The Molecule of More

THE MOLECULE OF MORE

I love humanity but I hate people.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sometimes they even use nearly identical language:

I love mankind... it’s people I can’t stand.

—Charles Schulz (writing for Linus in Peanuts)

It may be unseemly but it is explainable. Highly dopami-

nergic people typically prefer abstract thinking to sensory

experience. To them, the difference between loving human-

ity and loving your neighbor is the difference between lov-

ing the idea of a puppy and taking care of it.

THE TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES

There was almost certainly a genetic contribution to Einstein’s dopa-
minergic traits. One of his two sons became an internationally recog-
nized expert on  hydraulic engineering. The  other was  diagnosed with 
schizophrenia at  the  age  of twenty, and  died  in  an  asylum. Large pop-
ulation studies have also found a genetic component of a dopaminer-
gic  character. An  Icelandic study that  evaluated the  genetic profile of 
over 86,000 people discovered that individuals who carried genes that
placed them at  greater risk  for  either schizophrenia or  bipolar disor-
der were more likely to belong to a national society of actors, dancers,
musicians, visual artists, or writers.
Isaac Newton, who discovered calculus and the law of universal
gravitation, was  one  of those troubled geniuses. He  had  difficulty get-
ting  along with other people, and  engaged in  an  infamous scientific 
quarrel with German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leib-
niz.  He  was  secretive and  paranoid and  showed little emotion, to  the 
point of ruthlessness. When he served as Master of the Royal Mint he