486 | Hedonism

The Minimalists talk about why the pursuit of pleasure leads to hedonism, and they answer questions about self-indulgence, pleasure-seeking, self-gratification, self-restraint, immoderation, overindulgence, extravagance, and more. Discussed in this episode: What pleasures are likely to get in the way of living a meaningful life? (2:14) What nonessentials do you overindulge in? (29:51) Listener tip: Letting go of worries, saying no to others, and minimizing online shopping. (49:13) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and TK Coleman. Recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.

• 0:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, thank you, Malibu. Hello, everybody. Today, we're talking about when the pursuit of pleasure turns into hedonism. And we'll answer a bunch of your questions about self-indulgence and pleasure-seeking and self-gratification and self-restraint and in moderation, over-indulgence, extravagance, and much more. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about the types of pleasure that are likely to get in the way of living a meaningful life. And then we've got a question about the best and worst kinds of over-indulgence. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 486.

• 1:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to the very first episode. That's more than 10 years of podcast archives. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we would love to hear from you. Give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording right from your

• 2:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  phone to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Brian.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Good afternoon or good morning minimalist. This is Brian. I'm a Patreon supporter from Okemos, Michigan. I'm calling in today regarding your upcoming podcast episode about the pursuit of pleasure. Alcohol was a thing that I enjoyed consuming for pleasure at one point in my life. I enjoyed it with friends and family at special occasions and family gatherings. I enjoyed it with coworkers, usually on a Friday afternoon after a long day at work, for happy hour at some local watering hole. At some point, though, alcohol, this thing that I consumed and enjoyed, became more of a pacifier and a distraction in my life.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  If you asked me back then, when I was drinking, if my relationships, my health, my passions, and my ability to contribute were important to me, I would have said yes. In reality, though, I was just paying those things lip service. Alcohol was getting in the way of me nurturing those things that I claimed to value. The strange thing is, I didn't fully recognize that this was happening in the moment. Alcohol was so sneaky in that way. I'm glad to say that I've been sober for just over five years now. While I have more clarity on what my values are right now

• 3:44Speaker 03

  and on what things might be getting in the way of me nurturing those values, I sometimes wonder what other pastimes I might be enjoying or engaging in right now that might be getting in the way. My question is, what are the signs that our pastimes have become pacifiers or distractions?

• 4:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  PK, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. I've been wanting to do an episode about hedonism for a long time. And I thought this was a great question, Malabam. Thanks for starting with this one because it's the perfect opening. He's talking about the pursuit of pleasure and the sort of sneaky distractions. He calls them pacifiers. And we could just call them pleasures, right? Pleasure isn't inherently good or bad. But what Brian's asking about here is what pleasures are likely to get in the way of a meaningful life? And of course, we can answer that head on. We could say things like smoking, or drinking, or overeating, over-consuming anything. So scrolling, I often say that scrolling is the new smoking because it's an insidious addiction.

• 4:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  In fact, you could even argue that it's more pernicious than smoking because at this point, no one smokes cigarettes for their health. But we can go to the internet for our well-being to amplify or enhance our well-being because there's a lot of useful information there. And there's also a lot of really wonderful entertainment. But when we become pacified by that entertainment, it can certainly turn into hedonism. So I do want to start by talking about hedonism. Maybe you could tell us what hedonism is and when or why does it lead to suffering?

• 5:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the way the word gets used today is much more casual than its philosophical origins. But hedonism, in a nutshell, for our purposes here, is the optimization of the pursuit of pleasure. It is the belief that pleasure is the highest good. And while pain, to some degree, is inevitable or unavoidable, a good hedonist would attempt to minimize pain or avoid it in whatever way they can. There is some diversity, even within hedonism, about the kind of pleasure that is most prioritized. One of the ways that we sort of stereotype conversations around pleasure is we tend to equate pleasure with immediate gratification.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  But where it gets tricky and where it gets fascinating is that pleasure is also something that can exist in very substantial, sophisticated forms that one cannot easily access unless they engage in a lot of hard work. So you think, for instance, of C.S. Lewis, who had a very spiritual idea of pleasure. And he wrote a series of novels called A Space Trilogy, where he kind of gave his fictional representation of heaven, the ultimate state of bliss. And he depicts heaven as a place of infinite pleasure, but the nature of that pleasure is so substantial and so solid that it would be extremely painful for the person who never exercised discipline or any aesthetic practice in this life.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  And so you have a being who takes a trip through heaven, and because he's so flimsy and shallow, because he never pushed himself in this life, even like the blades of grass in heaven feels like they're cutting him like knives. Right? And so even when we talk about pleasure, we have to think about that more than immediate gratification. And that's where, you know, my perspective on hedonism, which we can get into later on, begins to become more of a critique, because so much of what hedonism gets used for today is, does amount to a kind of superficial form of pleasure.

