Our culture's dopamine-seeking “junkification” manifests in Silicon Valley news, too
The Sirens imploring Ulysses to stay, 1886
Literary references. Obscure mythological art. Thought pieces from complex, varied viewpoints. We're often asked by new Opp Now readers why we bother, in an age of fast, bite-sized, self-affirming journalism. In the NY Times, David Brooks discusses the dangers of media posing as entertainment (instead of art), and how we can return to our “higher desires.”
Back in February, the music historian Ted Gioia wrote an essay on the state of American culture. He argued that many creative people want to create art (work that puts demands on people), but all the commercial pressures push them to create entertainment (which gives audiences what they want). As a result, for the past many years, entertainment (superhero movies) has been swallowing up art (literary novels and serious dramas). …
Our dopamine-driven brains drive us to choose cheap distraction over entertainment and art. A 15-second video causes a dopamine release in the brain, which creates a desire for more stimulus, which leads to the habit of more scrolling on your phone, which leads to an addiction to more stimulus. If distraction is swallowing entertainment in our culture, addiction is also swallowing distraction. …
The phenomenon Gioia describes isn’t happening just to culture; it recurs across American life. We have access to wonderful things. But they require effort, so we settle for the junky things that provide the quick dopamine hits. We could all be eating a Mediterranean diet, but instead it’s potato chips and cherry Coke. We could enjoy the richness of full awareness, but booze, weed and other drugs provide that quick reward. Think of all the things in American life that seem to offer that burst of stimulation but threaten to be addictive — gambling, porn, video games, checking email.
Even journalism has found ways to trigger dopamine for profit. We journalists go into this business to inform and provoke, but many outlets have found they can generate clicks by telling partisan viewers how right they are about everything. …
The great volume of advice that flows from these people seems to fall into three buckets. First, there is the self-binding bucket. Create rules so you don’t have easy access to the things that tempt you...
Then there is the here and now bucket. Don’t go searching for the next dopamine hit; enjoy the life that you already have around you. …
The third bucket is the higher desires bucket. That’s based on the premise that you usually can’t control a desire through sheer willpower. But you can replace a low desire with a higher desire. …
The problem with our culture today is not too much desire but the miniaturization of desire, settling for these small, short-term hits. Our culture used to be full of institutions that sought to arouse people’s higher desires — the love of God, the love of country, the love of learning, the love of being excellent at a craft. Sermons, teachers, mentors and the whole apparatus of moral formation were there to elongate people’s time horizons and arouse the highest desires. …
We have schools to train our minds and gyms to train our bodies. We get less help training, elevating and regulating our desires. History suggests you can elevate people’s desires by giving them access to what is truly worth wanting. I imagine the cultural decline that Gioia described in his essay can be turned around if people can experience, at school or somewhere else, the emotional impact of a great film, a great novel, a great concert. It’s more desirable than a TikTok. Once you’ve tasted the fine wine, it’s harder to settle for Kool-Aid.
Read the whole thing here.
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