Psychology of Epithymia
The Brainrotting Succubus of Nihilistic Hedonism
Has our culture become too hedonistic? I think it’s a common narrative that we as men have increasingly defined our happiness based on pleasure. Sure, we have greater access to the internet, video games, unhealthy food, and adult videos, but is it true? Well, obesity now ends more lives than hunger, 81% of Americans have a smartphone, 3 billion people play video games, and each generation since the Boomers has increasingly valued hedonism, stimulation, power, and achievement.1,2,3,4 It seems clear that the “more hedonistic” idea isn’t far off the mark, so in this essay I’m going to go deep into why exactly hedonism is never enough.
Because the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t seem to be enough when more and more men are ending their own lives.5 In fact, taking one’s own life is the third leading cause of death in 15 – 29 years olds.6 It just seems odd that men are more and more likely to end everything despite the fact that we are surrounded by more and more pleasure.
Dr. Vervaeke et al. (2017) link this with what they call the meaning crisis, or the crisis in nihilism, alienation, and absurdity that has spread throughout Western culture.7 If nothing matters and we have no reason to live, it simply makes sense that we’d sink into disease of despair, but again, why exactly does hedonism not correct for this?
One of the studies that I’ve often seen referenced in regards to this problem is the Rat Utopia.8 Give a community of rats everything they need to meet their survival needs, and their population explodes until they eventually sink into a dystopian ruin of cannibalism and homosexuality. Like actually, that’s what happens. As you can guess, the idea goes that this is what is currently happening to humans. Give us everything we could need – food, sex, and entertainment – all at the push of a button, and we’ll all become weak, feminized men!
To be clear, this isn’t what actually happens and subsequent experiments found that the issue was unwanted social encounters caused by overcrowding. I’m definitely not making an evolutionary argument to justify homophobia here, that’s not what this is in any way, but I do think there are some similarities between Rat Utopia and our current predicament. If we can use this experiment as an analogy for humans, we can think, “okay, an inability to navigate a new social reality offered by abundance, led to social breakdown.”
As you’ll find out in the rest of this essay, it’s the voice of Epithymia that emerges from this culture of nihilistic hedonism where traditional social reality has begun to break down.9 If you want a deeper dive into what I mean by “breakdown”, then please check out my essay, “Psychology of Akedia”.
A major point however is that I do not mean for this to be a rant against feminism or LGBT+. That is not what I mean by breakdown. I have no issue with those things at all.
If you prefer spotify or youtube, then please click those links.
The Succubus of Nihilistic Hedonism, Epithymia
Either way, as I’ve done in the last two essays, what is this Greek word I’m using? Who is Epithymia? She is yearning, craving, and desire, and sometimes, lust.10 At least for my purposes, I think the best way to begin conceptualizing Epithymia is as hedonistic desire. Paraphrasing Dr. Marc Lewis, desire is a beam of focused anticipation of reward, the more of what we do not yet have enough of, but that will be so good once we finally have it, though not necessarily satisfying.11
What is this if not the spirit of the past 30, 40, 50 years? Exactly when was it that we started defining not merely our happiness based on how much shit we have, but our entire identity? How long has your worth as a man been defined by the quality of your car, the size of your house, or the number of men who would want to fuck your wife? I don’t think it’s far off the mark to call our culture hedonistic.
Now, remember the study I quoted before about how Gen Z value hedonism and stimulation more than any other generation. They granted that how Gen Z defines these things may differ. For example, stimulation might be going for a run vs. snorting a bunch of powder. But, is that really true, especially given this channel, for men?
Please keep in mind that Epithymia is far more than just lust. However, the conversation around porn can help us understand how our society has become increasingly defined by desire as hedonism. So, just to say, I don’t mean for this to be some sort of puritanical rant against the satanic evils of porn. I do have a nuanced perspective on it.