• 7:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, a type of pleasure chase. I was talking to a friend the other day, having coffee, and what I told her is, she was talking about deciding between a path that was super pleasurable, like, I want to go do this thing, and I know it's going to lead to pleasure, but I also know that staying here and working on this book that I'm trying to finish might lead to more reward in the long term. And so that's a different type of pleasure. And what I told her is, the path to peace is not paved with pleasure. Ironically, though, or maybe paradoxically, there's a lot of pleasure within that peace as a byproduct, but not as the thing that we are seeking. On my way into the studio this morning, I had to stop,

• 8:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and I just wrote down two pages. I was starting with this essay about hedonism, and it didn't turn into an essay at all. It's basically just a bunch of bullet points now. So I'm going to need your help connecting some of these dots throughout this episode, especially on pages two and three, when we get into the weeds behind all of this. Because I see hedonism, at its worst, as, or maybe at its terminus, it looks a lot like psychopathy. When we think about a psychopath, what do we think of? A selfish person, someone who is narrowly self-centered? We think about someone who doesn't learn from their past experiences? And doesn't that happen with hedonism?

• 8:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So hedonism, in the modern sense, can be correlated with consumerism. Not consumption, but with consumerism. The ideology that buying more is going to make me happy. It's going to extend my bliss, or maybe even create a perpetual bliss. And when we think about psychopaths, we realize that they don't learn from their experience. And hedonists, at their worst, at our worst, and I say this as a hedonist to myself, not someone who practices hedonism, but someone who was battered by consumerism for a very long time. And if I'm not careful, I can resort to that default. I can go back to it because it's the shortcut.

• 9:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's the love, I love the thing you were talking about with C.S. Lewis. What you're talking about is like, the shortcut to heaven is actually the path to hell, in a way, right? To speak about it metaphorically, then getting back to the psychopath here, if you don't learn from your experience, isn't that what a hedonist does? It's like, oh, you know what? This car, this happened to me, this Lexus is gonna make me so happy. And it didn't, but the second Lexus will, right? It's like, well, wait a minute, that's psychopathic behavior from me. Also, a psychopath doesn't care about other people. And they also don't care about their future self, which in some way, I heard a clinical psychologist talk about this, how not caring about others

• 10:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and not caring about your future self is essentially the same thing. Because at a fundamental level, your future self is a different self from your current self. And so, in a way, I'm punishing my future self for today's pleasure. I wanna feel good right now, tomorrow be damned.

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Hmm, you know, there's another aspect of this too. I love that phrase, "I'm punishing my future self for today's pleasure."

• 10:51Speaker 04

  A corollary of that would be punishing our past self for today's spiritual evolution. Sometimes when we outgrow something and we graduate to a more sophisticated or sustainable or substantial form of pleasure, we look back on our past and we condemn the old us for being so superficial. I think about my brother and I, one of my brothers, where whenever we give each other advice, we go straight to analogies and examples that come from a video game that him and I spent a lot of time on when we were kids. And we understand so many things in terms of that video game. And we don't play that video game anymore. It feels like a waste of time today, but if you go far back, when we were teenagers,

• 11:35Speaker 04

  man, we would lock ourselves in the basement and play that video game for hours. And I don't look back on that stage of life as, oh, boy, you know, I really wasted my time and I was a terrible person. I'm glad I became spiritual. It's no, there's a time to be a kid. There's a time to explore the contrast and the meaning and the pleasure to be found in things. And when we grow up and evolve into something different, we don't have to look back on our past selves and say, shame on you, sometimes, but not all the time.

• 12:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, right. But here's where I would make the distinction between sort of hedonism of today and psychopathy of today. It's the psychopath is unable to feel remorse. They actually have a part of their brain that's turned off. I had to look this up, right? And so it's called the mid-singulate cortex or the dorsal anterior singulate cortex, a part of their brain that processes rewards and punishments. And also it helps us a bit with like understanding delayed gratification, but also opens us up to compassion or even empathy for others, caring about other people. And the hedonist is able to learn from their remorse.

• 12:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And if they are able, then they can cease being a hedonist in a way, right? Because it's like the buyers are more, it's literally, oh, this happened to me when I had all of this debt. I had almost half a million dollars worth of debt. And so on the surface, I looked ostensibly successful, but I was punishing my future self with debt in order to acquire these objects right now. There was nothing wrong with the Lexus. Well, the problem was I thought it was going to complete me. And because I thought it would complete me right now, I, I forsook my future self, right? And also, to, to go along with what you're saying, in a way, I almost renounced my former self too.

• 13:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Like, oh, poor, literally, like poverty JFM was bad. And therefore, I need to signal that I'm, I'm no longer in poverty. Although ironically, I was broker than when I was poor because of all of the debt that I had. To put myself in this, this strange situation. But the person who can learn, the hedonist who can learn from remorse, the buyer's remorse, that's a type of visceral learning. In fact, you can't have that visceral learning without some sort of remorse. Like, oh, I can't believe I made that. So instead of condemning my past self, it's learning from the past self. And that's really what, what wisdom is. Wisdom comes from that type of, of suffering.

