From Faust to Facebook: On Why We Push Our Pain Buttons in the Digital Hothouse
What do we have in common with a highly educated but dissatisfied German alchemist from the 15th century? We made a Faustian bargain, trading our souls for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures — yet having made that bargain, many of us still seem deeply unsatisfied.
In August 2023, we warned that we should actively prepare for and act against emotional atrophy and cognitive distortions that might come from technology and GenAI. Automating research, thought, and writing is risky — behaving as if we can get anything we want (food, sex, confirmation of our brilliance) at any time and pushing aside (or ignoring) anyone who opposes that behavior is a form of societal regression.
Here we explore who benefits from this collective state of being, how we got here, and how we can contribute to turning the tide of persistent and pervasive complaints both in the workplace and society at large.
Goethe’s version of the fable encourages us to accept the laws of the universe and focus on productive work. How can we write this ending for ourselves and our communities?
From pleasure buttons to pain buttons
The vast majority of human endeavors stem from avoiding pain (health) and maximizing pleasure (arts), increasing security, stability, and predictability (science and technology), promoting well-being and education (humanity), and connecting and getting recognition (psychology). We finally have the tools and understanding in brain science to achieve these things.
Not only that, but we constantly push “pain” buttons — on our phones, in ourselves, and in each other. Could it be that in this digital, disembodied age, we are succumbing to another major driver of primal human behavior — the desire to be right at all costs?
Mutually assured distraction: “Going nuclear”
In 2003, Senator Trent Lott coined the term “nuclear option” in the context of a filibuster for judicial nominees. It was the 2016 election, however, that popularized the term “Going Nuclear.”
By 2017, Merriam-Webster had included the term in its dictionary: behaving in an unrestrained manner, politically, emotionally, etc. — in an all-out, point-of-no-return kind of positioning. The kind we are increasingly tempted to take (and make) for social, environmental, and political issues.
In the modern world, completing “missions” at any cost and without considering potential collateral damage means that we have become mission-driven and quite often blind to the costs of completing those missions. There is much talk these days of “total victory”—no matter the cost.
The middle ground — where solutions do little, if any, damage — is silent.
Life has become like American Idol: the four red X’s or the Golden Buzzer. “Go big or go home” has taken on the size of a societal imperative, where anything less than complete and utter success or victory is something of a let-down. We get three “yeses,” yet we feel like we’ve failed because we didn’t get four, even though we make it to the next round.
We score points and complete missions, but we are losing the war. Many of our victories are hollow, if we chase and especially if we achieve those victories by walking over, or through, other people.
When we find ourselves holding the victory wreath, only to have it snatched away by the latest up-and-comer, we retreat (with bruised egos) to plan our next mission. Our next mountain summit attempt. Or, more to the point, our next Everest. At the top, we discover the air is too thin and the weather too unpredictable to stay there, and we must climb back down to friendlier (and more realistic) climes.
When we can’t reach the summit, or get the Golden Buzzer, or the award, or raise, or commendation, we wonder where we fell short and why someone else won where we lost — and the collateral damage we caused “trying to win” becomes not just more visible but more felt.
And complaints are often as much about comparison as they are about actual gripes about things that are worthy of griping about. “Bob got a raise, but I didn’t” (a comparison) versus “We’ve got a twenty-mile run with fifty-pound packs to get done today” (a task worthy of artistic, and artful, griping every step of the way).
An increased focus on the self and self-aggrandizement makes it harder to complete collective tasks (sometimes quite complex technical tasks) with a sense of collaboration and contribution in harmony with others—even though those tasks can be among the most rewarding things we can do as a species (like putting a rocket together and flying to the moon).
And in a fractured world, “ethics” becomes a continually shifting sand — or a “swamp” we get caught up in and can’t seem to find our way out of.
