Is Our World Upside-Down?
Our society is set up for us to chase dopamine. Here's why that's bad.
In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard argues that the modern world is "upside down." That is, it's set up to encourage us towards the wrong things, and to reward us when we chase (or achieve) those things. Willard is a Christian theologian, but you don't have to be a Christian to recognize the truth of this sentiment.
I think one big way that our society is upside down is that it encourages us to chase dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that's associated with feelings of pleasure and pain. When we get a hit of dopamine, we feel good.
Dopamine can be a good thing, but it comes with a dark side: it can be associated with craving and even addiction. In many cases, a release of dopamine doesn't actually satisfy us. Instead, when we get a hit, the hit immediately makes us want more. Here's how social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it in The Anxious Generation:
"The release of dopamine feels good; we register it in our consciousness. But it’s not a passive reward that satisfies us and reduces our craving. Rather, dopamine circuits are centrally involved in wanting, as in “that felt great, I want more!” When you eat a potato chip, you get a small hit of dopamine, which is why you then want the second one even more than you wanted the first one."
So how does our society encourage us to chase dopamine?
1) Money
It's hard to overstate how strongly our society encourages us to chase ever-increasing amounts of money. To borrow a particularly evocative phrase from a Harvard Business Review article, we "revere our citizens based on their net worth." Our consumerist society sets us up to chase the next dollar, to spend more than we should, and to endlessly fantasize about what we would do with more money.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with having money; but the pursuit of money can come with a dark side. It turns out that more money doesn't really satisfy. Most of us think that we'll be financially satisfied if we just earn a little bit more. But here's the trick: almost everyone thinks this. At all income levels, we think that happiness is just on the other side of the next raise.
A study on financial happiness asked 2,034 Americans at all income levels, "How much does your annual salary need to be for you to feel happy / less stressed?" The results are below.
(source: The Pay Raise People Say They Need to Be Happy in U.S. : r/Infographics (reddit.com))
As peoples' incomes kept rising, the amount of money that they thought would be necessary to make them happy kept moving up too. Of course, some of this is basic economic reality. As a freelance author, I've spent time in each of the first 4 brackets. When you're making less than $25,000 per year (as I did when I first started out), paying rent is not easy. In those situations, more money can certainly lead to less stress. But that argument holds less weight when people are making $200,000 per year and saying that what they really need to be happy is $350,000 per year. Matt Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School whose research focuses on the causes of happiness, summed it up well:
"They might imagine that once they get the higher salary, then that’ll be enough…In reality, once they get there, they’ll probably want a little bit more."
2) Status
The other big thing that our society encourages us to chase is status (especially fame). But like more money, higher status rarely leaves us satisfied. I learned this first-hand when I was getting started as a writer in my 20s. On day CNN cited one of my articles. It felt great! I felt an instant rush of dopamine. But 10 minutes later, the hit had worn off and I felt empty and vaguely dissatisfied. I found myself checking Facebook and my email, wondering if anyone else had praised or cited my articles. Looking for that next hit.
When we chase money and fame, we think we're climbing mountains. But from a happiness standpoint, I think we're really just stuck on a hedonic treadmill. We're running hard but not getting anywhere. In my 20s I wrote dozens of articles, and every time one was published in a big outlet I would feel a huge hit of dopamine. But for all of those hits, my internal landscape never actually improved. My (relative) fame and high status didn't satisfy me; they just made me crave even more. I think when we chase money and status for too long, we become what Buddhists call the "hungry ghost"—empty, restless, unmoored, and always searching for (but never satisfied by) our next meal.
So if chasing fame and fortune isn't going to bring us peace, love, joy, and contentment, then what should we be pursuing instead? There are a lot of good options, but here are three that I like.
1) Integrity. The psychological benefits of being able to look ourselves in the mirror and be proud of the person looking back at us cannot be overstated. We sleep better and we love better. We feel more at peace. Over time, I think we become more calm and less anxious in the world.
In addition to the psychological benefits, I like pursuing an integrous life because it's relatively easy. Becoming famous is hard. Becoming a millionaire is hard. Unless we are extremely lucky, both will take many years; and may well be outside of our control. But pursuing integrity is simple, and it's completely under our control. When I feel like I'm not living a 100% integrous life, I sit down for a few minutes of peace and quiet. In that place, I start to identify actions I can take (which, while important, can sometimes be very small) to realign my life with the North Star of my values and my conscience. Taking those actions (even something as simple as apologizing to my wife for snapping at her the day before) produces a profound peace and contentment.
2) Friendship. My friend John Wood Jr. (National Ambassador for Braver Angels, a nonpartisan movement focused on helping political Reds and Blues to have healthier conversations and knit our great country back together) wrote what I consider to be one of the most beautiful songs of the 21st century. I was lucky enough to see him perform it live at the Braver Angels National Convention in Kenosha, WI on Sunday; and if the convention didn't provide me any other value (it did; lots), seeing him perform this song live would still have justified the trip.
I highly recommend listening to the whole thing, but here's the relevant line for this article:
"Take your place round the table, brother and sister, in this house where all friendship is gold."
(If you'd like to listen to the whole thing, it starts at 24:30 in this video.)
On a soul-deep level, I think all of us realize that the house that John describes—where friendship is gold—would be a far more enjoyable place to live than an actual golden house. Psychological research confirms this: the benefits of having a deep network of close friends truly are immeasurable.
3) God. The idea of pursuing God (or Spirit, Source, Infinite Intelligence, a connection to the universe, etc) requires a little bit of explanation; because it's less of a pursuit than a surrender. God is always here, ready and willing to talk to us. The work is not in chasing Him down, but in simply learning to listen to Him. I still think of it as work, because most of us have a hard time getting out of our False Self on a consistent basis in order to surrender and truly hear a higher power (I know I do).
But the rewards of walking this path are remarkable. It is the best path I know for getting out of fear, guilt, anger, and shame; and getting into a day-to-day experience of love, joy, peace, and connection. Once we have that experience for the first time, I think we realize that there is no path more worthy of being walked than the path towards God (or Spirit, Source, Infinite Intelligence, our connection to the universe, etc).
What makes these three paths (and there are many more) different from chasing money or fame? At each point along these paths, we experience a deeper and deeper contentment. We don't feel hungry and irritable, empty and yearning and restless. Instead we feel peace and calm, together with the quiet excitement of taking the next step and potentially taking those experiences a level deeper.
The other thing that separates these three paths from chasing dopamine is that each step along these paths is deeply joyful. Each step is better than the one before, and each step leaves us more satiated than the one before. In my experience, neither money nor fame can deliver that quiet satisfaction.
So here's our action item for this week. Look at your most recent raise. It may have made you happy; it may have helped you to get out of debt or to go on more vacations. That's all wonderful; and I'm certainly not saying that money is bad. Nor am I saying that we shouldn't earn enough to pay our bills. But ask yourself: did this raise make you content? Did it bring you the lasting peace and joy that all of us crave?
If the answer to that question is "no", then consider spending a little bit less time at the office chasing the next raise; and a little bit more time pursuing one of the three paths described above (either integrity, friendship, or a relationship with God).
P.S. If you want to walk two of these three paths simultaneously, I highly recommend checking out Braver Angels. Joining the nonprofit helped me to feel more in integrity, because I could see the divisions tearing our great nation apart and I starting sleeping better when I started trying to heal those divisions. It also helped me to cultivate deep friendships and amazing relationships all over the country. If you're curious, you can sign up for a Braver Angels 1:1 conversation or attend a debate in your area.
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