(sorry for formatting) mostly applies to the RICH. They have plenty of food, every existent amusement, and time, as much of it as they want.
Here is an interesting idea, which I will take a moment to introduce.
Addiction is driven by dopamine, or seems to be. And what we think we know about our brains is they like balance. Homeostasis. If you get too much pleasure our brains feed us, in effect, pain.
In fact in one podcast I listened to last week a Stanford Professor suggested periodically doing things we fear or find unpleasant, in order to increase dopamine sensitivity. This, all from a purely neurological, hormonal, biochemical perspective.
Could people who have everything, who have danger, no problems, no accidents, no unrxprcted unpleasantness of any sort not come to PREFER pain? If you live in a world saturated with dopamine, coukd there not be a major opposing reaction?
And I have often called sadism “outsourced pain”. Here is my idea: sadists HURT WITH THEIR VICTIMS. They have not turned off their natural human instincts of kindness and empathy.
But this pain, besides making sadism and masochism inseparable, acts to reset dopamine in precisely the way true life challenges would.
Having no challenges and no difficulties, on this reading, would then intrinsically lead to cruelty.
We need to have problems to be happy. And EVERYTHING that happens can be used as a tool for growth.