Dear Y
Not very long ago, I gave you my old PC which is, as I configured it for AI projects a few years ago, still perfectly suitable to play current computer games. Since this day, you have enjoyed this device many times. Recently we noticed that you were - again - playing games until very late in the night. After musing some time about it, I have today decided to write you a (this) letter.
I know you enjoy playing these games very much. You also already know that your mother and I are worried about you if you do it too often. But why? It‘s great fun, how can it be wrong? What makes gaming different from other activities you enjoy a lot and which are OK for us?
It’s actually not so easy to give good answers to these questions. I will try anyway.
You are right that trying to fulfill our wishes often leads us to happiness. If we get what we want, we are happy. Depending on what it is, the happiness may last longer or shorter. Now why are things which make us extremely happy sometimes dangerous?
The happiness you feel is something evolution „designed“ over millions of years as a reward for success. Therefore extraordinary happiness should be reserved for special achievements, like finding extra nutritious food or the first sex with the girl you fell in love with. The problem is now: evolution has shaped our brain under conditions which were very different from the conditions we live in today. Over time, humans have invented many ways to induce strong feelings of happiness in us which did not exist before. To give you an example: people learned to produce sugar from sugar cane only a few thousand years ago in India. This is far too little time to allow evolution to „update“ the brain for the challenges which this new invention brought us. And the challenge is: such strong feelings of happiness typically override all other cravings. This actually makes sense: if you find some bunch of rare and extra sweet fruits, you should focus on eating them and not waste your time thinking about the girl you are in love with! This is efficient behavior and helps you to survive in an environment where such fruits are very rare.
But what now, if there is an endless supply of such fruits? If they are in fact not rare at all anymore and you can always and anytime eat as many as you want? To focus on eating the fruits also means that you must neglect many other needs. This is not a problem as long as you focus on a particular need only for a short time. You can catch up with the other things you like to do later (and you lose nothing).
But what if the abundance of the fruits in our modern time lures you into eating them all the time and forgetting about all your other needs and wishes? Of course all your other needs are getting frustrated. If you now stop to eat the fruits, the strong reward you receive from eating them vanishes. What‘s left is only the frustration from all the needs you have neglected while eating the fruits. Very often it is not possible to satisfy them immediately. But what you do have in front of you is another fruit! So now there is this huge temptation to just eat another fruit to make the frustration go away. So you continue to eat fruits! And of course, by doing so you frustrate all your other needs even further. If you decide to stop eating the fruits again later, you feel even worse than the first time and continuing to eat fruits again will feel even more appealing to you. Now you are addicted to the fruits!
There are so many things which can make us happy that I cannot list them all here. And this is a good thing: we are complex, rich creatures. It makes our lives interesting and beautiful. But this also means: it's rather easy to frustrate some of them by focusing on one or a few strong rewards.
With the increasing number of ways to produce strong feelings of happiness, the problem is much more challenging than only a few years ago. Let‘s look at some common sources of strong rewards:
- TV, Youtube, Netflix (reward our curiosity!) etc.
- Sweet/salty/fatty food, lots of food
- Computer games
- Social media
- Porn
- Drugs like marihuana, alcohol, heroin, crack …
- Medication (painkillers, sleeping pills etc.)
- Gambling
They all have in common that they are relatively new inventions and are available in abundance. Drugs can be expensive but most people can still afford enough of them to ruin themselves easily. Drugs are particularly dangerous because they act directly on the reward system on the brain. The happiness you feel from them is actually based on nothing. They steal your time, your life and leave you with a huge feeling of emptiness, failure and regret as soon as you stop taking them.
And in the last few decades they have become much more potent: the fentanyl of 2022 is maybe 100x as powerful as the heroin of the 1980‘s. The marihuana I was smoking sometimes as a teenager was 50x weaker than the breeds which are consumed today. There are now several drugs which are so potent that they can make you addicted after consuming a single (!) dose. The experience if you take them is so strong that the only thing you want is more of the same.
But other reward sources are catching up too: social media platforms use advanced AI to select content personally for you which stimulates your curiosity as much as possible. Even computer games are made in a way which maximizes their addictive potential.
Should we consume drugs at all? It is most probably not dangerous if you watch a Netflix move from time to time or play a computer game once in a while. Also a glass of wine a day or a joint on Saturday night will not harm you. But you have to be aware of the following:
- Every person is different! What your friends might be able to handle well, might be a deadly trap for you.
- All of the reward sources listed above have the potential to ruin your life.
Therefore you have to be extremely cautious with the weaker ones and should strictly avoid the strong ones. All of them should be treated with great respect. And strictly avoid means never, ever (!). You would not jump from a bridge just to „try if it is really as bad as people say“. That would be simply stupid and in the same way it is simply stupid to try synthetic drugs.
So when you next time have to switch off your computer (because Mama complains after several hours of playing), please listen to your inner voices: that you miss talking to somebody, that you are actually hungry and need to pee, that you would like to listen to some music, that you want to hug Mama,… . Listen to them and take them seriously! You are responsible for all of them! You are the king of an „inner world“ of craving „creatures“ which constitute your mind. Try to be a good king! Make all of them happy and not only one! Live a rich life full of all kinds of different pleasures. Try to combine them, let them interact: for instance, talking to friends and eating and drinking go well together. If you are interested in computer games, join a team of people who make them. Play together the game you contributed to and discuss it with the others. Eat dinner (ideally cooked by you) with your new friends afterwards and joke about the game and yourself. Then play the game with your cute little brother….
If you cannot resist a weak drug, try to make it hard to get: get used to drink the wines which are so expensive that you actually can‘t really afford them. You will buy and drink less and enjoy the rare moments when you open a bottle much more. If you really need to smoke, smoke a Havanna once a month and not a cigarette every hour. And it is much better to have 20 small vices than one big addiction.
And most importantly: don‘t try to compensate the sadness of one of the „creatures“ by making another one extra happy. It‘s a recipe for disaster! If one of the „creatures“ complains, you must listen to it and improve its „life“ by trying to make it happy too.
All this won‘t be easy! It was not easy for me (it is still not!) and the available temptations multiply like rabbits these days. Be careful, be smart in the sense that you know and feel yourself. Don‘t let anybody steal your life. We all need you to be thoroughly happy for many many years to come.
Take care & good luck! Enjoy!
(and remember T.W.: „the harder I take care, the luckier I get“).
Hug
Marco
Image: Shutterstock / Lightspring
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