“…we use the dopaminergic power of the happiness of pursuit to motivate us to work for rewards that come -after we are dead- depending on your culture, this can be knowing that your nation is closer to winning a war because you’ve sacrificed yourself in battle, that your kids will inherit money because of your financial sacrifices, or that you will spend eternity in paradise. It is extraordinary neural circuitry that bucks temporal discounting enough to allow (some of) us to care about the temperature of the planet that our great-grandchildren will inherit. Basically, it’s unknown how we humans do this. We may merely be a type of animal, mammal, primate, and ape, but we’re a profoundly unique one.”
―
Robert M. Sapolsky,
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
