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Jumping off the hedonic treadmill
Oct. 14th, 2005 10:23 am[Uh. This thing is full of typos, don't have the energy or stamia to go back and proof it all. So if that bothers you? Skip it. It's my day off dang it, feel like a break from all things detail oriented. Ah. Rain. Is it possible that it can rain non-stop for three days straight? Apparently so.
Can't be on the computer too long today, screwed up my right shoulder a bit on Tuesday. And being on the computer aggravates it. Luckily I decided to take today off, had scheduled it weeks ago with my boss, we can't take the same days off. Sick of the rain, but oddly happy to be able to be lazy and not have to go out in it, not have to brave the downpours to get lunch or get to the subway or commute. First day all week didn't have to do that. Could work on what I wanted to do, be lazy, watch tv, read, drink tea, eat my gluten-free muffins and gluten free chocolat chip cookies I baked myself - somewhat on the grainy side, but tasty too. Ate too many of them at once and am paying for it now. Ugh.]
Jumping off the hedonic treadmill
The hedonic treadmill is a phrase that I'd never heard until this week, thrown our hap-harzardly, almost as an after thought by the social psych teacher and eliciting a debate that she could not quite put an end to. I think in retrospect she may have regretted mentioning it. It means working long hours, climbing the corporate ladder,w working hard at a job you're not nuts over in order to obtain pleasure, not unlike walking a treadmill hour after hour at a gym to become thin. I'm not a huge fan of treadmills, one of them destroyed my knees so I can no longer run the way I once was able to. I basically kept upping the speed, until one day my knees gave out. Push past the pain to the high and all that. The rewards will be great. Yeah, right. The rewards are pain.
The question posed this week is why people feel the need to work til they drop? The argument was whether that is a bad thing? And what would you do if you weren't working? And do people only work to obtain pleasure? Or is the job itself a plearuable thing? I guess it depends on what job you land in.
At work, every week, ten of us, put a dollar each into an envelope to play the New York Lottery. I find it odd at times that I participate, since I'm not a huge believer in lotteries and know that we have a one in a millionieth chance of winning, if that. Plus it's a rare thing that my name or number gets selected. When it happens, I'm usually in shock. While part of me dreams of winning, part of me dreads it. Fears it even. What would I do with all that money and how would I deal with people, friends, family, etc who wanted a piece of it?
Money changes relationships. Having something someone else wants always does. Approximately 50% of the people interviewed after winning the lottery, mentioned that their lives changed, not for the better. Most lost half their winninngs to family members who swindled them. Or bad investment scehemes. Or buying things they did not need. The pressure to have fun, some responded, overwhelmed. While others responded that they'd lost loved ones because of it and in some respects life was better without all that money, yet, yet, they still wanted it and getting it, they wanted more. Because whatever they wanted to do - was always somehow out of reach - the hedonic carrot they chased.
I feel safe in a way, doing it with a group. If we win - we win together. We half-jokingly mention that if we win a large amount, we'll all quit and go to Hawaii for lunch. And, I'm half-relieved half-disappointed when we rarely win enough to pay for a lotto ticket one week. Lotto used to be illegal in most of the US, with the possible exception of Nevada and Indian Reservations, until around the mid-1990s. What changed? Ah. Individual state legislatures finally woke up to the fact that Nevada and the Indian reservations were acquiring a ton of revenue that was not based on your standard income taxes. Revenue that voters didn't quip over. Revenue that could pay for stuff like education, building dams, government employees salaries. So they got to work on overturning the laws prohibiting state run lotteries. Gambling was still illegal but not if it was commissioned or run by the state or on a riverboat that paid taxes to the state. They of course forgot why gambling was illegal to begin with - the fact that it robbed people of their savings and caused social dissent and chaos.
And well is addictive. But hey, if we outlaw everything that is addictive, what's left? Sleep? It's what my old constitutional law professor loved to call the slippery slope argument.
Shirley Jackson wrote a short story, a rather famous one, that most people have heard of, called the Lottery.
A horror story really. About a town that picks a stoning victim through a lottery. I vaguely remember the particulars, having read it so long ago. Lotteries scare me a bit. Their randomness. I feel when I participate as if I'm throwing a kiss to the winds of fate. Yet by the same token, I'm afraid not to participate in my colleagues lottery pool. Half afraid the week I don't they will win and I'll be left out in the cold. Alone.
