There’s a multitude of factors that result in the overwhelming pursuit of hedonistic lifestyles in the postmodern era, here we’ll look at those that are most predominantly occurring to factor into its support, as well as its biological and cultural underpinnings. Most notability, the amount of free time afforded to those in the west due to economic and technological progression, the cohesion of democratic nations, and the general alleviation of poverty. While hedonism has been a perennial pursuit, the ability of more people to have the free time and money to even consider and engage in hedonistic activities has opened the playing field to the majority of the population to adopt a hedonistic lifestyle. Modern technology and societal systems have reduced primal goals through the increase in readiness and affordability of base necessities such as food and shelter. Base necessities are more easily covered by a shorter work week, there is an almost complete absence of threats from external sources and we are provided safety from impending dangers – which we would have been constantly guarded against in previous eras. These changes result both in a positive shift in wellbeing as well as a negative, depending on the individual’s reaction to them and his method of filling in that extra time afforded to him.

The ability to pursue our interests can be a double edged sword, depending on what those interests are, and the manner in which we pursue them. By progressing as a society in such a way we face some loss in the traditional forms in which our evolutionarily engrained reward systems are triggered, but this removal in no way erodes the systems and their potential rewiring to other stimuli. Removal of traditional forms of triggers to our reward system, such as personal acquisition of food in hunting, exploration into unknown areas, violence expressed in conflict, and, in even more primitive times, the unpunished acquisition of multiple mates forced into satisfying sexual desires. While food, war, exploration, and reproduction are still aspects of the modern life, the ways in which we acquire them, and the limitations governments put on our actions in pursuing them, has been altered as our extension of morality pervades the culture. While this certainly affords us a net benefit in terms of safety, equality, and basic rights to freedom, it simultaneously causes a shift in the stimuli which causes the production of serotonin. This differentiation removes some of our sources of the subjective experience of wellbeing, producing the desire to replace them with new forms of stimuli, and the question becomes, by what ought we replace them?

By moving away from the environment we found ourselves in for millions of years, into one which is almost entirely constructed by the human species, we find ourselves with new methods to cope with the drives and constraints of the human psyche. On the one hand we must find new methods to mitigate our unconscious, primal, and instinctual drives, and on the other we are faced with a much more expansive, yet strict, societally informed morality. Punishment for deviances such as violence, theft, and injustices enable greater freedom to act within the framework of society, while limiting the threat to the pursual of the majority of societies interests. The current state of the legal system reflects an improvement of moral considerations, aiding in removing external threats to our wellbeing and cybernetically informing the moral guidelines of society (we inform the government of morality and it, in turn, informs us). While all members in society have the risk of imprisonment for moral deviance, and this modifies the nations morality in the same way it is itself informed by it, it still leaves open the potential for vastly different methods of coping under its general guidelines. While both the unconscious urges and the moral restrictions have altered, our conscious, intelligible, mitigating “power” remains wedged between the competing factors, and it is how we cope with being “thrown” into such a situation that will determine the quality of our subjective experience.

The growth of the population and the interconnectedness of humanity has allowed for the upper constraining factor of conscience to be modified in a way that is in no way universal. Everyone is raised differently, whether it may be in a traditional nuclear family, or by more diverse familial structures. Some are influenced by sub-groups to follow strict religious morality, others are raised under more or less strict secular imperatives, and in other corners of the same society parents raise their children to conform to the most prominent form of moral imperatives, that of pursuing “whatever makes you happy”. While there is a vast range of ways we develop from infanthood to adulthood, the moral rules, discipline, and in general, what is deemed “important” and “right and wrong” vary according to individual circumstances. This variance causes a variance in the upper constraint of how we mitigate our instinctual drives, which are more or less universal in their grounding. While the generalized group of individuals that believe in the overwhelming pursuit of happiness may have been led into such a mode of being with the best of intentions by a society and family that only wants the best for their children, it holds the risk of developing a belief system that finds no problem in the overindulgence in sensual or pleasure producing stimuli, resulting for many in the pursuit of a hedonistic lifestyle. Given the ability to live such a lifestyle afforded to us by the modern era, the backing of an interconnected society, whether it’s the majority or merely a subgroup (we can find ourselves in an echo chamber in regards to whatever belief system we hold) the mutual acceptance and propagation by other members of society reinforces the belief system and can produce ideological possession to push the individual in the direction which he has been raised.

