Enjoyment and Utility

Pleasure and benefit are central concepts in the topic of personality integration.

An integrated personality derives pleasure only from what is beneficial, while a disintegrated personality primarily derives pleasure from what is harmful.

Some (usually poorly integrated individuals) consider benefit to be a subjective concept. Some even preach that anything that brings pleasure is beneficial. If you notice, this is how they try to achieve a state of integrity. So, as long as there is a significant gap between what a person considers beneficial for themselves and what they find pleasurable, they suffer and struggle: either forcing themselves to do unpleasant things (which causes stress), or giving in to all sorts of pleasures. In the first case, a person may sustain themselves with the notion that

"life is not lived for joy, but for conscience,"

while in the second case, they argue that benefit is an abstract concept with no practical meaning for them personally. Physiologically, this is quite understandable because they experience stress, and therefore, everything they consider "beneficial" is harmful to them.

"People who say 'breaking oneself is much more harmful than allowing oneself pleasures' are right,"

and indeed, breaking oneself is truly harmful. I've already mentioned that just a few minutes, sometimes seconds, of intense stress can lead to death. The body poorly tolerates an increase in cortisol levels and takes all possible measures to either eliminate the stressor or adapt to the stress reaction. That is, the body is ready to deny even real danger, sometimes mortal danger, creating a thick shield of illusions just to reduce cortisol levels. And this is very logical and very natural. It's not certain that danger will lead to death, but strong stress will lead to death in a matter of minutes.

That's why food addicts feel that a burger is beneficial to them, not harmful; drug addicts think the same about drugs, and someone deeply in love doesn't want to listen to well-wishers who advise them to leave their beloved due to their mistreatment. What mistreatment? There's nothing more dangerous and unpleasant than the stress an addict experiences during withdrawal.

The relativity of benefit is also proclaimed in other cases not directly related to addiction.

For example, a person who cannot derive pleasure from work, only experiencing stress after stress, may start to argue that the benefit of work is highly doubtful. "For whom is this benefit?" such a person thinks, most likely, "for the damned capitalists who shamelessly appropriate surplus value, while for me, it's nothing but harm." So, such a person is not lying about the harm to themselves because their body experiences stress from work, which is the most severe harm. However, the belief that only capitalists benefit from work is mistaken. Many non-capitalists benefit from work because they enjoy it, develop their minds during work, and also earn money and approval from others. But the first person views such experiences skeptically. They only agree about the money but believe that money is like a carrot that the cursed capitalist dangles in front of them. All the money earned by a working person goes into fuel for work, and there's nothing left for pleasure. That is, they spend their salary on transportation, office lunches, presentable clothing, post-work drinks to relieve stress, rent in the city, and there's nothing left for living. Such a skeptic cannot imagine that life consists of office-lunches-bars-cities because they don't derive any pleasure from it; their pleasure is lying somewhere in a hammock by the sea doing nothing, just drinking coconut juice and looking at naked girls. And therefore, the skeptic hates capitalism and dreams of downshifting.

Please note, I'm not condemning the skeptic; I wholeheartedly support them. I understand that if work and the city are just continuous stress with no energy, then no fool would want to work. Their body simply won't allow them to be cortisol-ed endlessly and will constantly create images of the sea, girls, and palm trees in their brain to convince them to leave the stressful city. Often these images are even simpler and far less romantic. It's not palm trees and coconuts that appear in the cortisol-ridden brain but half a liter and a friend's garage, where one can relax and relieve stress. For the Russian countryside, the second picture is much more relevant because the thought of flying to a foreign country with a foreign language and some incomprehensible rules in itself generates stress. And coconuts and girls don't seem appealing to those who aren't accustomed to finding pleasure in them. It's only for that office plankton who has been to Thailand, Goa, the Dominican Republic multiple times and has gotten used to associating the word "happiness" with these destinations.

But the main idea, I hope, is clear. Benefit is what provides the body with energy. But pleasure is indeed that very flow of energy, that immediate high, when the impulses of the brain gently massage special receptors, and a person feels an amazing flow of energy. This flow of energy can be slightly different: relaxing, relieving anxiety, filling the soul with light, warmth, or, conversely, stimulating, raising a wave of enthusiasm and faith in one's own abilities, and even giving a real feeling of mighty forces, tangibly filling the whole body. The flow of energy is the most immediate pleasure there is. And the real benefit. Isn't that so?

Well, there are some nuances.

What a person calls benefit (and sometimes even more precisely – duty) and separates it from pleasure, sometimes even opposing it, is what will provide the person with energy in the future. Not now, not in the moment, but later, beyond. That's what benefit and duty are.

I want to emphasize once again. Duty and pleasure are not opposed to each other. Duty is delayed pleasure, something that ensures a steady receipt of pleasure, or at least stable protection against suffering. Pleasure, on the other hand, pertains to the present and the flow of energy we receive today, right now, while duty or utility concerns the future and the flow of energy that will be required of us tomorrow, later.

And then the view of integrated and non-integrated personalities looks entirely different. The former is capable of deriving immediate pleasure from activities that will also provide them pleasure tomorrow. The latter experiences a huge dissonance between the present and the future; they crave what will destroy them tomorrow. When there is too much dissonance, the body opts for the present, chasing after a drug fix to avoid death. But with excessive dissonance, this strategy of the body is merely delaying death, postponing it until tomorrow. The same applies not to death but simply to suffering, i.e., stress, which the body can survive but experiences anguish. By avoiding anguish today, such a body craves what will destroy it, alleviating suffering now while ensuring even greater suffering tomorrow.