The reason Lost has been fascinating me this year, in some ways more than it did last year, is the focus on how each character is struggling with their own fears, insecurities, and foibles - how they are lost, not necessarily in the real sense of the word so much as the metaphorical sense. In an odd way they are less lost on the island they've found themselves stranded on, then they were in their lives off of it. On the island they are being forced to face the things they ran from or hide from in their own lives. ( Spoilers for last week and this week's Lost episodes )
Can't be on the computer too long today, screwed up my right shoulder a bit on Tuesday. And being on the computer aggravates it. Luckily I decided to take today off, had scheduled it weeks ago with my boss, we can't take the same days off. Sick of the rain, but oddly happy to be able to be lazy and not have to go out in it, not have to brave the downpours to get lunch or get to the subway or commute. First day all week didn't have to do that. Could work on what I wanted to do, be lazy, watch tv, read, drink tea, eat my gluten-free muffins and gluten free chocolat chip cookies I baked myself - somewhat on the grainy side, but tasty too. Ate too many of them at once and am paying for it now. Ugh.]
Jumping off the hedonic treadmill
The hedonic treadmill is a phrase that I'd never heard until this week, thrown our hap-harzardly, almost as an after thought by the social psych teacher and eliciting a debate that she could not quite put an end to. I think in retrospect she may have regretted mentioning it. It means working long hours, climbing the corporate ladder,w working hard at a job you're not nuts over in order to obtain pleasure, not unlike walking a treadmill hour after hour at a gym to become thin. I'm not a huge fan of treadmills, one of them destroyed my knees so I can no longer run the way I once was able to. I basically kept upping the speed, until one day my knees gave out. Push past the pain to the high and all that. The rewards will be great. Yeah, right. The rewards are pain.
The question posed this week is why people feel the need to work til they drop? The argument was whether that is a bad thing? And what would you do if you weren't working? And do people only work to obtain pleasure? Or is the job itself a plearuable thing? I guess it depends on what job you land in.
At work, every week, ten of us, put a dollar each into an envelope to play the New York Lottery. I find it odd at times that I participate, since I'm not a huge believer in lotteries and know that we have a one in a millionieth chance of winning, if that. Plus it's a rare thing that my name or number gets selected. When it happens, I'm usually in shock. While part of me dreams of winning, part of me dreads it. Fears it even. What would I do with all that money and how would I deal with people, friends, family, etc who wanted a piece of it?
Money changes relationships. Having something someone else wants always does. Approximately 50% of the people interviewed after winning the lottery, mentioned that their lives changed, not for the better. Most lost half their winninngs to family members who swindled them. Or bad investment scehemes. Or buying things they did not need. The pressure to have fun, some responded, overwhelmed. While others responded that they'd lost loved ones because of it and in some respects life was better without all that money, yet, yet, they still wanted it and getting it, they wanted more. Because whatever they wanted to do - was always somehow out of reach - the hedonic carrot they chased.
I feel safe in a way, doing it with a group. If we win - we win together. We half-jokingly mention that if we win a large amount, we'll all quit and go to Hawaii for lunch. And, I'm half-relieved half-disappointed when we rarely win enough to pay for a lotto ticket one week. Lotto used to be illegal in most of the US, with the possible exception of Nevada and Indian Reservations, until around the mid-1990s. What changed? Ah. Individual state legislatures finally woke up to the fact that Nevada and the Indian reservations were acquiring a ton of revenue that was not based on your standard income taxes. Revenue that voters didn't quip over. Revenue that could pay for stuff like education, building dams, government employees salaries. So they got to work on overturning the laws prohibiting state run lotteries. Gambling was still illegal but not if it was commissioned or run by the state or on a riverboat that paid taxes to the state. They of course forgot why gambling was illegal to begin with - the fact that it robbed people of their savings and caused social dissent and chaos.
And well is addictive. But hey, if we outlaw everything that is addictive, what's left? Sleep? It's what my old constitutional law professor loved to call the slippery slope argument.
Shirley Jackson wrote a short story, a rather famous one, that most people have heard of, called the Lottery.
A horror story really. About a town that picks a stoning victim through a lottery. I vaguely remember the particulars, having read it so long ago. Lotteries scare me a bit. Their randomness. I feel when I participate as if I'm throwing a kiss to the winds of fate. Yet by the same token, I'm afraid not to participate in my colleagues lottery pool. Half afraid the week I don't they will win and I'll be left out in the cold. Alone.
The reason Lost has been fascinating me this year, in some ways more than it did last year, is the focus on how each character is struggling with their own fears, insecurities, and foibles - how they are lost, not necessarily in the real sense of the word so much as the metaphorical sense. In an odd way they are less lost on the island they've found themselves stranded on, then they were in their lives off of it. On the island they are being forced to face the things they ran from or hide from in their own lives. ( Spoilers for last week and this week's Lost episodes )