For this essay, I just wanted to center a negative perspective to make a point because the average age of first viewing porn ranges from 9 to 13.12 PornHub itself reported that in 2023, that 27% of visitors were between the ages of 18 – 24, and 26% were between 25 –34.13
However, what’s telling is that PornHub doesn’t report underage visitors, so what adult age group are they fluffing up? The average first timer is 9 – 13, and personally, I first started watching porn on dial-up internet on the family computer when I was 12 and was watching it almost daily by the time I was 14. Today, 18 – 29 year olds are most likely to own a smartphone, and 58% of Gen Alpha have a smartphone by the age of 10.2,14 In other words, they have infinite porn in their pocket.
Maybe I was just a lucky case, but another study found that 37% of teens were at least once per month viewers and 57% of young adults were.15 This was in 2016 when the oldest of Gen Z were 19 and the youngest were 4, so you know, the youngest had only another 5 years before they started becoming more likely to watch.
I think I’ve made my point and porn is only one window for looking at masculinity, desire, and hedonism. A very important window, though I may be biased, but a single window nonetheless. Getting back to the opening piece however, do we actually live in conditions similar to that Rat Utopia? Remember, the analogy I was making was that an inability to navigate a new social reality offered by abundance contributes to social breakdown.
Does the proliferation of porn connect with a lack of social skills? A study found that in the year before it was conducted, 59% of 18 – 25 year olds, Gen Z, hadn’t approached a woman in person, and 81% hadn’t in the last month. The numbers aren’t much better for Millennials, so I’m not picking on Gen Z. Point being…maybe a lack of romantic social skills, but is this contributing to social breakdown? Well, 55% of men and 45% of women say they feel a profound and enduring state of unhappiness, uneasiness, and discontent about their singlehood.16
Then, I first learned about this next twist from Dr. K of HealthyGamer.17 Think about what the evolution of porn is going to look like in the next 10 – 20 years. What we’ve found from research is that random reinforcement is the most powerful way to hook someone. This basically means that every so often you get rejected rather than rewarded. This is basically gambling, you lose more money than you win, but that’s what makes you that much more addicted. So, apply that to AI generated porn girlfriends who are programmed to be optimally abusive to make you feel like shit just enough to make that custom-tailored porn that much sweeter. And now give that to a 12 year old boy.
Again, I want to be clear, I am not using the Rat Utopia study as an evolutionary argument for why hedonism is causing the downfall of man. I am only trying to create an analogy to demonstrate how things are not going as well as they could be, and hedonism and nihilism, are kind of part of the problem. Epithymia then, is an archetype for this dynamic. She’s a psychological complex of beliefs and emotions that have emerged because of nihilism.
I’m going to get into that more in the next section, but to understand a bit more about why she’s such an important part of this model, I wanted to go deeper into Dr. Lewis’s work on desire.11
His view is that addiction is basically a learning process on overdrive. Desire focuses our attention on something that is experienced as very attractive to us. This motivates us to repeatedly revisit that thing over and over again. We’re given ample practice to learn how to do that specific thing and what to expect from it. The more addictive something is the more accelerated this process becomes. Just imagine how good you’d be at playing the guitar if it was as addictive as heroin. On top of that, Will Durant said, “we are what we repeatedly do”, and so we become the thing we are addicted to.18
Whether it’s porn, food, or anything else, an addiction is a solution to a problem. It often develops because we learn that our emotional pain can be soothed with the substance or behaviour. Through that desire-powered process of accelerated learning, we eventually learn that we can only use our addiction to solve any problem we could ever have. Simply put, our brain becomes nearly incapable of trying any other possible solution and then trying to stop the “addiction solution” becomes another painful problem for the addiction itself to solve.
If you remember back to my essay “Psychology of the Chained Vortex”, I talked about the vortex of negative affect and the chaining process. The basics of what I said there was that we all have a vortex of negative emotion that threatens to suck us inside, whether that’s anger, guilt, shame, jealousy, or anything else. Over the course of our childhood and teenage years our culture chains us to these vortices. We’re basically given an external compass that we follow without question or we risk triggering intense negative emotions.
