Avoiding Reality Through Dopamine Slavehood
How selfish motives destroy others, the world around us, and ourselves.
TLDR:
The M.O. of exclusively serving the needs of the self is not just the foundation of capitalism and consumerism, it is also a means to living small. It traps you within the fantasies of yourself. Far removed from objective reality and the connection with the larger world. The larger you.
Self-knowledge requires some level of confrontation. Some level of looking beneath the surface, in search for the original cause of a certain behavior, thought, feeling, or idea. But for many, the act of looking in the mirror and exposing oneself to their reality is worse than burning alive.
We'd rather avoid that, and pretend like it has nothing to do with us. We'd rather continue to distract ourselves with things that make us "feel good" instead of confronting the pains of reality to mend ourselves and set things right. This tendency to hasten towards pleasure and away from pain affects more than just our psyche. It spreads like a virus, into the world, emanating from the very words we speak, relationships we hold, and actions we employ with our limbs.
A remedy for these childish tendencies is to engage the self with other than itself. Generosity. This way of being facilitates virtue inwardly and outwardly. Making us more.
I finished my last class for the day. It was 6:30pm in Ann Arbor, and the winter skies looked like the color black was in an unhappy marriage with purple.
All around me, artificial lights flopped out of monochromatically gray campus buildings. Despite how big the University was, everything seemed to be devoured by the awkwardly depressing energy descending from both black and purple. They turned to me and asked who was more right.
I thought about my parents and countless other parents. I thought about how many times I was forced into a position that I didn’t want to be in, with people I didn’t want to be around, then zipped up my coat and quietly evaded.
The unwelcoming winds of unfinished business laughed like a dumb beast. It was boisterous in all directions, even following me across the street to the bus stop, under a lonely, dim streetlight. I stifled my groans and channeled them through a deep exhale. 20 years of winters and I’m still not used to this. I just hate it, so cold, dark, depressing, and lifeless.
Google Maps blessed me with the only good news I got all day: ‘Three minutes remaining’ for the 5A bus to take me home towards Ypsilanti where I could finally be warm again, and away from dysfunctional situations.
I looked around for something that wasn’t impressively ugly or gray to distract me for those three minutes. Probably so that my mind wouldn’t have a chance to wander back into the many troubles I so often fled from. I could’ve predicted how things would turn out if I embraced the silence and the stillness. A subtle voice would eventually propose a logical argument within the span of a few milliseconds about how it’s “not right” to just walk away from the color black and purple like that.
Why are you avoiding everything?
What's wrong with you?
Then it would convince me to “do the right thing”, which is, of course, not what anyone wants to do.
I peered toward the direction where the bus would be coming from with a silently desperate plea for time to spin a bit faster.
Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a fresh ground of snow lying untouched beneath the now-dying streetlight.
Finally, something to fixate on.
The way it glimmered without moving was almost diamond-like. How could something so beautiful be out here in a place so cold, dark, barren, and miserably unentertaining?
But more importantly, where the hell was this bus? If you know anything about Ann Arbor buses, it’s that they’re notorious for being harrowingly late. And if you don’t, a wonderfully informative video made by University students depicts a number of activities one can engage in while waiting for their bus. Including but not limited to; jump roping, playing a game of chess, and having a cookout. None of which were feasible options in the midst of a biting Midwest winter.
After about thirty seconds, the once newly sparkling white sheet now seemed mundane.
And I decided to go stomping in the snow.
Beneath my two-and-a-half-inch palladium treads came a wonderful sensation of softness. It was like slowly stepping on a muffin. The euphoric feeling, however, only lasted for an instant before my boots packed the snow into a more solid, less luxurious form. The white grounds were left with a big muddy footprint.
I continued stomping.
Soon, there were no more fresh patches of snow to momentarily satisfy me with a muffin-like sensoria. I took a step back, and what was once a gleaming surface, now appeared no different than the snow pushed to the side of the road by snow trucks — which were also usually late.
Everything around me was trampled upon, discarded, gray, and ugly.
Then, finally, the bus arrived.
“Man’s lack of patience and forethought incite him to engage in behaviors that serve his self-interest, even at the expense of degrading those around him.”
All within the span of three minutes, I found myself bored, pessimistic, and self-centered. My primary objective became avoiding discomfort — namely evading the pains of waiting and thinking.
For three minutes that is.
Non-confrontation to "the pains of waiting and thinking" coupled with hastily confronting whatever pleasure seems within reach both seem to be prerequisites for tyranny. Man’s lack of patience and forethought incites him to engage in behaviors that serve his self-interest, even at the expense of degrading those around him (or in this case other things).
