The Rise of Hyperpleasures

Several years ago I was in conversation with a friend of mine, a former addict, who was sharing with me how he felt after a few years of sobriety. His comments to me were unusually candid. “I love drugs — I still love drugs,” he told me. “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s exactly my problem. I wouldn’t be an addict if I hated them.”

I was reminded of this conversation several months ago after coming across this post on Reddit, where someone asked why it takes methamphetamine users years to feel joy again after getting clean. The top commenter gave this insight:

Someone once described it as follows:

regular people have a happiness scale going from 0-10. Meth makes that scale go all the way to 1000. Getting a 9/10 is amazing, a 9/1000 barely registers.

I have returned to that comment several times over the past few months — not because I have ever experienced anything as miserable as drug withdrawal, but because it seems to accord well with my friend’s experience in his own path to sobriety. Even after years of being clean, he still acknowledges that drugs were, in a sense, deeply enjoyable At no point has he denied the pleasure they brought him.

I have never been a drug user, so I cannot share any personal testimony to corroborate these observations. But I do think there’s a metaphor here which we can broadly apply to our current situation, to the experiences you and I have both felt while living in a technological era.

A Scale of Pleasure

Let’s play with this metaphor a little bit. Assume for a moment, as the comment above suggests, that ordinary happiness — or “pleasure,” as I would prefer we call it — falls on a 1 through 10 scale.

For the purposes of this analogy, I want us to move away from the term “happiness” and use the word “pleasure” as a way to make a distinction between the two ideas. Let’s define pleasure here in its narrowest sense; assume that “pleasure” is a short term, “feel-good” state, a dopamine hit divorced from questions of long-term satisfaction or fulfillment felt while engaging in a certain activity.

We understand what would fall at the lower end of this pleasure scale — pain, sickness, and grief make us all feel like a 1 or a 2. At the opposite end we find certain pleasures that have been accessible to most of humanity across time and culture. These can nearly unanimously be described as life’s great pleasures: sex, a home-cooked meal, conversation with friends, playing a preferred instrument or sport, and so on. These activities bring us to somewhere between 8 and 10 on the pleasure scale.

We love our 8, 9, 10 activities. But we also realize that in all these activities there exists a certain level of discomfort due to physical, social, or mental effort — which means that while all these activities are pleasurable, they are not maximally pleasurable, at least according to our narrow definition of the word. We enjoy sex in spite of its required vulnerability. A lively conversation with friends demands social poise and focus. We play sports even though it leaves us winded. Our discomfort rarely outweighs the pleasure we experience completing these activities, but we cannot say we enjoy these experiences because of their discomforts. Even experiences which qualify as a 10 do so not because discomfort has been erased, but because we have become so enraptured in the activity that any accompanying discomfort has largely been forgotten.

Thus, if we take a broad look at our history, the pleasures associated with the ordinary activities of life have often been capped. Humans have always had access to pleasure, of course, but our capacity to remove discomfort from pleasure has basically always been nil.

Drugs and alcohol may be the significant exception here. We know these can produce states of excessive pleasure. However, the reason drugs and alcohol give us pleasure is because these substances are psychoactive above all else. While other activities are pleasurable in spite of discomfort, drugs and alcohol are pleasurable because they remove discomfort. Their telos is to numb us.

The Rise of Hyperpleasures

So it may be that drugs, alcohol, and other psychoactive substances are the prototypes of what I’m calling “hyperpleasures.” If humans experience pain and pleasure on a 1-10 scale, then hyperpleasures are those activities which take us “off the scale,” so to speak. They give us experiences that make us feel like a 20, 30, 100, 1,000, and so on. The particular number is arbitrary, of course, but the principle remains — these are pleasures that go far beyond the ordinary range of enjoyment, principally by removing those discomforts we experience in our ordinary pleasures.

Hyperpleasures, then, are not new. Humans have been enjoying drugs and alcohol for the entirety of our written history. Plenty of people from before the modern era have known what it’s like to feel like a 20, 30, 100, or 1,000.

What is new, however, is the broadening of our hyperpleasures with the rise of our technological advances in the 20^th and 21^st century. I mean this in two senses. One, our technological era has produced a broadening of the kinds of hyperpleasures available to us. In other words, we’re no longer reliant solely on drugs and alcohol to make us feel above a 10. Additionally, never before have hyperpleasures been so imminently accessible to us. Our technological advances mean that hyperpleasures are always crouching at the door, just within our reach.

Consider how the following technological advances have given us hyperpleasures like never before.