For example, think about ignoring calls from your mom on mother’s day because you were too busy getting high and playing video games. That slight or major cringe you feel at the thought is quite literally what I’m talking about. Your culture taught you about mother’s day, taught you about how to treat your mom in general but especially on that day, and that video games are far less important than other reasons you might have. If you had been busy rushing someone to the hospital, your mother’s disappointment would quickly evolve into compassionate understanding, and perhaps even pride.
My point in bringing this up now is to say that the chains of our external compass are the things we’ve learned through our desire to be a “good” person, all in order to solve the problem of emotional pain. Remember, this is the emotional pain we’ve been taught we should feel when we disobey the directions given to us by that external compass. In other words, I think there is at the very least a useful analogy here between conformity and addiction. If addiction is run by hedonistic desire, then that means our conformity, given our cultural context, is run by Epithymia.
But isn’t desire just desire? How exactly can desire be different?
The Shape and Structure of Desire
In his book Eros and Civilization, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse gives one of the most powerful quotes I’ve read:19
“People … have dozens of newspapers and magazines that espouse the same ideals. They have innumerable choices, innumerable gadgets which are all of the same sort and keep them occupied and divert their attention from the real issue—which is the awareness that they could both work less and determine their own needs and satisfactions.”
The point that Marcuse is trying to make here, is that while desire itself is simply desire, it is what exactly we desire and how we desire it that structures what I call Epithymia. Also keep in mind that Marcuse published that book in 1955. Consider how many more gadgets we have to divide our desire between, let alone things to do on each of those gadgets.
Think about all the ways that the contemporary media landscape has been fractured. There are now so many different ways to get the news, that you can get at least 10 different narratives about the exact same event. One person thinks it’s an insurrection, another that it’s a false flag, another that’s subterranean reptilians, and still another something altogether different. Each person lives in an entirely different reality.
And it’s not only different sources, but also different devices that influence how that news affects us. If you get your news from a newspaper in 1955 that is going to be far less engaging, than getting your news from X and spending a few hours arguing with people in the comment section. Think about all of the various ways we engage with technology, the news, sex through porn, achievement through video games, etc., etc. Then think about how all of these different things shape what we desire and how we should pursue that desire, and thus, how we learn how we and the world work.
I can open up tiktok and find twenty different influencers showcasing twenty different lifestyles for me to desire, and every single one seems pretty fucking amazing. Do steroids, get jacked, and surround myself with beautiful physically fit women? Great. Get tattooed, pierced, learn yoga, and surround myself with spiritually flexible women? Great. Become a traditional breadwinning husband and find myself a big titty blonde TradWife who’ll make monotone baking videos while I’m slaying dragons at work? ALSO GREAT!
In any of these situations, sitting on my shoulders, is Epithymia, whispering in my ear to keep scrolling because there might be something better, something “more but never quite enough” for me to pursue, for me to desire.
In my essay “Psychology of the Kathekon” I talked about how Kathekon is the whole body of social norms, rules, and regulations in regards to “being masculine”. We are given a definition of masculinity that is often defined by materialistic success. This definition of masculinity is cemented and enforced by a vortex of negative emotion that not only prevents you from questioning that definition, but actually makes life-damaging lifestyles seem like the “pinnacle of masculinity”.
We all know that as men we’re prevented from being emotionally connected and nurturing of ourselves and the people we care about because that is “woman’s work”. But “life-damaging lifestyles”…what do I exactly mean by that?20
Firstly remember, that I’ve only been using porn as an example, you can apply this to any form of hedonism and figure out how that specifically might affects us. Either way though, we also all live in a very sexualized landscape. For those of you who aren’t watching a lot of porn, just think about all the messages you see about sex from advertisements, movies, shows, tiktok, instagram models, etc. Every influencer I mentioned above was specifically related to the women involved in those subcultures. If you’re straight, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that beautiful women are incredibly motivating for you.
One of the common examples people give of “toxic masculinity” is sexual conquest.21,22 Research has also found that when boys are young when they first watch porn, they’re more likely to desire power over women.23 The point is that as a man you should lose your virginity as soon as possible, and then get those numbers up as high as you can whether you have to lie, cheat, or kill to make it happen. Okay, obviously not kill, but still, you see my point. We partly define our masculinity based on how successfully it gets us laid. I think non-committal sex can be healthy, again I’m not trying to be puritanical here, but I don’t think it often is healthy for these reasons.
