Epicurus and How To live on The Hedonic Treadmill

Why, when it comes to pleasure, less is more

As the Notorious B.I.G wrote, “Mo money, mo problems”. Perhaps we all grasp the wisdom of this on some level — and yet few of us give up the pursuit of more: more money, more sex more exciting experiences, more knowledge…

If the modern, Western world is marked by anything, it is excess. This excess is woven into the very fabric of our day-to-day lives. As we sit in the drive-through, we can effortlessly make it bacon while sipping on our venti caramel crunch frappuccino and absentmindedly scrolling through all the world’s accumulated knowledge while wondering if we should stop and get beer on the way home.

We may be gluttons but at least we are happy gluttons, no?

It seems, then, that getting more and more of what we want is not making us happier or healthier. However, our experience dictates otherwise. Every time we opt to make it bacon, we get a little jolt of pleasure. As we string together more and more of these pleasurable experiences throughout the day, we should become happier. But we don’t.

Related posts:

El ser humano como animal social, se ha rodeado de otras especies para desarrollo de su vida desde el principio de los tiempos. Aunque antes la tendencia era imponernos como seres con raciocinio…

Since starting my channel I’ve been getting lots of questions, and I’ve noticed that the one thing that everyone really has in common is that we’re all different. Specifically, we all have a…

This was an experiment to see if my operating system matters at all to how I work and how productive I can be. Having been on OSX on a Macbook Pro for the last seven years, I wanted to see how easily…