Morals are the rules that people use to guide their behavior. These enable people to decide between what is considered “right” and what may be considered “wrong.” Like tell the truth, do your part, tolerate differences…
The “morals of the moment” are moving targets where previously there was some permanency about what constituted “right behavior” or “right action.” Even now, we know what “right behavior” and “right action” mean, but they have become distorted by political lenses and lenses of the ever-greater number of groups fracturing along the lines of race, sexual orientation, political affinities, and economic divides.
Who benefits from our state of ill-being, volatility, and reactivity?
At some level, politicians and government are the final arbiters of our well-being and should cultivate an ability to compromise and de-escalate. But the exact opposite seems to be happening in many regimes worldwide, democracy or not. Politicians, like cults, have an easier time praying on the weak, the angry, the lonely, the stressed, and the tired. Which means, on any given day, pretty much all of us.
Their acolytes and corporate donors are information and dopamine purveyors. We can debate whether companies like Facebook and TikTok caused social media addiction or whether we are partly responsible as we embraced those platforms to dull our pain. A constant drip of dopamine is better than suffering. Or is it?
We crave interaction and a constant stream of wildly varied input, but something is being done to us. And we accept manipulation of our thought without (much) complaint or compromise — at least of an enduring nature. Cambridge Analytica was not the end of Facebook — au contraire. It was only a (temporary) symptom of a much larger disease. Everything is for sale, even the trajectory of our minds.
Regardless of the directionality of the humanity/technology co-dependence, most of us can agree that in a world where dopamine comes from interaction with a screen and not from interacting with others, something vital is lost.
We lose our ability to genuinely connect with other people. To accept faults and differences. To love and be loved. And to some extent technology cauterizes our ability to learn from others. We become a “ball of sensitivities” and forget that while it’s ok to have our own sensitivities and triggers, every time we blame or attack, there is someone, a human being, just like us, on the receiving end.
And then there is shopping.
First, we shop for well-being, including for mental health online, because we live and work in a system where we must “look good to feel good,” and where “looking good” is essential to job success and advancement. Coupled with an inability to see ourselves clearly, act rationally, or fully consider choices — means we become “push button shoppers” for things that make us look good, feel good, and promote potential success at work, or at home, and elsewhere in our lives.
And we shop for objects, because shopping can dull the pain. If we can “shop our cares away” or at least shop in a way that distracts us from our cares, is there anything wrong with that? If we feel the same once something is in our hands, then perhaps not. Does what we buy bring us genuine joy, or only a temporary reprieve? What are we being sold? And what are we actually buying? And what do we give up in the process?
We even shop for comfort humans, online, because no one looks up anymore. Like Faust we pursue the perfection of Helen of Troy, but she is only a temporary phantom with no real substance. How can you meet a potential romantic partner on a bus, train, or walk, or at a conference meet-and-greet if everyone is nose down on their phones? With access to constant information, we have lost the ability to truly see each other.
None of the platforms that encourage this kind of disconnection would benefit if it were not for us.
But we find ourselves drawn in and can’t seem to (or don’t want to) escape. But aren’t we the ones who actually have an addiction? Seeking the next hit of someone who can understand us, please us, distract us?
And when someone doesn’t meet our sometimes very arbitrary criteria for acceptance (this week), we can just swipe left or swipe right to get to the next candidate. This means that, on some level, we no longer have to work for relationships or connections.
It’s all served up in a constant stream of “here is everything you could possibly want” — except what we really want (challenge) and the people we might genuinely connect with and love (who are probably very different from us), might be completely orthogonal to what any algorithm can provide. Meaning we are, in many cases, chasing all of the wrong things, all of the time. And never getting what we really need.
So, the question becomes, why are we going this way? Collectively behaving like toddlers with low neuromodulation or exhibiting miles-long trains of oppositional defiant disorders. Then, to dull the pain of our agitation (because we get what we want, but not what we actually need), we resort to drugs and painful distraction, much like individuals who engage in cutting as a form of self-harm. Inflicting physical pain is as a way to numb psychological pain.
