The word pleasure has been used in this thread only three times. First, appropriately, by zen in post 12; second, incidentally, by zero in post 16; and thirdly, dismissively, by dwtbd in post 66. That's only one time appropriately in regards to what is, in fact, driving this WHOLE divided self internal struggle that AVRT solves so quickly with the Big Plan. Pleasure seeking. Deeeep pleasure seeking. Permanently ended with the Big Plan. It's gone forever for YOU. YOU will NEVER feel that wonderful buzz, ever again. Gee, what a loss.
Only humans "know" that sort of pleasure acheivement means survival. I believe that all non-human life engages in habituated pleasure seeking only because it feels good and NOT because they decide "I want to live longer". Also, not getting those pleasures can grow into a pain, so the pangs of hunger lead to more intensive pleasure seeking. Pleasure over pain is the driver. Life over death is the 2 billion year old consequence.
Aside: There's a new theory that the P i s s Shivers is the leftover of the earliest known experience of pleasure known to life. Microbes in the sea, when they evacuate, will need to get away from their own waste. So, the shiver to squirm away to a cleaner part of the sea. Ahh, feels good. I also got that shiver when I would take a nice swallow of my first scotch on the rocks of the day. "Ahh, feels good."
The discriminating diet of people within a swamp of invented products is an extremely modern phenomenon compared to the experience of pleasure that has literally driven life for billions of years. To shrink down the scale, invention and discrimnation has occurred only in the last sixty seconds compared to the pleasure seeking that has been habituated over the preceeding year. Ironically, that scale also applies to how fast a human can use his/her discrimnation to end a habituated pleasure seeking that has gone on for a year or more. Sixty seconds to make a Big Plan really sink in.
And, of course, Recognizing the Addictive VOICE is simply the ideal Technique to make it easy. I capitalize VOICE because language IS what our conscious mind uses to deliberate and plan. And that is what makes these forums so useful. It puts into a timeless record thoughts that can be Recognized, reRecognized, and rereRecognized for just what they are in AVRT terms. It can be language from someone as simply chemically dependent and looking for excuses to keep drinking/using, someone who is addicted and trying to figure out how to quit in our crazy RGM/ATI society, someone as a common teetotaler with a Big Plan who is altruistically staying here to help others, someone's personal Beast's bark, the Institutional Addictive Voice, or just someone who stumbled into this subforum and is wondering what the heck is going on here.