• 14:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And by the way, it doesn't mean you have to go look for suffering in your life. It's gonna show up regardless. You don't have to seek the suffering. The suffering will often seek you. Ironically, it will seek you more the more hedonistic that you become. And then you start to become resentful of your own success. Or you become resentful of the decisions you made, right? And then it's really difficult to be grateful. And so what do we do? We pacify ourselves more, as Brian said. And we start to forsake the things we say are our priorities. The things that lead to living a meaningful life. What he mentioned are health and, and relationships and contribution beyond yourself and pursuing your creative passions.

• 14:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wow, those are things that we find to be meaningful. They don't always correlate and they usually don't correlate with instant gratification, instant pleasure.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that's the beauty there of thinking beyond the hedonistic immediate gratification, the belly is full kind of hedonism, because it leaves you ill-equipped for many of the inevitable sufferings of life that are neither avoidable nor terminable. And when you have to deal with chronic pain, or you have to deal with some form of grief that is going to remain with you for years, you need a worldview that can imbue those experiences with meaning. Gabby Costello has this video that he put up maybe about a month ago called "Tailor-Made Crosses," and it's about a guy who describes himself as a former wise guy, picking on people

• 15:51Speaker 04

  and just fooling around all the time, not taking life seriously. And in his older age, he has Lou Gehrig's disease. And he calls it a tailor-made cross because it's a great burden for him to carry, but it's suitable for the person that he needs to become, because it teaches him to value little things. It causes him to become aware of how he treated people, how he needs to treat people. All of the things that he needs to make right in his life in terms of character, he is experiencing this illness as something that is doing that through him, to him, and for him. And it doesn't mean that everything you experience in life has to be analyzed or thought about

• 16:31Speaker 04

  in a deeply philosophical way, but that kind of possibility to adopt that framework comes from going beyond the hedonistic point of view.

• 16:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that's an interesting point, because when I think about hedonism, there's a particular kind of immaturity to it, right? And I wanted to say it's childish, but we almost use that phrase pejoratively. When I say immaturity, it's value-neutral here. Like, obviously, my daughter Ella, when she was a baby, she was by definition immature, right? And I don't mean anything bad by that. But as we grow, what happens? Our prefrontal cortex grows and we're able to regulate. Our prefrontal cortex allows us to time travel. No other animals can do that. It's the biggest difference between us and... And a lot of our primate cousins is we can time travel in a way, we can think about the past

• 17:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  or we can consider the future. We always do it right now in the present moment. We're time traveling now in the present moment. We're thinking about our future self. But the hedonist or the psychopath, they switch that off. And we do it all the time. We, in fact, we, we catch ourselves doing it's like, oh no, I've been scrolling for 45 minutes. And this has happened to me dozens of times where I didn't, it was so, it was pulling me in. There was nothing wrong with doing that. It just wasn't the best use of that time. And that is something that is immature. We see it in babies. We also see it in our pets.

• 18:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Your dog can't plan for retirement and nor would we ever expect it to. The same is with a baby is, is a baby or a pet, they, they simply want to fulfill their, their base pleasures like hunger or, or thirst or, or for a pet, it's like sexual gratification. Right? And an immature person, whether it is usually like an immature adult I'm thinking of, they're dominated by pleasure seeking. We, when we act our most immature, we are dominated by pleasure seeking. However, what I love about you TK is you've reclaimed

• 18:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that childishness to mean childlike curiosity and wonder and play. And that's why I didn't want to use the word childish, because childish can be really beautiful. It doesn't mean that you're necessarily weak or, or you're unable to delay gratification. There's a childlike wonder that we can have even amid the difficult things, even amid the discipline or even amid the suffering.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  And that's one of the things that makes it admittedly hard for me to critique hedonism, not because I don't disagree with it, but because so much of how I see life is based on a reframing of the concept of pleasure. What does it mean to be truly satisfied? I even think about John Piper and his idea of Christian hedonism. I don't agree with them on everything, and I hate when I say stuff like that because I don't agree with me on everything. But he has a lot of interesting things to say about that idea of pleasure being at the foundation of life. And many of your great spiritual philosophers are often appealing to a deeper kind of pleasure, something that we might call eutomonia, something that we might call fulfillment,

• 20:00Speaker 04

  something that we might call inner peace, something that we might call the invincible joy. And so I definitely see things in that way. And I think ultimately, when you prioritize pleasure, one of two things are going to happen. One, you'll make yourself miserable by chasing after pleasures that are unattainable. But the other is you'll actually get what you want, and then those pleasures will begin to teach you about their own futility. They will begin to teach you about just how fragile they are, just how finite they are. And you'll begin to realize that who you are is so much bigger than what possessions can fulfill, than what fleeting experiences can fulfill. And hopefully, you realize that soon enough to begin to ask the deeper questions about

• 20:45Speaker 04

  what will truly satisfy the soul. And I think with respect to Brian's question here, one thing that we can do is we can build experiences into our lives so that we can take the time to pause and create space between our experiences of pleasure. So we can ask ourselves, is this more about familiarity or is it about fulfillment? Because it really may be possible that you've got some things in your life today that are like what the alcohol was for you in the past, where it's like, this isn't really you. But sometimes we get on autopilot. In fact, sometimes we even have thoughts where we say, man, I can't stand that person. I hate them. They bother me so much. And then when you pause, you go, wait a minute, that's Not me anymore. That's a habit. That's a program that I've got running.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  I absolutely love that person. I would never want to live without them. They mean everything to me. That's a habit. That's a program. And I'm ready to let go of that habit of just complaining about things. And it's time for me to change my instincts. And so taking the time to create little breaks from the things we enjoy doing, not because it's wrong to do them, but because it is right to always give ourselves the opportunity to reconsider and recontextualize. And we bring that energy of self-awareness back into the experiences of pleasure if we continue in them.

