Hi and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on I-Heart Radio. There was a piece on the Spectator website that came across my

feed a few days ago. It was called Modern Life Doesn't Make Us Happy by

Teneth Carrie. The subhead was when everything is designed to be pleasurable,

nothing feels good.

Carey's thesis is that dopamine isn't a happiness chemical. It's a go out and survive chemical. But now we don't

fight for our survival every day, so dopamine becomes this drug we chase. I looked her up and she's

written some cool stuff on friendship and what

kids are actually thinking really up my alley but I have to disagree with her a

little bit about modern life not making us happy. She writes, quote, when your ancestors woke each

morning feeling hungry, dopamine levels would have risen to motivate them to seek

out a bird's nest from which to raid eggs or a beehive from which to gather honey in addition to the

berries and nuts they foraged. But dopamine's effect is designed to be short-lived. Once they've eaten

and gotten the reward of the extra spurt of

dopamine, along with the release of feel-good opioids, those levels quickly dropped

and even dipped below baseline. After all, unless dopamine fell back down again, where

would they have found the necessary motivation to seek out the next meal?

And then she adds, and I find this part so interesting, quote,

apart from some slight changes due to genetic and I find this part so interesting, quote,

apart from some slight changes due to genetic selection

over the years, you basically have the same brain

as your ancient family members,

powered by the same reward system.

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