Why do people want to have fun. The nature of sex. Why do people get such pleasure from sex? Sperm contains many vitamins and minerals

Feelings strongly influence thoughts and actions. Therefore, we do not feel like doing anything when we are upset or annoyed. But from negative emotions nowhere to go. But you can learn to think positively.

• Keep a gratitude journal. Every day, write down what you were grateful for, and try to worry less about what you don't have. Gratitude makes us happier, increases productivity, and has a positive effect on sleep.
• Repeat positive attitudes that confirm your progress in the area in which you want to improve.
• Try to surround yourself with positive people. Don't forget that emotions are contagious.
• Be active. When we are inactive, we begin to wind ourselves up and worry about trifles. But playing sports causes the release of endorphins.

2. Set an alarm half an hour earlier than usual

Many successful people. And while you don't have to be like Apple's Tim Cook who wakes up at 3:45, try to get up at least half an hour earlier than usual.

So you will have an additional free time, which can be spent on sports, meditation, reading, breakfast with the family, planning for the day ahead, or even working on something that interests you. You no longer have to run out of the house in a hurry, feeling that you do not have time for anything and do not control your life.

3. Clean up after yourself

How long does it take to make your bed or wash your dishes? Five minutes? But for some reason, we often leave such cases for later. And they quickly accumulate and get on our nerves. By cleaning up after yourself immediately, you will save yourself from unnecessary headaches. Plus, you get a boost in productivity.

4. Don't over-commit

We often set ourselves big goals and give up halfway. It is much easier to stick to and achieve your goals when they are simple and clear.

Start small. Don't try to run a marathon if you have no preparation at all. At first, for example, do 10 and walk daily. If you want to meditate, do at least five minutes of breathing exercises every day.

This also applies to business. Do not try to develop in all directions at once, improve in one area. Don't promise what you can't deliver.

5. Don't be so predictable

If you do the same thing day after day, you can get bogged down in a routine. Therefore, try to get rid of the monotony and predictability in your life. Get out of your comfort zone at least once a week and do something new that you haven't done before. For example, dine at another cafe or go shopping at another store.

New experiences make us happier, help us look at the world differently and energize us.

6. Instead of Complaining, Express Gratitude

Be grateful for the good things that happened to you today. This will help you feel better. In addition, the researchers found Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of
Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life., What:

• Those who write in a gratitude journal every week are more likely to exercise and be more optimistic about the future.
• Talking about what you're grateful for every day can increase your focus, focus, energy, sleep, and maybe even help fight depression.
• People who think, speak, or write down their gratitude every day are more likely to help others and offer support.
• Those who are grateful place less value on material possessions, are less envious of others, and are more willing to share their belongings.

Thank friends, family, colleagues, clients, because sincere gratitude- great way. Don't you yourself enjoy being thanked for a job well done or simply for listening to someone?

7. Stop comparing yourself to others

Stop worrying about what others have. There will always be someone who earns more than you, who has a bigger house or a more expensive car. When you compare yourself to others, you evaluate yourself by someone else's measure of success. Instead, think about what success means to you personally.

8. Do something you've been putting off for a long time.

We all put off something: calling the insurance company, cleaning, or buying new batteries. Over time, even such small things accumulate and interfere with relaxation. If possible, try to do them as soon as you remember them.

Or, add one such case to your to-do list for the day. Once you've dealt with the main things, do what you've been putting off for a long time. You will be surprised how much happier and more productive you will feel when you take this burden off your shoulders.

Even such simple pleasures as food and sex are actually not so simple: there is always depth in pleasure. Usually, we care about how our food was prepared, and who exactly is our partner. On the other hand, the pleasure of contemplating a Pollock painting or listening to a complex symphony has something in common with pleasures that are considered low and even shameful. What unites all these different ways with the help of which people have learned to give themselves pleasant sensations?

The nature of human pleasure is the subject of a fascinating book by Paul Bloom, professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University. Subtitled "Why We Love What We Love," this book combines two types of explanation that are usually hard to reconcile.

