One Choice at a Time: Escaping the Cycle of Quick Hits and Empty Wins

Dave Jackson:
Mick Jagger once said, I can't get no satisfaction. And that was before TikTok. So let's talk about that.

Speaker B:
Kick the doors open Let the party begin Every day I gotta testify.

Dave Jackson:
Time to testify. Well, today's lesson sounds like a science report I did in high school, but it's important. Again, part of the reasons I do this type of episode is I think we have to know what we're up against, because the devil's a sneaky little dude. And so we're going to start off talking about how your brain works. And you're like, what? Yeah. So the brain is always trying to answer this one question, what can I do that requires the least amount of work or energy and yet delivers the biggest bang for the buck? Which is not a bad strategy, because back in the day, right, we had to conserve our energy. Otherwise we didn't know when the next meal was coming. And there was this thing called death that often happened.

Dave Jackson:
And so I get that. And a lot of times people classify dopamine as the pleasure chemical. It's actually the wanting chemical in the brain. It's why we keep scrolling on social media. I know. Look, I'm here to tell you, Facebook shorts. Get me every time. And I'll be like, I don't know, nine or 10 videos.

Dave Jackson:
And I finally just started, like, when I click the first one, I kind of go, all right, if you get three in a row, you got to stop. Because all of a sudden you look up and you're like, wait, it's 2:30 in the morning. Why have I been watching, you know, orca videos? What? So weird. But it's why we binge. And so I say this because it's just science and we're going to get hooked in. But step one of fixing a problem is understanding the problem. Here's another one, because we're talking about choices today. In the end, it all boils down to a choice.

Dave Jackson:
We like to say, remember, I'm going to date myself. Flip Wilson. The devil made me do it, honey. Yeah, well, no, it's your. Well, let's talk about food. There is one hormone, the hunger hormone, called ghrelin, I believe is how you pronounce that. And then there's another one called serotonin. That is the.

Dave Jackson:
I'm full. I couldn't eat another bite. Well, they have designed food that basically the whole, I'm full. No, no, no. We're not going to let that signal get to the brain. In fact, we're going to have our food make you think you're even hungrier. And this is wired into it. And how this gets past the fda, well, we'll talk about money a little later.

Dave Jackson:
But I mean, you remember the old slogan, lay's potato chips, nobody can eat just one. Well, maybe now we know why they've wired our brain. They've figured this out. The good news is we learn more and more about the body all every day. I just heard where they discovered. Do you remember the John Travolta movie where, where he was the boy in the bubble or Seinfeld, the bubble boy. They have come up with a solution, like they found a cure pretty much for bubble boy disease or whatever. So we're finding all sorts of stuff.

Dave Jackson:
But our good friends in Silicon Valley figured this out and now everything is gamified. But before we leave food, let's look at what's going on, our children and our adolescents. So age 2 to 19 are over 21% have obesity, which has more than tripled since the 1970s. And what's interesting is when you get too many fixes, your brain kind of turns down the satisfaction. It's like turning up a dimmer switch and the lights are still kind of dim, they're not really brightening up anymore. And what happens is real life, what we live every day, it's not instant gratification and we lose our motivation because we're not getting that high. Whoo, give me another one, give me another one. That's not the way life works.

Dave Jackson:
So we need to remove the instant stimulation and return to internal satisfaction. Because what happens then is when you don't get that. Ooh, that was a good one. Oh, that was a good one. We don't want to do anything because we're not getting that fix. And you end up with a bunch of unmotivated people sitting around going, oh, there's a. I was going to quote a line from. Let's quote a line from Green Day.

Dave Jackson:
Well, let's get to this and then I'll quote Green Day. Our children, our lovely little children, they're so sweet and innocent, are now being exposed to porn around the age of 10. Why? Because I want a phone. Here's your phone, but don't look at porn. And if you think that you can parental control that stuff, I just know when I had a 13 year old stepson, we put all sorts of stuff on that computer, turned it on, we went to Google, we typed in boobs, and there they were. So either that particular and it was like the number one brand. It's a while ago, but whatever that software was, didn't block squat. And so men again, not so much the 10 year old boys, but by the time they turn into men, they are, you need a little more.

Dave Jackson:
So it's not at first you're like oh my gosh, I think I saw some side boob. And then you see boobs and then you see everything. And then it gets freakier and it's got this and we got to throw this in and what's she doing with that lamp? And everything just nothing stimulates you anymore. And now this is a legit thing. There are now 20 year old men that could be in front of an absolutely gorgeous female. And nature is not taking its course because it's not enough. And that blows my mind. And again, Silicon Valley.

