I’ve been intrigued by Charles Lyell‘s self-described “dopamine awareness campaign,” trying to show how all of our social behaviors boil down to a desire for gratifying dopamine shots. The campaign doesn’t seem to be going so well; see, for example, the collapsing of his recent answer to Why do people contribute reviews of restaurants/theatres/even
I appreciate your awareness campaign, but it does seem like all of your answers boil down to one word. “Why does anyone do anything?” “DOPAMINE!”
Charles wrote me back:
I’m not trying to annoy or bore people, but part of my awareness campaign is to help spread the word that everything we do we do for dopamine. Imagine a world where the fear/power/esteem addicts wreaking havoc and destroying the planet are revealed to be desperate addicts who need treatment for the same brain disease plaguing heroin addicts. I’ve come to the conclusion that everything comes down to dopamine appeal and that trying to explain dopamine appeal has zero dopamine appeal. As a result, I’m working a couple of new approaches. If you can think of a way to make explaining dopamine appeal more appealing, please let me know.
That’s such a good question that rather than respond in a comment, I thought it merited my first-ever Quora post.
Charles is oversimplifying dramatically when he says that “everything comes down to dopamine appeal” but his essential point is right on. He’s also totally on point that “trying to explain dopamine appeal has zero dopamine appeal.” I admire the spirit of his campaign, and want to help him out. So here are some thoughts.
Almost everybody believes in a soul
Cartesian dualism is an almost universal belief in America. It’s practically axiomatic, and people are very emotionally attached to the idea. Even well-educated folks resist the notion that our thoughts and feelings are nothing more than electrical impulses and molecules bouncing around an organ that’s more like your pancreas than unlike it. I agree with Charles that Cartesian dualism is an outdated and misleading idea, and that it would be really helpful to get the word out about modern neurobio. The weight of cultural tradition is heavy, though.
Answer the question: what’s in it for me?
If someone believes in an immortal soul that temporarily resides in the body, what do they gain in being convinced otherwise? How does neurobio benefit us? For me, understanding human behavior in materialist, Darwinian terms has made the world a much easier place to live. I’ve come to believe that we humans are like monkeys in a zoo of our own mostly inadvertent construction. We have a severely limited ability to control our own actions, and even less ability to control those of others. Nothing is really anyone’s fault. This attitude makes it easier for me to suspend judgment of myself and others; to extend compassion and tolerance; to connect constructively. I’m trying to learn to judge humans the way I’d judge chimps or daisies or mushrooms: not at all.
Be careful with emotional tone
Describing normal people seeking dopamine squirts as “heroin addicts” is not going to produce the desired response. Whether or not the comparison is apt, it’s a highly charged, confrontational image. It implies strong negative judgment. Better to frame heroin addiction as an extreme and misguided version of the ordinary person’s desire to regulate their own brain chemistry in a way that produces pleasure and reduces pain. Similarly, try to not call people robots and zombies; they don’t like that either.
Respect the brain’s beauty and complexity
Materialists like me and Charles get a bad rap for being unromantic, unfeeling, out of touch with a sense of wonder. My own experience is that the more I learn about the brain and its workings, the more breathtakingly beautiful it reveals itself to be. Gerald Edelman observes that the human brain is the most physically complex object in the known universe in his book Wider Than The Sky: The Phenomenal Gift Of Consciousness. Here are some images from around the web that appeal directly to my sense of beauty and possibility:
For me, actual physical study of the actual physical brain is way more poetic and inspiring than any supernatural or spiritual idea I’ve ever encountered. Any discussion of how the mind emerges from the brain should be couched in a sense of awestruck wonder at how mindless evolution could have produced such a magnificently intricate structure.
Okay, so I’m sitting at work the other day, bored out of my skull. I’m working in a large office for the first time, and it’s not what I expected, to say the least.
So as I’m doing a repetitive task, I start letting my mind wander. And I start thinking about the structure of this company, and how even though the task I’m doing doesn’t seem to drive the company forward (sorting checks by check #), when you consider the millions of employees who are all doing repetitive tasks at that moment, we’re actually moving forward quite fast.
Then I think about how the brain is like that, only several orders of magnitude more (trillions of cells as opposed to millions of employees). Each brain cell is fairly useless, can’t even survive without the body supplying blood and nutrients. Can’t really “think”. But when they move as one, my conscious mind emerges. Thoughts can happen.
And further, my entire body is made of useless cells, all surviving by moving as one. I’m not one entity, really. I’m trillions of tiny entities all focused on the same goals! It was quite a thought to have, and it reinforces your point about the beauty that exists in the natural body without invoking pixie magic.
Do you have a blog? You should post this there, it’s good writing.
Regarding the charge that materialism somehow unmagicks the wonder of existence, you might check out Richard Dawkins’s book, Unweaving the Rainbow. It’s probably the best takedown of that idea I’ve read, and full of fun educational tangents besides.
I’ve read, and loved, several Dawkins books, but not that one. Will have to check it out.