Pleasure is the measure

Finding independence from your phone

In January, I wrote about the spiritual value of pleasure and being alive to the erotic. Following that, I read a NY Times interview with Emily Nagowski, sex researcher and author of Come As You Are:

Most of us are too fixated on libido — or on wanting to want to have sex — she said, which has caused a lot of unnecessary stress and insecurity. “Desire is the No. 1 reason people of all gender combinations seek sex therapy,” she said. “Even I need to be reminded that it’s not about desire. It’s about pleasure…

Pleasure is the measure. As sex educators, one of the most beautiful parts of our job — and one of the most frustrating parts of our job — is to ring that bell over and over and over again to wake people up and say, ‘Pleasure is good. Pleasure is healing.’” — Emily Nagowski

In her new book “Come Together,” Nagoski argues that desire is almost beside the point:

“Center pleasure, because great sex over the long term is not about how much you want sex, it’s about how much you like the sex you’re having.”

In capitalism, we focus on desire. Desire refers to a strong feeling of wanting or wishing for something. It involves a longing or craving for a particular object, experience, or outcome. Note that the word craving is the root of suffering (i.e. Second Noble Truth). As Nagowski notes, it’s the number one reason people seek sex therapy: I want it this way and it’s not. I don’t want it this way and it is. Desire is likely the number one reason people seek any therapy or coaching. We’re all, including me, trying to cope with our dissatisfaction with life amidst a world of plenty.

Pleasure, on the other hand, is a feeling of enjoyment, satisfaction, or happiness that is derived from a particular experience, activity, or thing.

In other words, pleasure is having. Desire is deficit. In capitalism, we focus on deficit, the thing we want (desire) instead of experiencing the thing we have (pleasure). Again, according to the Buddha, the problem is desire. This feeling like you’ve in constantly desiring in capitalism is so unhealthy. While life is a balance between the two, we need to stop feeling in deficit of what we’re missing and rest much more in satisfaction and contentment with what we have.

Desire causes a lot of unnecessary stress and insecurity.

Pleasure, on the other hand, is good. Pleasure is healing.

Capitalism is mostly based on fantasy

A student in my current FF1 cohort was talking about the pleasure we get from shopping, but actually owning the thing is actually not pleasurable:

My best friend takes so much pleasure in deciding what she’s going to do with her splurge money that she sets aside every month. Then, after she is holding her purchase in her hands, she always comments that she feels a little let down. My husband buys clothes but never feels like he has anything he likes to wear. I feel this way, too

I read once that with online shopping, you get dopamine hits twice: when you are shopping for the item and then when you receive the item in the mail. Again, the pleasure is in the shopping; it’s not actually that fun to own the thing.

Consumerism is mostly based on a fantasy of how our lives will be different in the future if only we bought the thing. It’s desiring to eliminate the deficit. That’s what all marketing and advertising is for: creating and then eliminating the deficit. The more we watch advertising and marketing the more we feel money dysmorphia, a nagging feeling of financial insecurity, despite having enough. One-third of Americans surveyed said that they spent more than they could afford on things like a vacation or luxury item to keep up with the “digital Joneses.” In other words, unnecessary spending to placate a feeling of imaginary, manufactured deficit. That number jumped to over half for respondents who spent more than three hours a day on social media. Addictive habits to social media create addictive habits to not-enoughness and consumerism.

Natalie says: “analog leisure”

There’s very little pleasure in capitalism; it’s all about desire. But pleasure is the measure. And pleasure is surprisingly easy!

My friend Natalie believes that “analog leisure” is the most fun we can have in life. She explained the Analog January Challenge, which was Cal Newport’s idea of a Dry January for resetting one’s relationship to digital devices:¹

• READ - books. not the internet.

• MOVE - exercise 15 minutes outside every single day.

• CONNECT - hang out with people in real life. No screens, not for work.

• MAKE - participate in a skilled hobby that requires you to interact with the physical world.

• JOIN - join something local that meets weekly.

I bet if you looked at the most satisfying moments of your week, it involved reading, moving, connecting, making, or joining. I bet if you looked at the most satisfying moments of your life, it involved these things. Most likely, a combination of them. They mirror the five things Jews are allowed to do on the Sabbath. It’s a good outline of the way I’ve structured my financial freedom:

• I join and make music at Community Jams.

• I connect and move at soccer.

• I learn to make in carpentry classes at Rebuilding Center.

• I eat with friends.

These are the good things in life. And you don’t need a lot of money. All you need is time.

An industrialized and increasingly online world eats away at time and presence. The twin engines of capitalism, work and consumption, are thieves of time and presence.

Happy Independence Day

I think the critical instruction for analog leisure is: leave the phone at home. Mobile phones are naturally addictive, and with addiction, you have to be in environments without the substance. When I go to Community Jams, or play soccer, or hike, I try not to carry my phone. If I go out to dinner with a friend, I try to leave the phone in the car. Research says that the mere presence of a phone detracts from the quality of your lived experience. In essence, carrying a digital device kills kairos. It disembodies you. It removes you from the experience of pleasure. Imagine making love to someone who was distracted by their phone. Ha! That’s just a vivid example of how phone kills presence. Leaving your phone at home makes free time, off the clock, out of chronos.

“But Douglas, I’m so busy! How can I find time for analog leisure?” Our devices are so ubiquitous it’s hard to think of time and space without them. Cal Newport writes:

“You might be wondering how you’re going to fit these commitments into your already busy life. The answer is simple: by spending less time online. This was another one of interesting discoveries I made working on my book: people were often surprised by how much free time they had once they stopped treating their phone as a constant companion.”

Analog leisure is embodied pleasure. Pleasure is good, pleasure is healing. And, unlike the things advertisers and marketers tell you to desire, embodied pleasure is mostly freely available. Like grace. You don’t have to work or make the world (or you) better. Just read, move, connect, make, join.²

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.” — Edward Abbey

Today is (American) Independence Day, so rebel against the device. Rebel against always being online. Against always working, always being on. Against always seeking, always being not-enough.

Desire causes a lot of unnecessary stress and insecurity.

Pleasure is the measure. Know the difference between pleasure and desire, and prioritize the first. Great sex is not about how much you want sex, it’s about how much you like the sex you’re having.

Life is probably the same. Gratitude = pleasure.

It’s all about attention. And analog leisure is the most fun way to center your attention.

It’s all right here.

This is it.

Happy independence day!

1. Unsurprisingly, she was telling me this after an incredibly fun session of Community Jams, where we had just played music with others for 2.5 hours.

2. In fact, you may make the world better by doing these so.