Monday 20 October 2003

Pic of the day: Give us today our daily bread. Most other things are optional, though we still tend to like them.

Undesiring

For something like 20 years I have known that humans and our furry friends have a pleasure center in the brain. When this area is stimulated by a mild electric current, the subject is overcome by a sense of pure pleasure. Rats will forgo foods and sleep and keep pressing the lever until they collapse and die. Humans are able to stop, but would prefer not to. The pleasure center is generic and is activated by our various instincts to reward us.

I was wrong. Then again so was almost everyone else. I just bought the October 11 issue of the British magazine "New Scientist", and there was a long article on this topic. It turns out that once again we have believed what we wanted to believe. The human test subjects did describe their feelings, and those were not feelings of pure pleasure. Oh, there was pleasure enough, but there was another feeling that dominated: Desire. Test subjects reported excitement and even sexual lust. But evidently it was a positive experience, not creepy or scary. Perhaps desire only scares us when it is connected to negative experiences from the past? More about that another time, perhaps. Food for thought, indeed.

***

And then the article said something that jumped out at me: "The dopamine system is about motivation and seeking. It gives a generalized desire or urge, an eagerness to engage with the world."

That is so not me. As regular readers will know, I live an almost monk-like life, looking at the world from a distance even while I am in it. This is not restricted to socal interactions, although I am quite withdrawn in that aspect too. In a way, I am easier to define by negatives: Man without a car, man without a TV, man without a wife, man without ambition in this world. None of these are really extreme, but they do add up. And the list goes on. I used to daydream about a house of my own, years ago. That desire is dead before it was even born. Other desires got to live for little while: I still have stacks of CDs from the first months after I bought my first CD player. And so on with many other things, but I have spoken about this before. I have felt that spark, the eagerness, the glow. Desire, want, not merely wishing for something but longing for it. But as time passes over me, I feel it less and less often.

I still have my instincts. I eat and drink, for instance. I may have lost a little weight these last couple of months, but there's plenty left; I hover on the borderline between normal and overweight (at least by Norwegian standards). And despite my 44 years I still experience sexual desire. It is not terrorizing me, filling my nights with dreams and my days with fantasies. But it is still there, and the dreams and images and feelings are still there. For as long as it yet lasts. I guess basic instincts are quite resilient, as well they should be. But so many other, less essential, things have faded over these last 25 years.

I have considered writing about the religious aspects of this gradual fading from the material world and the society of men. It is after all central to at least two world religions: Buddhism and Christianity. But I will not venture into this today. In part because I do not know for sure what part religion plays in this slow process of withdrawal. I have something else to say, though. It is something that was stressed at the beginning of that article in New Scientist: Pleasure is not the same as desire. And in my case the pleasure has not receded along with the desire. I am less involved with the world, but I am not less happy, I am not less content.

I enjoy the taste of fresh bread. I delight in the colors of the forest and the sky when I am outside walking (unless I am lost in some thought, of course). Music can fill me with near ecstasy. I even suspect that I might have enjoyed lovemaking more now when I don't feel a desperate hunger for such things. (Not that I am ever going to know.) When it comes to enjoyment, I feel more at home in the world now than I did when I was young. I have wondered if this is wrong, if it means that I have become more worldly and less spiritual. But I am not so sure of that either. Enjoyment, contentment, gratitude... these are good things, are they not?

***

Back to the article again. Some of the rats got their dopamine receptors eradicated. They did not bother to eat, but when they were fed, they showed telltale signs of pleasure. They liked food; they simply did not desire it anymore. I dare say I am not that far gone, and am sure I never will! But a little bit of it. I enjoy this simple life I live, and don't long for so much more. How this change came about, I do not know for sure, although I have my thoughts. But this is it, at least for now.