Dave Jackson:
Oh, the green day line is when masturbation has lost its fun. And then he says nasty words, but think about that like holy cow, but that's true. And that was again what is written by probably 20 year old guy at the time. But there's a syndrome kind of called problematic TikTok use and it's a psychological condition. And the bottom line is, I'm just going to paraphrase this, it's addicting. They say the study found that excessive use, particularly over six hours a day, was linked to addictive like behaviors such as procrastination and attention deficits. And that women showed a higher likelihood of developing this addiction. And it was attributed to part of its advanced algorithm.

Dave Jackson:
We figured out, hey, let's give them something else they want. Oh, they'll watch another one and another one and another one and another one. And it creates a feedback loop of immediate rewards that triggers the dopamine driven compulsive use. And then the problem is you put down your phone, you come back to real life and mom says, help me chop the onions for dinner. And there's no instant gratification. And they're like, I don't want to do it, there's nothing there. Like, well, we're going to make your favorite stew, honey. It's weird but if we think about it, if we slow down a bit, Let me put the phone down a second.

Dave Jackson:
Everything we have, everything we have came from God. It's a gift, it really is. And Jesus had a specific story about money. It's a long one, so get comfy. This is Matthew 25:14 30. It's the tale of the guys with gold. And he said it would be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. So we're talking about money.

Dave Jackson:
This is not a metaphor. I mean, it's a story. But it's not like, well, the bird means grass and this means. No, no, he's talking about money, giving people money. And he says, to one he gave five bags of gold, to another two, and to another he gave one. Then he went on his journey and the one that received five bags of gold went out at once, put his money to work and gave five bags. So also the one with two, he got two more bags. The guy with one, though, yeah, he dug a hole in the backyard and hid his master's money.

Dave Jackson:
Now, after a long time, now notice that not instant gratification, long time, the master comes back and to settle his accounts, it says, and basically the guy with five bags said, hey dude, I put your money to work for you. And we got five more bags. So he had 10. And the master replied, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. The dude with two bags came back, hey, I got two more.

Dave Jackson:
Again the master replies, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. Then the man who had received one bag of gold came and said, hey, I know you're a hard working man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seeds. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. So here it is. And if you go into the Bible, there's a lot of times when Jesus is like, oh, ye of little faith, and why were you afraid? He was not a fan of people being afraid. And so it shows here, because this guy's like, yeah, I wasn't sure what to do, so I just stuck it in the ground.

Dave Jackson:
And verse 26 says, the Master replied, you wicked, lazy servant. Not a lot of metaphors there on that one. Pretty straightforward. So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gathered where I have not scattered seed, or, well, then you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has 10 bags. For whoever has will be given more and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have even what they have will be taken from them and throw that worthless servant outside and into the darkness where there will be weeping And Gnashing of Teeth, which I believe was a band in the 70s. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome.

Dave Jackson:
Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth. Yeah, not really subtle there. And so when we go into. This is the one I want to talk about a lot. Gambling. And here's why I want to talk about it. It's everywhere. I mean, everywhere.

Dave Jackson:
There are now banking apps that have gambling in them. When you go shopping online or on an app, it's like spin the dial and see if you can get a coupon. Gotta get that. There are boxes in adult games, and by that I don't mean porn, but just they're made for adults. And it's kind of like for those of you that remember let's Make a Deal, and it'll be a box and you have to pay to open it, and then you see what's inside of it. Well, they have the exact same mechanism in children's games. Now, how they get around this is you're not betting money. You buy coins, much like you buy chips in Vegas, and then you bet your coins, and if you win, you can cash them out.

Dave Jackson:
But this isn't a children's game. And I'm sure they have it where the parent has to buy the coins or something like that. But that game, four kids made $2 million in a year. But wait, there's more because that's kind of casinos and stuff. Now they have what are called predictive markets. And what this basically means is you can bet on anything. And I mean anything. Do you remember when the President of Ukraine, Zelensky, came to Washington the first time? President Trump was not exactly nice, for lack of a.

Dave Jackson:
Kind of told me, look, you didn't even wear a suit. So when he came back, there were $200 million worth of bets on whether Zelensky would wear a suit. And then the fun thing was he wore some sort of weird outfit. And nobody is like, is that really a suit? I don't know what they did with that. But with predictive markets, you can gamble when you're 18. And they are. In fact, there's a company called Cheddar, and they're like, yeah, if you're 18 to 21, I know you can't bet on DraftKings. Well, you can't if you're 21, but if you're 18, 19, 20, you can bet over here.

