One thing that can help you understand what is happening in our societies today is to walk through the woods. As you do, look around. Picture what you would eat if there were no civilization, and you had to survive off of the land around you.
The pickin’s are kind of slim in most natural settings. The most hedonistic food you might find somewhere would be blueberries.
Maybe if you farmed, there might be a tasty cheese, or even an apple tree. But nothing would begin to appriximate the product of an advanced society, with advanced chemical engineering of foodstuffs like colas, and candy bars, and delicious barbeque sauces.
Look at what the dopamine surge produced by Coke did to this little girl’s brain, when she first encountered it:
Cola is delicious after a Big Mac with that special sauce and some salty french fries. Her brain was completely naive to the dopamine surge that cola would produce, and look what happened. That was literally lights out for a moment. I don’t know whether her amygdala shut off and she entered pure bliss, but you see the same eyes rolling back up into the head when heroin addicts feel every dopamine receptor suddenly activate after a hit. And what does she do after it passes? She dives right in for another hit. It wasn’t painful.
Now picture how her brain will change, just as an addict’s, though to a lesser degree, once daily Coke is in her life. That is us. It barely registers as a dopamine surge. Coke, Pepsi, Milkyway, Carvel, McDonald’s, Pizza, and on and on are all similar. We consume them without a second thought.
We are still very much designed for a harsh natural world. Although our machine is adaptable to this unnatural world of dopamine and pleasure, clearly judging by the state of our society, it is not a perfect adaptation. As we have acclimated to the pleasure, we have lost some ability to process the dangers we face, and tolerate the rigors of a more unsophisticated time.
Of course it is the nature of our machine, that all adaptation is easily undone.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because it is almost as good as dopamine for us
[…] A Video Of Modern Dopamine’s Effects […]
Cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels and even nuclear is what makes this possible. Can you imagine what happens when that starts to go away?
It would be like slow motion Venezuela with the accompanying increases in mortality and decline in life expectancy over time.
Ever seen a bunch of 230 lb. men not getting their sugar dopamine hits? They can be feral within 24 hours.
> Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because it is almost as good as dopamine for us
…so its actually bad for us?
Now imagine 300 Million people who did not have their “Coke” in over a week – cuz that is how SHTF will look like!
What are some natural and healthy ways of getting dopamine hits?
Really good question. I would also like to know more about that from AC.
My 1st thoughts are sex1 and food2 . Also thought of discharged rage; yet it is not healthy ; and causes too much stress to be valid. Physical exercise, like running, achieving something one desires4, affection5 ( love; different from sex), nice views 6 and being in the outdoors 7may also count.
Does are 7 things I feel any person in pre industrial societies would enjoy, plus an 8th thing for women; being a mother. In the case of K men’s, parenting( teaching their sons how to survive; ex: how to shoot a longbow or how to hunt). Maybe r women; as well as r men; wouldn’t enjoy raising thier children, and indulged in orgies or other deviancy.
The role and omnipresent role of each religion should be considered in order of having an accurate picture (9), if religion worked as an amygdala assuage. Also wars; and genocide; plus every crime it involved, were extremely common.
So those may be 8 or possibly 9 things people got dopamine from in healthy and natural ways during agricultural societies.
Sounds good.
Sex and food may depend on DRD4 status though, as addiction can be problematic. Exercise is good. Fighting in martial arts is excellent for blowing off steam, it develops skills, and can build friendships which are not bad for dopamine as well. Hunting is probably good, especially if it provides food and advances your position.
Nature and views are probably excellent, if they are something you can regularly tap into, or associate with work to use as motivation. But you have to be careful about adapting to something beautiful, which will degrade your ability to function under harshness, if you need to function in harshness. If you cannot focus in your cubicle because you are wishing you were in the mountains, then that is counterproductive.
I think the key is structuring things so your life gives you dopamine as you advance your position.
Of course an Apocalypse, with no rules, will be a big dopamine hit for some.
I think it is best approached by molding your environment to give you dopamine as a reward for something that is good for you, than looking for a hit of it independent from environmental advancement. So the best option would be to start a business where you love the work, each job completed is a rush, and it is a financial improvement as well.
Where dopamine is unhealthy is when it is an escape from misery that advances you. Then you are choosing between advance and pleasure, which means pleasure is tainted with the knowledge it had cost, while advancement means misery, and the forgoing of pleasure.
Other than that, I have seen an incredible dopamine rush from acupuncture, which seemed to improve health as well.
infowarrior, the Earth’s crust contains hundreds, possibly thousands of years worth of fossil fuels (mostly shale and coal, but they can be liquefied as needed) and millions of years worth of uranium and thorium at current consumption rates. The only scarce resource is smart people, who keep thinking up new ways to sterilize themselves* and collapse civilization. Barbarism is eugenic as civilization is dysgenic, so eventually a new civilization will rise up, dust off the old books, study the old ruins, rebuild, and set up another welfare state.
*E.g. the nerd who suggested that nanotechnology could give us self-repairing condoms
yep, oldest trick in the marketing book. Make something that is plentiful and replenishable apear scarse.