Dopamine Fast, Dopamine Feast

I recently read an article titled The Junkification of American Life by David Brooks. He laments the decline in culture from Art to mere Entertainment and then goes further, claiming a further de-evolution from Entertainment to Distraction and then from Distraction to Addiction. Of course, the “junkification of American life” is not exactly new. We’ve always had Grade B movies and potboiler books and muzak in the dentist waiting room and sugar pumped into just about every processed food and drink. But two things have changed:

First is the long term effect of the junk that defines our culture and its steady advancement into all corners of American life. Rest stops off the highway now give you a choice between McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s, with Subway at the highest level. Classical and jazz radio have disappeared—heck, radio has disappeared and the idea of being introduced to a new song or style or genre is replaced by circulating endlessly within the algorhythm of what you think you like. The 1964 top 100 Hit Parade on pop radio included the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Roy Orbison, Barbara Streisand, Mary Wells, Herb Alpert, The Supremes, the Beach Boys and Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto! By the time my kids were ready for their generation’s Pop Culture, everything had been reduced to the same tempo, some drum beat, same instrumentation, same singing style, same lame lyrics. (Compare the pop music of the last thirty years and excuse my geezer-grouchiness, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to the Beatles, Smokey Robinson, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, etc. in both lyrics and musical sophistication.) And the level of political discourse— and yes, I’ll say it, mostly from one side—has sunk so low that a swamp looks like a mountain lake. 

 

Second is the immense power of the engines of distraction via social media and such, the trickling stream of junk culture now a roaring river washing over us all 24/7.  What was once entertainment is now a formula of distraction driven by constant explosions, sex and super-hero powers that sink us down to the brain stem and the lower three chakras, all human evolutionary adaptations designed for survival and shared with snakes and lizards. The things that make us human— the capacity to nurture and love and speak eloquently and think deeply and imagine creatively— are all higher up the energy centers (chakras) in the spine and in the next two layers of the brain. The ones at the bottom are given for free and the same more or less in all living creatures, but the higher ones require effort and need to be beckoned forth and drawn upward by something called culture, something that used to be known as education.

 

Now we simply go from one dopamine rush to another and the results are good for exactly no one. It infects our emotional life, it lowers our capacity to care and nourish the feeling body, it rots the brain and leaves us vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories and most dangerously, in the hands of the criminal dopamine drug pushers who purposely manipulate us for their own profit (and pave the way for others to manipulate us for their own power), moves us yet further into the hellish regions of the human psyche by making such distraction addictive. 

 

What to do? Brooks article suggests three strategies:

 

1)   Consciously choose to limit your easy access to the things that tempt you.

2)   Choose to enjoy the live you already have around you.

3)   Replace a low desire with a high desire, as in pregnant women giving up alcohol out of love for their coming child.

 

In a parallel article by Maia Szalavitz titled “A Dopamine Fast Will Not Save You from Addiction,” she agrees with all three strategies above:

 

“Consequently, America’s problem isn’t that we’re a bunch of hedonists hooked on capitalism’s “dopamine hits” — it’s that so many of us aren’t able to get our social, physical and emotional needs met in healthy ways. The solution, then, isn’t to ban or quit potentially addictive escapes, though they should be regulated to minimize harm. Instead of a dopamine fast, what we really need is a dopamine feast — one that makes us want experiences we actually like, rather than compulsively responding to cravings. “

 

Bingo! The best strategy for diet might include a month of no sugar and not going back for seconds, but ultimately works best when the pleasure of eating a good raw carrot or fresh tomato is as pleasurable—or more— than going for the cookie. And diet is the perfect metaphor for all this. Rather than take the Puritan route of banning ice cream cones, what works best is to simply balance the diet, with a healthy appetizer, a nutritious and delicious main course and sure, a little dessert at the end. It’s when dessert becomes the main course that the havoc begins. 

 

And so with culture. I read Mary Oliver’s poems and Dickens’ novels, play Bach and jazz every day of my life, eat oatmeal for breakfast and a lean vegetarian cuisine for lunch and dinner, but still enjoy a pinch of John Grisham, James Brown and a good dark chocolate bar. And as a teacher and a workshop leader and a performer, do my best to create instant communities of great joy, humor and depth of feeling. The best antidote to addiction is deep connection. What I offer is better than a Facebook hit! Come join! 

PS For those who want to read the original articles, here they are:

The “Junkification” article:

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The “Dopamine” article:

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