Pleasure is a universal and biological thing. But many people enjoy horror films, pay huge sums of money for canvases with smeared paint spots, or literally lose their heads when they hear a tune that will make the other person wince and plug their ears.

The pleasure of a cannibal devouring the flesh of a slain enemy is not much different from the pleasure that a gourmet will get from a bottle of old Château Mouton.

In other words, the biological basis of pleasure does not prevent it from being a profound and transcendent phenomenon. No one, except people, has such abilities to find pleasure in the most seemingly strange things. Man is not only a wingless animal with flat nails, capable of reasoning, but also an animal greedy for pleasure.

Biologists and researchers in the field social sciences agree that biology makes a lot of things impossible (say, humans can't eat rocks, and some can't digest lactose), but everything else is left to chance. However, people tend to perceive their feelings and experiences as something completely natural, given by nature.

As William James wrote back in the 19th century, only a metaphysician can think of the questions “Why do we smile and not frown when we are pleased?”, “Why are we not able to speak to the crowd as we speak alone with a friend?”, “ Why is this girl driving us crazy?

An ordinary person will simply say: “Of course we smile, of course, our heart flutters at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the girl whose beautiful soul, dressed in a perfect form, so obviously and frankly created in order to be dearly loved for all eternity!

William James

from Principles of Psychology, 1890

Of course, these questions cannot escape the attention of a scientist. But even today it is still very difficult to answer them: in order to do this, it is necessary to go between the Scylla of biological and the Charybdis of cultural reductionism. And Paul Bloom seems to have succeeded in doing so. The main news he brings from this journey can be summed up in five points:

1. It is not only what we experience that matters, but also what we think about those experiences.

According to Paul Bloom, pleasures are based on the essentialist attitude - the idea that things have some invisible essence. Therefore, we value the original painting more than an indistinguishable duplicate. And therefore, when we eat food, we eat not only proteins and carbohydrates, but also its inner essence.

This is, for example, the difference between tap water and bottled Perrier. Bottled water is associated with purity, even if it tastes indistinguishable from tap water. As Bloom wittily remarks, “Perrier really great taste. Just to appreciate it, you need to know that in front of you is “Perrier”.

2. Our psyche was created, among other things, in order to give pleasure to others.

Darwin was at first confused when he thought of peacocks: they are heavy, completely useless, or even harmful when looking for food or when confronted with a predator. Out of this kind of confusion emerged the theory of sexual selection. A luxurious tail is needed to attract females: with the help of this indicator, they determine the dignity of males, because only a healthy and fit one can afford to wear such an excess.

From the same point of view, one can explain human love to complex works of art, intricate conversations and sophisticated jokes. It is possible that our psyche is not only a data-processing machine or a cunning Machiavellian trying to outsmart others, but also an entertainment center "shaped by sexual selection in order to please others, to be able to tell stories, to charm and to laugh."

3. Imagination and expectations form pleasures not in lesser degree than reality.

The significance of expectations can be easily understood if you offer people the same wine bottled in different bottles and indicate that the first costs $10, and the second costs $90. Scientists have done similar experiments many times; especially revealing results were obtained by placing wine tasters in a tomograph. At some gross level, the sensory inputs from the same wine at different prices will also be the same. But expectations are superimposed on the perception of color, taste and smell, so the overall picture changes significantly.

Beliefs distort our impressions of reality and support themselves.

Sometimes physical sensations can prevail over ideas: for example, you can get great pleasure from ordinary table wine, while elite and aged wine can turn out to be sour and unpleasant. But in general, our attitudes towards things mean no less than the things themselves.

4. Even if we are quite sure that something is fiction, at some level we believe that it is real.

Why do we prefer to watch Friends instead of spending time with real friends? This is quite serious psychological question. If you look at what the average resident of a modern city does most of the day, you can easily understand that the acquisition of impressions has become our main occupation.

Fiction captivates us because, on some level, it is as real as reality itself. But to see the difference between these two things is also very important: in Chaplin's film, we can laugh at a pedestrian falling into an open sewer - precisely because we know that it was not a person who suffered, but a character.

5. Science is as much fun as anyone else.

Science is based on the pleasure of getting to the heart of things - the same essentialist attitude that sustains our love of art and our religious beliefs.