• Sex: If sex gives an 8, 9, 10 on the pleasure scale, then internet pornography gives a 20, 30, 100, etc. Sex demands vulnerability and requires two bodies, both of which will almost always be imperfect. Internet pornography, on the other hand, gives users the capacity to indulge any fantasy imaginable, almost always with perfect bodies. The user is almost always alone, which means he completely foregoes the social demands required during sex.
• Play: If children sword fighting with sticks gives them an 8, 9, 10 on the pleasure scale, then video games give kids a 20, 30, 100, etc. Sword fighting with sticks requires an exertion of energy and use of the imagination. Video games are played on couches in an air-conditioned climate, where the work of imagination is done for them.
• Reading: If reading gives an 8,9, 10 on the pleasure scale, then social media is a 20, 30, 100, etc. Reading requires a constant stream of focus, and not every sentence will hold our interest. Social media works around that discomfort by presenting bite-sized content, curated to be 100% interesting to us 100% of the time.  
• Conversation: If conversations give us an 8,9, 10 on the pleasure scale, then videos give us a 20, 30, 100, etc. Conversations demand something of us: We must pay attention to social cues, move things along with questions and statements, read the other person’s intonations and emotions. Videos give us all the benefits of conversation without any demands: We hear stories, we learn, we laugh, we delight in other people. All that’s required of us is to sit and passively receive.

This list is not exhaustive by any means. But hopefully it shows a sampling of what kinds of hyperpleasures have now been made available to us thanks to technology: internet pornography, video games, social media, videos. We could go on to examine how an array of hyperpleasures have invaded our institutions. Think about what kinds of tech we’ve brought into the food industry, into universities, possibly even into churches.

But suffice to say, the lid has come off. We know no limits to the kinds and degrees of pleasures available to us. Ordinary pleasures have given way to hyperpleasures — especially as companies and media platforms become more adept at identifying our discomforts and rooting them out. Think, for example, how the latest iPad ad conveys the destruction of ordinarily pleasurable activities in place of the newest piece of tech. What they might as well have said is this: You used to settle for things that make you feel like an 8, 9, 10; here’s something that will make you feel like a 20, 30, 100.

Implications

Before continuing, I probably need to remind you that it’s better here to understand hyperpleasures as an analogy or metaphor, which may correspond to how we actually perceive pleasure but cannot be reduced to it. The human condition is far too complex to be reducible to numbers.

But as an analogy, I think the concept is helpful for the following reasons.

Hyperpleasures and Choice

Hyperpleasures help us explain why, when given the option between activity A and activity B, so many are inclined to choose activity B. If activity A makes us feel like an 8, 9, or 10 and activity B makes us feel like a 20, 30, or 100, all of us will face the temptation to indulge in activity B. We are creatures of comfort, after all, and the possibility of removing discomfort even from the most enjoyable activity is an appealing one.

Earlier this year, Ted Gioia’s State of the Culture made rounds across the internet as he diagnosed a concerning trend. In this essay, Gioia claims we are now living in “dopamine culture,” caught in cycles of addiction brought about by major tech companies. Toward the end of his essay Gioia cites an example of dopamine culture in effect, taken from Dr. Anna Lembke’s book Dopamine Nation:

My patient Sophie, a Stanford undergraduate from South Korea, came in seeking help for depression and anxiety. Among the many things we talked about, she told me she spends most of her waking hours plugged into some kind of device: Instagramming, YouTubing, listening to podcasts and playlists.

In session with her I suggested she try walking to class without listening to anything and just letting her own thoughts bubble to the surface.

She looked at me both incredulous and afraid.

“Why would I do that?” she asked, openmouthed.

Overlay this example of dopamine culture with the concept of hyperpleasures. Any time Sophie walks to class, she is presented with a choice between a pleasure and a hyperpleasure: She can either walk without listening to anything, or walk and listen to whatever she wants.

Walking without earbuds can be a genuine pleasure — if the birds are out and the weather is friendly, we could easily see this as an 8, 9, 10 on the pleasure scale. But to walk with the chance to listen to anything we desire is a 20, 30, 100 on the pleasure scale. Without earbuds, our capacity for enjoyment is limited based on our natural surroundings. Earbuds in, the possibilities for enjoyment are endless.

Thus, in our technological age people are often caught between two worlds, forced to choose between what is pleasurable and what is beyond pleasurable. Activity A may be a genuinely enjoyable activity, but as an ordinary pleasure it comes with certain discomforts and limitations. Activity B, on the other hand, promises to move past those limitations, satiating our desire for maximal pleasure. Who wouldn’t want to choose Activity B, then, when the option is presented so readily?

