On Modern Incontinence

Esta es una de mis publicaciones viejas, escrita a finales del 2021. Me da un poco de cringe el estilo con el cual escribía antes, pero igual decido publicarla.

From ethology...

In the 1940s, scientist Niko Tinbergen conducted several experiments on the behavior of herring gulls. Adult herring gulls have a red dot on their beaks, and newborn herring gulls will peck this dot to ask their mother to regurgitate food. In one of his experiments, he designed a fake cardboard beak, completely detached from a body, and offered it to the chicks. He believed the chicks would ignore the dummy beak altogether, but to his surprise, they pecked the red dot on this cardboard beak just as much as they did the real one. Their attraction to these red dots was clearly innate, not entirely learned. Tinbergen then designed a series of beaks that changed the presentation of the dot and studied the chicks' reaction to them. Eventually, he designed a beak that contained not one, but three unnaturally large and bright red dots. When he presented it to them, the chicks turned frenetic, pecking the beak as if it was the most joyous thing they were ever going to do. Tinbergen studied other animals with similar innate attractions and consistently found that he could exaggerate the characteristics of the innately attractive to get the animals to react with an ardent desire for it. He dubbed these "supernormal stimuli."

Why is this relevant? Well, the reactions of joyously desperate chicks are quite adorable indeed... until you realize that there must be a human equivalent.

... to psychology

For millennia, we developed innate instincts and desires [1] that promoted our survival and reproduction. Salts, fats, and sugars became attractive because they were rare but necessary for survival. We developed a unique curiosity towards all kinds of information because it all related to our real world and our survival in it. Sex became stimulating because it promoted the passing of genes. Even our attraction to that which is cute developed as a mechanism to care for the young and vulnerable.

But in modern times, with the introduction of mass production and growing consumer markets, companies began to realize, whether consciously or unconsciously, that they too can easily appeal to our innate desires to sell a product. The problem with this is that being incontinent and excessively submitting to these impulses is a surefire recipe for self-destruction. The modern diet is completely foreign to what our ancestors ate, particularly because it is overloaded with salts, fats, sugars, and all that which our bodies aren't prepared to receive in large quantities. The advent of the digital age has allowed us to overwhelm ourselves with vast amounts of information, most of which will be completely unproductive and will ultimately subtract an ungodly amount of time off of our lives, but will guarantee clicks, views, and revenue nonetheless. And merely out of respect for myself, and perhaps also out of concern for my sanity, I won't discuss the abhorrent amount of time and money thrown into the deep, dark hole that is kawaii culture \[2\].

Even so, companies are not the main culprits. They only ever meet demand. By desiring to have our innate desires satisfied at every moment, we have created an environment that specializes and continually becomes more efficient at doing so, and it won't hesitate to push us to self-destruction if we so wish. If we instead wish to avoid such a fate, then it is in our best interest we think twice about following our desires. We shall here explore how mindlessly following our impulses has fostered this dangerous environment and will continue to strengthen it unless we stop it.

How to sell

Incontinence is an easy concept to understand. Just as an object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by another force, our biological pull towards satisfying our innate desires will continue even when it becomes counterproductive, unless we consciously attempt to stop it. Traditional moral systems have historically been the force that stopped this biological pull when it became self-destructive. Presently, for reasons outside the scope of this article, these have greatly diminished. The majority of people now have a vague understanding of or even little interest in morality and distinguishing right from wrong, and in this pop understanding of morality, incontinence falls increasingly on the right side. If you're a company looking to sell a product or a government looking to grow its economy, this is quite convenient. Strong moral principles would simply sway demand against a wide variety of consumptive habits. You can't sell sex to an abstainer or alcohol to a teetotaler. Fortunately for you, however, your potential consumers are already biologically primed towards fulfilling certain innate desires as much as possible. You need only to offer them the stimuli with which they can satisfy their craving, and then, with no other act on your behalf, they will bite. Best of all, once they bite it, few will hardly ever let go. Through habit their incontinence will only reinforce itself, and they will return to you. The irony here is that they will come to see their loyalty to you as an expression of themselves, and some will even defend your business and your right to operate in the "free" market, when in reality, their better judgment overridden by their own incontinence, your own consumers have stopped fully consenting to their consumption.

Unfortunately for you though, your products will almost certainly not be the only fish in the sea. You will be fighting other companies for the limited amount of time and money your potential customers have. To ensure your continual survival, you must create products that increasingly maximize customer satisfaction. Of course, you could try to design a product that satisfies customers by actually providing a benefit to them, undoubtedly some will, but if your goal still is to maximize profits, then the sad reality is that in this world what customers need does not outsell what customers want (or worse, what they think they need), and customers ardently want their innate desires satisfied. Thus, anyone looking to acquire as much capital as possible will eventually have to betray its customers' best interests and push them towards incontinence. Now picture every company in the planet trying to do so, and by mere Law of Least Effort, it becomes easier to see why so many people today are slaves to their own impulses.

Escape the supernormal

What can be done about it? Frankly, I won't pretend I'm too interested in the large-scale transformation of our society. We all receive what we dare to seek, and those who seek their own destruction will justly find it. If, however, you belong to the few who seek to avoid it, then I can at least offer some guidance on this less traveled path, taken from my own personal experience.

Our innate desires aren't inherently evil. Information, calories, and even sexual gratification, though to a much lesser extent, are all part of a good life. It is only when we corrupt or overuse these stimuli that they become a force for evil in our lives. Engaging with stimuli this way does feel pleasant, but, as you may already know, this will only last a moment. The next dose of this stimulus will not be as pleasing, and the more you try to chase its pleasure, the less it is within your reach. What you may not know, however, is that as your brain adjusts itself to the pleasure received from the stimulus, it becomes dependent on it to function properly. In other words, the supernormal becomes normal, the normal becomes tedious, and the challenging, where the essence of life truly resides, becomes unbearable. Conversely, when one rigorously abstains from corrupted and excessive pleasures, the normal itself can become supernormally pleasing. Believe me, Reader, whatever you seek out of life, it is not to be found in banal pleasures. Choose to see the beauty in the normal.

Notes

[1] Innate instincts, desires, cravings and impulses are used interchangeably here.

[2] These are only some of the negative consequences of supernormal stimuli, and some of the bleaker ones at that. See Supernormal Stimuli below for more information on the true harms of supernormal stimuli.