The answer of how to act in the modern era – given the lack of formal structure and openness to ever-increasing options – is for many of us with quick fixes of serotonin surging activities. While this satisfies a “natural” unconscious urge, and it can be rationally defended by conscious self-interested arguments, I argue, it is not the optimal framework in which to develop a wholesome psyche and a meaningful life. The manifestations of the hedonistic mode of being, whether rationally considered or merely driven by societal and unconscious desire, manifests in the form of overindulgence in an excessive amount of food, sex, and drugs and alcohol. Social media allows for our pleasure system to be moved by apparent attraction and acceptance in communal settings, by opening us up to the approval of millions of users. Fixation on societal approval in our online presence across social media becomes reinforced by the dopaminergic systems response to attention, television and video games provide satisfaction that the non-human created outside world doesn’t provide to the same degree. Bars, clubs, and drug dealers are found on every corner, and there is the added social reinforcement of those who indulge, not to mention the widespread cultural acceptance. The secondary acquisition of our basic biological needs through work rewarded by compensation for currency and further exchanged for necessities, allows a recourse of the dopaminergic system towards striving after wealth and power, which would be a second derivation away from our primitive desires which still must be met. Although the means have changed the ends are relatively similar, in the abstract. While the plague of desire for quick satisfaction, attention, wealth and fame may be a modern problem, it is in no way a non-perennial one, merely the form in which it manifests itself is altered.

While these factors are relevant and its results can, at times, negatively affect the populations overall wellbeing, at least in the lives of many individuals, the tendency to generalize it, and to only apply a critical theoristic framework to the current milieu is fallacial. While we can find negative repercussions of any frame of mind, applied to any era, or any society, we must not limit ourselves to merely criticism and stating the situation as being a novelty, without seeing the whole picture, including the benefit. In preindustrial society the ability to abstain from hedonistic pursuits and desire for excessive wealth existed alongside the ability for altruism, which, in our social development, became more than a possibility as seen by our current large scale states, which couldn’t have been created and developed to cohesive welfare societies in the absence of cooperation between individuals and groups of individuals. The development from primitive egoism, to kin altruism, to reciprocal altruism and later to group selection, has, in the west, been extended to populations of millions of people, for the benefit of the vast majority. The expanding circle of our consideration has enabled the lower class to have enough extra time and currency to pursue what once was only afforded to the wealthiest and most powerful in a society.

We can see technology and the mass productive capabilities of modern society, along with the scientific erosion of fundamental religious views as producing suffering and existential crisis for many people. It may be that the development of humankind has produced a society that is permeated by negative emotion not equipped for its newest development, while the suffering which drives us is perennial regardless of the era, the disconnect between our environmental adaptations informed by evolutionary biology and our societies rapid development has never had a bigger gulf. The ability to transcend the societal norm, the human condition of permanent desire in a constantly fluctuating experience, has been reframed to an extreme extent given the situation and environment we find ourselves in. The more our conscience’s diverge from our biological nature, the bigger the toll on our psyche to mitigate the difference, which for many is too big a gap to attempt to reconcile, leading them into escapism and a masking of the “natural” mode of being, inhibited by the quick fixes available to us.

Humans have evolved from their primitive ancestors, but this has shown less biological movement than societal and cultural change in the recent millenniums. Memes have altered and propagated our current milieu more so than genes over the last 10,000 years, and to lay the blame of the nihilistic tendencies, and lack of meaning in many of our lives upon this lagging biological nature, would only be half of the story.  Our societal influences and the progress of civilization in general bears a tangential relation to our biological nature, the coupling of which is failing to provide adequate answers to how to cope with our lives. We merely haven’t evolved to be equipped with a positive subjective experience, and as we have more time to be self-aware and contemplate our existence, the fact of this phenomenological truth makes itself clear.

As our ancestors had the potential to escape suffering through meaningful pursuits, whether that be by providing food for the tribe and their families through sweat and blood in hunting, or if it’s by factory work with the same outcome, the potential for a meaningful life with values that highlight the positive side of our nature are still possible. As beneficial as critical theory is at exposing problems and injustices, it merely is one side of the existential coin. The potential to suffer, even if it is itself an impermeable widespread pandemic, is truly part of our nature, yet so is the potential to live meaningful lives of value, whether they be summarized in religious principles, traditional family values, liberal or progressive in nature, or personal and idealistic. The reward system which consolidates our biological, social, and cultural influences into a present desire to pursue whatever it intuits as beneficial, still runs through us. The ability for that desire to be directed at more or less fulfilling and meaningful, or pleasant and unpleasant pursuits still is an existing possibility, and wisdom remains the guiding star towards optimizing our value system (what our actions stem from) as well as the traits we embody in systemically providing a feasible ground for their attainment.

