It Works, But It Doesn’t Feel Right
In the West, we have an extreme focus on how things work at the micro level.
Psychosis? That’s dopamine.
ADHD? Dopamine.
Depression? Serotonin.
I find it hard to imagine that we have brains that simply produce “happiness chemicals” just because we feel like it.
It is far more likely that we don’t truly become happy from serotonin itself, but that we become happy through real, loving relationships with people. The confusing part is that when people don’t have those relationships, we start looking for the chemical version instead.
I think the brain is more of an indicator of everything that is happening. It is a summary, a representation, an overview of all the relationships within your body and with your environment.
“You don’t understand—there are many people whose brains are simply malfunctioning.” I understand that. But when I look around me, I mostly see many people who have very few meaningful relationships, and who therefore run into problems more easily. That is not meant as an accusation; sometimes you simply find yourself in a bad situation. But it makes little sense that evolution would equip us with happiness chemicals without them being connected to something. Eventually you realize that it is about relationships with others.
Don’t get me wrong: I have been in that situation myself. At that time, there was also all kinds of things wrong with my dopamine and serotonin. Do you know what I also didn’t have then? Even an occasional normal conversation with someone.
If you consider that all the small things and all the big things are connected—like gears in a machine—then it makes little sense to see dopamine as something “separate” that you can fix things with. It’s a bit like ADHD medication: it works, but it doesn’t feel right.
Options
Sometimes there is food on my desk while I’m working. I notice that eating or not eating suddenly becomes a decision, an option. I think the same thing happens when we read the news. It becomes an option to get involved, but you’re sitting here safely and you can’t really do anything. That creates stress, a conflict.
* By looking at something, new options emerge — including options that did not exist in reality before you looked.
* You also have a relationship with that thing.
Cogs
It is easier to see every thought as a cog in a machine. Every thought is part of a larger web.
You can make thoughts bigger or smaller (more important or less important). But it is wise to keep both positive and negative thoughts, because you need all of them.
They are cogs that you don’t have to remove. It works very intuitively.