This is how all addicts are structured. And for anyone who wishes to effectively treat addiction or simply help addicted loved ones, it is crucial to consider this point. A person cannot quit because they cannot overcome the suffering in the present. They can be convinced that the suffering in the present is temporary, that they must quit, recover, and then in the future, there will be no suffering, and a happy life will begin. But firstly, not all suffering will allow the person to overcome it, only moderate suffering (see cortisol), and secondly, the notion of an obligatory happy life is untrue. To ensure future happiness, it is not enough to simply abstain from addiction. It is also necessary to create and establish sources of energy. That's why, even when addicts are removed from the addictive needle, be it chemical or psychological, even if they break the cycle of dose-pleasure-crash-dose, they still find themselves in a bad state, in apathy, in depression, in an energy pit if they have not managed to somehow fill their circle of resources, that is, to connect to some spheres and derive pleasure from useful sources. And remember, how a useful source differs from a harmful one, right? Harmful sources provide energy now and take more away tomorrow, requiring an increase in dosage. But a useful source provides energy now and ensures it for tomorrow as well.

Why is office work better than among coconut palms?

I'll reiterate that office work is not better for everyone, only for those who can derive energy from it. For those whose resource is blocked, office work is very unpleasant, difficult, and stressful. But for those whose resource is connected, work is much better than idle relaxation. More precisely, "there's a time for work and a time for play," idleness can also be good and even necessary; it's a relaxation of the entire body and a chance to unwind. However, excessive idleness is beneficial in very small quantities. Even for leisure, active relaxation is preferable, and passive relaxation should be in small doses (if we're talking about both physical and mental passivity, meaning not that a person in a hammock is actively using their imagination, which is part of the creative process, but rather about relaxation and switching off the mind for the sake of body rest).

On the contrary, work can occupy a significant portion of one's life, and if this work is beloved, involving not only mechanical but also creative, intellectual, and social aspects, indirectly involving other resources, such work does not deplete energy reserves in the present; it even replenishes them and ensures the future. In the future, such work brings a paycheck, bonuses, awards, societal respect, gratitude from loved ones, career advancement, skill development, intellectual growth, and exploration of new social spheres. In contrast, idleness, if it occupies a significant portion of one's life, does quite the opposite: money is spent, debts accumulate, societal respect diminishes, loved ones are dissatisfied, careers are destroyed, skills stagnate, intellect degrades, and social spheres narrow.

Paradoxically, even the level of pleasure from idleness is inferior to the pleasure from work (if the resource is connected and functioning well). Idleness is passive, numbing pleasure, quickly leading to apathy, boredom, and haze. Work is active pleasure, nourishing self-esteem with the best and highest-quality food – real achievements, stimulating the brain and allowing the activation of new receptors. Addiction to work, workaholism, can also develop, but this is a completely different interaction with the resource, and such addiction is also destructive, no less than any other (although it must be admitted that this addiction grows much more slowly than others and very rarely reaches a destructive threshold, although it can happen).

Meanwhile, I wanted to mention that in the ethical sphere, "duty" has exactly the same property, meaning that fulfilling duty is not abstractly beneficial but very concrete, as it ensures a prosperous tomorrow. A person who deceives, avoids paying debts, seeks to take what is not theirs, and exploits others may gain short-term benefits but creates problems for themselves tomorrow (especially when this becomes a widespread scenario, leading to the rapid demise of society). When some moralists try to juxtapose personal happiness with the fulfillment of social duty, they speak of disintegrated personalities for whom fulfilling duty is painful and difficult. An integrated personality adheres to ethical rules with pleasure and ease. It's unpleasant for them to violate them. Ethics is harmoniously integrated into their personality. They don't weigh the rational benefit of "to steal or not to steal" in each case. Physically, they are repelled and disgusted by all actions that blatantly harm others (when something is integrated into the core of one's personality, it starts to operate not on the level of reason but on an emotional and physical level). Thus, an integrated personality earns respect and trust from society, its love and support. Unethical individuals (fraudsters, deceivers) are disintegrated as personalities (infantile, stuck in a stage of childish selfishness), so they constantly have to choose between personal and societal interests, and of course, they choose personal interests because their well-being depends on it.

And finally, what should a disintegrated person do, who experiences stress from beneficial things and only finds pleasure in harmful ones? Such a person should do the following:

1. Realize that today's pleasure leads to tomorrow's downfall. Understand that beneficial things can also be enjoyable if one reshapes themselves from within.
2. Don't try to forcefully break yourself by compelling yourself to do (eat, drink) beneficial things and give up harmful ones.
3. Understand that breaking oneself leads to stress, and the need for harmful pleasure becomes even greater (stress creates a gap and requires additional energy to patch it up). Avoid stress.
4. Seek a compromise between today's pleasure and tomorrow's benefit by finding the most enjoyable beneficial things and the least harmful enjoyable ones. Soften the transition, relieve stress with additional methods.
5. Gradually train your body to find pleasure in beneficial things, gradually steering it away from harmful ones (though I will describe the best method later, which is, of course, upgrading resources).
6. All this gradualness does not apply to potentially life-threatening pleasures, where it's important to quickly sever the connection. In such cases, it's necessary to consult a doctor to help mitigate stress during abrupt withdrawal with medication. This applies to some cases of love addiction, where the attachment is strong, and the partner is dangerous to health and life. Sometimes it applies to gambling addiction, extreme sports, compulsive shopping, food addiction, etc. And almost always applies to dependencies on heavy drugs.