The result is like a puzzle where there are missing pieces. It’s a puzzle that you can never finish, no matter how hard you try. And then we look to fill the holes in our internal puzzles with the very things the algorithms and “dopamine machines” of our phones (and online shopping carts) are incapable of providing.
And in that situation, it is easier to lash out at others (and ourselves) instead of looking inward and confronting our demons. Being unhappy is a bad habit that reveals more about those promulgating the stereotype than it does about those being typecast — but it also feels good.
When others complain about us (gender, race, privilege, family status, politics, religion, you name it), it can hurt our feelings, damage our reputations, and demoralize us — or even worse, lead us to accept lower expectations of ourselves. If less is assumed of my character and abilities, why should I rise to the occasion? I may become the reckless capitalist or obstreperous social justice warrior.
We complain for a whole host of reasons: feeling superior to those we complain about (a complaint is particularly attractive when we are under stress and less confident in ourselves); connecting with like thinkers and feelers; and accusing others of not doing their part or undermining our authority allows us to vent and place the responsibility for negative outcomes on others.
Before the internet, people who complained all the time were ostracized. Misery might love company, but company does not love misery. Or does it?
Today, thanks to our Faustian bargain with technology (trading our souls for unlimited knowledge and unlimited Earthly pleasures), we have endless possibilities to find reasons to complain and an endless supply of “friends” and “active sympathizers” to complain to.
And with that receptive audience, we don’t even have to manipulate them into feeling sorry for us. Their sympathy comes ready-made. This phenomenon has been coined as “misery porn” — like the journalism adage, “when its bleeds, it leads.” And if we have something to complain about, someone will always back us. Leading to a constant societal churn of “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us.” A bad outcome for everyone.
Recently a famous podcast host — focused on human performance and health — published a post on his mental and physical exhaustion after an intense travel and work schedule where he recorded multiple podcasts in multiple cities while running his three companies. That post has garnered 53K likes at the time of writing. Why? Because (as above) misery loves company. But it seems that nowadays, “company (everyone) loves (others’) misery.”
=> In other words, does the “notoriety of exhaustion” become a goal in and of itself — drag racing and flaming out our mental and physical engines on purpose — just to see who can have the most significant engine fire or explosion — because you worked harder than anyone else? What is the goal there? Not a genuine contribution; only a self-serving flag of superiority planted higher and higher up the Mountain of Impossibility. As we race through the towns of our lives at 200 miles per hour, people line up to watch us — crash? Or succeed?
We can also use captive audiences as an amplifier for our greatness. A close cousin of misery porn is “charity porn” or “charity of convenience.” Jesus wanted his acts of mercy to be private. Helping someone in need is essential and central to charity but when charity becomes performance art — something is lost — the intent seems bound up somehow in self-service.
=> When charity is of the “surface” variety, it fails to address the human being at the other end of the transaction. If you do give a dollar, do you say something kind like “I hope things turn around for you” or “I’ve been there, brother” (whether actually or in spirit)? True charity is an act of kindness, but also (generally) an act of genuine human connection.
And so external pressures can shape us, it’s true, but if we allow those pressures to crash against us, like waves on a lighthouse, is it possible to shine out all the brighter because of those pressures? To shine a light into the darkness, both curious, and determined, about what we might find or uncover there?
In other words, when we look deeply into issues and into the parameters of others’ lives, it enriches our own lives in a variety of important ways. When we turn inwards, devolve into stereotyping, and diminish or demean others we might think it increases our value — but instead the opposite happens. In failing to see the rich inner lives of others (as rich and as varied as our own), something vital is always lost.
Stereotyping contradicts social ideals, dehumanizes individuals, manifests bias, and often leads to lost opportunities and connections. We can’t know and adapt to an individual we choose to think of as a stereotype or perceive through a label’s lens.
These stereotypes are constantly changing, and as a result, we end up catering to a set of biases that are also constantly shifting sand. In our kaleidoscope of prejudices and stereotypes, we lose a genuine chance to connect with others. And this truly is a two-way street. I must overcome my biases, and you must overcome yours. And sometimes, that list of biases, on both sides, is as long as our to-do’s.