Dave Jackson:
And I don't know about you. And they're really trying to targeting young men. So we've got the only fans that are targeting are young females. And now they're targeting our men, our young men. And I don't know about you, but when I look back, some of the worst decisions I ever made, when I think about the money I blew in my 20s on stupid stuff, and that was without gambling. Just so much stuff. And if you're thinking, well, there's two companies, two big companies that are doing predictive market kind of gambling, and you're like, well, we should go after them, well, guess who they just hired as an Advisor? Donald Trump Jr. So I'm thinking they're going to be okay in terms of having people come after them and do things.

Dave Jackson:
So yeah, this cheddar app, 18 to 20 year olds, you can come and bet on every play because it's predictive. It's not sports betting. It's predictive. See all the manipulation? Robinhood, that's an app where you buy and sell stocks, now has sports betting. And then FanDuel, which is a sports betting app, has stocks. Everything's getting really blurry about. Here's how you make money. And that's the way they wanted.

Dave Jackson:
This goes back to 2018 when sports betting was made legal by the Supreme Court. And they are, how are we getting here? How is this happening? They are paying sports people, or really I shouldn't say sports spokespeople, hundreds of millions of dollars. So I live in Akron. There's LeBron, you got Kevin Hart. We'll talk about him in a second. You've got wrestlers, you got Rapp, anything that attracts. You've got a lot of YouTubers, Joe Rogan, anyone that's attracting young males. Again, look, and what's funny is when you're 22, you feel like you know everything.

Dave Jackson:
And when you turn 25, you realize, I don't know anything. And then they do this by saying, you know, bet $5 and we'll give you 150 to play with. That's kind of like, hey, buy this first pack of cigarettes and we'll give you another 50. They're just trying to get you hooked. And if you quit. There are people that have sued these companies because they finally kick the habit. And they will send them emails, they will send them, in some cases physical mail saying, hey, come back, we put $200 in your account. Think about that.

Dave Jackson:
Think about somebody who is battling alcohol addiction and you go into their house and put two bottles of whiskey on the counter. That's so evil, it's amazing. In fact, there are other reports that if you're actually good at gambling, because some of this stuff is skill Related, kinda. And if you win too much, they won't let you bet. It's just a loser's sport. What was really interesting is there was just a big story in the NBA. The FBI had a coach and some old players that were rigging games. And on espn, you know, have that ticker thing at the bottom.

Dave Jackson:
They had an advertisement for the ESPN Sportsbook. Yeah, that's. That's a little bit of a mixed message where you're talking about the dangers of gambling and how it's ruining the game and, oh, by the way, you know, cash in and win. Yeah. But they say 22% of Americans have some sort of online gambling account. 50% of young men have an account. 50. That's scary.

Dave Jackson:
And one in five of those young men have placed a bet. And it's just that first one, you know, if you bet 5, we'll make it 150. Yeah. After the legalization of bankruptcy, after the legalization, after the Supreme Court made it legal, yeah. Bankruptcy rose by 10%. Most families spend about $720 a year. As I record this, it's November. We're supposed to get snow this week.

Dave Jackson:
That's a snowblower. That's a really nice snowblower that you just lit on fire. Because, look, I've been to Vegas, and if you win on your third hand or your third spin or whatever you do, walk away. Because if you keep playing and we did, you lose. That's just the way it's designed. People with a gambling problem, 60% of them will commit a crime because they need money and their back's up against the wall and things are turning really, really bad. And that's also why people with a gambling problem have one of the highest suicide rates, because your life has just been destroyed. And you know you can't win if you don't play.

Dave Jackson:
That's what they say here in Ohio with the lottery. What was interesting, I got some of this information from Investigative Reporter on YouTube. I'll put a link in the show notes called Coffeezilla. And he is very anti gambling because it's a scam. And he's kind of an investigative reporter. So scams are kind of his beat. And they offered him $20,000 to do a video that somewhat painted gambling in a nicer light. And he was like, nah, I don't think so.

Dave Jackson:
And then later, because he is an investigative reporter, and when you do that and you point out people that are doing not so nice things, you get sued. And so this anonymous person offered him a Million dollars to help with his legal fees. And because he's an investigative reporter, he investigated it. Yeah, it was an online gambling. It was behind the hundred million dollars with no strings attached. Evil people. And it's easy to say, yeah, but Those companies paid 16 billion, billion in taxes. Okay, which goes to the government.

Dave Jackson:
And don't get me started. Right. But we're being manipulated. If you watch those commercials in the same way that when you watch the drug commercials and the people are dancing and laughing and high fiving because look at me, I got diabetes and I'm so happy. Watch. At the end of every gambling commercial, they're all high fiving and the whole bar's jumping up. Woo. We won.

Dave Jackson:
Yeah. And they kind of manipulate you. You can cash in. It's the opportunity to win and we all want to win. Yeah. That's not the way it works. And then of course they think they can get away because at the end they go, if you or someone, you know, has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-GAMBLER. You know, yeah, I don't think that's enough.

