Wanting
See if any of these sound familiar to you:
- Pleasure should be sought in moderation.
- Pleasure must be earned.
- Pleasure must be achieved naturally.
- Pleasure is transitory.
- The denial of pleasure can yield spiritual growth. (The Compass of Pleasure, David Linden)
These basic rules about pleasure are deeply ingrained in us and persistent across culture and time. They reflect our ambivalence about pleasure, and an underlying sense that pleasure is an indulgence we may or may not deserve.
According to neuroscience professor David Linden, in his book The Compass of Pleasure: How our brains make fatty foods, orgasm, exercise, marijuana, generosity, vodka, learning, and gambling feel so good, “pleasure is our compass.” It is our compass for vice and for virtue. This makes pleasure a morally relevant area for our exploration as a religious community.
The vice part we’re pretty schooled in. Yet even there, we find a great deal of ambiguity and inconsistency. Just consider that at the same time more individuals than ever are being prescribed drugs for a whole host of ailments so they can have more pleasure and less pain in their lives, we continue to fight a War on Drugs in this nation. Concurrent with fighting the War on Drugs are efforts to legalize some drugs that are considered recreational and less addictive. And the efficacy of some of the prescription drugs we use has been brought into question. Add that to the reality that most of us use and enjoy mild stimulants such as caffeine. Judging from the long coffee line after church, we UUs are happy to indulge in the pleasures of caffeine.
Psychoactive drugs are a more complicated matter. Many, though not all of them, are addictive, and hallucinogens have long been used for religious sacrament as well as for recreation. Shaman in a number of cultures rely on herbal hallucinogens as a catalyst for visions and mystical experiences. Humans it turns out aren’t alone in their attraction to hallucinogens. “Birds, elephants, and monkeys have all been reported to enthusiastically seek out fruits and berries that have fallen to the ground and undergone natural fermentation to produce alcohol” (Linden). Does this make it a natural pleasure?
A number of states have embraced gambling to help boost their economies, and here in Pennsylvania we have instituted gambling casinos to help balance the budget. As of September, we had 10 full-scale casinos. But at what other expense are we solving our budgetary woes? Studies around the world have concluded that, “When legal gambling becomes more readily accessible, the prevalence of gambling addiction increases” (Linden).
One reason we appear to be ambivalent about pleasure is that what brings pleasure in our lives can also turn to excess and even addiction. What’s initially enjoyable can quickly become so seemingly pleasing that it leads to the brink of ruin. This is especially true, but not solely so, for those with a genetic predisposition to addiction. We are all susceptible to the damaging impact of over-indulgence. It can damage our most significant relationships and compromise our health. The pursuit of pleasure can kill. No wonder moderation is advised as a general rule.
Most of us learned about B.F. Skinner’s conditioning experiments in school. When a rat presses a lever, it receives a reward or punishment. The rat quickly learns which lever to press to receive a reward and which lever to avoid.
In 1953, Peter Milner and James Olds made a very telling modification to Skinner’s experiment. They surgically implanted electrodes in the brain of a rat which were connected by wires to an electrical stimulator. Stimuli were delivered directly to the rat’s brain whenever the rat pressed a lever.
Milner and Olds first thought they had located a part of the brain that provokes curiosity. They soon learned this was not the case. Milner and Olds were stimulating a pleasure center. The rats pressed the lever as many as 7000 times per hour to stimulate their brains. The rats preferred the stimulation to food even when they were hungry. They preferred it to water even when they were thirsty. Male rats ignored female rats in heat in favor of the direct brain stimulation. “Pressing the lever became their entire world,” says David Linden. I found this all very interesting, as I suspect you do too. But what I learned next really shocked me. The rats had to be unhooked from the wires and electrical stimulator and the project aborted in order to prevent them from starving themselves to death (Linden).
Like those rats, we can become fixated on desire. Wanting can replace getting. Rather than experiencing pleasure, we end up craving it. Linden asks, “Do you, like many, think that drug addicts become drug addicts because they derive greater reward from getting high than others? The biology says no: They actually seem to want it more but like it less.”
Greed and consumerism encourage our wanting. The promotion of a lifestyle, product, idea, gadget, or even a certain kind of experience can get us hooked on wanting what we do not have and do not need, even on what will make us unhappy rather than happy. The result is that we buy more, eat more, and consume more.
Craving has certainly been around since earliest times. Buddha taught that all life is suffering, and that craving is the underlying cause of that suffering. Writing around the turn of the 19th century, Franz Kafka said, “I do not read advertisements – I would spend all my time wanting things.” Just imagine what he would think were he alive today being bombarded by marketing messages. Wanting things is not merely a modern phenomenon, but the stimuli and enticements do seem to be greater than ever.
