The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

by Daniel Z. Lieberman

From dopamine’s point of view, having things is uninteresting. It’s only getting things that matters. If you live under a bridge, dopamine makes you want a tent. If you live in a tent, dopamine makes you want a house. If you live in the most expensive mansion in the world, dopamine makes you want a castle on the moon. Dopamine has no standard for good, and seeks no finish line. The dopamine circuits in the brain can be stimulated only by the possibility of whatever is shiny and new, never mind how perfect things are at the moment. The dopamine motto is “More.”

Dopamine is the conductor, not the orchestra.

Dopamine doesn’t stop. It drives us ever onward into the abyss.

Living our lives in the abstract, unreal, dopaminergic world of future possibilities comes at a cost, and that cost is happiness.