Dopamine addiction is real

   Dopamine is a very important neurotransmitter compound in the brain.  It is the brain's "feel good" compound that gives us our natural "high" when something good happens to us.   It re-enforces our desire to repeat an action or activity that we perceive as good for us.   We don't often think about what internally drives us to do the things we do.   We like to think we give money to various charities because we are inherently "good people" but how much of it is from our own brains internal desire to get another shot of dopamine?

   We look down our noses at drug addicts for their weakness to turn away from dangerous chemicals but when it gets down to it, in some sense we are all drug addicts.  Dopamine is such a strong chemical that few of us can say no to its lure.   What is worse, we don't even know that we are addicted to it.   No needle needs to be injected.  No pill swallowed.   No bottle to drink.   Nothing needs to be snorted, or inhaled.   It's always available.  It's always in store and ready to be consumed.  All that is needed is the proper stimulus to activate it and the list of activators is almost endless:

• Shopping
• Exercising
• Skydiving 
• Mountain climbing
• Tricks on skateboards
• Racing cars
• Riding motorcycles
• Getting good grades at school
• Getting promotions at work
• Eating
• Sugars
• Carbs
• Doing charity work
• Social media
• submitting pictures to Instagram
• posting on Facebook
• tweeting on Twitter
• blogging on YouTube
• Cleaning the house
• Organizing
• etc. etc. etc.

   Dopamine is important.  It's what allows us to get good at various activities.  Let's face it.  We all have to start somewhere and usually it's at the bottom.  In order to get better at anything we need to repeat it over and over again.   But unless there is some internal "reward system" it's very difficult to find the energy to repeat a process.   Small rewards act as that reward system and encourage us to try again and again.

   The school system has long been the biggest source of dopamine pushers.  From little on, we were given bright GOLD STARS on our little works of art or assignments to reward us for our effort.   Seeing those gold stars on our paper would give us our first push of dopamine into our little 5 year old brains and BAM!! We were hooked.  We would do anything to get another one of those gold stars or see our name listed on a bulletin board for high achievement or honors.   Even if he we ourselves were not the recipient of the reward it would many times flow down to us as well.   I can still remember seeing my brother Jim who was 4 years older than me graduate from high school with a gold cord hanging over his shoulders for "Honor Roll".   I was going to be a freshmen the next year and thought to myself "If Jim can be Honor Roll then I know I can be too!"  I put a plan into place the next year to prove I could do it (before I was just a A/B student).   Four years later I walked down the aisle with the same gold cord over my shoulders and surpassing my brother with a 4.0 (he only had a 3.93).  That was probably my biggest push of dopamine I had ever experienced.

    Dopamine rules the world.  It's what drives us to build bigger, faster, stronger, cheaper, better.  It drives businessmen to expand their businesses.  It drives the wealthy to become wealthier.  It drives the Philanthropist to give away even more.  It drives the worker to work even harder.  It drives the athlete to play harder and practice more.  It drives the actor to take on more challenging roles.  It drives the musician to go on the road and perform on stage in front of thousands.

   But it also has it's downside as not every dopamine activator is beneficial over the long term.  Take for example the most common activator today:  Social Media.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pintrest are all built around a common theme.  Feedback.   Whether it's a re-post, re-tweet, a "like" or a comment, it all serves the same purpose: to give the user a dopamine shot.  How many of us post a comment or picture on Facebook and await our friends replies and comments.  We sit there anxiously waiting for their hopefully "positive" replies.   We might even hold off on a post in the evening because we know most of our friends might be asleep and not see it.   Like the old philosophical question goes: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sounds?  So likewise, if I make a great post and no one sees it, does it matter?   I think we are not so much interested in changing the world as we are in getting our little daily/hourly/minute injection of dopamine.  If we are so lucky to have a comment go viral or at least go into the double/triple digits we may be high for the rest of the day or week as we achieved a new level of gold stars.  Also, heaven forbid, if we get a "negative comment" we become like a heroin addict who must fight back against those are threatening to take away their drugs.   We unleash on these poor bastards all the furry of hell who dare to challenge our view and our source of self-pleasure and self-worth.