• 22:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I love the distinction you're making between sort of what you call eudemonia. We could just call it satisfaction versus gratification, especially instant gratification. I think about Ella when she was really little and we go to a grocery store together. Maybe she's like two and a half years old and, and she wants the Milky Way bar at the checkout line there at Target, right? And she really, really wants it. And she wants to be gratified right now. And if she doesn't, what happens? She might throw a fit. She might get really upset. And don't we do that as immature adults? I want it and I want it now. Remember the J D Wentworth commercials back in the day?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Eight seven seven cash, no. Yeah.

• 22:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Whoa.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Not a sponsor, not an ad. Just a good song.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  That's so good.

• 22:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, an earworm, right? It's my money and I want it now.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's immaturity. That, that, that particular level of immaturity is a type of hedonism. I can't wait for it, right? This is what happens when predatory payday lenders will go after people and give them something absurd like a 2,700% interest rate. Because it's like you want it now. They're playing on that immaturity. So the biggest downside of immaturity is the people who are in power can take advantage of that weakness. Immaturity is weakness. I think about Harvey Mansfield. He wrote a book about this. He talks about the sort of three different types of men. You have weak men, you have manly men, and then you have gentlemen.

• 23:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And the weak men are the sort of immature men who can get taken advantage of because they're physically weak, but also mentally weak usually, right? Then the manly men are the ones who have attained some level of power. And in fact, today, we might even call it toxic masculinity, right? But really, what it is, is it's people using their power and wielding it over to, over other people to take advantage of them. And then you have the gentlemen, right? This is the, the people who do have power, but are, are willing to be benevolent with it, right? And, um, but the problem is that there are a lot of people who are in power who are not going to use it for your best interest.

• 24:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so if you show up to a car dealership immature, they're going to take advantage of that immaturity. If you're pleasure-seeking with your next purchase, you are probably being taken advantage of. If you're buying something from an Instagram ad, which by the way, have you noticed that it's never good when it shows up at your house? I've stopped buying from Instagram ads altogether, and it's been a while now. But like, I realized after making two or three purchases, even like, because they know you so well, right? They seduce you so well, and they know exactly what black t-shirt I'm going to want. Or they're gonna, "Oh yeah, I really want the cotton pant," whatever it is, right? And they, they get it, and so they take advantage of my weakness there.

• 25:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  As opposed to me being willing to put in the work and the research. They, they funnel a product to me, and they appeal to my, my base desires. That they appeal to my desire to gratify myself right now. And so what I've learned is that hedonism is, is sort of a, a type of suicide. We're killing our future self.

• 25:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Just to pursue today's pleasure, I'm reminded of two quotes here, TK, I wrote down for this episode specifically for Brian's question. Carl Jung said, "The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering." Ooh, let's break that down for a moment, right? Because what is hedonism? It is an unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering, not unnecessary suffering, that's a different thing. But we're all going to have suffering in our lives. And when we try to paper over it with pleasure, it just makes it worse.

• 26:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you have an infection and you just put a Band-Aid over top of it, it doesn't heal that infection underneath your skin. We actually have to do some excavating here. And the same is true with our own lives. We have to be able to, to sit with that suffering, to sit with the boredom, to sit with the discomfort. Paradoxically, that does lead to a different kind of pleasure, one that we might call satisfaction or fulfillment. But it may be different from the pleasures that we keep chasing. You know, it's funny thing about happiness, right? Is, is we go around chasing happiness and it's always running away from us. Well, why is that? Because anything you chase tends to run away from you.

• 26:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that is true with pleasure, it is true with happiness. But those things show up the moment or shortly after we stop chasing them. In a legitimate way, we sit through the suffering and we experience the real lasting eutomonia on the other side of it. One other quote that really stood out to me was from Deepak Chopra. He said, "Discover your own discontent and be grateful for without divine discontent, there would be no creative force." And this really reminded me of TK Coleman here, right? Because it's, what it's saying here is maybe that discontent you're experiencing, Brian, isn't a bad thing.