Last week, I went to the mall to get a $5 battery for my watch. The day I dropped off my watch, the sales signs I saw when I passed the shoe department caught my eye. I ended up buying a pair of boots. The day I picked up the watch, the 50 percent clearance signage next to the watch counter caught my eye, and I ended up with two pairs of earrings.
That’s pretty harmless, no doubt. But I spent more on impulse purchases than the item I needed. I’m not particularly worried about buying a couple of pairs of half-priced earrings. But imagine a day-long shopping spree in the midst of a stressful time spending hundreds of dollars on impulse purchases when already in debt. Unfortunately, this is becoming part of the American way.
When we become consumed by what we want, particularly when it goes beyond meeting our basic needs, there may be something essentially unfulfilled in us. Psychotherapist Sasha Loring says, “We hunger, [and] we experience a fundamental and pervasive dissatisfaction with what is.” It’s so easy to get caught wanting more love, more wealth, more knowledge, and in believing that we are lacking in some way at some fundamental cellular level. When this happens, we actually need “to overcome the craving that leads to excessive consumption.” Yet reducing this craving is incredibly difficult. (“How to Tame the Wanting Mind,” Sasha Loring, Shambala Sun, July 2011)
Poet Sylvia Plath said, “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.” Plath struggled with depression and suicidal tendencies. She knew from her own painful experience how wanting everything and wanting nothing are two aspects of the same struggle. She ultimately killed herself.
The question I ask myself is not how to moderate or reduce pleasure. It is how to increase it. How can we experience pleasure more fully and minimize our wanting?
It is impossible to imagine anyone being happy and contented without experiencing pleasure in life. We all like to feel good. Pleasure makes our lives rich and fulfilling. It gives our existence its vibrancy, excitement, peace, and joy. We find it in a startling array of activities, in everything from an encounter with beauty, such as in nature or art, in savoring food and sex, in reading a novel, in acts of generosity and compassion, through purposeful work, through volunteerism, and through our connections with other people and other creatures.
Universalist Hosea Ballou believed we have a God-given right to be happy – very different from the idea that we must earn our pleasures, which was one of the rules I cited earlier. Ballou lived in the 19th century. And it was thanks in part to Ballou, that by the end of the 19th century one out of every eight Americans called themselves Universalists. Ballou was an author, a public lecturer, an itinerant preacher, editor of various Universalist journals and minister of the Second Universalist Society of Boston.
He was also one of the theological spokespersons for our Universalist motto, “God is love.” Ballous insisted that when we feel this love we are happy. He insisted that human beings are created to be fulfilled and happy. In Ballou's own words – and remember he was writing in the 19th century using terminology of his time: "... if the Almighty, as we believe him to be, did not possess power sufficient to make all his creatures happy, it was not an act of goodness in him to create them... . If it be granted that God has both power and will to save all men, it is granting all I want for a foundation of my faith.”
According to contemporary UU theologian and professor Thandeka, “Ballou's legacy to us as Unitarian Universalists today is our awareness of our God-given right to be happy. Hosea Ballou made human happiness a mandate of liberal faith.” (“What Moves Us Curriculum,” Tapestry of Faith, “Introducing Hosea Ballou”)
So how do we maximize pleasure and reduce craving. Neuroscience may hold some answers. It is providing us with an understanding of the scientific dimension of pleasure. The brain responds to various pleasure stimuli. Our pleasure-seeking and pleasure-receiving behaviors actually alter the pleasure circuitry in our brains. Addiction changes the pleasure circuitry in the brain.
But thankfully, prayer and meditation do too. Practices like prayer, mindfulness, and meditation have been found to counteract the ill effects of addiction and stress. Our brains our malleable and can be altered by transcendent experience as well as by addiction. University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Baime says,
Several neuroscientists have shown that some of the brain regions activated during meditation are actually different in people who meditate regularly, and the most recent evidence suggests that the changes can occur in as little as eight weeks. … Meditation practice is associated with changes of specific brains areas that are essential for attention, learning and the regulation of emotion. (“This is Your Brain on Mindfulness,” Shambala Sun, July 2011)
As a result of recent scientific support for mindfulness practice, it is being integrated into many contexts – into medicine, the workplace, and elsewhere. Mindfulness is intentional. It brings full awareness into the present moment and to the unfolding of life as it is. It increases our ability to know ourselves and to stay with our experience of the present moment. Rather than operating on auto-pilot, we become attentive to our experience and our lives as we are living them.
The point of meditation, prayer, and spiritual discipline isn’t to destroy the senses or deny pleasure but instead to learn to focus our attention in order to be happier, more peaceful, and more contented. The point is to be liberated from wanting in order to experience genuine, long-lasting, life-affirming pleasure.
The world abounds with pleasures. Let’s enjoy life. Let’s learn to experience love, belonging, a sense of purpose, peace, and pleasure that is ultimately fulfilling to us and our relationships, that is healing to others and ourselves rather than harmful, that serves the world and our own best interests. Let’s practice our God-given right to be happy.