I believe most humans are born with a capacity for fulfillment. Under good-enough developmental conditions, our feelings will lead us to seek out human needs—physical activity, face-to-face social connection, challenges and skills. Unfortunately for many folks, cheap entertainment is hijacking their tendency to cultivate needs and experience fulfillment.
On a most basic level, a sense of fulfillment comes from effectiveness in two general principles:
1) Doing—acting in alignment with one’s values.
2) Being—quality attention to sensations necessary to feel fulfillment. This includes the full spectrum of human emotion, including satisfaction, gratitude, disappointment, frustration, etc.
I’ll call the two together Effective Doing & Being. Neither on its own is sufficient. Doing without being is just going through the motions on auto-pilot. Being without doing feels empty, meaningless, or isolating. There will always be outliers, but generally speaking this is the case.
Unfortunately, we have imperfect brains that aren’t great at distinguishing between real or simulated doing & being. We find ourselves in an era bombarded by simulation. This is what I call cheap entertainment—it provides a reward for little to no effective action.
Examples of cheap entertainment:
Visual simulation: Netflix, Youtube
Social simulation: Facebook, Instagram
Auditory simulation: Spotify, EDM
Intellectual simulation: Podcasts, blogs
Mood simulation: Alcohol, drugs
Nutritional simulation: Processed sugar, seed oils
These sources of simulated fulfillment are accessible nearly anytime anywhere, and require little to nothing of the user to receive a psychological reward.
It would be one thing if cheap entertainment simulated fulfillment well enough to actually feel fulfilled, but it doesn’t. It provides just enough reward to temporarily inoculate a difficult emotion’s tendency to bring action. Have you ever been stuck in the scrolling loop? Feeling awful, knowing scrolling is making it worse, and continuing to scroll?
And as a final kick while we’re down, the super-stimulating nature of entertainment can actually steal the reward of real life fulfilling activities. Real sex seems awkward compared to porn, playing guitar seems clunky compared to tracks on Spotify, writing feels impactless next to famous Substack journalists. When we have the best in the world at our finger tips at any moment, the experience of what it’s like to be a regular human being can seem underwhelming.
What to do with this? One option would be to try a period of little to no cheap entertainment, understanding that such drastic counter-norm changes are unlikely to be sustainable. The other option is to look to people who appear to have a healthy relationship to cheap entertainment, while also modelling Effective Doing & Being. Usually that involves being very intentional about prioritizing Effective Doing & Being first, limiting cheap entertainment to certain times or conditions, and eliminating the most toxic and super-stimulating forms of entertainment. Surrounding yourself with peers and mentors who prioritize Effective Being & Doing will also make less friction in your own journey.