• 27:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We pathologize it. Oh, no discontent. Quick, cover it up. Buy something, smoke something, drink something, eat something, feel something. But maybe, maybe that type of discontent is actually what leads our creativity. It leads to a more meaningful life if harnessed and leveraged appropriately.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  That's right. And I want to make a distinction here between contentment as appreciation and contentment as addiction. There is a kind of contentment that says, hey, you know what? I don't want to be in this place or position anymore. It's time for me to move on to something else, but I'm so grateful for this experience. And if I had to be in this position for another 10 years, I wouldn't cease to be grateful. But then contentment as addiction is, hey, I'm really comfortable here. Doing something different requires me to confront some fears. So I'm going to settle for something that is mediocre by my own standards, by my own values. And I'm going to compromise my future self in order to remain here. And that's often what we call selling out.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  And so the divine in divine discontentment is that aspect of our discontentment whereby we feel appreciation for an experience or a situation. But we also honor that principle within us that says, something needs to change. This could be better. Hey, I'm grateful for this event that we threw for everybody, but I think we can create even more value for people. I'm grateful for that vacation we had, but the next time we take a vacation, I think we could plan a little bit more efficiently and avoid some of those unnecessary problems we had. I'm grateful for this conversation, but the next time I have a conversation over conflict, I think there are some ways I could say things that would allow us to achieve our result more effectively.

• 29:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Listeners, I'd love to hear from you. What pleasures are likely to get in the way of you living a meaningful life? Let us know in the comments on YouTube or on Patreon. Or better yet, you can send in a voice memo to [email protected] if you've been able to overcome some of those instant gratifications that lead you to a more meaningful life. Before we get back to our callers, Malabam, what time is it?

• 29:54Speaker 01

  You know what time it is. It's time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week.

• 29:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Now, during the lightning round, we attempt to answer your question with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims. In fact, this week, I think it's like 10 or 11 new maxims. But we'll do that every Monday, right to your inbox for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.e-mail. We'll never send you spam, or junk, or ads, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. What's the question of the week this week?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  What do you overindulge in?

• 30:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What do you overindulge in? I thought this was a perfect corollary with hedonism, because we're talking a bit about immoderation today and self-restraint, but also this indulgence versus overindulgence. So before we get to our pithy answers, I want to hear from our simpletons. Bama, what does more listeners have to say?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Ed said, "On the positive side, I overindulge in great books and beautiful music. On the negative side, I can overindulge in mindless internet. One leaves me filled, the other leaves me drained."

• 31:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So TK, this is an important distinction to make here. What's the difference between indulgence and overindulgence?

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Intentionality, the presence and the absence thereof. You know, indulgence, you know, we could strictly define as the decision to immerse oneself in an experience of pleasure. You dive into a pool because you imagine that cool water would feel good as you're wading your way through it. That would be indulgence. But overindulgence would be, you didn't do any thinking before this experience about why you want to get into that pool, how long you want to be there, what else you have going on today, and what the need is you're trying to fulfill. And because of that, you become a slave to impulsive thinking, which usually leads us in the wrong direction.

• 31:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I like that distinction because what Ed's talking about here, the great books and beautiful music, that sounds to me like an indulgence, not an overindulgence, even though he's saying that he overindulges in that. But then, the mindless internet searching, the mindless internet scrolling is really what he's talking about here. That can be an overindulgence, because the mindlessness that's behind it. And then, I think, of course, we have to, we have to talk about the hedonic treadmill, since we're talking about hedonism here. And it's also known as hedonic adaptation, which basically describes the human tendency to return to a baseline of happiness despite significant life events, both positive and

• 32:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  negative. Because people will always adapt to their circumstances. And so, you become super wealthy, and you're a multimillionaire, and you have the big house on the beach, and you have the luxury cars. Your baseline of happiness doesn't change. It's not like your happiness increased with those things. Your pleasure did increase for a period. And we mistake that pleasure for a type of happiness. And of course, when the pleasure goes away, what happens? Well, the low feels much lower, because we had a huge spike. The mountain was huge, but the valley is even bigger. And we end up in those valleys more and more often. So we seek more pleasure. We seek higher mountains. But of course, we don't

• 33:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  seek to do the work to get to the top of the mountain. I want to take my helicopter to the top of the mountain. I don't want to climb the mountain myself, which is where a lot of the reward comes from. I mean, it becomes a cliche, right? The journey is the destination, or whatever. But cliches are cliches for a reason. There are profound truths in many of these cliches. Any shortcut that we take to get to that feeling of pleasure, you know, I think about the easiest one is just eating a piece of candy. A piece of candy isn't going to kill you, right? But if your whole diet consists of sugary goodness, you lack the nutrition to fuel your mind, to fuel your body, to fuel your skin and your organ system.

• 34:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And what happens is you get that moment of pleasure. But the payoff isn't an actual payoff. It is you're going into debt with your with your own health in a way. And so this happens all the time with the hedonic treadmill. When we seek pleasure, we get it. But then it ceases to be pleasurable the moment we get it. It's like going to the ocean and trying to take the ocean home in my hands. Yeah, I might get my hands a little bit wet. But I'm going to end up with nothing by the time I get home. What else you got?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Amy said, I binge watch TV shows to the point of obsession and I like it.