   Another problem I think social-media has also had on our world is that it allows people to escape from the problems in their life.   Remember the list of things I said dopamine drives us to do?   Build bigger, faster ... work harder?  What if I am already getting all the dopamine I need through social-media?   What if my life is full enough by getting re-tweeted or "liked"?   Do I need to work hard at work?   Do I need to get promoted?   Do I need to hear praise from my boss or co-worker?  Maybe not.   Some people have labelled Millennials as "lazy".   I really don't think that is the case at all.   I think that, for many, they are getting their dopamine from social-media and so their brain's need for more dopamine is all tapped out.  At the same time, social-media can serve as surrogate supplier in bad times as well.  For example, in previous generations if you didn't get a great review from your boss you would work hard to fix it the next year to get a better review (a gold star).  But today, many can retreat their their other world of social media to pump them up and restore their lost dopamine supply.   The problem with this alternate source of dopamine, however, is that it's not a longer term supplier of what we need as a society.  Tweets or Posts, for the most of us, are not going to pay for a house, raise a family or provide a retirement income.  Escapism, whether with drugs, alcohol or social media, never works out in the end.

   As with any drug, it's the misuse of the drug that leads to problems rather than the what the drug is trying to do.   Pain killers, for example, are meant to dampen the pain receptors.  In the right context they allow the body to relax and the area that is causing the pain (maybe post surgery stitches) to heal. The problem becomes when the person only feels normal when they are taking the pain medicine and do other terrible things to fill that addition such as: lying to doctors, embezzlement, robbery and even murder. Likewise, dopamine addiction too causes the user to do things that are harmful to them or others.   The skydiver must take riskier jumps.   The sugar addict becomes obese.  The work addict ignores their family needs.   The social-media addict spends much of their time re-checking their account to check for responses and thinking of better ways to increase their positive feedback.  The texting addict drives with their knees on the steering wheel or with one hand firmly on the phone and their vision down and away from the on coming traffic unaware they have slowly drifted into the opposite lane. In all of these cases dopamine addiction was the root cause for their destruction.

   So next time you post another Facebook comment or tweet another snarky comment on Twitter, or sending another funny text message to a friend, maybe you should first ask yourself this:

Am I a dopamine addict?

Fear and the invisible dog fence

     My wife and I were on a walk one day about a year ago and as we walked by a house a large dog came running over barking loudly at us.  He stopped just short of the road and scared the crap out of us.   The lady of the house was outside and yelled "Don't worry he won't go out of the yard! He thinks he will get shocked!"   And of course he dog did stay in the yard.  She came over and talked to us and told us that they had used an invisible dog fence with a shock collar for several months and now they don't need to use it at all because he has been conditioned to stay in the yard.

     Humans are not much different from dogs when it comes to fear.  All be it, we are a little more sophisticated than our canine counterparts but still we fear pain just as much as they do.  Maybe even a little bit more.  Anybody who has either been an older brother or had an older brother knows the sheer terror that younger brothers live under.   They are told, "Don't go in the basement there's a monster down there!"  or "Don't go into the creepy barn!" or  Don't wander in the back woods there's a man with an ax out there!" etc..   For me, I had a fear of clowns (something about that creepy clown on Captain Kangaroo that I hated).  My brother found this out and he would hide this picture we had of a clown in various conspicuous places like: my bed, or my closet  and wait for the fireworks to go off.   Big brothers love doing that.  It's part of the pecking order and keeping little brothers in their place.

    But even as adults, people still use fear as invisible dog fences to keep us under their control.   Take for example, the lefts use of racism.  Racism has been cried out as the reason for everything wrong in this country from law enforcement, to the deficit, to why ISIS rose to power, to why Trump got elected President (last I saw Hillary and Trump are both white so I just don't get that last one).   Now liberals on college campuses are asking for Safe-Spaces for black students to live in separate from whites.   Uh.... isn't that segregation all over again?   Oddly enough that is exactly how segregation started in the US back in the early 1900's.   President Wilson segregated the military (they were not before him) and also all government agencies including the Post Office.  When asked why he did this he told a reporter that "It's for their own safety and also for efficiency as they work better among their own kind".   Sound familiar?   Sounds to me Wilson (a democrat) was arguing for Safe-Spaces in government as well.  Today there is less racism than ever before.   We no longer have segregated schools, businesses or sports.  We no longer see signs for "Whites Only",  We have black judges, black generals, black actors and actresses.  We have even elected a black person to the highest position in the land.   But still the call of RACISM! RACISM! is heard regularly on the news.    To me, this is done for 2 purpose.  The first is to keep blacks from leaving the Democrat Party.   Telling them constantly that the others in the world hate them and are out to get them can be a very powerful tool.   The other reason is that it has the power to control those outside the fence as well.  Like a fence that reads "DANGER: ELECTRIFIED FENCE"  we stay clear and don't go near.  In the past when Republicans have tried to engage the black communities out come the racism rants telling them that they are bigots and racists and to stay away.