The believer will agree with the scientist that there is something deeper, a different reality beyond the senses.

So Richard Dawkins rightly does not share John Keats' concern that Newton has destroyed the poetry of the rainbow. The reality of science is no less poetic than religious fantasies, and even the hardest rationalists yearn for the transcendent. Imagination is even more necessary in science than in religion: one must be able to believe that a stone is made up of particles and energy fields, and this can be much more difficult than imagining that wine is the blood of Christ.

Pleasure can be thought of as a by-product of the essentialist work of consciousness - the idea of ​​the deep essence of things. However, the essentialist approach also has its downsides. Where it comes to the social, it becomes even dangerous. Racial, caste, and class differences, which to many still seem to be rooted in the very nature of the cosmos, have no real basis other than our ideas.

Another important, albeit trivial, conclusion follows from this theory. We need to appreciate the pleasures that we get from the world, because no one but people can enjoy a roller coaster ride, hot Tabasco sauce, watching erotic films and immersing themselves in scientific discussions about the nature of pleasure.

In the design of the article, the painting by Balthus "The Mediterranean Cat" (1949) was used. We thank the Corpus publishing house for providing a copy of the book.

The relationship between the amount of pleasure we get and how happy we are is not as obvious as it might seem at first glance. Morten Kringelbach, a professor of neurology at the University of Aarhus in Denmark and a member of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford, is convinced that simply increasing the portion of even the most beloved dish, we will not get more joy. He told Aeon about his research into the pleasure mechanism built into our brains. "Theories and Practices" publishes the main theses.

My research is about what gives us pleasure. It's things like food and sex that help us to be both individuals and members of the human species. Aristotle believed that what we call pleasure consists of two separate aspects: hedonia ("pleasure") and eudaimonia ("prosperity in life", "prosperous life"). We all strive for eudaimonia and want to make our lives as good as possible. I'm trying to find a connection between the first aspect (hedonia) and the second. It is really difficult to see that the one who has more pleasures is happy. The only thing that can be said is that if you are unhappy, most likely you are suffering from a lack of pleasure. But we cannot say that if you are happy, you are at some constant level of pleasure. No, you have bursts, pleasure is brief periods, almost peaks.

For example, let's take food. I just ate well, and now I don't think much about food. But after a few hours, I start thinking about where my next meal is, where to get it from. I begin to think about how I will absorb it, what exactly I will like about it - that is, just about where to enjoy it. So the question is not the very existence of things, but what happens to my brain when I want what I like and can get it. My research is about what happens when all these forces come together - what are these parts of the brain that are responsible for each particular phase.

The results of the study showed that, apparently, there is a specific area of ​​\u200b\u200bpleasure in the brain - as if a single center, thanks to which the parts of the brain "talk" to each other, and as a result we get pleasure. Different parts of the brain are involved in the process. Some are responsible for our desires, for motivating, directing us to receive and absorb something. Others - for perceiving this and conveying to us the satisfaction - the joy that we derive from this. But this effect cannot last long, and these departments calm down.

In a normal balanced system, this works, but it happens that someone has anhedonia - a lack of pleasure, such as depression. Then there is an impact on this single center, the system collapses, and violations can be different. Addicts, let's say, want things that bring pleasure more and more, but over time they like them less and less. And in another case, there is a general decrease - both desires and pleasures. But if you want to restore balance by understanding these mechanisms, you can intervene.

“It is variety that brings the main pleasures, and not an increase in one serving of something”

One of the most important and enjoyable pleasures for us, sex, at the same time one of the most difficult to study. In this study, we observed on the scanner what happens during sex in a man and a woman. When we think about sex, we have a desire, we are excited, specific parts of the brain are involved in this, and in certain moment we start to enjoy. Unique among pleasures is the state of great pleasure - orgasm. We have studied when it appears. We saw that part of the anterior circular area of ​​the cerebral cortex changed its activity only if the person experienced this superpleasure. But it leads to whole process, different parts of the brain turn on and off - it's a complicated dance, if you like. And then we looked at what stages this process consists of, what happens. This is very important because many emotional disturbances show up in problems that manifest themselves in these different stages. So, if you have depression, it is very difficult for you to become aroused in the first stage. Or you find it difficult to get into a state where you really like something. And there is another kind of depression, when you have addictions, you seem to want sexual activity, but in fact you are absorbed in another, and you don’t really like a real orgasm when you even achieve it. That is, you constantly strive for this pleasure, but do not experience it when you finally can.