He seeks to feed himself in abundance while those around him starve. He seeks to sever bonds with his own family and close friends (eventually leading to a separation from everyone and everything), to avoid any measure of what he deems could be “undeserving harm”, which, from his perspective, is all and any kind of harm. He commences wars against innocent lives so that he alone may prosper. He seeks convenience at the expense of environmental devastation. Fame at the expense of debasing others. And to adorn himself with the fleeting beauty of self-satisfaction at the expense of uglifying the world and those around him.
Actions that exclusively serve the self ultimately affect our way of being. And not for the better. Instead, they appear to take us back to a bestial way of operating. Some Neo-Freudian schools of Psychology describe it to be the hallmark of humanity. That is, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This kind of ontology facilitates acting out in a tyrannical way. Whether on a small scale with ourselves and our social groups, or a larger one with the environment, businesses, and nations.
When man follows these bestial inclinations, he inevitably finds himself in the midst of self-centeredness. His M.O. (modus operandi) becomes all about himself, and only himself. He is frantic about his own needs until his entire life, choices, behaviors, etc., revolve around nothing more than himself.
What better target audience for the ploys of both consumerism and capitalism?
Ironically, these individualistic tendencies that seek to serve the self are — not surprisingly — correlated with the inevitable doom of the self. And not to mention the destruction of everything it interacts with. The internal upholding of selfishness eventually materializes into external selfishness. It manifests as each of the individual’s everyday engagements, whether that be buying, selling, speaking, listening, studying, giving, taking, building, eating, being etc.
Man's motives and intentions—the beginning of all things—become himself.
The ends become himself.
The theology of secular psychology proposes the human being to be just that. A simp(le) and selfish organism that runs toward pleasure — defined as an extra boost of dopamine, be it for less than for a fraction of a second — and away from pain — be it what allows him to stand at a bus stop, unmoved, for three minutes. But is our identity, nothing more than a senseless, thoughtless, egotistical thing that just so happens to move and want?
Aren’t we much more than that?
But why does all this matter? You’re waiting for the bus and you go stomping in the snow, so what? Or you feel the stings of pain and choose to run towards something that gives you comfort. What's the big deal? There is nothing wrong with the action of stomping in the snow, or inclining towards comfort when needed, rather, why it occurs.
Take for instance these scenarios:
- “What’s the big deal? Just let them eat, they’re hungry and don’t have anything better to do.”
Well, why is it that we are not looking for something better to do? Why do we choose to corrode our bodies with sugar and poison because we just can't express our anger in a healthy and honest way? Why is it that whenever we start to feel overwhelmed, we turn to the action of eating instead of sitting with our emotions, and learning how to communicate them? Wouldn't we be able to understand the source of said frustration and anger and learn about ourselves on a whole other level?
The action of eating isn’t a problem, but rather why and when we do it.
- What’s the big deal? they’re just buying clothes to destress, they have to put themselves first.”
Well, why is it that retail therapy is the only way to cope? Why can’t we sit with ourselves or with another trained person we trust and assess who we are and what is frustrating us? Why can’t we communicate ourselves with another human being and nourish the natural process of healing through intimate and vulnerable sharing? But no. Instead, we choose the "harmless" act of buying $5 tops from stores that proliferate child slavery. And not to mention our emotional problems — self-deemed unsolvable because of our lack of confrontation.
Again, nothing wrong with buying clothes, but rather why and when the action occurs.
- “What’s the big deal if they want to watch porn? They’re not hurting anybody.”
Why are we looking at what is not being done to others at the expense of what is being done (and wronged) within ourselves? What if we're hurting ourselves? What if we're numbing ourselves and ruining our own relationships, social skills, problem-solving abilities, memory, self-esteem, and any trace of optimism in exchange for seeing a woman be exploited and violated?
Why are we distracting ourselves with these seemingly common and "harmless" actions so that we don't have to confront the painful reality lodged deep within us?
It may not even be the stimuli we want, but a feeling of euphoria when we eat, shop, and arouse. Here it is again, running towards pleasure and away from pain.
But only for a moment, after which it disappears. And there we are again, in a cringy confrontation with the dysfunction of ourselves. Now what do we do with our depression, anxiety, boredom, and pessimism? Simple. Search for selfish self-fulfillment that yet again takes our minds off of the real underlying problems we purposefully fail to confront.
We search for fulfillment away from the void within our depths. The voids that need our attention the most. All of our efforts are instead busily upkeeping another short-lived episode of false happiness through overstimulation and distraction.
