Divide by Zero
The Living Force
3dS, I'm not sure if you have taken the quizzes here ( https://www.juliarosscures.com/mood-type-questionnaire/ ) on the right side to determine what imbalances you have in neurotransmitters, but it may help you out.
"The Dopaminergic Mind" by Fred Previc
- Thread starter Hesper
- Start date
Nice summary, Hesper - I went for Previc's book. Amazon was completely out of the ballpark for me, yet Oxford was not too bad, less than half the former seller; although still pricey as was said.
Ant22 - re link on Amazon Kindle. I guess they are at the mercy of the publisher, yet disappearing books when you perhaps are in the middle of it, and after paying for it (refund or not) seems another reason to avoid, which is too bad. Interesting it was those particular two books (1984/Animal Farm).
Ant22 - re link on Amazon Kindle. I guess they are at the mercy of the publisher, yet disappearing books when you perhaps are in the middle of it, and after paying for it (refund or not) seems another reason to avoid, which is too bad. Interesting it was those particular two books (1984/Animal Farm).
I skipped quite a few books to get to this one because I just HAD to read it, given what I already knew (how dopaminergic eh). But I think it deserves a re-read after I've gone through some others because it is so dense and I don't feel like I fully got the most of it.
I always thought I had dopamine issues but this brings me one step closer to understanding just how it works. The fact that there are multiple dopamine systems was a revelation in and of itself. For instance I have sometimes had tendencies to be impulsive, or towards addictive behaviours and always thinking about the future, which are a sign of being hyperdopaminergic. However on the flipside I also have always been pretty lazy to be honest, lacking in inspiration or knowing what to do with myself, being indecisive, and sometimes pretty socially awkward.
This all never fit into a black and white view of dopamine, thinking that I either needed more of it, or more sensitivity to it. But its more like perhaps I don't have enough in some areas, and too much in other areas. And a better goal would be to have some kind of balance.
The "dopaminergic personalities" he discusses are interesting because they are quite diverse, ranging from conquerors and leaders of men (bold, charismatic, strategic) to scientists (reserved, eccentric, brilliant). Despite the differences they share a foundation of similar traits.
Previc didn't include Caesar in the book but I imagine he would fit the profile very well, given what we've learned about his life. Maybe even he would fit as an example of a person who primarily used the "dopaminergic mind" for achieving some kind of good.
The book also gives a lot of food for thought in light of the recent phenomenon of the decline of Western men, described in many places as men becoming weaker, less adventurous, more lazy, more reclusive, with declining testosterone levels. What actually is wrong here? Perhaps such a "dopaminergic society" is now having an opposite rebound effect on people.
Anyway my thoughts are not fully formed on all this yet but those are some things that initially came to mind.
I always thought I had dopamine issues but this brings me one step closer to understanding just how it works. The fact that there are multiple dopamine systems was a revelation in and of itself. For instance I have sometimes had tendencies to be impulsive, or towards addictive behaviours and always thinking about the future, which are a sign of being hyperdopaminergic. However on the flipside I also have always been pretty lazy to be honest, lacking in inspiration or knowing what to do with myself, being indecisive, and sometimes pretty socially awkward.
This all never fit into a black and white view of dopamine, thinking that I either needed more of it, or more sensitivity to it. But its more like perhaps I don't have enough in some areas, and too much in other areas. And a better goal would be to have some kind of balance.
The "dopaminergic personalities" he discusses are interesting because they are quite diverse, ranging from conquerors and leaders of men (bold, charismatic, strategic) to scientists (reserved, eccentric, brilliant). Despite the differences they share a foundation of similar traits.
Previc didn't include Caesar in the book but I imagine he would fit the profile very well, given what we've learned about his life. Maybe even he would fit as an example of a person who primarily used the "dopaminergic mind" for achieving some kind of good.
The book also gives a lot of food for thought in light of the recent phenomenon of the decline of Western men, described in many places as men becoming weaker, less adventurous, more lazy, more reclusive, with declining testosterone levels. What actually is wrong here? Perhaps such a "dopaminergic society" is now having an opposite rebound effect on people.
Anyway my thoughts are not fully formed on all this yet but those are some things that initially came to mind.
Yes that is also something that came up for me time and time again when reading this book, namely, what exactly is currently going, especially in the West, also in regards to the postmodern, libtard, gender bender, fascist, "female victimhood" and men being the "patriarchal oppressors" movements and the general tendency of our society to get ever more restless in general and addicted to electric gadgets like cellphones and many more things?
I think I also have to re-read the book soon since there are so many questions it raises not only for the machine itself but for society as a whole. There are quite a number of questions and considerations that this book opens up, that I can't quite wrap my mind around yet.
Will read Damasios book next.
beetlemaniac
The Living Force
What struck me about this book was how it made clear that the line between "mental illness" and "genius" is not very clear. I guess to travel into new and unknown lands creates a great stress on the system.
