This podcast explores the hedonic treadmill, which states that people will adapt to pleasure over time, making its pursuit a marginal endeavor. Through four life examples, I show how this adaptation affects your perceptions of both pleasure and pain, before discussing the implication that we will eventually adapt to anything encountered in the material world. I share my thoughts on how to deal with this awareness and how I used it to make a recent decision that came after a negative event in my life.
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Previous Podcast: How The Manosphere Crushed Feminism
Hedonism is a dead end.
From my experience, there are two things that provide real satisfaction in an ongoing basis.
1. Spiritual connection to God and pursuits via prayer and the Bible.
2. Psychological connection the subconscious via an active dream life.
There is a continual newness of life and existence when engaged in these two areas of human experience.
Really? Spiritual connection to God, is he answering back to you?
God speaks in the silence of meditation. It works with Buddha, too. In fact, it works without without the idea of Buddah.
Aah, the mishmash of religions called New Age. I know a few bible-reading reiki-healing diviners myself.
I shit you not they claim they can tame dragons & that they have telepathy.
All I know is that it’s never good to argue with such people, who knows what a reincarnated dragonborn with Professor X powers can do?
Gray aliens told me you were wrong, dirty reptilian. Repent or make me a sandwich.
The blue aliens told me different.
You’re both wrong. Green aliens is where it’s at.
🙂
Do you thinh blue aliens are better than greay aliens ? aRE YOU PREJUDICED , Aliens lives matters !
I may have to agree. Captain Kirk did well with that one.
I haven’t met any man that meditates that I couldn’t bitch slap to the ground in a goddamn second.
We should meet ! You could bitchslap me, then i could break your bones ! We will have so much fun.
I once read a police report about me. It said I was a dangerous and violent psychopath, and advised them never to approach me without at least 3 police officers present. Good luck breaking my bones ………..
The Gray ones gave me candy.
Did you frame it?
I’m sad. Maybe i’d see you in the next riot ?
Anime vs New Age
Kamehame vs Psi powers
This shit is hilarious.
There have been some good articles about meditation on RoK in the past, and I have spoken with at least one of the authors. He didn’t strike me as a pushover: http://www.returnofkings.com/59778/need-motivation-learn-to-meditate
That’s because the officers are supposed to restrain unhinged individuals without hurting them seriously in the process. Even a teenage girl can be extremely difficult to restrain if she’s psyched out of her mind.
I was paid $104k last year by doing an online job and I did that by working part-time for few hrs every day. I used an earning opportunity I stumbled upon online and I am excited that I was able to earn such great money. It’s really newbie friendly and I’m so thankful that i found this. Here is what i did… http://jump.wtf/2hJBjCL
v
New age feminist bullshit.
I wish there were a God so I could spit on him.
“New age feminist bullshit”
Fascinating. First, there is nothing “new age” about this and most feminists are atheists.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/29/why-feminists-less-religious-survey
Christianity is the greatest patriarchy we have after all.
When you think about it, they would have to be hypocrites and an actual christian feminist cannot exist.
But frankly, looking at feminism it makes sense that it’d be founded on atheism.
After all atheism is a stance of denial of any values.
To be able to reach such degree of inanity as in feminism, communism or all the others one has to be free of any moral restraints.
Only atheism offers this.
As inane as “New age feminist bullshit” might sound, it’s actually very accurate.
Helena Blavatsky gave rise to the New Age thought, she predicted the coming of the Age of Aquarius(The New Age religion). She was a proto-feminist. She dressed as a man, she disdained christinity & she spoke with the “masters”, which predated Crawley’s satanic spirit cooking. Evil patriarchy was a reccuring theme in her theosophical work.
New Age & feminism infiltrated the mainstream during the hippie period, they are the one and the same.
Also I know atheists that go to an astrologer, that also do yoga, that’s New Age for you.
Red pill is reality. Blue pill is fantasy.
Running your life via an imaginary super being + your dreams = fantasy (if not outright insanity). I would suggest you seek medical help.
You have no way to say for certain that there is no God, without yourself making a statement of faith (a point made with no way to prove it, iow). Chill out and relax dude, because if I was on the fence about God and read your post, then examined your other posts here and see how thoroughly miserable you are, I’d probably swing towards religion.
And she, in turn, received hers from Anton Mesmer, the 18th century prognosticator of Mesmerism, or Animal Magnetism. The precursor of the bullshit “Law of Attraction”. Ever hear someone say they’re mesmerized? That’s where it comes from.
I have no way for certain to say their aren’t faeries living at the bottom of your garden. But as a general rule of thumb, never believe any stories made up by a bunch of Jews.
