Biohacking for Pleasure | Optimizing life for the senses
While walking my pup on a brisk Berlin morning, I listened to The Happiness Lab. Host Laurie Santos spoke with Gretchen Rubin about how being present in each of the five senses is a recipe for happiness. On the pod, Gretchen spoke about how acknowledging both good and bad sensations creates a mindfulness effect i.e. how fully embracing the world you're in instead of gliding through on autopilot can create more richness.
Imagine walking through the woods embracing both the smell of rotting wood and the fragrance of sweet pine? The juxtaposition paints a full picture of life.
Why don't we optimize for pleasure?
From intermittent fasting, to gut microbiome scans, technologists are seeking ways to stretch their time on this planet. Silicon Valley biohackers have been trying to manipulate their bodies so that they can live forever, including simple life add-ons like the wearables of the 2010s all the way to genetic modifications using CRISPR and muscle growth promoting injections.
But what is a longer life without pleasure? Call me a hedonist, but...
If we look through the lens of the five senses, we could be creating personal havens optimized for our delight. More than just homes with our preferred sound landscapes, scent profiles, and tactile requirements — we could create atmospheres that evoke pleasurable sensations with every interaction.
Let's make this tangible. A few months back I was visiting friends from business school. Sitting in a cute Malaysian cafe in Mont Kiara, I was served coffee in a cup that felt like velvet beneath my fingertips. I sipped. The rim of the cup, so thin and delicate, produced a decidedly erotic response. I have no idea why this happened, but I immediately bought two cups to keep in my home. The difference between just buying a pretty cup and buying a pleasurable cup is the difference between passive acceptance and active curation.
What is pleasure?
According to Dictionary.com, pleasure is a noun meaning:
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My biggest grievance is that I don't think there is anything frivolous about pleasure. Frivolity speaks to a lack of seriousness or sense...a lightness. For me pleasure is a spectrum of positive sensations that work in contrast to both decidedly negative sensations and neutral ones.
Translation: Pleasure exists in contrast to numbness, pain, and disgust. Because the "numb" to "disgust" paradigm is a spectrum, pleasure is by definition both serious and light, driven by the senses.
Sensation + Pleasure: What could the future look like?
Back in 2022, I spoke about the Future of Sex at SXSW. We spoke mostly about partnered sex, consent, and access. What we neglected was the self —the current landscape of sex products is dominated by self pleasure. When I think about the future of sense optimization, pleasure, and sex, I think ultimately we are talking about the self: optimizing our own bodies and atmospheres for both solo and partnered sex that we choose.
Taking this idea to the logical extremes are the transhumanists.
This morning I read about a person modifying their body to amplify their experience of the world, subverting reality by attaching an ear to their arm that incorporated the digital features. In the article, one line struck me,
" Certainly what becomes important now is not merely the body's identity, but its connectivity- not its mobility or location, but its interface. In these projects and performances, a prosthesis is not seen as a sign of lack but rather as a symptom of excess."
This article speaks about modifying the body for abundance, adding sensations and pushing the limits of sense knowledge. It's a bit further than I'm willing to go, but it does bring up an interesting question: why do we have to be satisfied with what we already have? Satisfied with the functional realities of life? What if we pushed the boundaries of sensation and created realities that provided new vantage points?
The next question I naturally ask, is can we create new forms of erotic products in categories like lubes, perfumes, and lingerie that are designed to hack our senses for pleasure beyond direct genital stimulation?
I end with more questions than answers and I don't know exactly where to go with this. However, I do believe that if we optimize our lives for (consensual) pleasure then maybe the world would be a better place.