THE MOLECULE OF MOREentrepreneurs. Whatever their calling, they never stop working. What
they care about most is their passion for creation, discovery, or enlight-
enment. They never relax, never stop to enjoy the good things they
have. Instead, they’re obsessed with building a future that never arrives.
Because when the future becomes the present, enjoying it requires acti-
vation of “touchy-feely” H&N chemicals, and that’s something highly
dopaminergic people dislike and avoid. They serve the public well. But
no matter how rich, famous, or successful they become, they’re almost
never happy, certainly never satisfied. Evolutionary forces that promote
the survival of the species produce these special people. Nature drives
them to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of bringing into the
world new ideas and innovations that benefit the rest of us.
SURF, SAND, AND PSYCHOSISBrian Wilson of the Beach Boys is one of the most revolu-
tionary popular musicians. In his early years, his music was
deceptively simple: catchy tunes about surfing, cars, and
girls. But as time went on, he conducted unprecedented
sonic experiments—music just as pleasant to listen to, but
successively more layered and complex. As a composer,
arranger, and producer, he began to introduce new sounds
and new combinations of sounds to pop music. Some of
these choices were variations of familiar forms: unusual
voicing of common chords, unlikely assemblies of tones as
chords, and standard progressions that begin and end in
unexpected places. Wilson employed unusual instruments
such as the harpsichord and theremin, which was previously
used to create the eerie humming noise in horror movies. He
also used devices that were not considered musical instru-
ments at all: a train whistle, bicycle bells, bleating goats.
This experimentation culminated in the album Pet Sounds
(1966), a critically acclaimed collection of creative music that