What Do We Crave? Podcast Episode

I think there’s some extreme conversations we had of, okay, well, let’s just get rid of all movies or let’s get rid of all this. I don’t know what the answer is, but even the smallest little bit of pushback of we need to cut, we need to be bored, we need to cut this stuff out. So many people are like, well, hold on.

Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Excellent, as always, to have you along. My name is Matt Kaufman. Isaac Funk and Jacob Feicht are here in the studio. Welcome to both of you. Welcome. Thanks. Looking forward to a conversation, Jacob, you’ve been on once before.

Share with our listeners again, the work that you do that’s really pertinent to today’s topic. I’m really excited to get into some of that but share a little bit your day, in and out. Yeah. Last time I was on, I was with Brian. We were talking about how to work with kids on pornography use and shielding from that.

And that’s where I have set up base in the counseling world is trying to work in that area of sexual addiction, sexual purity, just working with kids, people, mainly men struggling with pornography addiction and with sex addiction in general. Yeah, this topic today feeds into that a lot.

Supernormal stimulus is the matter that I want to press into. I think there holds a lot of promise for understanding this term. I think the term really says a lot about the world that we live in and our own personal lives. So, let’s just press right into that. Yeah. Supernormal stimulus.

What is it? Who coined it? And if we can illustrate this, I think there’s some promise here in understanding this term well. For sure, yeah. Yeah, so I came across it within the last year. I’ve seen it some in my studies, but where it really came up was from a book I read by someone named Brant Hansen.

And he was talking about this study by a man named Nikolaus Tinbergen, a Dutch man who started to do an experiment on how certain things affect the brain, basically, or affect behavior. And so, he did a series of experiments. One of the main ones that illustrates it well, I think, and even connects to the pornography aspect, is he did an experiment with a species of butterfly.

The male mates with the female based off of the size of their wings, the color of their wings, and the shape of their wings. And when they are very beautifully colored, when they’re large in shape, and when they’re an intricate shape, that is what they gravitate towards. And so, Nicholas created cardboard butterflies far more colorful with far bigger wings and far shapelier wings than nature has produced. And he put them out there, and the male butterflies came to the cardboard butterflies and tried to mate with them, even though there were female butterflies right next door, right? They were right there, but they gravitated towards the cardboard.

They didn’t know what it was, they just knew it was beautiful and that’s what they wanted. And so, this put him on a journey of understanding what he had then coined supernormal, in that the stimuli were exaggerated. So normality exaggerated was very enticing. Would that be a good way to define this?

Normality exaggerated, I just made that up, is enticing. Yeah, very much so. I’m fascinated already by just the introduction to this conversation that I think is so pertinent in the world today. Everything is overdone to the extreme. Digital addiction reminds me of this word craving which feels like this is what’s pulling us towards these unnatural or these super normal stimuli.

The potato chip, the things that are built to hack our brain. And let’s pause on some of these again, because you’ve just given a litany of examples that I think are very pertinent, Isaac. So, let’s start with the potato chip. Where are the supernormal stimuli in the potato chip? I mean, there’s a large number of things. The amount of flavor, the salt, whatever. So, I don’t know if you watched the video I sent you or the series I sent you. I didn’t watch the series, but the first episode had that example where they showed a picture of how much sugar was in our food this many years ago versus how much sugar is in our food now.

And it was just this massive difference of this small pile of sugar and this massive pile of sugar that now over the years, we’ve just gotten accustomed to basically. And the reality of it is society has weaned us on to this craving. As you put it, we used to be back here and satisfied with less. And now all we want is more. So, it’s almost the exaggerated normal becomes normal. That’s the Achilles heel. Right? Where’s the hope?

And so, then my palate, my tongue calls for a certain thing, right? Yeah. I’ll give you a perfect example of this. Actually, my wife, Rebecca came from a Japanese cuisine, very low sugar, the Japanese palate. Yeah. And I remember in our first week of marriage, she made just a delightful meal. And I was left wanting at the end of it. Because I needed my sugar dessert fix. Yeah, you know kind of wanting like well, we’re not done yet, are we? Even though I’m full, we’re not done yet.

