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Our pleasures reflect our environment – the structural and cultural conditions that we turn to in order to find the optimal neurochemical processes leading to a feel-good state. Chen Lizra, a dancer and therapist who has spent some time in Cuba, observed that the absence of media causes people to search for stimulation enhancing their wellbeing in dancing or flirting. This example can help us to see the changing character of preferred pleasures because it is so much in contrast to our culture. It is worth asking oneself whether the pleasures we search for are the ones that we choose or the only ones available to us. We are shaped by the virtual world, which determines which pleasures are within our reach. These available pleasures are sensuality poor. Our pleasures are the pleasures of the dispossessed.
We spend so much time online and looking at screens because it gives us gratification. An action movie induces emotions flushing through our bodies. Similarly, specific online interactions generate a flush in our hormonal system. Those who lack motivation or confidence to cultivate excitement in their offline lives may be able to access that motivation and confidence in the virtual world. Indigenous societies in the past and sports teams in modern times gave the young the possibility to go through a physical rite of passage, which corresponded to their natural attraction to extreme experiences due to the risk-seeking stage in their lives. Online life replaces the excitement of a real-life experience with the ideological struggle. Cancel culture can generate a framework for enacting emotionally loaded situations. It normalizes behaviors such as rejection and humiliation. Searching for extreme online conduct may be a contemporary form of the rite of passage.
In a panel on gender pronouns, in which Jordan Peterson was one of the speakers,1 the moderator cited the refusal to participate2 by one of the invited activists. The panel concentrated on the law imposing punishment on people not using the chosen pronoun towards people who do not conform to traditional gender categories. The person or people justified their decision in the following way: “Giving (Jordan) Peterson this platform serves to legitimize his views which are based on bigotry and misinformation. The humanity and rights of transgender, non-binary and intersex people are not a matter of debate, and holding a debate that places a false equivalency between the views expressed by Peterson and the human rights concerns of the trans community would be an act of transphobia.” Such behavior may be self-interested. By rejecting another person, one can experience a feeling of being superior and in charge. I wonder if there is any pleasure in the act of exclusion and taking this type of power. By refusing the debate, the activists assert that there is no other option than agree with this law. They automatically marginalize other views by calling a debate to be transphobic. The insidious message t