Dave Jackson:
In Proverbs 13:11, dishonest money dwindles away. But whoever gathers more money, little by little makes it grow. Warning against, you know, that's pretty obvious that get rich quick schemes are really not a good thing. Our buddy Drake, one of the top rappers out of Canada, he signed and this is one of those where we got to stop and think about this a second. $100 million. Just one would be great. He got 100 of those things, $100 million deal with an online betting casino. And he thought he was being brave because he went online and took a screenshot and said, I need to show the other side of gambling.

Dave Jackson:
Because he had lost $8 million. Great role model, right? Hey, look at me. But he is worth reportedly 450 million. So when you lose eight because you got 450, it's not quite the same, but people are actually kind of selling their soul. I love Kevin Hart. I love his book. I love his early shows where he was making fun of his kids. I think he's a very funny guy.

Dave Jackson:
But he was on Joe Rogan and he talked about how the black community needed financial knowledge. They're just that community is not as well versed in the options that are available to help your money work for you. And he actually partnered with Chase bank and I really respected it because he was going through. And if you've read his book, he's a guy that just had so many opportunities, yanked out from under him that any normal person would have just quit. And Kevin kept saying, look, I'm just going to be so funny. You can't ignore me. And I really respected him. And now he's a spokesperson.

Dave Jackson:
And I'm sure he got paid very well, him and LeBron to pimp DraftKings. In fact, if you go into the Apple Store or probably Google as well, and you look for the top sports app, Is it the NFL? Nope. Is it ESPN? Nope. It's DraftKings. It's sad. And again, it's the quick hit. You can bet on every single play, and it's just not the same. Let me give you an example.

Dave Jackson:
I made a checklist this week. I am a bachelor. My house just says, wow, a bachelor lives here. And I woke up and I was like, I gotta remember. Because the furnace had come on. I'm like, I gotta replace the furnace filter. I gotta clean the bathroom. And I need to make an attempt to find my kitchen table because there's just this mountain of empty Amazon boxes and, you know, mail that hasn't been open.

Dave Jackson:
It was just. It was very, Wow, a bachelor lives here. And I just kept moving. Like, I went in, I did the one I hated the most, to clean the bathroom. Got smart. Put some knee pads on so I could really scrub the tub. Cleaned the bathroom, went downstairs, cleaned, swapped out the. The furnace filter.

Dave Jackson:
You know, went through all of those. And I just kept. I wanted to stop. And I'm like, you're on a roll. Keep going, keep going. And there is a difference between gratification and satisfaction. If you've ever eaten Juicy Fruit gum, you know what I'm talking about? Juicy Fruit gum. You would bite into it, and you're like, oh, this is so good.

Dave Jackson:
And literally seven bites later, you'd be like, hey, where'd all the flavor go? It was a quick hit. And I remember finishing that last task, right? I'm like, okay, furnace, filter, done. Bathroom, done. And I actually found my kitchen table, right? Tore open all the Amazon boxes and got them ready to go to the recycling bin, all that stuff. And I went to bed kind of proud of myself, because a lot of times I will get distracted. And I was like, good job, man. You had some things you had to do today, and you knocked them out. And I went to bed proud, satisfied.

Dave Jackson:
Like, look at you getting stuff done. That wasn't a quick hit. That is something that now I can go, well, I did it once. I can do it again. It's a thing that builds momentum, and it Builds confidence, all that kind of stuff. And so we need to renew our mind. It says in the Bible, in Psalm 42:1 2, it says, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Dave Jackson:
And that's dopamine. It's that wanting. It's that desire and instead of feeding it with these quick hit things that don't bring any satisfaction, it rewires our brain in the wrong way. We need to fill it with God's word so he can direct us and keep us focused and be doing those things that make us feel satisfied, that make us feel proud and that aren't wasting our time, that aren't wasting our money, that aren't wasting the gifts that God has given us. That, you know, it's just destroying our families. Whether it's porn, whether it's gambling, alcohol, all those things, none of them bring lasting satisfaction. And just realize that it comes down to choices. And maybe your last choice wasn't the best.

Dave Jackson:
It happens. Make your next one better and then make the next one after that better and just keep going so that one day you can hear. Well done, good and faithful servant. The website feedingmyfaith.com if you know somebody who is struggling with something, feel free to copy the address or just send them over to feedingmyfaith.com 94. If you would like to support the show, you can go over to feedingmyfaith.com donate. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting. Thanks for checking out Feeding My Faith. Where God's word is made simple.

Speaker B:
I came to play. I came to testify. Every day I got Testify.

Dave Jackson:
Where God's word is made simple.