& kardec & Bohme & buddist practicioners etc.
Mesmer wasn’t related to feminism, Blavatsky’s succesor Besant was.
She and her Krishnamurthi abomination were symbols of the new age religion.
I just like how atheists claim to be rational whilst concluding something that is based on blind faith.
It isn’t scientific to have an opinion on something that you haven’t perceived anything of.
With your experience you should neither affirm that god exists nor should you categorically deny it.
Your cute fairies don’t change that.
Regardless, I see how atheists run their lives and I don’t see any merit to it.
Your notion that atheism is needed to properly and not insanely run your life is plain ignorant.
Frankly, no matter what it be, sodomites or communists or whatever, they are hardly christian. It is insane to deny any inherent values in life after all. You reduce your life to nothing but a matter of definition and now you only have two paths: nihilism or hedonism.
No matter what, aside from all, I don’t see any benefits in atheism for running ones life.
Can’t disagree with this. However are you sure that a “psychological connection to your subconscious” is new age or even magical or whatever? I mean you hardly claim that that Helena invented praying and a spiritual connection to god?
Also, dreams are how our subconscious works through experiences so I have heard.
Albeit I wouldn’t say to have much of a connection to my subconscious it hardly sounds fantastical to me.
” are you sure that a “psychological connection to your subconscious” is new age or even magical or whatever?”
Spiritual connection comes through 2 metods:
1.Initiation – see orthodox hesychasm, see sufism, taoists.
In regards to hesychasm, when someone becomes a monk he loses his old identity & he becomes an exoterist(the monk prays, he controls his posture, he fasts). If his superior sees him worthy(the apprentice mastered the exoterist practices) then the master inititates the apprentice(the monk changes his name again), giving the apprentice access to the spiritual world.
A spiritual cult’s practices must originate from Antiquity, that’s how u see whether it’s authentic or not.
The profane don’t have acces to the spiritual even if they pray or meditate.(there are very rare exceptions ofc)
2. mysticism (God wishes to reveal Himself) – see Swedenborg & Bohme. Mystics can’t share their powers, they just have them(or they are crazy).
Blavatsky, Crawley, Kardec are counter-initiators. Channeling
is the connection to the lower plane, it’s similar to the voodoo practices & tantra .
That’s great and all but I don’t see the connection to dreams and a spiritual connection to god still isn’t new age.
1)I basically wrote that there isn’t anything that u can do to establish a spiritual connection to God without proper masters. New Age believes that u don’t need them, that u can do it on your own.
2)If u believe that lucid dreaming & drinking ayahuasca is spirituality then more power to you.
Well, I always thought that the example of the lone prophet in the desert means that you can establish a spiritual connection to god on your own.
And I don’t think that lucid dreaming is spirituality and I have no clue what ayahuasca is.
Regardless, this conversation was very informing.
The practical truth of the above probably doesn’t depend on the ultimate nature of reality, but on psychological realism. Obviously you can argue that such an approach might be based on self-deception and is therefore not red pill, but that rather depends on the approach
There is.
And you can.
And still no one gives a shit.
Clint Eastwood, “Heartbreak Ridge”, 1986: “Improvise, adapt, overcome.”
Powerful words that I remember decades after hearing them.
“I’ll send you home with that just-pumped-the-neighbors-cat look on your face”
An overlooked Clint film. But it is/was the balls.
Why don’t you just have another sip of your pink daquiri…
Clusterfuck (first time I ever heard the word).
And “Swede. Swede. Swede”
Great podcast. I’m really enjoying Roosh’s recent work. How to be more resilient, hedonic adaptation, etc. This is another reason to keep improving yourself, but adopt some level of minimalism in your life. Chasing after shiny things is, ultimately, a dead end.
Absolutely. I’m currently reading Antifragilität (Antifragile) and highly recommend it. Roosh made a good summary of the book and there are other summaries (Julien Blanc did a video on it) but the book is so amazing – it changed the way I perceive my surroundings. Together with the works of the Stoics it is the most influential book I ever read. Nassim Taleb even dedicated a whole chapter to Seneca.
Warrior men fight ……. homo Greeks read and talk. Which one are you most like? I certainly wouldn’t read anything written by a homo, Jew or Arab ….. these people are our enemies.
Don’t take all believers as pussies….
That would be a mistake on your part bitch
Antifragile – I’ll read it. Cheers
Most Americunts are surrounded by hedonism from birth to grave. That’s why they are so insufferable.
