Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

Lessons of the Balance The relentless pursuit of pleasure (and avoidance of pain) leads to pain. Recovery begins with abstinence. Abstinence resets the brain’s reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy in simpler pleasures. Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopam

The rewards of finding and maintaining balance are neither immediate nor permanent. They require patience and maintenance. We must be willing to move forward despite being uncertain of what lies ahead. We must have faith that actions today that seem to have no impact in the present moment are in fact accumulating in a positive direction, which will

We tend to think of shame as a negative, especially at a time when shaming—fat shaming, slut shaming, body shaming, and so on—is such a loaded word and is (rightly) associated with bullying. In our increasingly digital world, social media shaming and its correlate “cancel culture” have become a new form of shunning, a modern twist on the most destr

“Stricter churches” achieve a larger following and are generally more successful than freewheeling ones because they ferret out free riders and offer more robust club goods.

In particular, those behaviors that seem excessive, gratuitous, or even irrational in existing religious institutions, such as wearing certain hairstyles or certain clothing, abstaining from various foods or forms of modern technology, or refusing certain medical treatments, are rational when understood as a cost

Behavioral economists refer to the rewards of belonging to a group as club goods.

There is no shame about being an “alcoholic,” consistent with the saying “AA is a no-shame zone;” but there is shame about the half-hearted pursuit of “sobriety.”

The key to encouraging adherence to group norms, without casting out every person who strays, is to have a post-shame “to-do” list that provides specific steps for making amends. This is what AA does with its 12 Steps. The prosocial shame cycle goes like this: Overconsumption leads to shame, which demands radical honesty and leads not to shunning,

Prosocial shame is further predicated on the idea that we are all flawed, capable of making mistakes, and in need of forgiveness.