If my child ever came to me talking about “mogging” or being “mogged,” I’d simply remind him, or her, that Rilke wrote —“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
A key to overcoming addictive behaviours is to notice the distinction between the feeling of “I am enjoying this” and the feeling of “I want more of this.”
The two generally get lumped together in people’s experience but they are actually quite independent.
People are perhaps more familiar with having the feeling of “I am enjoying this” without the feeling of “I want more of this.”
It’s basically the feeling of satisfaction and is perfectly healthy.
But what people notice less is that we can have the experience of “I want more of this” without the experience of “I am enjoying this.”
This experience I would say lies at the heart of many addictive behaviours.
For example, when eating very sugary, salty, or highly processed foods often as soon as it hits the tongue the brain will send the “I want more of this” signal without ever actually sending the “I am enjoying this” signal.
Likewise with phone and social media usage / gaming etc..
People often assume that if they want more of something, they must be enjoying it.
So when they experience the “I want more of this” impulse they will assume that they are enjoying the experience.
So a key part of escaping the addictive cycle lies in decoupling the two.
Noticing that often when experiencing “I want more of this” impulse we are often not actually experiencing an “I am enjoying this” feeling.
As we increasingly notice that the “I want more of this” feeling is not an enjoyable one, it starts to undermine the power of the “I want more of this feeling.”
The illusion of enjoyment that it offers is seen through and much of its addictive power is lost.
It’s one thing I think meditation can be useful for in helping us find the clarity to notice the extent to which ostensibly compelling experiences are actually satisfying or not.
By developing this wisdom we can restructure the orientation of our mind towards increasingly satisfying and increasingly less addictive life experiences.
I spoke about this with Hayden Dunham in my book, it was a source of great frustration for her, SOPHIE and AG. There was humour in their music for sure but what they put out was always sincere and always came from a genuine love for synthetic sounds and pop music. SOPHIE especially was 100% earnest about her music, the music press just perpetually assumed this mask of irony which wasn’t there… this is dead wrong
When Walter White repeatedly said that he was cooking meth ‘for his family’ did you think that the director was trying to convince you that he was actually doing it for his family, or did you understand the character well enough to know that the director was trying to showcase the depth of his self-deception?
Marty Supreme is an egotistical, self-aggrandising Jewish antihero in the 50s who dreams about bringing himself - and his recently annihilated people - glory through sport. When he says ‘we built that’, do you think Josh Safdie is trying to say to the audience that the Jews built the pyramids, or can you understand that he is trying to showcase the self-mythologising nature of Marty’s character?
I cannot believe people are this media illiterate that this has to be spelled out to them step by step as if they are children.
today i did 4 lines of BRAT coke
took the EUSEXUA & AFTERGLOW shrooms
injected the WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA ketamine
snorted the THAT'S SHOWBIZ BABY! poppers
ate the Fancy Some More? & SEQUENCE 01.5 edibles
overdosed w the Through The Wall LSD
& drank the Raven Ayahuasca #healed