We each become the other to each other. When stereotypes are propagated repeatedly, there’s a cost to both the individual and any organization: both parties disengage immediately, and generally, the damage done is permanent.
When we trip over our biases and stereotypes, the reaction from other people is immediate. Because they have their own internal list of sensitivities and triggers — so if you reject, diminish, or demean someone, they will hit their own internal “go to” sensitivities first, if you have rejected them for their primary or secondary self-bias. But like the military maxim goes, “’Assume’ makes an ‘ass’ out of both ‘u’ and ‘me’ — so assume nothing” — so always do your best not to get caught in the trap of biases and stereotypes.
If you can surpass your biases and stereotypes, even temporarily, you are already halfway there. If the other person can surpass their own, you have a genuine human connection — whether that genuine connection happens in the workplace, at home, or with friends.
There is nothing new, to an extent, in any of these revelations — only that we live in a time of great fracturing and loneliness — where people try to connect but get caught up in their own stereotypes and biases to the point it’s like going to a football game except you are wearing ten different jerseys — one on top of the other. And so are all the players on the field. You don’t really know who is playing who, and when you stand next to another fan, which team they are cheering for.
But in that level of the ridiculous, suspend stereotypes and say — “I see you as simply another person. Let’s try to forget about all of the things that brought us to this moment and simply say, ‘Hello, it’s nice to meet you.’”
Pick science over Mephistopheles
One advantage we have over Herr Faust is advances in brain science and behavioral research, and more recently, research on how technology has affected brain function. Does technology make us react even faster? Do we jump to conclusions and be purely reactive instead of having firm baselines based on sound moral principles?
Tor Nørretranders argued in The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size that much of what we consider conscious decision-making could be subconscious processes influenced by both sensory inputs and internal processing.
Our sensory inputs have increased nearly exponentially. Processing much more information in less time is like running a factory or production line constantly past the red line of peak load — leading to expected results.
In other words — we think we know what’s going on, but in reality, our subconscious minds are constantly in a state of “dumbing things down” for our conscious minds — yes/no, right/wrong, up/down, left/right. And in that situation, where the brain is constantly summarizing data for us, and with no firm moral guard rails, we find ourselves pulled in many directions at once — and in the uncomfortable position of someone about to be drawn and quartered — “hmm, everything seems in balance for the moment, but what happens if I sneeze?”
According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, a renowned neuroscientist and author of How Emotions Are Made, the realities of our body budget impact how we think and behave: our brain “expands its predictive repertoire to include anything that might impact your body budget to meet [your] body’s metabolic demands.” The repetitive, negative aspect of rumination can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety and can worsen existing conditions: “when a person who is in a depressed mood ruminates, they are more likely to “remember more negative things that happened to them in the past, they interpret situations in their current lives more negatively, and they are more hopeless about the future.”
To restore balance, Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning author, advocates that we engage in “a slower, more deliberate and effortful form of thinking” instead of surrendering to “the law of least effort.” This means that as we live and work, we tend to break things down to their lowest (and often very low) common denominator, missing out on a great potential of richness in connection, understanding, empathy, and creativity both at home and in the workplace.
The prefrontal cortex performs the heavy lifting in this “more involved” thinking process, which, according to neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, “consume[s] mammoth amounts of energy.” According to Sapolsky, this task becomes far more difficult when the cognitive load is too great and cognitive reserves are depleted (as often happens during a workday). Sliding into stereotyping and rote responses becomes more likely.
When choosing between allocating our energy to our organs or engaging in deep thought, the former usually wins out. We construct how we experience the world with “constant, rapid, automatic categorization performed constantly by the brain to explain the sensory input we encounter. We use concepts in our brain to categorize the continuous inputs.” 2
These shortcuts help us make it through the day, but they also do a lot of damage to those around us. We work and “work hard” but consistently run on empty.
