https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=xwbZ4iZwMqI
In order to have any positive meaning in your life, you have to have identified a goal and you have to be working towards it, and there is a technical reason for that and the technical reason, as far as I can tell, is that the circuitry that produces the kind of positive emotion that people really like is only activated when you notice that you’re… when you’re proceeding towards a goal that you value and so that means that if you don’t have a goal that you value, you can’t have any positive emotion so technically that’s the incentive reward system, and it’s… the underlying circuitry is dopaminergic and when that circuitry is activated, then it’s part of the exploratory circuit it makes you… it gives you the sense of being actively engaged in something worthwhile and that’s… you know, you tend to think of positive emotion as something produced by reward but there’s two kinds of positive emotion, one is the reward that’s associated with satiation and that’s consumatory reward, and that’s the reward you get when you’re hungry and you eat but the thing about eating when you’re hungry is that… it destroys the framework within which you were operating it’s time to eat while you eat, and then that framework’s no longer relevant so the consumatory reward eliminates the value framework, and then you’re stuck with, well, what are you going to do next? and so the consumatory reward has with it its own problems, but the incentive reward is constantly what keeps you moving forward and incentive reward, because it’s dopaminergic, also is analgesic literally analgesic, so if you’re in pain, you take opiates and that will cut the pain but so will psychomotor stimulants like cocaine or amphetamines and so it’s literally the case that if you’re engaged in something that’s engaging and you’re working towards a goal that you’re going to feel less pain, and you can see this happening with athletes who, you know, they’ll break their thumb or something or maybe sometimes even their ankle, and they’ll keep playing the game of course afterwards they’re suffering like mad, but the fact that they’re so filled with goal-directed enthusiasm means that, well, the pain systems are in some sense shut off so that’s an interesting thing, because what it suggests, I mean, then you could imagine, I might say, well, how happy are you that you’ve made a certain amount of progress and if you think about it, what you’d say is, well, it depends on how much progress, and in relationship to what so hypothetically, you’re going to be happier if you’ve made quite a bit of progress towards a really important goal and then you have to think through what it means for a goal to be really important, because that’s not obvious now, you could say, you’re in this class and you’re listening to some information and maybe there’s two reasons for that, you might find the information interesting per se, but let’s forget about that for a minute you need to listen to the information so that you can do well on the assignment, so that you can do well in the class you need to do well in your classes so that you can finish up your degree you need to finish up your degree so that you can find your place in the world you need to do that so that you’re financially stable and maybe you can start a family and have a life, and that’s all part of being a good person, something like that and so, that’s a hierarchy of goals, and you might say that being a good person would be the thing, however vaguely thought through, that’s at the top of that hierarchy and then, when you’re doing things that serve that ultimate purpose, then you’re going to find those more meaningful and that meaning is actually produced as a consequence of the engagement of this exploratory circuit that’s nested right down in your hypothalamus, it’s really, really old it’s as old as thirst, and it’s as old as hunger, it’s really an old system and so, you want to have that thing activated