When the C's say to do all you can and that yourself in the future will bridge the gap - I think how we are doing that in a neurophysiological way is through dopamine. By doing and maximising on the lessons learned, at the same time gaining knowledge to provide the mind with information for which it can base future decisions on, we get closer to where we want to be? Just wondering out loud...
When the C's say to do all you can and that yourself in the future will bridge the gap - I think how we are doing that in a neurophysiological way is through dopamine. By doing and maximising on the lessons learned, at the same time gaining knowledge to provide the mind with information for which it can base future decisions on, we get closer to where we want to be? Just wondering out loud...
I haven't read this book yet although it's already sitting on my bookshelf waiting for it's turn
The bolded section above reminded me of a study from 2003 that Jordan Peterson was involved in that linked the biological basis for creativity to mental illness. Both were linked to latent inhibition and as the study stated, the same features may lead to mental illness and creative accomplishments - under some conditions.I am also reminded of Raine's Anatomy of Violence and his studies that showed that the conditions of upbringing often determined if someone was going to become violent or not.
This may be a far shot since I only have your above post to go by but I thought I'd share it in case it is relevant.
Biological Basis For Creativity Linked To Mental Illness
I just finished the book and agree it was a tough one to read. I think it would have been as tough be it in French! A good exercise anyway. I also think I didn't fully grasp it all though it made a lot of sense regarding the hyperdopaminergic disorders on the rise in our society.
Although I regret he didn't expand on the fact that hyperdopaminergic symptoms ARE linked to serotonin and norepinephrine deficiencies and I thought it should have been more dug in because there are a lot of reasons why those two would be depleted in our actual world. Even in his propositions for an anti-dopaminergic mind, it should have been expanded in my opinion. No words on diet too.
It raised some questions to me being left-handed. The prevalence of dopamine in the left-hemisphere and the lateralization of it all make me curious about the possibilities behind it. Would left-handers have actually more dopamine in the right-hemisphere, would the balance be opposite of right-handers?
Although I regret he didn't expand on the fact that hyperdopaminergic symptoms ARE linked to serotonin and norepinephrine deficiencies and I thought it should have been more dug in because there are a lot of reasons why those two would be depleted in our actual world. Even in his propositions for an anti-dopaminergic mind, it should have been expanded in my opinion. No words on diet too.
It raised some questions to me being left-handed. The prevalence of dopamine in the left-hemisphere and the lateralization of it all make me curious about the possibilities behind it. Would left-handers have actually more dopamine in the right-hemisphere, would the balance be opposite of right-handers?
I read this book and The Strange Order of Things awhile ago, and thought I'd weigh in. I see these books as being quite complimentary in the same vein that Raine and Samenow's work is, in providing 2 different but informative angles at addressing the same issue. Damasio sees the problem (or would construe the problem) of our modern society as being characterized by a large departure from homeostasis - that is to say, from normal psychological and biological conditions. We see this in a lof of questionable parenting strategies, historically speaking, from physical and emotional abuse to handing babies off to wet nurses and taking them back when they're a few years older. Nowadays in addition to regular child abuse we are more likely to see helicopter parenting that undermines the independence and autonomy of children while inculcating learned helplessness.
In addition to these heavy strains on people's resilience, we see threats to our biology now especially on a biological level with the prevalence of heavy metal pollution, endocrine disruption, non-native EMF, glyphosate, transgenic, and heavily hybridized food strains. All of these factors compromise us physiologically and psychologically, making us chronically ill at ease and vulnerable to stress. And that means we are more easy to program and control from without.
Pair this with the Dopaminergic system which has seen dramatic growth over the last few centuries. Previc sums up the benefits and consequences of having a hyperdopaminergic society:
A lot of these attributes have been directly or indirectly facilitated by either high functioning psychopaths or schizotypes, both of which have highly dopaminergic systems, but also deficiencies in their emotional processing, particularly when it comes to connecting with others. This distinction is important, because we often use other people to help steer our behavior and thoughts based on how well we attune with others. Those who have shortcomings in this area may do what feels good or right for them, but is connected only tenuously to the wellbeing of others around them, to say nothing of the abstract effects on people and other life dispersed far into time and space.
It really seems that Previc is trying to grasp towards a deficiency in our ability to truly apprehend and act in a way that is genuinely beneficial to our organism and biological equilibrium on a personal and societal scale when we are in these high dopamine, seeking patterns that constantly keep us wound up in pursuit of something, no matter how trivial or irrelevant that thing is. I'll take a common example: scrolling or swiping down on a social media platform. You can literally do that for hours, where information and byte-sized dopamine hits continuously prime your seeking system to keep performing. More often than not you're absorbing none of that information, and definitely not in any kind of constructive manner.