OT
Cartola was Red Pill. Advice for young daughters out there:
Haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but I couldn’t agree more that hedonism is a huge risk to mental (and physical) well-being. It’s worth remembering that our entire western bubble economy depends on the creation and multiplication of desire, increasingly based upon identities that are manufactured around and defined in terms of particular desire complexes, most obviously but not exclusively with respect to sexual identities (increasingly including quite obviously made up ones) and the created hungers that go with it.
Such a desire / debt economy depends on both the need for instant gratification but also the potentially infinite deferment of the thing desired – consider the psychoanalytic concept of ‘lack’. Leaving aside the psychological truth of that idea one could see the modern world as deliberately manufacturing such a bitter aftertaste to attempts to satiate ones appetites, as something creative of addiction and craving, without which we could not be tempted into ever great debt and servitude
Just say no and the monster will begin to die
I’m not entirely sure hedonism encompasses buying stuff. More about drugs and other pleasures of the flesh. Things in which I have been indulging heavily for the past 10 years …….. totally pissed at the moment. I would be taking drugs if I wasn’t scared the police would shoot me in the head and dump my body. I’m 100% in favour of hedonism, but not all that keen on buying stuff.
Now I think about hedonism …….. I didn’t do any in the west, it was all work and not much sex. Nah, western culture is about control and restriction ….. for white men anyway.
” I would be taking drugs if I wasn’t scared the police would shoot me in the head and dump my body. I’m 100% in favour of hedonism, but not all that keen on buying stuff.”
You live in the Philippines? I think people who have given up on drugs – like heroin – often think of it as though it would be blissful if it weren’t for the economic and social constraints / consequences – i.e. if you were a billionaire and could pay for your unlimited fix (health implications aside) then there would be no reason not to indulge.
I think the argument against hedonism shouldn’t depend upon the existence of such constraints but rather on the idea that it is the orientation of mind body and soul towards pleasure (of whatever kind) that is itself corrupting. Hard drugs, sex etc are the most obvious example here, but there are any number of similar forms of hedonistic pursuit. Coffee, masturbation etc might not be the same as heroin, but in all cases what you get is some kind of neurological reward system: receptor cells in the brains are activated by some or other brain chemical, within some kind of pleasure circuit, but typically with decreasing effect – hence the need in many cases to up the hit to get the same reward etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system.
The point here is that hedonism is something very difficult to control, and indeed may result in the hedonist being controlled by the pleasure he seeks. To the extent that is not the case, one might argue that it is not the form of pleasure itself that is evil (leaving other moral issues aside) but the typically addictive nature of the pursuit of such pleasure. Of course, the pursuit of pleasure may not be addictive in some cases, and presumably you have something like that in mind, however there is still a question as to whether it is a worthy orientation of soul so to speak (although that might just be puritanical moralising)
I think buying stuff should classify as hedonism in a wider sense but I get your point – it isn’t what is usually understood as hedonism. My point though related to identities that seem to be increasingly based upon what we (are told we) desire and the satiation of those desires. Perhaps not all desires are for pleasure or pleasurable things, but arguably we are talking about the same kind of reward circuits, but with respect to identities that are oriented towards the satisfaction of desire, particularly through varieties of consumerism, not only iphones, sex, heroin etc, but through consumer lifestyles that come (pre-) packaged in relation those things – have you seen the Witch – you could argue that one character in that film sells her soul because she would like to enjoy the taste of butter!
For an alternative more upbeat view on hedonism you might want to consider the hedonism imperative https://www.hedweb.com/ – which argues that suffering can be abolished in all sentient life.
Listen to this: “the metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture – a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world’s last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event.”
Sounds good, but is it?
Roosh,
I always get a lot of pleasure out of helping people. Many times there is no material cost but the amount of karma you receive is very high. Try volunteering at an orphanage. Trying helping out a poor family. I get more out of this type of activity than just about anything I have ever done.
I especially enjoyed the part about taking pleasure in small things that cannot be easily taken from you.
I can relate to this as I approach 40. Knowlege becomes wisdom as your character becomes solidified and well defined. It’s the satisfaction of accomplishment that a man should have. It comes from things such as understanding people, mastering your field of work, and knowing how to handle the skirts.
Great episode. I really liked that you ended with realistic life hack advices, such as to enjoy coffee and a workout, and avoid spending on expensive stuff that give little in return. Cost/benefit and return on investment analyses are indeed very valuable for most men. Thus we all can agree – regardless of one currently is into hedonistic game or not – that being a beta orbiter in like NYC and spending thousands of dollars on girls in restaurants and clubs are very bad ROI and hack.