Openness to novel perspectives and abstaining from dogmatic beliefs is a potentiality for anyone, and individuals who hold a fallibilistic mindset can find other likeminded individuals who will reinforce their belief that such a framework to operate from is beneficial. While this is a possibility, the advantage hedonism has is that it is experienced as a short term pleasurable subjectively, as well as having a group which reinforces it in culture. Those stimuli which provide short term satisfaction are more enticing to a biological system which isn’t designed for long term goal acquisition, we are wired for short term indulgence, and this butts its head against the current situation we find ourselves in. With ever increasing lifespans, and the benefit of stability across a long period of time becomes more important to individual and familial success, the hedonistic route is revealed as a hindrance to our long term goals and wellbeing.  In America we champion hedonistic heroes, many of our most popular celebrities, musicians, and cultural icons display the type of behavior that reinforces a hedonistic lifestyle, providing an example to those who already are inclined toward pursuing happiness (everyone!) that if they continue to do so they could be successful in a similar manner to the famous representatives of such pursuits. The cultural reinforcement to the hedonistic lifestyle is strong in the modern era, and with our natural disposition and unconscious urges, fleshed out in our neural chemistry propagating a reward system based on these urges, we find it easy to explain why anyone would prefer a hedonistic lifestyle. The real question becomes not how anyone could find themselves in a mode of being characterized by hedonistic pursuits, but how could anyone escape it? The answer to this question is seldom posited, but as more and more people discover the result of hedonistic pursuits in the long-term, that of creating a lack of meaning, that of not providing real relationships, or success and inner contentment, they find themselves asking what a better way could possibly be.

Being that our genes haven’t provided the optimal influence towards pursuing meaningful and subjectively beneficial experience in our current environment, we must turn to the word of culture, memes, and, if so inclined, philosophy, to properly uncover what a meaningful life would look like in the 21^st century. We ought to optimize the memes which influence us, our belief structure, and develop a conscious top down influence to drive behavior, based on reason. While this system is developed on the framework of our biology, using our genetic heritage, we can utilize the tools in accordance with our modern environment to form more meaningful and productive lives, which can sustain well-being rather than promote suffering.

The sacrifice required of short term pleasure for long term gain isn’t merely a leap of faith, but it can be proven in personal experience as providing a more meaningful life. Anyone who has tried both lifestyles, in their extremities, or has found themselves somewhere in between, can personally recognize the benefit to themselves and those they value in abstaining from a purely self-indulgent lifestyle. Nothing someone tells us should be taken up dogmatically, especially when it is in regards to our morality, how we live our lives, and what to believe. It is in the exploration of different methods of living, of testing different philosophies of life, in living different lifestyles that we collect the data needed to inform us of better ways of living. If we take the human enterprise of what’s the best way to live seriously, and concentrate on the causality, both in the positive and negative repercussions of our actions, applied to different lifestyle experiences, we will be better informed as to which interests to pursue, how to spend our time, and what values and character traits are most optimal to be embodied. To dogmatically heed cultural norms, or a specific belief system, without collecting this data, limits the evidence we have towards uncovering, or progressing, in a way that is optimal for us.

Finding a better way to live our lives, that produces a more sustainable and positive subjective experience, is in the interest of every individual, and deviating from what is comfortable and known towards attempting to live a life in the absence of purely hedonistic pursuits can provide the necessary data to act upon to improve our lives. This is entirely possible for anyone, regardless of economic class or upbringing. The current milieu’s championed ideals may not always adequately provide trustworthy advice for us in the pursuit of a meaningful life, and we should question it where we can to discern what is useful and beneficial, and what is harmful and reductive to fulfilling our potential. There are individuals and great minds, now, and throughout history, that can aide us in developing a system which foster our attempt in developing such a mode of being that can better navigate our current landscape. All hope isn’t lost, and it is our responsibility to ourselves to seek the truth, not merely metaphysically, but existentially, not merely for ourselves and our own wellbeing, but for the benefit of our current society and future generations to come.