And if our kids and other young people are watching us, what do they think of how we, as a society, are reacting to all the things pulling us in every direction? Do they find themselves also caught up in an endless cycle of despair, unable to define guardrails for themselves when their parents (with greater maturity and experience) are also having a very tough time (and often failing).
We are, as adults, supposed to be merchants of hope for the new generation, and yet how can we do this when there seem very few goals worth pursuing, those we do pursue seem empty once we achieve them, and we fight for things that (apparently) have no value?
Getting off the path of least resistance. What ending can we write for this oh so modern of fables?
So when we find ourselves the constant recipients of things we want to hear, a steady stream of information that caters to our biases, that pushes all the right buttons, that makes us feel good, or feel worse (or both simultaneously — to our great delight), do we simply swipe right or swipe left, find temporary perfection, find that perfection empty, buy something else to fill the void, and seek connections — but find over and over again that they are not genuine — in that situation, what can we do?
First is to retake agency.
Many people develop life goals and plans and have clear health objectives. If you had a plan for your health, you would have a diet plan that supports it. If you have a plan for your mental health, you need to have a media and social diet that supports that plan. Media and community are like the diet and exercise that doctors always recommend for our physical health. If we eat and move towards a particular level of physical health, it follows that we can digest information and socialize to achieve a particular level of mental health.
So take a step back and try to untether yourself from the information and entertainment dispensers. Then plug the wires back in to the things that bring you genuine sustenance and joy. Access knowledge that actually matters (which feeds your mind and warms your heart), and provides you more worldly pleasures, joy, and happiness than they take from you.
Then focus on your consumption patterns.
Ask yourself if you “shop — including for news and podcasts that prove you right — because of wanting to be informed, wanting to be confirmed, waiting to be distracted, or avoiding other activities. Clicking on and ordering the latest fad, gadget, or wearable? How many times have you been to an actual store this week, where you interacted with another person — a salesclerk, or a counterperson? As we edge away from in-person interactions and interact increasingly with machines, human connection is also lost.
In other words, are the things we buy genuinely useful, or are they temporary knick-knacks which hold only a cursory interest? If we shop this way, does that translate into how we treat people and relationships? In a world where there are thousands of potential candidates for each job, how “disposable” are employees? Has commodification of our actual lives translated into a commodification of everyone, and everything?
Third think about where you would turn when all the algorithms — shopping, pain/pleasure, connection, direction, and love — fail.
Have you substituted social media for genuine human interaction? How many people have you met this week? Do you have more or fewer friends than you did as a child? Are your friends close friends or only acquaintances?
Perhaps turn off the radio (of our cell phones) for a bit. Find a genuine person, not selected by algorithm or technology but by complete random happenstance, and take that person by the arm, and say “let’s go sit and talk, it has been forever since I’ve done that.” And that other person will either shrug you off, and go back to their text, or video, or podcast — or they will look you in the eye, surprised as you are that you said something like that, and perhaps, just perhaps, say: “absolutely.”
Finally, we encourage you to close your eyes for just a few minutes to think back to an instance of misunderstanding or painful altercation either at home or at work, on or offline.
- Was the conflict inter-generational? Related to a common “push-button” theme (politics, global issues, race, sexual orientation, financial status) — and if it was, what was the trigger?
- What did you win?
- What did you lose?
- Was the calculus you applied to the problem the right calculus?
- What could the parties have done differently to better manage that conflict?
- And if things went badly, what did you do? Watch TikTok? Or go for a walk? Call a friend? Or watch your favorite influencer? Or did you just shop, or cruise Instagram, or binge watch a series, until the pain went away?
If you find yourself in those situations, we encourage you to seek out genuine human connection. Because if you do you are not the only one who benefits. The other person — on the other side of a phone call, or who walks beside you, or who sits across from you at a meal, benefits too.
Come sit on a bench with us! Carin and Matthew Vernon Hanson
