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The Shape of Wanting

A 5-part series · best read from the top, in order.

  1. Why Epicurus's Calm Breaks Down in Front of Passion

    Epicurus and ataraxia (tranquility), the long-running misread of his 'hedonism,' the four-part cure (tetrapharmakos) that dissolves fear, and the structural limit this philosophy of calm reveals before adventure and passion. Following the thread all the way to Nietzsche's critique.

  2. Schopenhauer's Will and Boredom, Epicurus's Calm: Taming Desire Instead of Killing It

    Schopenhauer's will (Wille) and the pendulum between lack and boredom, Epicurus's calm (ataraxia) and his redefinition of pleasure, and the one knot that ties the two together. How to handle boredom by taming desire rather than denying it — an optimism built on top of a pessimist's metaphysics.

  3. Dopamine Isn't the Pleasure Chemical: Wanting vs. Liking, Schopenhauer's Will, and Epicurus's Prescription

    Dopamine doesn't deliver pleasure (liking) — it drives pursuit (wanting). Berridge's wanting/liking split, reward prediction error, and Lembke's pleasure-pain balance show what dopamine really is. All the way to where Schopenhauer's will and Epicurus's subtraction are confirmed, 200 years later, by neuroscience.

  4. Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Best Hours Live Between Boredom and Anxiety

    The structure of flow as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined it. Optimal experience measured with the Experience Sampling Method (ESM); the conditions that open flow (clear goals, immediate feedback, a balance of challenge and skill); the four-quadrant model (apathy, boredom, anxiety, flow); autotelic experience, where the activity is its own reward; and the paradox of work, the finding that flow comes more often on the job than in leisure.

  5. Homo Faber: Why Humans Feel Most Alive When They Make Things

    Loving to make things isn't a hobby — it's a 2.5-million-year-old instinct. How toolmaking grew the human brain (Homo faber), the pleasure of having your will land on the world (effectance motivation), why you love what you built yourself (the IKEA effect), and how a mortal creature pushes back against time by making. The origin of the urge to make, read across three layers: evolution, psychology, and existence.