This wasn’t America and she looked at me like I had a second head. Like well, what exactly were you’re wanting? Yeah, something sweet. And so, she gave me a strawberry. Yeah, I mean here. Oh, here’s an orange Which wow some reset, you know, my ceiling, my palate, was super normal. Now I couldn’t detect that because it’s not super normal in the American diet, but it is super normal in the global diet, yeah, and it was interesting. So, they had that example of the food, the sugar that we’re accustomed to, then they also gave a few other examples. But one of them they gave was one of the action figures from years ago. This is one of our action figures today. And the first action figure was this fairly muscular guy and just making a strong man’s body pose. And then they brought out this guy with these muscles upon muscles you couldn’t even define, it was so unrealistic. And yet to little kids, they’re like, yeah, that’s the muscular man I’m looking for. And just that right there gave me a view of what we’re becoming accustomed to what a body should look like right.

And that then took me into pornography. We get accustomed to what society says is sexual what society says is sexy or the attractive side of things and it is blown out of proportion to something that God did not design and something that the people on the screen can’t even live up to themselves except through editing. Well, I was actually tracking with you just as you were saying that Jacob, whenever we have to brush up or airbrush, aren’t we even by that activity saying not super enough.

Normal is not super enough and we really lose our bearings on normal. That’s, I think the problem, right? We lose a sense of what normality is, we get off into ditches. I’m just thinking about airbrushing illustration, the meal illustration you gave. There’s something nourishing about a good meal that’s not packed and loaded on with all these sugars and crave-worthy flavors.

There’s something nourishing about a long-term relationship with people that are committed to each other, not just going for the next airbrushed looks. The promise of these things is really high. It’ll get your dopamine going, but it seems like it could never actually deliver what the lesser or what the more normal things actually provide.

I think a great example of that is the potato chip. Back to the potato chip. I’m not sure I’ve ever been satisfied. I’ve had belly aches from too many potato chips, but never like that was perfect. Yeah, that was a full meal for me. That was perfect because I always want one more. Yeah. Until I’m sick. Which is to your point, Isaac, right? Where was the satisfaction? There was always a pursuit of satisfaction, but never satisfaction.

Now I’m curious about dopamine. Is dopamine not necessarily the satisfaction, but pursuit of satisfaction? Is that a true statement? Am I understanding dopamine correctly? I would say that’s pretty accurate. Yeah. And I think oxytocin is what they call the cuddle hormone, and for a lot of women, they feel the oxytocin a little bit more powerfully than men do is what we’ve seen. Dopamine is the thing that builds you up, even thinking of a sexual experience, it’s the thing that builds up to the climax, and then afterwards is when the oxytocin comes in, and that’s the relationship hormone.

So, oxytocin is the sex hormone or satisfaction, and dopamine is the anticipation of satisfaction. Yeah. Right. And if we can keep people anticipating without satisfaction, that is a great marketing hook. Oh yeah. I mean social media, right? Yeah. Keep coming back. There are all sorts of books now of people in the social media realm talking about what they’ve learned in hacking the mind of the endless scrolling. It doesn’t have an end. They’re constantly keeping you on the hook. There’s no way that you could be done with this content and so it’s just always feeding you and it’s all about dopamine and there’s no satisfaction to it, right?

Yeah, the infinite scroll with the tiny bits of information juxtaposed against reading a book, you know, the long slow work. Yeah, that’s satisfying to read a book. What happened at the end, right? In today’s society, the end isn’t a thing. YouTube tends to recommend more extreme content than what you’re currently observing, but along the same lines.

So, it’s constantly driving people more towards these extreme views on something or expressions of whatever it is that you’re learning about. Which I think to that point is it’s just trying to get that reaction. Super normal. Yeah, it’s trying to get that dopamine for sure. Yeah, Jacob, you must come face to face with what you’re seeing and understanding with addictions and then understanding God and putting these together in a way that you can make sense of what we do with this.

