The Molecule of More

THE MOLECULE OF MORE

real, facts that must be accepted exactly as they are, facts that cannot

be  modified by  a  hair’s breadth to  suit  our  needs. This is  the  world of 

reality. The future, where dopaminergic creatures live their lives, is a

world of phantoms.

Our worlds of fantasy can become narcissistic havens where we are

powerful, beautiful, and adored. Or perhaps they’re worlds where we

are in total control of our environment the way a digital artist controls

every pixel on his screen. As we glide through the real world, half blind,

caring only about things we can put to use, we trade the deep oceans

of reality for the shallow rapids of our never-ending desires. And in the

end, it might annihilate us.

WILL DOPAMINE DESTROY THE HUMAN RACE?

When the human race lived in scarcity and on the brink of extinction,
the drive for more kept us alive. Dopamine was the engine of progress.
It helped lift our evolutionary ancestors out of subsistence living. By
giving us the ability to create tools, invent abstract sciences, and plan
far into the future, it made us the dominant species on the planet. But
in an environment of plenty in which we have mastered our world and
developed sophisticated technology—in a time when more is no longer
a matter of survival—dopamine continues to drive us forward, perhaps
to our own destruction.
As a species we have become far more powerful than we were when
our  brains first  developed. Technology develops fast  while evolution is 
slow. Our brains evolved at a time when survival was in doubt. That’s
less of a problem in the modern world, but we’re stuck with our ancient
brains.
It’s  possible that  we  won’t last beyond another half-dozen genera-
tions. We’ve simply become too good at gratifying our dopaminergic
desires: not all forms of more and new and novel are good for an individual,
and the same is true for a species. Dopamine doesn’t stop. It drives us ever
onward into the abyss. In the following sections we’re going to look at
worst-case scenarios. It may be that our dopaminergic-driven ingenuity