Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Perceiving children as psychologically fragile is a quintessentially modern concept. In ancient times, children were considered miniature adults, fully formed from birth. For most of Western civilization, children were regarded as innately evil. The job of parents and caregivers was to enforce extreme discipline in order to socialize them to live i

The world’s natural resources are rapidly diminishing. Economists estimate that in 2040 the world’s natural capital (land, forests, fisheries, fuels) will be 21 percent less in high-income countries and 17 percent less in poorer countries than today. Meanwhile, carbon emissions will grow by 7 percent in high-income countries and 44 percent in the r

Philip Rieff, a mid-twentieth-century psychologist and philosopher, foresaw this trend in The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud: “Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.”

M Stands for Mindfulness

Addiction broadly defined is the continued and compulsive consumption of a substance or behavior (gambling, gaming, sex) despite its harm to self and/or others.

EFFECTS OF ADDICTION ON DOPAMINE RECEPTORS

The p in DOPAMINE stands for problems related to use

O Stands for Objectives

In 2013, an estimated 2.1 billion adults were overweight, compared with 857 million in 1980. There are now more people worldwide, except in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, who are obese than who are underweight.