I hope you can clearly see the connection between this example of toxic masculinity and to something like the hedonism of porn. I’m sure the vast majority of you have heard that watching porn is just something guys do. In fact, your guy friends probably introduced you to porn, share porn, or talk about porn. When I decided to quit watching, I quite literally had to tell my friends to stop sending photos of Instagram models in our group chat. I was lucky enough to have friends who respected my decision. Guys have told me their friends outright refused to stop.
The point is that our masculinity gets wrapped up with sex, which gets wrapped up with porn, and life-damaging lifestyles that justify sexual conquest as masculine behaviour. Then, what do you see in porn? Muscular, well-endowed men who dominate women, often aggressively and violently…and…the women LOVE IT. They seemingly can’t get enough of it because they’re acting absolutely ravenous for the abuse. The external compass of our culture has already taught us that masculinity is about dominance and the more masculine we are the more women will want us. That message is multiplied a thousand times in the vast majority of porn.
The fact that all of this is happening in the context of a porn video means that it becomes even more emotionally powerful. The more desire we feel for something that is never truly satisfying, the more accelerated our learning becomes. In other words, we remember what we learn in porn far more than what we learn in other situations, but especially when it reinforces what we’ve learned in other situations.
Through what and how we desire we are taught what it means to be masculine. Kathekon is the shape and structure of masculine conformity. Akedia is the shape and structure of the anti-conformity that challenges the Kathekon. That means that desire, as Epithymia, is the force that is driving the dynamic between Kathekon and Akedia.
We’re socialized to desire all the masculine treasures of Kathekon, become jacked, embrace tradition, get rich or die trying. We are also socialized to desire challenging masculinity, to view masculinity as toxic, to get in touch with our emotions, and to empathize with the struggles in dating and employment that women experience at the hands of the Kathekon.
How then, has this dynamic between Kathekon and Akedia influenced the structure and function of Epithymia?
The Bastard Daughter of Kathekon and Akedia
Throughout this essay I’ve presupposed that hedonism is a natural response to nihilism, which has been caused by the collapse of traditional masculine conformity. I think that’s true. In my last essay I defined meaning in life as coherence, purpose, significance, and mattering. We have meaning in life when our life makes sense, we have a purpose to dedicate ourselves to, we feel like we are intrinsically valuable, and we matter to people who matter to us.
Traditionally, Kathekon provided all of these within a moral framework for right conduct. We had a very narrow window for what was acceptable behaviour for us as men, but this protected us from a lot of lifestyles that were harmful given what was expected of us. Now that Kathekon has been blown apart by Akedia, it’s not necessarily that we’ve found ourselves in a space of infinite possibility. Akedia is shaped and structured by the fact that it is an anti-conformist response to a specific Kathekon, and it comes with a whole host of its own moral prescriptions.
The conflict between Kathekon and Akedia emerges as a confusion that leads to meaninglessness. When we’re pulled between competing options and we don’t have an adequate ability to make sense of things or to find a coherent path forward, that’s when we’re put at risk for what’s most stimulating to us, which is what is most pleasurable to us. It’s the lack of a coherent, significant purpose that matters to people we care about that leads to hedonistic lifestyles. Epithymia is loudest in the ears of the nilhilistic man because he literally has nothing else to live for.
The specific way that Epithymia manifests is through all of these various masculine tribes we see popping up. The Red Pill movement puts forward a hyper-masculinity defined by wealth, social status, power over women, muscularity, and aggression. Men Going Their Own Way or MGTOW puts forward an isolationist masculinity defined by a rejection of women out of resentful resignation. NoFap is the idolization of Spartan asceticism and sexual self-hatred.