• 34:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I would say I would say obsession is is value neutral here, right? Obsession isn't always a bad thing. We often talk about obsession as though it is bad. And of course, we pathologize it. And sometimes it is a pathology for sure. Obsessive compulsive disorder OCD is something I have. And and while I think it's a superpower, I also understand when it can become pathological. But the thing that I wrote down here is liking a thing is not a reliable measure of its value. Now, part of it has to do with liking it. If you dislike it, then yeah, it's probably not very valuable to you. But just because you like a thing, that is not the full picture of its value.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  That's right. And obsession is a funny word. I got triggered when that word was mentioned because it made me think about the movie with Idris Elba and Beyonce. It's kind of like a modern day take on Fatal Attraction, which makes me feel so old to even describe it as modern day. I'm like, wait, Fatal Attraction was just last week. But I think in popular culture today, when we use the word obsession, we have sort of reframed it as a very positive thing. We don't think of it as a fatal attraction, as an attraction to something that leads to the detriment of yourself and others. We think of it as really intense preoccupation with Kobe Bryant described himself as being obsessed with the game of basketball. And what that meant is I'm a student of it. I love it. I enjoy talking about it.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  I'm never going to be the person that's bored by this. And if you're obsessed with your shows or your literature or your genre. That often just means I'm really, really into this thing. And if we were to have a 10 hour conversation around it, you would be the one to say, can we talk about something else? And that's a good thing to be in tune with those sort of things. And if it's not creating detriment for you or for others, then that's the positive sense of obsession.

• 36:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think about Don DeLillo. He talks about writing a book as like having a deformed pet. Like it just always follows you around. You always have to take care of it no matter what. Like it's always this, this idea of like, yeah, writing a book, you have to be obsessed to write the book. Because it's not just if you're spending an hour a day or three hours a day writing the book. That's part of it. That that's the mechanical composition side of it. But it's following you around in your mind this whole time. And so I think the key for me is being obsessed about the things that fuel me, that make me feel the most alive. And for me, that is, is writing. I get really obsessed about this podcast too. I mean, the preparation that goes into these episodes is pretty intense.

• 37:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I spend three, four, five days quite often. For this one, I think I spent four days just, and I wasn't sitting down for eight hours a day, but it follows me around. Even if I'm out for a walk or yeah, I'm out at dinner and sometimes it will follow you there. Oh, I gotta write this down real quick. Sorry, I, you know what? I just, I need to get this down and get it out of my head because I'm obsessed with this communication. I'm obsessed with these conversations. I'm obsessed with this topic. I'm obsessed with understanding. And that's the reason that I write. And it's the reason that I do these podcasts is because it helps me better understand what I think about the world. That's why I want to do this episode. I've got all these disparate points that I wrote down and you're helping me connect the dots.

• 38:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And, and you just show me when obsession can be really helpful as opposed to just being harmful. It's harmful when it gets in the way of something more important. If I'm really obsessed about tying my shoes all day, well, that's an obsession that's probably getting in the way of my own personal greater good. And maybe even getting in the way of the greater good of the people around me. What did Kyle have to say?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Kyle said, I overindulge in food waste elimination. I'll overeat way too much just to get rid of the excess, even if it's food I don't necessarily want that badly or I'm not that hungry for. I always feel guilty throwing away leftovers and will eat them beyond suggested expiration dates and in extra quantities to make sure there's no excess.

• 38:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Kyle, you don't have to eat the trash. And I know that sounds wild, right? But like, that's literally what you're talking about here. These things would otherwise be trash. And I understand. I'm very much with you. I don't want the food waste. It becomes, that becomes a problem. But also, it's a bigger problem if I'm putting trash into my body. And so, it's trading one problem for another. But it could be, I mean, okay, I want to be more deliberate with the way that I plan my meals in the first place to avoid the food waste. As opposed to, I'm going to just shove as much of this leftover food down my throat because I don't want to waste it. What if I don't create the waste in the first place?

• 39:30Speaker 04

  There you go. My thought on this is exactly that. Follow your conscience, but expand your vocabulary of the, of what it could look like for you to follow your conscience. If you feel so passionate about not wasting things, that you're willing to eat, even if it makes you feel bloated or bad, then that shows dedication. And how can we apply that dedication creatively to something else that you can do to either get rid of that food in a way that helps someone? Or just get better at ordering and purchasing so that you don't get in that position?

• 40:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  For the sake of time, let's just go to James. One more from James here.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  James says, "I overindulge on spending time in my rock garden."

• 40:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oof, yeah. So James, he actually posted several, maybe three pictures in the Patreon community chat.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  They were so beautiful.

• 40:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wasn't it, right?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  It made me want in a rock garden.

• 40:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You might call it overindulgence. It just seems like a beautiful place that you've created, that you're able to indulge in. And by the way, you created it. You put in the work. You went through the pain and suffering. And I bet you sweated, you maybe even bled for this rock garden. And to me, that is not hedonism at all. There is a payoff on the other side of that discipline, of that effort, of that obsession. All right, time for you, TK. Give me something pithy. What do you overindulge in?