Now, juxtaposing the options in this way may lead some of us to wonder whether it’s really right to call this a “choice.” Do we really have the freedom to choose between activity A and activity B? Or are we being forced, whether by addiction or some other means, into choosing activity B?

The answer to this question is undoubtedly complex, and since I’m not a psychologist, I hesitate to give any account of the nature of compulsion and addiction. But I think I’m in agreement with L.M. Sacasas here when, responding to Gioia’s essay, he reminds us that we may not be as innocent as we suppose in our participation in dopamine culture.

When read in a certain light, Gioia’s essay may lead some to believe that we are victims of dopamine culture without any personal agency in our actions. It may be true that we are being manipulated by tech companies and media platforms — we have good reasons to think we are. But aren’t we also complicit to a certain extent? As Sacasas rightly asks, “Why . . . do we turn to the media of “dopamine culture” in the first place and what keeps us coming back long enough to get addicted (if that is, in fact, what is happening)? Are there no genuine human desires in play at all? Do we keep coming back because we are addicted or because we imagine that we have no better alternative or no good reason not to?”

These are good questions, and I think the concept of hyperpleasures can help give us an answer. To frame this in Augustinian terms, we keep coming back to things like media — and their associated hyperpleasures — because that’s what our will inclines us to do. We’ve ordered our loves such that we tend to love those things which bring us maximal pleasure and tend to avoid those activities which bring us discomfort, even if those discomforts are packaged with truly enjoyable activities. So long as the desires of our will are bent toward maximizing pleasure, we will be inclined to choose activity B over activity A, and we’ll keep coming back to activity B so long as we love and enjoy it more than activity A. As my friend observed, we never get addicted to things we hate.

Hyperpleasures and Enjoying the Normal

Hyperpleasures help us explain why so many people have difficulty enjoying activity A after choosing to quit activity B. The past few years have produced an abundance of articles, books, podcasts, etc., bemoaning a cultural bankruptcy brought about by contemporary technology. We mourn that people are on Twitter rather than reading books, watching reels rather than having conversations, indulging in internet pornography rather than building healthy marriages.

All of this is truly worth mourning. But we’re failing to see the entire picture if we only chastise people for indulging in activity B, rather than enjoying activity A, and leave it at that. Remember, activity B makes us feel good — hyper-good, you might say. Regardless of whether our overindulgence in activity B constitutes an addiction (I’ll leave that for the psychologists to decide), it’s clear that it is similar to an addiction in this way: When we’re used to feeling like a 20, 30, or 100, an 8, 9, 10 isn’t going to feel the same.

The decision to quit activity B is not as easy as we might assume. A person can’t just pick up a novel after years of doomscrolling and not expect his experience to suffer greatly for it. Reading is enjoyable — a solid 9 or 10 at times — but to the person who spends hours every day browsing his phone, a 9 or 10 compares little to a 20, 30, or 100. His pleasure threshold has been raised much higher. He knows more fun is to be had out there.

So it goes with all other pleasures. Once we’ve gotten accustomed to feeling maximum pleasures, those kinds of pleasures which include discomfort are not going to feel nearly as enjoyable. We’ll become more aware of the effort involved, of the risks we have to take and the skills we lack in these ordinary activities. The temptation to return to hyperpleasures becomes even more poignant at that point, making the ordinary activity feel even less enjoyable. It’s no wonder we have such a hard time forgoing the hyperpleasure.

Conclusion

I share this metaphor with you as a way of expressing my personal intuitions about what is happening in our culture. Hopefully my aims here have been modest — I’m no expert in psychology and cannot speak to anything other than what I’ve seen and felt.

But I have seen and felt these problems acutely, and I’ve witnessed others face these problems just the same. I’ve seen my enjoyment of reading and conversations diminish in the temptation to pick up my smartphone. I’ve known friends to squander their potential in their indulgence of video games and pornography. To deny our enjoyment in these activities is a failure to account for the reality of the situation — we indulge because we love our pleasures, and discomfort-free pleasures seem more lovely to us than ordinary pleasures. That we keep coming back to them again and again, loving them above all else, is what concerns me.

What would it take to break our dependency on hyperpleasures? I can’t offer a full answer here, but I think it starts with a reorientation of the will. Our loves must be ordered correctly. We must reconceive pleasure in ways which dignify our discomfort, and so make ordinary pleasures seem more beautiful to us.  

Most of us have a long way to go in this reorientation of the will. To see beauty in limitation is not an easy thing — I would go so far as to say that it takes an act of God to open our eyes to it. But once our eyes have been open, it will be for the better. Contentment always gives us a better vision of reality.