I Think Humans Are Pleasure Machines

I think humans are pleasure machines.

I don't see humans as anything all that grand.

If that sounds cynical, it's only because you haven't yet heard what I'm about to say. I don't hate or look down on humans. Quite the opposite. When you look at the essence of being human exactly as it is, you start to see just how strange a situation we're in right now.

I hold a mechanistic view of the human being. I think the human body is a system designed with a purpose. And what that purpose is — I have to begin the story from an unexpected direction, not from philosophy or religion.

2024, Alien Interview

In 2024, I read a book called Alien Interview.

In 1947, a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The U.S. Army recovered a surviving alien being, and the only person who could communicate with it was a nurse officer named Matilda O'Donnell MacElroy. She conversed with it via telepathy for more than 60 days, kept the secret for over 60 years, and released the records a few weeks before she died.

It might be fiction. It might be fact. I'm not trying to judge which. The point is that what it contains is so specific, so systematic, and that it put into precise words a view of humanity I had only vaguely held.

The alien being, Airl, says the following in Chapter 10 — "A Lesson in Biology":

At First, the Body Was a Device for Amusement

According to Airl's account, the first development of biological bodies in this universe began about 74 trillion years ago. And its purpose was this:

"It rapidly became a fad for IS-BEs to create and inhabit various types of bodies for an assortment of nefarious reasons: especially for amusement, this is to experience various physical sensations vicariously through the body."

IS-BE stands for "Immortal Spiritual Being." A purely conscious entity with no physical body. At some point they began to create bodies and step inside them. The reason was just one — amusement. To experience physical sensations vicariously through a body.

The body was a device for amusement. A contraption you stepped into for a moment, experienced sensations, and stepped out of. Which is to say, the human body was not designed to be something noble from the start. It was a kind of suit for experiencing pleasure, an experiential device you put on for a while and then took off.

But Then We Got Trapped

The problem is what came next.

Airl says: as time passed, IS-BEs began to get trapped inside bodies. And the way it happened was insidious.

The body looked sturdy on the outside, but it was actually designed to be extremely fragile. When an IS-BE used its original energy, accidents happened in which the body got hurt. So, feeling guilty, the IS-BE began to be careful. The next time it used a body, it held back its power.

And so, dampening its power, being careful, adapting itself to the body — at some point it could no longer get out.

This was the trap. You put it on thinking it was a suit, and the suit became your skin.

And right now, that is the state we are in.

Earth, Ever Since

The history that follows is even harsher.

According to Airl, Earth is the backwater of backwaters in this universe. A remote planetary system far from the galactic center, a place fit only to be used as a botanical garden or a prison. From 30,000 BCE, Earth actually began to be used as a prison planet. A power called the "Old Empire" exiled here the IS-BEs it judged to be rebellious or unnecessary.

Memories were erased. When a body died, the soul was captured and transplanted back into a body. A hypnotic command to "return to the light" was implanted, and the concepts we call "heaven" or "the afterlife" are part of that trap. A device to make you go back in.

It was made as a device for pleasure, and then it became a prison.

So Why Do I Believe This?

To be precise, "believe" isn't the right word.

There's no way to prove whether this story is true or not. I'm not a UFO believer, nor am I someone glued to conspiracy-theory channels. I'm 26, a person who writes code and builds products every day.

But after reading this story, a certain feeling I'd carried for a long time finally found its words.

The fact that humans are so vulnerable to pleasure. Food, sex, stimulation, recognition, dopamine — we collapse far too easily in front of these things. People say evolution can explain it, but evolution doesn't fully explain why this structure was designed so elaborately around pleasure. It's too well made. As if someone designed it on purpose.

And lifespan. A human life is at most 60 to 100 years. Of this, Airl says, "flesh bodies live for only a very short time." From a cosmic perspective, it's an instant. The description of an experiential device you step into briefly and then step out of fits it perfectly.

The flesh is heavy, slow; it ages and falls ill. Whether the thing we call "I" is the same being as this body — honestly, I'm not sure.

What This View of Humanity Gives Me

You might think a mechanistic view of humanity leads to nihilism. Why bother working hard at anything if we're just pleasure devices anyway?

I feel the opposite.

If anything, it makes things lighter. If the body is a suit you put on for a little while, there's no need to obsess over this suit too much. Looks, health, age, achievement — of course these matter. But once you know they aren't the whole of "me," you become better able to focus on this present moment.

And you stop beating yourself up for being drawn to pleasure. Because that's how you were designed. A system that responds the way it was designed to is not at fault. But there is a difference between knowing that structure and not knowing it.

Once you know the structure, you can be dragged around by it a little less.

Finally

Reading this story, I came to see that certain traditional beliefs are not the truth. What filled their place was not some comfort, but a cold clarity.

We are here for a brief while. Boarded onto the machine that is the body, we experience sensations, and then we leave. Where we go next, we don't know. If our memories are erased, we can't even know.

So then, what will we do here and now?

That is the question left to me.

This piece is written based on the contents of Alien Interview (edited by Lawrence R. Spencer, 2008). Regardless of whether or not it is true, I think the worldview this text contains is itself fascinating.