• 40:50Speaker 04

  All right. Excess turns pleasure into burden. I think about my friend Young Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, who enters through the wardrobe. And unbeknownst to him, he is a great threat to the evil queen. She knows who he is, but he doesn't know who he is. And so in order to render him a little bit more useful to her, she offers him Turkish delight. And he eats it and it is the most delicious thing that he ever had, but it's enchanted. It makes him want to eat more. And eventually he just exists in almost a drunken like stupor. And he is so easily manipulated by the queen. She can tell him to do anything. And even if he know it knows it isn't right, he doesn't really care. He's just like, well, will I get more Turkish delight?

• 41:34Speaker 04

  We'll see about that when you take care of what I want you to do. And it makes me think about the world today, all of our TV shows, all of our movies, all of our food. It's enchanted, perhaps not literally, but it's designed, it's engineered, it's made in a way that just makes us want to consume more of it. The best creators, the brightest minds spend a lot of time not only making videos and food for us, but making treats that will make us want to buy more and eat more when we consume it. And so what do I indulge in? Everything, because everything is designed to be that way. And I felt like I'm on a dance floor where there's like a hundred amazing best ever songs playing at the same time.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  And my job is to listen through that noise to the song that's coming from my heart and making sure I dance to that.

• 42:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And also not to go over to the DJ and turn the volume up on the other 99 songs, right? If anything, what you can do, and you can have even a responsibility to do, responsible for your own well being, responsibility meaning ability to respond. You can turn down the volume on those other 99 songs. If you want to be intentional, if you really want to indulge in that one song when you're on the dance floor, it's often about turning down those other ones or the bare minimum, avoiding turning the other ones up to make the one you want to dance to more difficult. Which brings me to my pithy answer, which is freedom from obligation is the ultimate extravagance.

• 43:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ben, we were talking about this before and if, notice I'm saying freedom from obligation, not freedom from duty or responsibility. Or freedom from compassion, or freedom from others necessarily. But it's freedom from obligation, because as soon as I feel obligated, like I have to go do this thing, as opposed to, I get to go do this. Well, to me, that's a particular kind of freedom. I get to do this. The spaciousness of my days are really what dictate my freedom. It's not the hedonic treadmill. It's not getting more cars or more square footage. It's not scrolling more. It's not getting more. In fact, we have a question on, on page two about sexual gratification

• 43:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and, and how lust can get in the way of meaningful relationships. And, and that one is difficult to, to navigate, but I think we'll, we'll thread the needle on that. I'm really interested in your perspective on that as well. But freedom from obligation, or maybe you could just say, freedom from frenzy. When you think about the frenetic world around you, oh, that doesn't feel like extravagance. Although it does sometimes look like extravagance and the right advertisement, that party. But after a while, it becomes frenzy. In fact, my favorite song of the year, we're playing on our added value segment on page three today, and it is a total hedonist song. It's a song about hedonism, but I wrote a short essay about it.

• 44:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I want to make an argument that it's illustrating the seductiveness of hedonism that we see and how, how sexy it is. But then also you can see, if you look closely, you can see what happens, the punishment that happens on the other side of hedonism. We're getting toward the end of page one here. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. But first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. I've been on a writing frenzy lately. I wrote two essays that I think apply to hedonism in some way, and they're published on different sites. These, these two are not at theminimists.com, although I have some new writings over there as well. One called letting go in advance, you could check out.

• 45:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But what I'm talking about right now, there, I wrote this essay called, "The Amplification of Joy and the Diminishing Marginal Utility of Things." Now, I just wrote that second part because I knew TK would like it. Our resident economist here.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  You knew I liked anything with too many words. What are you overindulging in talking?

• 45:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He's like, "You had me at diminishing marginal utility."

• 45:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I finished writing this essay. And then it's the first time in over a decade that I published it on someone else's blog. Cause I finished writing, I'm like, "You know where this belongs? Joshua Becker's blog, which is called Becoming Minimalist." And so I just sent it to him. I said, "Hey, can I give this to you for free to publish over Becoming Minimalist?" And he was like, "Actually, I really needed some, I'm going on vacation this week. I really needed something to publish. This is perfect." So the timing worked out and I thought it was just right because it talks about, well, I'll just read the first paragraph or so, and then you can read the rest. We'll put a link to it in the show notes.

• 46:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  "My friend Derek wanted to be a good minimalist, so after his son Sammy was born, he refused to buy toys for the little boy, assuming he would be just as happy playing with the rocks and sticks strewn throughout their backyard. A few years later, however, my friend started questioning his own minimalism when he saw his son erupt with joy each time he played with his friends' toys. Sammy smiled while he constructed deformed dinosaurs with his multicolored Lego bricks. He laughed as two ninja turtles performed backflips and ate plastic pizza slices. And he literally jumped with joy the first time he slammed a Nerf ball into its door frame hoop.

• 46:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Derek realized he had been denying Sammy in the name of minimalism, dampening his boy's playtime with his own preference for simple living. So he did what many loving fathers might do. He logged onto Craigslist and found a big box of used toys. When Sammy opened the box, his facial features expanded with delight. He extracted his new toys one at a time, a walkie talkie, an Etch A Sketch, a miniature Wright Flyer model airplane, welcoming each with gratitude. Yet, at the sight of Sammy's glee, Derek was overtaken not by triumph, but by the consumerist mindset."

