Doing things merely to stimulate pleasurable brain chemistry is fine unless all you do is play games or watch formulaic media that have no lasting effect or achievement.
Coincidentally I’ve been listening to Divers a bunch recently (which is a really great album, although I am just passively consuming just like everything else… I don’t know if it falls under formulaic for you, but it is a good formula if so). A lot of it is about death and time, and she ends one of the songs with a sort of gentle sing-songy “Look, and despair.” I always read the “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” in Ozymandias as a giant “fuck your hopes and achievements” from that ancient king.
Anyway, Joanna Newsom’s delivery is a lot more gentle, so maybe the fact that all of our effects and achievements will ground to dust is not so bad. Mattering would be very stressful.
I felt terribly sorry for that loss of GDP and decline in mean global IQ.