And especially as believers, right? How do we think through this matter? Yeah. Yeah. So recently I was reading one of the books from my training and they had a quote in there that I felt was really pertinent to this. Basically, it said that if mental health can be defined as a commitment to reality no matter the cost, then addiction can be defined as its most direct opposite evading reality no matter the cost though it may even bring death. Just that idea of when we are giving ourselves to addiction almost every time it’s because we want to avoid reality.

We’re looking for that coping mechanism that’s going to take us away from the stresses, from the sorrow, even sometimes from the over excitement. You know, we want to celebrate with something, and so we’re going to celebrate with what we know, alcohol or whatever it might be. And we are trying to avoid that reality and not deal with our emotions.

And so, mental health is being able to have a commitment to reality no matter what and I was thinking about that and what is more real than the God who created reality? The God that created our existence and normal, whatever normal may be, right? It’s hard to define that, but the God that created what is good for our brain rather than what we’re coming up with now that overstimulates it.

What can be more real than that? And in Psalm 36, some of the verses in there, I felt like really spoke into this. So, starting at verse seven, and then to verse nine, it says, how precious is your steadfast love? Oh God, the children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life, in your light do we see light.

Let’s just pause there with that verse, Jacob. When you read that, it is so loaded with desire. And I think the brilliance of that verse is that God is the end of that desire, as opposed to all of these other supernatural, supernormal things that we tend to replace it with.

And I guess that would be the definition of idol. Yeah, for sure. So, I have a question. How do you think these supernormal stimuli have affected the way we pursue or don’t pursue God? Yeah, that’s a good question. And I think it makes it a lot harder. There are a lot more distractions, right?

The reality of what we’ve been talking about is that what God created for our brains is less than what society is telling us we need. But that’s because what he created is what we need, while this is what we want. And so, we’re chasing what we want and what is entertaining, what we think is satisfying, and yet the satisfaction is less.

Like we were talking about, satisfaction is always pushed off. After we reach a point, they give us something else that’s more enticing. There’s an incredible amount of good news in what you just said there. Actually, it’s kind of delightfully good news. You mean God is simpler. You mean the good life is simpler. You mean satisfaction is right under my nose.

Yeah, that’s all really good news. You mean there’s benefit in boredom. You know what I mean? The type of thing that I’m trying to scrub out of my life because boredom is too normal and I need a super normal, and so I don’t know, I’m getting this image like come home to God and come home to the good life.

Yeah. An example I was just thinking of during this conversation is one day a week, my wife and I will try to go completely screen free as much as possible. This is where we find that a lot of our super stimulus lies in our devices. And it’s amazing how much I crave those things, right?

And I want to just sit on the couch and scroll, right? But if I am intentional, make deliberate choices not to do those things, have some pre-commitment to put the phone in another room or whatever and get away from it and I find myself outdoors. And I get done with that day or whatever, there is a totally different feeling at the end of that day, a different sort of satisfaction that I could have never had with the stimulus constantly coming at me through the devices. Something about the simplicity, though, the beauty, the deep beauty that’s found in something right outside your front door.

Boy, I really like that, Isaac. Let’s go there. You like it. Sounds to me like there’s a reset that needs to happen in my brain on a lot of different levels. I mean, we’ve shared this applies to sexuality. It applies to chemical addiction. It applies to my taste buds.

It applies to how I need to spend my time and how I evaluate time usage and pleasure. So, it applies across the board here. And Isaac, you’ve just really given us a great example. Let’s talk more. What does it look like to reset? What does it look like? How could I be more resistant to supernormal?

That’s what I want as a human being and as a believer. Okay. And I think that primarily because I’m a believer, I should be able to be resistant to supernormal stimuli. What I mean by resistant is I shouldn’t be as enticed. How do I reclaim and recapture that life?

Yeah, the first thing that comes to my mind is from that quote of having a commitment to reality. In my head, I’m thinking maybe it’s not so much about me needing to resist these stimuli, but more that I’m going to commit to reality and then through that it will bring the resistance. So, you’re chasing a separate thing.