These are only some ways in which Kathekon has become hyper-reactionary in response to Akedia, but think about some of the hyper-reactions of Akedia and how they are defined in turn by a reactionary Kathekon. One example is from a psychedelic cult that came after the metamodern philosopher Emil Friis.24 The gist is that they were forcing men to have anal sex with other men to deconstruct their heteronormativity, all the while the cult leaders were busy fucking their wives.
So, I know I’m highlighting the worst elements of this kind of dynamic, but if given free reign, that’s what Epithymia does. Remember that she accelerates learning to the point that we can only solve our problems with an increasingly narrow set of solutions. These solutions are provided by these hyper-reactionary forms of Kathekon and Akedia, born out of their competition with one another.
One counterpoint is that a lot of these masculine tribes are defined by the repression of desire in some way. In Volume 1 of the History of Sexuality, Foucault deconstructs the idea of sexual repression.25 He says that power is not simply repressive, but also productive. We repress certain ways of expressing desire and redirect that desire in other directions that are deemed socially acceptable by whatever tribe we conform to.
Dr. Patrick Carnes talks about the bulimic cycle of addiction in his book Sexual Anorexia.26 This is basically the idea that addiction doesn’t necessarily look like mindless indulgence all the time, but often oscillates between Spartan, repressive lifestyles and mindless indulgence. We’re trapped by the oscillation because one makes us hate ourselves as a shameful creature and the other tries to force us to live a life that robs us of all joy, except that other thing that makes us hate ourselves.
As I said before, addiction is in some ways analogous to conformity. Many men find themselves oscillating between Kathekon and Akedia. Extreme versions of this are the right wing homophobe who sucks dick on the side vs. the male feminist who gets outted for serial sexual harassment or even assault. However, in smaller forms this occurs within all men as we find ourselves oscillating between the expectations of the Kathekon and expectations made by Akedia when it challenges and deconstructs the Kathekon.
And of course, other men simply tap out and numb themselves with free indulgence. That could be porn, as I’ve talked about at length, or food, video games, drugs, binge drinking at endless parties, or whatever other form their nihilistic hedonism takes. In some ways the men who pick some sort of masculine tribe are actually further in their development relative to the men of free indulgence. They’re at the very least challenging the status quo, even if in very regressive ways.
The man of free indulgence is merely numbing himself into a stupor in which he doesn’t need to challenge anything. I know that sounds judgmental, but I say it out of care because I don’t think a life of meaning is one where you’re numbed out and disconnected from the world.
Regardless of which situation you find yourself in, the following is likely true for you. Developmental psychologists have found that 50 – 75% of people in the US are Conformist or a little bit above.27,28 As I said before, those who find themselves trapped in masculine tribes may be described as a little bit above Conformist, but even then I think they find themselves in just as powerful a trap, if not more.
It may also seem weird to call Akedia, the anti-conformist challenge to masculine conformity, its own conformity, but understand that Conformity exists within our own minds. We turn Kathekon, Akedia, or their bastard reactionary children into something to conform to. This internal conflict between Kathekon and Akedia, powered by Epithymia, prevents us from freeing our own mind from the influence of social pressure. We’re trapped by the promises of the fractured external compass given to us by our fractured culture.
Epithymia gives us a facsimile of meaning, a twisted version preventing us from finding something that could actually provide meaning according to our own personal standard. However, if Epithymia is the Succubus of Nihilistic Hedonism latched on our back, whispering the seductive rewards of conformity, what exactly is it that she locks our gaze onto? Why is this thing so powerful that we refuse to tear our eyes from it even as our life and culture fall apart around us? This is what we’ll discuss in the next essay.
Until then, thank you so much for your time and attention. Please hit the like button and subscribe for more conversations on masculinity, psychological development, and the cultivation of a personal mythology. Thanks again, and all the best to you on whatever journey you find yourself on.
If you’d like more, the recommended reading order at the bottom of this linked article.