We need to escape the pains of ourselves under the auspices of fleeting pleasures that ironically widen such a void. These attempts appear to culminate into a [lifelong] cycle of escaping reality and by proxy, our deepest truths. We step outside of the real world and into an ephemeral paradise that we frantically scramble to maintain and uphold. Whoever (or whatever) threatens such a fantasy is an enemy and desires “harm/pain” for us and our dream of a perfect little place that has no real existence.
At least, not in this life.
"We want something, greater than the fulfillment of our wants."
We may always desire pleasure and evade approaching pain. Granted this is to an extent human nature. Yet, a subtle part of us is opposed to these egotistical ways of thinking, acting, and being. We are not fully content, even if we get everything we want in the end.
The fact that the very dopamine rush we crave is extremely short-lived, and after which we feel empty again, is strong proof that something, inherently, isn’t right.
There is, perhaps, a locus within us that swirls restlessly. It's almost as if we weren't meant to fill ourselves with materialistic tendencies *shocking*. It's almost as if we weren't meant to receive perpetual rewards from subconsciously godified corporations, whose advertisements of an omnipotent ability to ease any and all sorts of pain or feelings of emptiness we presumptuously hasten towards.
This unsettled part of us wants something more. More valuable. More profound. More meaningful. A fulfillment—more lasting. Maybe to achieve great things, help people, make others laugh, service communities, be with one another in a way that is real, and hold genuine conversations that culminate into lightbulb moments or timeless memories worth cherishing. Literally forever.
It’s strange to say, but we want something more than what we want — as it pertains to the one-dimensional ego that only craves shallow things. We, somewhere in our inherent dispositions, want something, greater than the fulfillment of our wants. Many spiritual and religious traditions recognize this part as a primordial reality existing at the core of every human being. A true modus operandi. One that needs to be activated and enlivened in order to work properly.
Maybe we can call it a type of Generosity?
The word Generosity comes from Latin origin. It means "becoming magnanimous".
The prefix gene carries the linguistic connotations of "rebirth", "begetting", "innate quality", and "human race" in more than a dozen languages. Whether you speak Latin, Arabic, English, or French, this suggests that generosity is the universal human condition. Becoming generous is the path to becoming you in your fullest, most noble self.
It is the more.
The more you have been searching for. The more whose place is meant to reside in your gaping voids. And it makes you more. More than the reductionism of being someone whose only purpose in life is to run toward exclusive self-pleasure and away from the pains of dealing with others.
When we incline to servicing and supporting others, rather than strictly ourselves, our limbs can finally be utilized outside the confines of “me, me, and me”. As such, generosity can be perceived as a medium to channel the hoarded potential of service towards the world. It is the action of extending the self beyond itself. Hence, its linguistic meanings manifest within you and within your world.
You become more.
This in turn rescues the “you” from suffocating itself within itself.
The hoarded pools of our potential and efforts are meant to be irrigated outward, towards others, and not just the self. When we do this, we take ourselves out of the incessant, reductionist cycle of running towards pleasure and away from pain. By contrast, we become connected to ourselves, people, and the world at large. Generosity, and the expansion of the limbs, lead to a path of freedom from the shackles of obsessively hoarding short-lived, feel-good cravings. Instead, it sews the fabric of communities closer and closer together.
Now, we find that we are living in reality as opposed to the fantasy within the self. This may be the first step to “putting yourself in someone else's shoes”. Otherwise, how can we actually do that without first coming out of ourselves and our egotistical wants?
If we are incessantly focused on “I” there is likely no hope of hearing, feeling, or understanding “you” (i.e. the other).
And all of a sudden, we become more human.
The once seemingly trivial acts of smiling and asking how people’s days are, listening to them wholeheartedly, virtuously providing where there is need, etc, etc, begin to foster love, care, and belonging between and within ourselves.
All of a sudden, the once automatic thought of “me and my needs” transforms into “I wonder how my family and friends are doing” which paves the way for wider connections.
It paves a way. . .to more.
To something greater.
Conclusion:
And so, the next time we experience a situation that we almost instinctively deem dysfunctional, and incline towards evading it, can we not ask ourselves what it is that we can do? Even if it is very little and does not immediately solve the problem? How can we positively contribute to a world we see as ugly and gray?
How can we preserve the bonds of hope and connection to spread such life-giving generosity everywhere we go instead of simply seeing things as hopeless? How can we step outside of ourselves, do something for others, and unlock a whole new potential of our humanity? How can we seek to preserve beauty and begin to see it in the world, others, and eventually, ourselves?
QUESTION: What have you been avoiding lately that is of disservice to yourself? Is it relevant to the mentioned analysis? Is Generosity a remedy?
AND I WANT YOUR CRITIQUES.