motivational triad also encourages continued use. Addiction is often the result.
When first used, cocaine can seem like a great thing. Intense and easy pleasure experiences can deceive us into believing that something valuable is happening, since feeling good is a hallmark of biological success.
But these good feelings are deceptive. Chronic use will eventually cause damage to the pleasure mechanisms of the brain, and such damage can be permanent. The normal pleasure neurochemistry is disrupted, and now the healthy pleasures of life will fail to signal success in a satisfying fashion. The natural internal compass for life's decision-making can be deceived. As anyone who has ever struggled with addiction knows, drugs may produce extraordinary jolts of pleasure but may destroy one's happiness potential. Drug addiction is a primary example of the pleasure trap.
Deceiving the Motivational Triad Animal research has confirmed the power of drugs to deceive the motivational triad. If you give a male pigeon a choice between cocaine and a sexual partner, he will choose the cocaine. The artificially induced pleasure can be a more powerful signal of "success" than sex, even though sex is necessary to reproduce his genes. Similarly, if you give a laboratory rat a choice between cocaine and food, he will choose the cocaine, because cocaine is a more powerful cause of pleasure and thus a stronger signal of success than is food. Incredibly, this will remain true even as death by starvation approaches.3
In short, pleasure responses caused by drugs can overwhelm and deceive the natural mechanisms of feeling good. The senses of animals can be fooled. The motivational triad was not designed to manage such deceptive stimulation; thus, self-destructive decisions are often the result.
But enough about rats and pigeons. The important issue is that we humans are similarly dependent upon the motivational triad to guide our way. If we expose ourselves to experiences that can deceive this delicate system, poor choices are the predictable result. This book is about much more than drugs. It is the larger story about how modern life can deceive the motivational triad within each of us, and what we must do to protect ourselves.
In recent decades, people have expended tremendous energy trying to figure out how to give each other the most pleasure or the least pain for the least effort. And this is why our modern world is laden with such a multitude of confusing problems.
We have become ingenious at inventing magic buttons, each of which is its own potential pleasure trap. Recreational drugs, fast foods, television, modern medicine, the electric light bulb, and the glorification of casual sex and gambling are powerful features of our societal landscape that can be deceptively dangerous. While innovation is often useful and important in human life, many of our modern "advances" have been problematic. They often trap our motivational machinery into inducing self-destructive behavior. As a result, they have been extremely deleterious to our collective health and happiness.
This is the story of our new understanding of health and happiness. But by necessity, it is also the story of the destructive magic buttons in modern life—the pleasure traps—and how to identify and overcome their pernicious influence. Until recently, our motivational triad worked like a nearly infallible internal compass. Pointing in a behavioral direction that we refer to as "True North," the motivational triad used to encourage behavior that was consistent with the pursuit of our health and happiness. For our ancient ancestors, the path toward more pleasure, with less pain, and for less effort was almost always the right path to choose. This is no longer true.
Today, the workings of that internal compass are being disrupted so that it is no longer fully reliable. We must now learn to recognize when it is failing to point us in the right direction, and when to act against our instincts if necessary. To the degree that we are successful, we may enjoy the bounty of the modern world's innovations without compromising our health and happiness. But we must be wary. The various faces of the pleasure trap can be highly deceptive. We need both awareness and determination to stay on course.
In nature, certain experiences are designed to encourage successful behavior. As such, they are extremely pleasant and reinforcing. The primary sources of pleasure are food and sexual activity. This is because success in these arenas is necessary for survival and reproduction. Such moments are biologically expensive and are thus designed only to be very short-term—minutes, rather than hours.
In contrast, the moods of happiness are a different reward system. Though not as intense, they are not naturally limited. We are designed by nature to sustain positive moods all day, so long as we seem to be making progress toward worthwhile goals, usually incremental steps toward pleasure or pain avoidance.
Modern life has magic buttons that can short-circuit the natural connection between happiness and pleasure-seeking behavior, with products such as recreational drugs, processed foods, pain-relieving medications, and gambling. These magic buttons are dangerous, as they appeal to the instincts imbedded in the motivational triad, but rob their victims of health and happiness. This deceiving of our instincts is what we have termed "the pleasure trap."