Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Today in Biology of Addiction, I learned that happiness, or what we call "happiness" is the effect of a pulse of dopamine between the nerves, or in the brain, something like that. It's essentially a reward for doing something that keeps you alive. So, when you listen to that song that makes you feel so much that you could cry, or when you eat the best piece of cake you've ever eaten, or when you have a drink of cold water after running, or when you kiss someone who you really want to kiss, a pulse of dopamine is released (also, I could be mixing up these terms, I'm not great at the whole biology thing). Anyway, I can't decide whether this is depressing or not. It's not that my hopes were crushed that happiness, joy, was something completely transcendental, non-biological. It just makes happiness seem...somewhat less. Like, all these things; eating drinking, procreation, are just things that your body is driven to do, it's not happiness, it's just a fulfillment of a biological need. I'm probably not making any sense. And, I suppose the biological can also be transcendental, if this means anything to anyone. Like, maybe these two things are not as seperate as we'd imagine them.
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Well, not everything that triggers a release of dopamine keeps you alive. Are songs necessary for survival? If they are maybe dopamine is trying to tell us something.
ReplyDeleteAs simple as it is to get that trigger of dopamine, is it not beautiful in its simplicity?
I've always found that depressing, that our whole lives are just striving for another fix of a brain-made drug. I read this article that says that even people who do seemingly selfless charity work are subconsciously driven to it because their brain associates good deeds with pleasure. It's the same pleasure receptor that gives other people joy for good food or sex. It just makes people seem so much like machines. It is a little comforting that it's naturally fluctuating though. Every time you're depressed you can be sure that it'll be followed by happiness.
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