One relating to the lack of “meaning” in your life, and one to related to the hedonic trademill.
As for the first, I don’t know much about about crises in meaning, I’ve never had any. People have been saying good things about Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl (LW review), but I haven’t read it yet, so I personally can’t vouch for it.
If you’re simply looking to become happier, How to Be Happy is pretty much the go to resource here on the site. This won’t grant you exit out of the hedonic treadmill, but it may shift the baseline upwards.
As for the hedonic treadmill: It seems extraordinarily difficult to exit it. Some possible approaches could include Wireheading (also, also, also), very high amounts of meditation, chronic pain and death. These are either very speculative, dangerous or undesirable (in the case of exiting the hedonic treadmill at the bottom).
Disclaimer: I’m not sure whether higher attainments in meditation could be classified as actually “exiting the hedonic treadmill”. I think @romeostevensit has some higher attainments, maybe he or somebody else who is very experienced in meditation wants to chip in.
[epistemic status: weak to very weak]
I see two different questions here:
One relating to the lack of “meaning” in your life, and one to related to the hedonic trademill.
As for the first, I don’t know much about about crises in meaning, I’ve never had any. People have been saying good things about Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl (LW review), but I haven’t read it yet, so I personally can’t vouch for it.
If you’re simply looking to become happier, How to Be Happy is pretty much the go to resource here on the site. This won’t grant you exit out of the hedonic treadmill, but it may shift the baseline upwards.
As for the hedonic treadmill: It seems extraordinarily difficult to exit it. Some possible approaches could include Wireheading (also, also, also), very high amounts of meditation, chronic pain and death. These are either very speculative, dangerous or undesirable (in the case of exiting the hedonic treadmill at the bottom).
Disclaimer: I’m not sure whether higher attainments in meditation could be classified as actually “exiting the hedonic treadmill”. I think @romeostevensit has some higher attainments, maybe he or somebody else who is very experienced in meditation wants to chip in.