Seth Haines's Blog, page 14

Could Dopamine Fasting be a Spiritual Practice?

As we learned yesterday, the ‘dopamine fast” is the new fad in the tech industry. The purpose? Denying pleasure now to experience greater pleasure later. Deny food. Deny eye contact. Deny Netflix, Twitter, sex. Deny, deny, deny, in the hopes that this form of Silicon Valley asceticism will lead to a heightened rush of whizz-bang chemicals when returning to feasting, drinking, making eye contact, binging Netflix, tweeting, or doing It. (Yes, that “It.”)

But is there any science behind the notion of...

Dopamine Fasting in the age of Stimulation

You may have noticed I missed a post last week. Chalk it up to technical difficulties and the speed of life. These things happen.

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Last week was a deep dive into neurochemistry, into the ways dopamine motivates, fuels, and locks in any habit, attachment, or addiction. What’s more, we examined how the tech purveyors in Silicon Valley know this, how they design their social media platforms to maximize the flow of dopamine in an attempt to drive addiction. Silicon Valley—aren’t they the socially acceptable dr...

Social Media and Gambling: The Pleasure Principle Applies

Yesterday, I shared how the the cues that prime the dopamine pump during social media use—unpredictability, incomplete satisfaction, and the cues of potential rewards—fuel our want for quick fix of Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram (or Twinstabook as I call it). This same brain chemistry fuels other reward-seeking behaviors, too.

Your brain on gambling.

Unpredictability: Pull the lever and watch the images spin; wonder whether they’ll come up three cherries. 

Incomplete Satisfaction: The machine does what the machine does, but three cherries is not y...class="">Incompleteclass="">Unpredictability:

A Pleasure Primer, Part 2: Social Media and Dopamine

Dopamine—as I wrote yesterday, it’s the neurotransmitter fuels our pleasure-seeking and plays a part in instigating, motivating, and rewarding desire. It’s the life of the party. But does dopamine play a part in our modern social media obsession?

Social media is a daily distractor, an attention hound, a time-suck. It’s equal parts feast, famine, fear, ego, and political dumpster...

A Pleasure Primer: How Dopamine Drives Us

This week, I’m building on last week’s Waking theme. If you missed it, go back and read from the beginning. Today, I’m sharing an excerpt from my forthcoming book, which builds on yesterday’s piece “The Ways we Cope: Sex and Chocolate and Alcohol (Oh My!).”

When we experience the pleasure of sex, chocolate, alcohol, or any potentially habit-forming thing, we feel a rush of whizz-bang chemicals. Among those chemicals is the driver of desire: dopamine.

If Dopamine Could Speak

Dopamine—it’s the neurotransmitter f...dopamine.

Ifof whizz-bang

The Ways We Cope: Sex and Chocolate and Alcohol (Oh My!)

This week, I’m building on last week’s Waking theme. If you missed it, go back and read along. Today, I’m sharing an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Book of Waking Up. It' dovetails nicely with our ongoing discussion.

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Consider the objects of our desires: sex, chocolate, alcohol, shopping, work, food, even narcotics. Ask yourself, Why do you turn to them in times of stress? What do they have in common? As I wrote last week, what do they do for you?

You might give any number of answers,...

Why do

Waking: Know Your Coping Mechanisms

In a 1995 edition of “The Orange County Register,” a professor at McMasters University in Ontario described famed physicist Albert Einstein’s approach to solving an apocalyptic hypothetical: “When Einstein was asked how he would save the world in one hour, he said he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes solving it….”

It was an apocryphal quote, one which Einstein likely didn’t speak. But still, isn’t there wisdom buried there? When we come to understand our habits, vic...

Waking: Knowing Your Shadows (Week 2)

In the old country house, the afternoon light came streaming through the west window. It was a house with a wide belly, one in which the shaded east side provided rich contrast to the afternoon sun. Amber sat at the table, sipping tea, and the play of shadow and light across her face created the essential moment.

Know thyself—it’s necessary to live a waking life. For the last few days, we’ve seen how knowing our values, gifts, and the things that bring us joy lead us to the light. This kind of knowing,...

Waking: Living Into the Light (Week 2)

I’ve continued my exploration of the timeless maxim on the temple of Delphi—Know Thyself, and yesterday, I turned back to the first three “Know Thyself” lists I asked you to create. (Those lists: your values, your skills, and the things that bring you joy.) But knowing yourself, formulating these lists—what’s the point?

Consider Lore and Nate. She’s a writer by trade (visit her site and follow her work). He’s a data architect with a penchant for p...Delphi—Know

Waking: Know Your Joy (Week 2)

I spoke with a world-class photographer yesterday, a good man with a good eye and a better heart. Society is like a camera, he said, and these days, our lens is fixed on the negative, the shadow, the pain. He offered the obvious example—the political vitriol of the day. He mentioned the angry undercurrent of the 24-hour news cycle. He read violent tweets from his timeline. He read some self-aggrandizing tweets too.

The photographer—he’s right. So much media—traditional, alternative, social—is...