Daniel Z. Lieberman, Michael E. Long
The ‘molecule of more’ whose machinations make you desire what you don’t have, and drives you to seek new things. That which offers rewards when you obey it, and punishes you when you don’t. Dopamine, whose fingerprint is visible in most of the thoughts and actions we do on a daily basis, is the subject of the book. Discovered in 1957 by Kathleen Montagu, and first thought of as a pleasure molecule, only .0005% of brain cells produce it, but it has a disproportionate influence on us.
The book has seven chapters – love (how to make love last), drugs, domination, creativity and madness (how to use dreams to solve problems), politics (interesting observations about conservatives and liberals), progress (is there a connection between bipolar disorders and migration?) , and harmony – which the authors use to showcase the influence of dopamine in various facets of life, at an individual and species level.
Dopamine is all about the chase, and once the reward becomes predictable, it loses interest. From dopamine’s perspective, having things is uninteresting. It’s only getting things that matters. And so it drives us, and plays tug-of-war with others of its kind – oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, which are more focused on the here and now. An example of this is in relationships – agentic, formed for the purpose of accomplishing a goal and orchestrated by dopamine, vs affiliative, formed for the pleasure of interaction, driven by oxytocin, vasopressin and others more interested in the here and now.
Dopamine itself has a desire circuit and a control circuit. The former evolved to promote behaviours that led to survival and reproduction and switches on when it finds something that is potentially valuable. And the latter’s role is to manage the uncontrolled urges of the former, and pull it towards long-term profitable ends. The extreme cases of both are bad. Those with more of the latter have an addiction for the buzz of an immediate high, while those with the other are addicted to long-term achievement and cannot enjoy the present. The balance, not just between these two, but also with the here & now gang is what is ideal.
The subject, though complex, is made very accessible and even entertaining, with interesting experiments, real-life scenarios and very less jargon. If you’re interested in human motivations and behaviour, this is a very good book to pick up.
Quotes
“My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings” ~ Albert Einstein (Totally relate to that)
“Dreams are brief madness, and madness a long dream”~ Arthur Schopenhauer
