A Realm of Skinner Boxes

A friend asked me the meaning of life. Here was my answer. I also threw in God, as an extra:

Skinner boxes.

You know, those lab experiments where you offer a chicken a red button that produces treats and a blue button that produces punishments. The chicken slowly learns.

That's what this is. A realm of Skinner boxes.

The world is nothing but Skinner boxes, though we don't frame things that way, because it's like trying to get a fish to understand water, which to a fish is just EVERYTHING, so it's essentially invisible.

This immediately explains an enduring mystery: Why do we jade?

The moment someone gets what he wanted — his dream come true! — it's only a matter of time before his joy fades into colicky sourness and he pines for some other thing; dreaming some other dream. Most billionaires never stop wanting more money. Most people with extremely attractive partners never stop seeking other partners. Etc., etc., ad infinitum.

It's not because aspiration is the wind beneath our wings, nor is it because we're spoiled children. The counterintuitive truth is that we're right to quickly turn tepid, because the rewards are never so great.

The unrecognized truth of Skinner boxes is that while they are surefire ways to fire up enthusiasm, they are, by their nature, pretty meh. Pretty "mid". The rewards aren't so great. They're mere trinkets.

And the punishments aren't so bad, either. Mostly propositional, often a matter of "standing". Abstract score-keeping. Fluffy stuff, as punishment goes. That's why we're sloppy and incautious, and even self-destructive. Of course, the other players, watching along, are horrified to see Hugh declining to PUSH THE RED BUTTON! Earn your PELLET, Hugh!!!!! C'mon!!!!!

What's wrong with that guy?

Lots of mental health problems strike me as flailing responses to a dawning recognition of this predicament. Depressives find it all tedious and dreary (which it kind of is). The anxious over-dramatize their win/lose stakes (which seems natural). Manic-depressives dive in way too deep on both ends (understandable). Addicts desperately seek something to cling to for a sense of dependable constancy while riding this crazy-making happy/sad, good/bad machine (who can blame them?). And psychopaths shortcut to reward by disregarding or manipulating anyone in their way. Given how encouraged we are to give winning all we've got, you could make a case that psyhopaths are the ultimate players. To them, we all look like Hugh, needlessly leaving money on the table.

Let's consider addicts a bit more. They're trying to do something sensible: to find something to hold on for a sense of level constancy as they careen through the ups and downs. It might be healthy if they'd chosen something less harmful than drugs, alcohol, shopping, gambling, etc. In fact, this explains the basis of Alcoholics Anonymous, which proposes swapping in a less malign stability. A "higher power." "God".

You needn't visualize some bearded dude on a cloud. A far less specific stability point can suffice. In fact, the mere intimation that there might be something behind the omnipresent Skinner Boxes is extremely helpful. One can be restored and stabilized by a mere ray of hope that that's not all there is. So it scarcely matters what attributes you assign to that other realm.

It needen't be a fleshed-out scenario of angels and clouds and virgins. Just some silence beyond the game; some spaciousness amid the pressure. Any shift of attention away from the reward/punishment cyclotron represents Liberation. And that's the gateway to beauty and love and happiness and all the good stuff (way better than trinkets) lying close at hand though we frame them as distant rewards we must paddle towards.

God is what's not Skinner Boxes.