Consumptive vs Generative Activities

We spend a lot of our lives consuming for recreation. We go out to eat for the aesthetic pleasure of food, we watch movies and TV shows, we read. All of these are activities in which you consume the creations of others through an economic transaction. Roughly, I call these consumptive activities.

We spend much of our lives in consumptive activities, especially when spending time with others. It’s a shame because it’s a very limiting way of spending time relative to the full range of human experiences that are available to us.

Generative activities are the exact opposite of consumptive: one creates rather than consuming. These activities typically involve a more drawn out reward loop than consumptive activities. Consumptive activities typically give a reward at various points during the activity, generative activities often do not until an outcome is reached. Where consumptive activities give an aesthetic sensation that we associate with pleasure during the activity, generative activities give no such sensation, and often, it needs to be manufactured internally.

Generally, generative activities require a training of your mind and body - a fundamental, physical change must occur (neurally or muscularly) to engage in the activity. Personally, I’ve found this change of mind/body in order to effect my neurological system/reward subsystem in a way that makes me more deeply satisfied with reality.

Finally, it tends to be the case that when you are generative for long enough, you create something that others value, and being valuable to others is naturally deeply satisfying for our cooperation-contingent species.

Summarily: go for the nutritious meal, not the candy bowl.