• 47:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You might even say the hedonist mindset here, right? His thought was, if one box made him this happy, then 10 boxes will surely make him 10 times happier. And of course, that's where it breaks down. And the essay goes into talking about the diminishing marginal utility of toys and thus the diminishing marginal utility of things, which I think is perfect for hedonism. And then the other essay I wrote, which is over at Minimalism Life, our side project, you can find it at minimalists.com. We'll also put a link to the specific essay in the show notes. It's a short one. It's called "Expensive Clothes Are Not An Investment." Savvy D. and Jordan Noemore and I went

• 48:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  out and made a video around this one as well. It wasn't the full essay, but the essence of this essay, which the last paragraph says this, "Designer clothes aren't bad if you can afford them. In fact, some luxury items last longer than their fast fashion counterparts. But please understand, you're not investing your hard-earned income on an asset that will generate dividends. You're playing dress up with a fashionable liability."

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 48:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so you can check that out, minimalists.com, our side project, Minimalism Life. The essay itself is called "Expensive Clothes Are Not An Investment." You can read that for free. And same with the essay over Becoming Minimalist, The Amplification of Joy, and The Diminishing Marginal Utility of Things. You can find the links for those in the show notes. Malabama, what else you got for us?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 49:18Speaker 05

  Shalom to the minimalists from Israel. My name is Deanna, a Patreon subscriber, and I want to say thank you. Your podcasts changed my life so much. I'm an action items person and love the way your podcasts are full of durable insights. Everything that remains book is a constant remember on my nightstand. Here are just few things that changed in my life. For the past complicated year, letting go of worries, for things I cannot change, helped me to cope with fear and anxiety better. By saying no to other people's ideas, I'm much more focused on what really matters to me, like taking care of disabled father and focusing on my career.

• 50:03Speaker 05

  I was able to get more control over my online shopping by removing the credit card information from all online store accounts. I've replaced old plastic food storage boxes with new healthier glass containers. And I'm using the 1990 rule on daily basis. I really believe it became a habit for me. So, thank you for your amazing podcast and bye from Israel.

• 50:25Speaker 04

  Deanna, thank you so much for that kind comment. Yes, Everything That Remains is my favorite book from the minimalists as well. But she mentioned this word TK before we get on to page two here, control. And I think that is maybe the, how we sum this up. Hedonism lacks a particular kind of self-control or self-restraint. One of my favorite episodes you and I ever did was an episode just called Restraint. And it was just me and you and Bama here in the studio. And I really enjoyed that because we talked about the sort of virtues of restraint. And that is not possible with a hedonist lifestyle. Because it doesn't provide you with the opportunity to strategically seek out uncomfortable

• 51:09Speaker 04

  experiences for the purpose of building strength. I think of restraint or self-control as a kind of psychological or spiritual weightlifting. If you want to be physically strong and be able to lift things, you have to develop that strength by exercising that muscle and getting to the point where you can do in the future what you're not capable of doing today. In a similar way, the weight of desire, the weight of craving is very strong. And if we always give into it, we seem like we are in control because we're choosing to nurture those pleasures, but we're actually becoming weak because we don't know how to say no to that. And so you have to practice through little things, the art of developing the spiritual

• 51:51Speaker 04

  psychological strength to carry the weight of your own cravings so that when your body says, hey, instinctively, I want to punch that guy in the face for irritating me. Hey, instinctively, I just want to have five slices of cheesecake. You can say, I hear you. I understand. That makes perfect sense, but that's not what we're going to do today because we have a path that's going to lead us the way we want. Want to go and it's not going to be fun or comfortable, but I want you to come with me this way.

• 52:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, understanding the true cost of your comfort, the true cost of your pleasure. Right. But also the true reward of your discomfort. Not seeking pain for the sake of seeking pain, not seeking suffering for the sake of of seeking suffering. You're going to experience pain. You're going to experience suffering. I just don't want to wallpaper over those by just agreeing that cravings are the number one virtue. And if it feels good, then I should do it. Well, what we do can feel good, but just because something feels good. That is not reason by itself to to just do it.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  That's right. My guiding principle for this is that it's always permissible to do what feels good to you in the absence of any logically or morally compelling reason to do otherwise. Does it feel good? All right, excellent. Is there a logically or morally compelling reason to not do it? Well, then let's sit that feeling on the shelf or find a more creative ethical outlet outlet for it.

• 53:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And just because something is permissible, doesn't mean you have to do it or should do it. Or your life would be better just because you're doing the thing that you're permitted to do. Deanna, thanks again for your lovely comment. For anyone else has a listener tip or insight about this episode, send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three, but first let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 53:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that's the first 32% of episode 486. We'll see you on Patreon for the full juicy maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, what's the difference between self-care and self-indulgence? When does self-gratification turn into escapism? And why does pleasure seeking lead to the fear of missing out? Plus, we have a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malabama, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff and Spire Dave, Savvy D on the board and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Milburn.

• 54:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you leave here with just one message. Let it be this. Love people and use things because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 54:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.