I'm brought back to Gurdjieff's addage that "Man will not give up his suffering." Of course, there is a LOT to suffering, not simply the seeking circuits activating old and worn out seeking/reward patterns, but I think the adage is close. We give up our suffering when we begin to move away from this seeking-for-its-own-sake and begin to move towards a direction that directly improves our homeostatic equilibrium. It's insufficient in and of itself (I'm trying really hard to avoid being reductionistic here if you can't tell), but is is also entirely necessary. Reconnecting our seeking system when it is attuned and primed properly by our homeostatic mechanisms necessitates that we work on our emotions and clean our machines so that we are dowsing the environment with our high intelligence with as clean a system as possible, with as little noise as possible.
I believe this thought was what Previc left us with an a roundabout way when he made the following comparison at the end of his book:
The funny thing is, I feel that our society is starting to grasp this at an extremely unconscious and unsophisticated level. There is a lot of talk about feminine emancipation in the last century or so. This has only seemed to accelerate and take a highly perverse turn with this equality of outcome shtick in our society, the fetishization of female victimhood in the #metoo movement, and so on.
Hollywood has done its best to help support this "female emancipation" in their typical propagandistic fashion, which Jonathan Pageau has outlined quite well in this video essay on The Inversion of the Masculine and Feminine in Popular Culture (a great watch on its own, but a little peripheral to my point). In this video Pageau discusses how so many modern blockbuster movies typically cast a female protagonist as supplanting or replacing the masculine, as if the height of female empowerment and liberation and self-actualization is the mimicking of the male. As if the feminine in and of itself with disregard to masculine traits has no value. It's like society understands that there is more to the world than the masculine (i.e. hyperdopaminergic) system, but in the absence of understanding what that fundamentally means can only grasp it at a symbolic level with the female coming more into its own and the masculine making way for it. In Collingwood's lexicon this knowledge is beginning to pierce the aesthetic level and reach the religious level, where we understand that a particular trope or symbol (i.e. appreciating the feminine) has import, but not really being able to understand what that means on a practical level. And people, with their limited knowledge, are doing the best they can by trying to integrate the feminine into the social value structure. Since our society values the dopaminergic, high-achievement system above all else, they want women as CEOs, leaders, scientists and engineers and they'll support draconian affirmative action and support the most reprehensible individuals (#ItsHerTurn) to get it. This of course is missing the entire point. They sense the feminine is being excluded, but they have no practical understanding on how it is being excluded and what specifically it would mean to be integrated in terms of masculine and feminine traits.
Jonathan Pageu contrasts this in a later interview with Rachel Futon, who wrote a book on the history of typology of the Holy Virgin Mary, which discusses the sacred feminine in its proper role as complementary to the masculine, rather than being in competition with it. In Orthodox and Roman Catholic iconography, a lot of homage is paid to Mary because she is the space and the world in which God manifests - Christ is literally born from her flesh. Mary also receives God in the immaculate conception in thought. In images of the Madonna, Christ is seated on her. So she is his throne - the universe which receives and nurtures the Christ. The loss of the recognition of the Virgin Mary happened largely with the advent of Protestantism/Science, which began to make way for a more materialistic worldview of man as a "rational animal," with no recognition that there is a deeper level of our humanity we're jettisoning by reducing us just to thinkers (i.e. solely run on dopamine).
Taking the Pauline understanding of Christ, Mary also symbolizes the fertile I ready to receive the X of God, that she may transform the community S. In Petersonian terms, the archetypal hero must be raised and cared for in the safety of the home prior to adventuring in the unknown. Being undermined at the stage severely compromises them, and thrusts them into the chaos of life far too early (I'm thinking of all the stories with evil stepmothers throwing the child protagonists into horrible dilemmas).
I have an intuition that all of this is making reference on some level to the feminine as being part of the homeostatic imperative that undergirds all our rational dopaminergic functions. That our society is slowly coming to the realization that we've taken a wrong turn in our social evolution, but is still trying to figure out what that means and how to move forward (never mind the schizos that develop armchair theories and superficial fixes). I feel like restoring the properly place of the feminine in our society means on a deeper level having everyone focus on healing themselves emotionally and physically, so that our dopamine systems themselves will be able to function in ways that provide more concrete benefits to others. Thanks for reading.
beetlemaniac
The Living Force
I recently stumbled upon a video by Dr. Andrew Rostenberg of Beyond MTHFR outlining the importance of balancing dopamine. It's interesting to hear his perspective and I felt that this information has a place in this thread. having learned a little bit about the other neurotransmitters in the brain such as serotonin as well as sex hormones, it seems that there is something to dopamine that is critical to the life force of the individual itself. He even says that without serotonin, you'd feel dull and depressed, but take away dopamine, and the organism would die!
He also goes into methods of balancing dopamine such as eating more frequently, etc.
He also goes into methods of balancing dopamine such as eating more frequently, etc.