References:
1 – Robertson, L. (2013, March 29). Bloomberg’s Obesity Claim. FactCheck.Org. https://www.factcheck.org/2013/03/bloombergs-obesity-claim/
2 – How Many People Own Smartphones? (2024-2029). (2021, November 19). Exploding Topics. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-stats
3 – Boffey, D., & reporter, D. B. C. (2023, June 6). Power-hungry hedonists? Survey reveals what drives generation Z. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/07/power-hungry-hedonists-survey-reveals-what-drives-generation-z
4 – Katatikarn, J. (2023, September 21). Online Gaming Statistics and Facts: The Definitive Guide (2024). Academy of Animated Art. https://academyofanimatedart.com/gaming-statistics/
5 – Twenge, J. M. (2024, March 5). Suicide rates are now higher among young adults than the middle-aged. https://www.generationtechblog.com/p/suicide-rates-are-now-higher-among
6 – Suicide. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2024, from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide
7 – Vervaeke, J., Mastropietro, C., & Miscevic, F. (2017). Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis (Hardback ed. edition). Open Book Publishers.
8 – Izzo, J. (2024, May 22). Universe 25 “Rodent Utopia” Experiment Doesn’t Mean Human Society Is Dying. Snopes. https://www.snopes.com//articles/466960/john-calhoun-universe-25/
9 – Doomen, J. (2012). Consistent Nihilism. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 33(1/2), 103–117.
10 – Ἐπιθυμία. (2017). In Wiktionary, the free dictionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E1%BC%90%CF%80%CE%B9%CE%B8%CF%85%CE%BC%CE%AF%CE%B1&oldid=48175003
11 – Ph. D. Lewis, M. (2015). The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease (Illustrated edition). Public Affairs.
12 – Pornography Use Among Young Adults in the United States. (n.d.). Ballard Brief. Retrieved October 7, 2024, from https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/pornography-use-among-young-adults-in-the-united-states
13 – 2023 Year in Review—Pornhub Insights. (2013). PornHub. Retrieved October 9, 2024, from https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2023-year-in-review
14 - Reschke, M. (2024, August 21). Generation Alpha: Online Habits and Media Preferences by the Numbers. Basis Technologies. https://basis.com/blog/generation-alpha-online-habits-and-media-preferences-by-the-numbers
15 – Porn Phenomenon. (n.d.). Barna Resources. Retrieved October 9, 2024, from https://shop.barna.com/products/porn-phenomenon
16 – Alexander. (2023, July 14). Risk Aversion and Dating—Date Psychology. https://datepsychology.com/risk-aversion-and-dating/
17 – Tom Bilyeu (Director). (2024, March 5). Truth About Porn, Sex, Women, AI Girlfriends, Laziness & Toxic Masculinity | Dr. K (Healthy Gamer) [Video recording]. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=5-dc3tP1Mr4 (remove the space after www.)
18 – A quote by Will Durant. (n.d.). Good Reads. Retrieved October 8, 2024, from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/546495-we-are-what-we-repeatedly-do-excellence-therefore-is-not
19 – Marcuse, H. (1974). Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (First Thus edition). Beacon Press.
20 – Bradshaw, J. (2005). Healing the Shame That Binds You: Recovery Classics Edition (Recovery Classics Edition, revised). Health Communications Inc.
21 – Toxic masculinity: Definition, common issues, and how to fight it. (2020, June 22). Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/toxic-masculinity
22 – Vallie, S. (n.d.). What Is Toxic Masculinity? WebMD. Retrieved October 8, 2024, from https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/what-is-toxic-masculinity
23 – Age of first exposure to pornography shapes men’s attitudes toward women. (n.d.). Https://Www.Apa.Org. Retrieved October 8, 2024, from https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/08/pornography-exposure
24 – Friis, E. E. (2021, October 8). How a Psychedelic Sex Cult Infiltrated a German Ecovillage. Metamoderna. https://metamoderna.org/how-a-psychedelic-sex-cult-infiltrated-a-german-ecovillage/
25 – Foucault, M. (1990). The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Reissue edition). Vintage.
26 – Ph.D, P. J. C., & Moriarity, J. M. (1997). Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred. Hazelden Publishing.
27 – Kegan, R. (1998). In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life (Reprint edition). Harvard University Press.
28 – Cook-Greuter, S. (2021). Ego Development: A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making.