The drug: dopamine. If you understand the mechanism of addition, every human action makes sense. Continuing living is simply a dopamine addition.
Everyone is more of less aware of it, it's not a secret knowledge, but I have my own reasons to believe stating the obvious is useful.
What's the point of life? What's the end goal? People continue living, because they believe they can achieve happiness and happiness is practically synonymous with dopamine high. Having power? Dopamine. Banging hot chicks? Dopamine. Starting a family? Dopamine. Being immortalised because of some great achievement? Dopamine.
People know that living is an endless rat race, but they hope the next hit of dopamine will finally satisfy them. All this talk about achievements, goals, experiences - all drug addict talk. If you removed the dopamine release, we'd either be living in a sheol/purgatory (state of endless void) or hell (if you could still experience pain) - pain-happiness spectrum is completely relative, so they're essentially the same thing (too lazy to elaborate tbhtbh).
So now you realised you're stuck here trying to get your next dose. What to do? Two options: either ignore it and continue your life (you're high and you have the support of all instincts) OR become religious (I'm using the term somewhat loosely). Religions found the perfect loophole, a bug in the Matrix, so to say. In the end it's an unsolvable epistemological dilemma: you can't know what you don't know. You can't ever be 100% sure of anything. Literally everything is theoretically possible, no matter how improbable. It's a little crazy, but it's good enough to instil into everyone's mind the idea that maybe there's anything more to life, maybe you get a grand prize if you follow some algorithm. I'd say barely (or maybe literally) no one is 100% materialistic, there's always some hope and that's enough to decide to keep on living.
So now what? Religions are very aware how dopamine addiction works. They know you'll always crave more and you'll never be truly satisfied. But because they basically took continuing living as an axiom, they have all the incentive to try to hack this system. So they did. What's inherent of all religions? Sacrifice. It's a basic idea, but understanding it and applying it consciously can yield some great results. Avoiding things which help you cope seems pointless if you don't take dopamine into account. People found out very early that things get less pleasurable with time and that you can regain some sensitivity if you abstain from pleasurable activities for some time - that's it. That's why fasting is a thing, that's why no-fap is a thing, that's why voluntary seclusion is a thing. Religions generally use deities to illustrate different cravings and the growth of our will. I think minimalistic Zen Buddhism is the most straight-forward: if you abstain from pleasure for long enough to stop even desiring it, you'll reach a state of ultimate bliss and you'll break free from the samsara cycle (most commonly understood as reincarnation cycle, but you could go deeper into the psychology and esoteric meanings). The goal of abstaining from something is eventually to break the vow, but if you set your standards so low that sunlight feels orgasmic, it'd take a long time to become desensitised again (assuming you won't stay in a constant cycle of pleasure and withdrawal). That's it.
Everyone is more of less aware of it, it's not a secret knowledge, but I have my own reasons to believe stating the obvious is useful.
What's the point of life? What's the end goal? People continue living, because they believe they can achieve happiness and happiness is practically synonymous with dopamine high. Having power? Dopamine. Banging hot chicks? Dopamine. Starting a family? Dopamine. Being immortalised because of some great achievement? Dopamine.
People know that living is an endless rat race, but they hope the next hit of dopamine will finally satisfy them. All this talk about achievements, goals, experiences - all drug addict talk. If you removed the dopamine release, we'd either be living in a sheol/purgatory (state of endless void) or hell (if you could still experience pain) - pain-happiness spectrum is completely relative, so they're essentially the same thing (too lazy to elaborate tbhtbh).
So now you realised you're stuck here trying to get your next dose. What to do? Two options: either ignore it and continue your life (you're high and you have the support of all instincts) OR become religious (I'm using the term somewhat loosely). Religions found the perfect loophole, a bug in the Matrix, so to say. In the end it's an unsolvable epistemological dilemma: you can't know what you don't know. You can't ever be 100% sure of anything. Literally everything is theoretically possible, no matter how improbable. It's a little crazy, but it's good enough to instil into everyone's mind the idea that maybe there's anything more to life, maybe you get a grand prize if you follow some algorithm. I'd say barely (or maybe literally) no one is 100% materialistic, there's always some hope and that's enough to decide to keep on living.
So now what? Religions are very aware how dopamine addiction works. They know you'll always crave more and you'll never be truly satisfied. But because they basically took continuing living as an axiom, they have all the incentive to try to hack this system. So they did. What's inherent of all religions? Sacrifice. It's a basic idea, but understanding it and applying it consciously can yield some great results. Avoiding things which help you cope seems pointless if you don't take dopamine into account. People found out very early that things get less pleasurable with time and that you can regain some sensitivity if you abstain from pleasurable activities for some time - that's it. That's why fasting is a thing, that's why no-fap is a thing, that's why voluntary seclusion is a thing. Religions generally use deities to illustrate different cravings and the growth of our will. I think minimalistic Zen Buddhism is the most straight-forward: if you abstain from pleasure for long enough to stop even desiring it, you'll reach a state of ultimate bliss and you'll break free from the samsara cycle (most commonly understood as reincarnation cycle, but you could go deeper into the psychology and esoteric meanings). The goal of abstaining from something is eventually to break the vow, but if you set your standards so low that sunlight feels orgasmic, it'd take a long time to become desensitised again (assuming you won't stay in a constant cycle of pleasure and withdrawal). That's it.