But most importantly, you lose by forgetting to live a balanced life. Because the main pleasure comes from variety. Variety, not an increase in one portion of something. And I think that the greatest pleasure is not food, sex or drugs, but the people around. It really makes sense to look at it in an evolutionary context. Food is much more enjoyable when surrounded by other people, and historically for the sake of food we had to unite, which helped us survive. Sex also needs another person, and our brain knows this. And addictions, in particular drugs, lead to loneliness.

It turns out that one of the most important things to say about pleasure is that it is not related to selfishness, but to empathy, sympathy, and my research clearly proves this. We are here on Earth to share pleasure with other people.

Why did man come into this world? Who knows the answer to this question? Perhaps he appeared to fully enjoy his life? Let's see what in this life gives us true pleasure.

We all come into this world for a purpose. This goal is often unclear and controversial, so many, without hesitation, defined their goal as "Enjoying life." Why not? Who determined that our mission on Earth involves hard labor and self-sacrifice? Perhaps with such an attitude it is easier to exist in this world, constantly devoting oneself to pleasures and pleasures. I wonder what people all over the world enjoy? And what is the greatest pleasure? According to a survey of more than 10,000 people, a kind of rating of human pleasures was compiled:

8. Food
This is probably not entirely correct, because the main function of food is to saturate us, maintaining the vitality of the body. But with evolution, humanity has developed a real cult of food, which, to be honest, each of us is subject to. And it doesn't really matter if it's a chicken leg or a lobster.

7. Health
It would seem so vital important factor, how good health should be at the top of the ranking of pleasures, and he is practically in the rearguard. And all because we remember the pleasure of health only when we get sick. Having got rid of the pain, having coped with the disease, we are in euphoria for a short time, enjoying such a comfortable state. And after a while we forget about it, taking good health for granted, and stop monitoring it. But those moments of happiness that we experience when feeling recovered deserve a place in this rating.

6. The pleasure of achieving the goal
This is a rather strong pleasure that we experience when setting a goal for ourselves. And it does not matter at all what brings pleasure, whether it is wealth, when we rejoice at every ruble earned with our own hands, or every kilogram lost while on a diet. Moreover, the most interesting thing is that we get more pleasure from the process of achieving the goal than when the goal is achieved.

5. Pleasure from beauty
This is a true pleasure that we experience when we listen to music, watch actors play in a theater or cinema, contemplate a painting by a brilliant artist or a sculpture created by someone with talented hands. Or we admire the beautiful architecture, the ever-changing landscapes of nature. We experience great pleasure admiring the beauty and diversity of the animal world.

4. Sex
The most famous and guessed pleasure, physiological need, which also brings a lot of pleasure. The only downside is that the pleasure is short-term, albeit frequent, so sex for many becomes something ordinary, equaling the level of pleasure with food.

3. Wealth
Everyone dreams of being rich, having a lot of money, so as not to constantly think about where to get it. This is a great pleasure that people receive not even from wealth as such, but from the opportunity to buy absolutely everything, without thinking about the price, to buy many other pleasures, even a little health. But this pleasure is not endless, because satiety always sets in or money runs out.

2. Passion
Undoubtedly, one of the strongest feelings, capable of giving the strongest pleasure. It inspires a person completely, subjugating itself, whether it is a passion for the game, for drugs or for any person. One has only to say that such a strong facet of pleasure can be extremely destructive. The forced rejection of the object of pleasure can have the most incredible consequences.

1. Love
The feeling that not everyone is given to experience is the main, true pleasure of life, which everyone from the beginning of life to the end strives to experience at least once. And it doesn't matter if it's love for parents, children or close person. Having found this magical feeling, a person receives the highest pleasure as a gift.