    Fear can also be used by those on the right as well.  The GOP uses the fear of having our drug laws or social-morality weakened to keep it's members in line.   Those who think about leaving the GOP to become Libertarians are mocked and made fun of (Just watch how John Stossel is treated on "The O'Reilly Factor").   The drug war is a favorite fear monger issue often used to keep the GOP sheep from straying into Libertarian pastures.  "Do you want heroin sold at Walmart?  That's what you are going to get if you vote Libertarian!".   Fear can also be leveraged by religiously inclined political people in the GOP.   If gay marriage is allowed, to many of them, God will smite the US and take away our good economy and let us be destroyed (trust me God has enough on us already to take us down without gay-marriage on the list).   Fear drives people that listen to them to run to their phones and computers to contact their representatives in Washington DC to prevent such a calamity from occurring (and also send a nice $100 check to the group asking them to "Stand up for God!").

    Like that dog that never tests to see if the fence is still ON, we never risk seeing if what we are being told is factual or not.   I have written before that the PC (political correctness) police have toy guns for weapons.   They are not real, but so few people stand up to them and make them defend their positions that they get away with it constantly.   Politicians for years have done nothing to address the error in political correctness and by not doing so have surrendered to these idiots and let them control the language and ideas that can be discussed.

    That was until Donald Trump came around.  Many have said his campaign was "unconventional".  That is just the medias way of saying "He took on the PC police".  He showed that he could say whatever he wanted and however he wanted and people would still vote for him.   All the other politicians were convinced that your messaging must be filtered through a think-tank of like-minded politically correct 21 year-old women first before you could speak it.   Trump proved them wrong.  He showed them that many in America hate Political Correctness.   We wanted REAL, not FAKE, speeches.   We wanted Political Correctness ended.  It has been the Apartheid of the human psyche in our country of most of the last 30 years and Trump showed us that the fence no longer worked.   It was dead.

    I think it's going to be a long 4 years for liberals.   I hope Trump takes a blow-torch their "Temple of Political Correctness" and leaves nothing but a pile ash behind.   Maybe then we can go back to talking plainly to each other once again and stop living in constant fear of each other.

God's Economy

   If you think this is a blog about Capitalism (or any other ism for that matter) then think again.   Instead I wrote this blog in response to something I have heard various people over the years use as a reason to hold them back from faith in Jesus.  It is the idea of God punishing people who from a worldly vantage point seem pretty decent and do a lot of good in the world.  To them, these people should not be damned.  God should make some allowances for them, given their "good lives and good works".  After all, why should God damn them and not others, just because they believe in Jesus.

    This is really nothing new.   King David lamented about a similar issue as well but from a different point of view.  He lamented that he knew he had sinned (he had committed adultery and killer her husband to boot!), and that NOTHING he could give back to God was adequate. In his words, "all the bulls on a thousand hills are all yours!".   Meaning, even if I sacrifice 1000 bulls to you, those bulls were all created by God and therefore worthless in payment.   It's like being in debt to a bank and then taking out a loan from said bank to pay back the same bank.  It's totally futile.

    But what about those "good people" and their "good works" ?  Surely that must account of something! Right?

    To explain how good works don't matter, imagine you work for a company and you as an employee make a vital mistake that costs the company $100,000.   You fear losing your job and so you go to the boss and tell him you want to make up for the loss any way you can.  He looks at you and says, "Okay! Here is what you are going to do!".  He points over to the sign near the entryway that reads "All Employees must work from 8am-5pm Mon-Friday" and tells you "Instead of working from 8-5 you will work from 6am to 6pm every day for 1 year with NO extra pay for those extra 20 hours per week you put in".  You thank him profusely for not firing you and allowing you to work off the lost money.

    But in God's world things are different. God created us to be perfect.  He says, "Be Holy for I the Lord your God am Holy!".   His employment sign simply reads: "Be Perfect".  Now the problem becomes that there is absolutely no way to go beyond PERFECT.  It's absolute.  So even if I do SOME good works, those are things I am supposed to do anyway, and I am supposed to do them ALL the time as well.   So how can I put in any extra "overtime" good works?   The simple answer is this: I can't!

    So if everything thing in the world is God's in the first place and I am required to be perfect, clearly this debt cannot be paid from a worldly point of view.  It must therefore be paid from out of GOD's OWN POCKET.

   That is what God did.  As we celebrate Christmas this year let's remember that Jesus came to pay that debt I created and had no way to pay back.