Yeah. When we plan out what’s going to be satisfying, then the thing that society says is going to be satisfying doesn’t matter as much. Right? Because we see that this matters more. What God gave us matters more. When we focus on his Word, when we focus on what he has given us, then we understand that this is more fulfilling than anything the world can offer.

But I would contend it takes some time to really agree with the satisfaction that God offers. Am I okay saying that? I want Isaac to talk about this and I want to just draw a comparison. It takes me no time to learn to like a potato chip. No time at all. Like once. It takes me no time to learn how to like Skittles, one time. Mountain Dew, one time. But delighting in God, maybe I’m alone here, but that’s not like that, it’s slow getting there. Yeah. Just to deepen the impact of what you shared, Matt, about the importance of the long, slow work involved with this, with anything worth doing.

We’ll take time and anything that we’ll have, like that satisfying oxytocin sort of experience is something that will come out of the other side, which is where discipline might play a role in our world as Christians. Are we disciplining ourselves past our initial cravings in order to pursue something that might feel distant, but you’re willing to go through the tough bits, the boring bits, perhaps what seems mundane, for the hope of what lies ahead which is this satisfaction that cannot be found anywhere else. Satisfaction in God. But even by saying that satisfaction is there is really, really helpful. The satisfaction is there in time.

We’ve got these two things. On one hand, you’ve got supernormal that tells you right away. That was good, wasn’t it? Instant gratification. Okay, more of it? Here it is. And then we have the other thing, which sometimes, Isaac, do we try to evaluate too quickly? Didn’t work for me. Put my phone away. Went outside. Isaac said it was going to work. Didn’t work. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. All right. That wasn’t nearly as much fun as Netflix.

Yeah. So, you know, there’s a lot that needs to be overturned in my life maybe in order for me to really lean into that space and live in that space long enough for it to really have its value because it’s literally like a rewiring that’s going on, right?

Speak to this Jake. That’s what I was just going to touch on. We were talking about what our brain has become accustomed to right now and you know these pathways and the rewiring that we’ve had. This is what our brain is and so to go out and just put our phone away and go outside, yeah, it’s not going to seem fun at first. It’s going to take discipline. You mentioned the word discipline.

That is, I mean, we’re disciples for a reason, right? There’s a discipline to that. And it is so important but hard to get to the point of letting our brain be bored, right? We want to always be listening to a podcast. We want to always have something streaming. We want to always be listening to music whatever it is, always have something like the fridge open looking for something to eat whatever it might be. To let our brains be bored is such a good thing. It sounds so crazy. And yet that is when we are bored in this world. We want to be excited for a world that we’re not in, right? We want to be excited for the eternity that’s to come and letting ourselves set aside this world so that we can focus on another is what we need to get to. And that takes rewiring.

I absolutely believe that conquering boredom will be a huge boon to my walk with Jesus. And what I mean by conquering boredom is not getting my life busier so I don’t have boredom. It’s doing boredom well. And I do think that of all of the people who have lived in this world, we probably do boredom the best. I mean, can you imagine a time when I might say, well, I’m going over there, it’s going to take me a day and a half to walk there.

I mean, the most fun toy in a generation used to be a hoop and a stick that you would smack, right? That’s so far from where we’re at today and our brain just can’t handle that. Maybe I’ll redefine boredom as gaps. In my day gaps, what if they were rejuvenating? What if they were filled with restfulness? That actually prepared me for the next activity. Wow. Well, you know, that’s inspiring, I think, but I think you’re absolutely right. I have to step into the normal world, and I have to let normal be normal. I have to be real and let real be real instead of escaping that, which is what the supernormal stimulus is calling us out of.

Escape the normal, escape the real, and get into an unreal world. Jacob, back to your quote. Can you open that quote up again? Okay, you ended that quote about life and death, am I right? Yeah. Can you read it again?

Yeah. If mental health can be defined as a commitment to reality no matter the cost, then addiction can be defined as its most direct opposite, evading reality no matter the cost, though it may even bring death. That is interesting. Okay. Well, let’s just go back to the butterflies. Yeah. Right? Okay, and we can all imagine if male butterflies mate with cardboard butterflies that butterfly species goes to death, right?

