We are prone towards doing the easy things.
Our minds hate doing difficult, mentally tasking, activities. If we can find an easier and more efficient way of doing something, it will be done. This has played a monumental role in tech innovations. Why walk for 1 hour to get to point A if I can use a horse and get there in 25 mins? Why not build a bridge across the river instead of risking our lives or wasting hours walking to the lowest point to cross? Why go to the grocery when I can have it delivered?
Our brains however evolved to produce dopamine when we’ve accomplished something hard, i.e. the rush from having a successful hunt or the rush from winning a tribal battle. Subconsciously this can drive us to do great things.
But now we can have our dopamine rush simply by sitting and watching someone else do difficult things on YouTube, whether that’s building furniture, painting a master piece, building knives, etc. And we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that we too have accomplished something difficult. We haven’t.
The desire to do difficult things have incrementally decreased as technology advances. Why spend time and energy trying to find a compatible lover when you can have that dopamine rush by swiping right or watching porn? You mitigate your risk of rejection, save energy, and time.
Our minds have been hijacked from actually doing difficult things.
The technology that was supposed to liberate us has instead enslaved us to random short-term dopamine releases.