Cheap Dopamine: How Social Media & Tech Ruin Your Life (and How to Fix It)

The Dopamine Dilemma: Fast Food Socialization and the Quest for Control

We live in an era of instant gratification, where social media, pornography, video games, and streaming services offer quick hits of dopamine. This abundance of readily available pleasure creates a "cheap dopamine epidemic" that can have detrimental effects. To understand this phenomenon, we need to explore the historical context of societal structures and our relationship with resources.

A Brief History: Technoeconomic Bases and Shifting Societal Structures

Societies can be categorized by their technoeconomic base, which refers to their primary means of production. Throughout history, there have been five distinct technoeconomic bases:

1. Foraging: Hunting and gathering.
2. Horticultural: Simple planting, often led by women, with female deities.
3. Agrarian: Animal-drawn plows led to increased miscarriages in women, shifting roles and leading to male deities. Male slave labor was prevalent.
4. Industrial: Marked by advancements in manufacturing and resource availability.
5. Informational: Characterized by the rapid spread of information and technology.

The shift from foraging to agrarian societies marked a significant cultural change. As women were no longer able to operate the animal-drawn plow due to health concerns, they transitioned to more traditional roles, and men became the primary food producers. This shift contributed to the rise of patriarchy. The abundance of food allowed men more time for intellectual pursuits, leading to the invention of writing and mathematics, along with ascending philosophies. This led to a disconnect with the descending, or physiosphere.

The Industrial and Informational Ages: Abundance and its Consequences

The Industrial and Informational Ages have drastically altered our relationship with resources. Fat, sugar, and salt, once scarce, became readily available. Assembly lines and 9-to-5 jobs emerged, leading to increased wealth and potential for many. This led to the rise of fast food chains and the Golden Age of Television. The internet then amplified the spread of information.

Companies like Google and Facebook competed for attention, leading to the evolution of technology that, while not inherently bad, can have poor incentives for power.

Because humans aren't adapted to having resources like fat, sugar, and salt in abundance, these substances trigger dopamine release. Companies discovered this and began manipulating these ingredients to keep customers hooked. The same principle applies to the digital world, where inflammatory headlines and negativity capture attention, leading to algorithms that feed users what they want to see.

Digital "fat" can be described as fearmongering, digital "sugar" are quick desirable promises, and digital "salt" are absolutistic takes. This constant exposure to quick fixes and fear induces mental obesity.

Understanding Dopamine: The Molecule of More

Dopamine is often misunderstood. It is not the pleasure molecule, but rather the molecule of more. Daniel Z. Lieberman, author of "The Molecule of More," explains that dopamine is an early warning system for anything that can help us survive. Understanding how dopamine works is crucial to controlling our behavior and reversing the negative effects of cheap dopamine.

There are two types of neurotransmitters:

• Down Chemicals (Here and Now): Oxytocin, norepinephrine, adrenaline, serotonin, endorphins, and endocannabinoids. These allow you to savor, enjoy, or fight/run from your experience.

• Up Chemical (Dopamine): Motivates you to pursue and control what you don't have but want, because you think it may be useful for your survival.

The Issue: Dopamine Overload and Loss of Touch with Reality

The issue is that we are so overloaded with information, that we are forged by game theoretic principles. Relationships suffer because we are motivated by dopamine, we possess a partner because we think that may be beneficial for our survival, but we fail to appreciate the relationship after the honeymoon phase.

The key is to shift from superficial pursuits to a philosophical sense of mastery. Whether it's a relationship, a new hobby, or going to the gym, we must appreciate it, master our craft, and focus on the fundamentals. We need to move from dopamine to the down chemicals that allow us to savor and appreciate what we have.

To enjoy what we have, we must train our minds away from the future and back to the present. Mindfulness, walks, and simply observing the world around us can help. Dopamine detoxes can also be helpful, but changing how we approach and leverage technology is essential.

Dopamine is not inherently bad. It is a driving force behind both success and failure. The key is the difference between short-term and long-term gratification. Short-term gratification (cheap dopamine) leads to entropy, or chaos, uncertainty, and disorder. Long-term gratification (earned dopamine) leads to centropy, or the creation and improvement of order and certainty.

Social Media: A Double-Edged Sword

Social media can be toxic, but it's also an integral part of how we work, communicate, and stay connected. However, if we let the algorithm control us and are only exposed to polarizing information, our lives can be terrible. We become reflections of social media feeds, unable to think critically or budge on our beliefs.

The combination of fear and desire on social media pulls us away from the present moment, increasing entropy. Even seemingly harmless posts can induce chaos in our minds. Since social media companies are not going to change their incentives it is up to you to create your own environment for success.

Creating New Digital Environments for Success: Three Steps

We can leverage the rapid spread of information to our advantage by being intentional about the content we consume.

1. Curate Your Digital Environment: Short-form content can be useful for quick insights, but it can quickly devolve into meaninglessness. Challenge your beliefs with long-form content from sources with the intention of helping. Unfollow accounts that aren't serving your growth and seek out long-form writing, videos, and podcasts.

2. Focus on a Meaningful Project: A project provides order, frames your attention, and helps you enter a flow state. Building something is a building block for a better future. Use the good inputs from your curated digital environment to create good outputs.

3. Earning Your Control and Freedom: What do you build? Getting a job and investing your savings isn't the only option. If you have the right skills like writing, marketing, and building, all you have to do is get what you build in front of a fraction of people. Create the content you want to see in the world, build the product you want to see in the world, and attract like-minded people.

By curating our digital environments, focusing on meaningful projects, and earning our control and freedom, we can harness the power of dopamine for good and create a life of purpose, order, and fulfillment.