Okay. The super normal stimulus leads to death because it’s not normal. Yeah, it doesn’t operate on the economy of life as God has imagined and put into this world. I think that is a really thoughtful outcome. And pair that now with Proverbs eight, which I think so beautifully speaks of wisdom. And at the end, wisdom is speaking. And she says, everybody who loves me loves life. And everybody who hates me loves death. And I think that’s so profound. Isn’t it? That somehow the love of that butterfly has gone to something towards its demise. And as you put it in that quote, the love of addictions of every kind as a love is self-hatred in a sense, right?

Towards death. Yeah, for sure. A big part of that is pride. This love of addiction, this love for desire is often seen as a love for self. When we love God, we’re denying ourselves and we aren’t chasing that desire. We aren’t chasing what society says is fulfilling. We’re saying Christ is fulfilling.

So, I love him, not myself. And when we love ourselves, we know that brings death too. When we focus on ourselves, we will die because our focus is not on what is fulfilling, and Christ is life. And so, taking that focus from ourselves and from addiction, from desiring to fulfill ourselves and focusing on Christ, because that is where the true fulfillment is and where the life is.

Well, let me just approach that from another perspective. Actually, when we love ourselves well, we’ll resist addiction as well, because that’s the best way to love yourself. Which is another thing that I think God’s been teaching me and that is I don’t really love myself very well.

And love is so central to what Jesus has been about in the New Testament. So anyway, yeah, we could probably launch into another conversation, Jacob, on that premise of how we love ourselves well. But that’s really what you’re asking here, or what really what you’re sharing is how do we love well?

Addictions are hard and the three of us understand very clearly the complexity and are very compassionate towards addiction and towards those who are addicted. And some are going to be listening here saying, I get it. I don’t like it. I know it’s terrible. I want out of it. I’ll be the first to say I haven’t conquered this.

Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, for sure. Me too. Right. What’s the first thing? Say, all right, take this one thing away. Why would you do? Isaac, take this one thing away from this conversation towards what would it be? I think having some sort of pre-commitment involved helps in removing a super normal stimulus and just practicing boredom and learning to do that well.

For me, nature is just the place I experience best. Yeah, and what I appreciate about that is you step into a stimulus place. In nature, it’s loaded with stimuli, so it’s not just depriving of stimuli, it’s actually stepping into a normal stimulus. Right, yeah, just trying, reconditioning myself.

I really like that. Jacob, what would you say? Yeah, I think that same thing. Like you said, I love conquering boredom. I think we have this idea of conquering boredom as I must make sure I never get bored. I must make sure my brain is always occupied. And I struggle with that so much.

You know, I love podcasts. I love music but being able to conquer boredom in the way of, I want to be a master at being bored. I want to be a master at just shutting off the distractions and focusing on what is real. And that is, if you just shut everything off, then you have a void, and that void is going to be filled with something and it’s what you’re used to.

And so, I think what Isaac said of finding, going outside, having something to fill that with that which is good is the necessary thing. So, finding that good thing to fill the void with and then committing to that is what is satisfying. Oh, okay. I love that. You know, one Psalm that I just thought of.

I really like Psalm 90:14, it says, oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. That is upside down to what we’ve been talking about. The supernormal says let me try to satisfy you late. Enjoy the ride. Yeah. God says, no let me satisfy you early.

And then we start and live our life from a place of satisfaction. It’s a total game changer. Thanks, Jacob. Thanks, Isaac. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, each one, for being on. I’m sure you could relate, as the three of us could relate, to our brains being hijacked and taken over by supernormal stimulus.

I think there’s an advantage here with supernormal stimulus. There’s a real advantage when there is a term that’s very self-explanatory and that connects. It’s a term we can use in our families. It’s a term we can use with our children. Hey, this is a super normal stimulus. Let’s be aware of it.

So hopefully that’s brought value. Thanks, each one for being on.