So I have realized, thanks to the New York Times, that I am not only a liar, but that I am also a junkie; so is everyone else.
A recent NYT article talked about Cook and Perry, two early 20th century explorers who both claimed to reach the North Pole. They could provide no proof, and furthermore, every detail of how they did it is questionable, but that did not stop a bevy of people and organizations (most notably National Geographic) from believing the claim. And despite the passage of time, National Geographic STILL believes.
Speaking of the North Pole, this reminds me of the night I realized the man in red was not real. It was quite by accident that my mom woke me while removing a tooth from under my pillow. This instance set off a logic chain and then a panic within me and I concocted a variety of elaborate explanations to maintain the magic for four more years.
Brain scans of political partisans demonstrate this same phenomena. The participants in a recent study were able to see the errors in logistics concerning the opposing political party, with scans indicating activity in the logic centers. However, when it came time to think about their own party, their dopamine (think pleasure, think dope) levels increased instead, and they ignored the truth, if it made their candidate look bad.
So apparently I am a dopamine junkie.
This has been on my mind recently because of my feelings about our president. I’m not too happy with some of the things he’s been saying. When he was elected, I’d been so happy that I’d cried. I had mostly given up on democracy before that moment, but it rallied within me after that. For a long time after, I swelled with pride when I saw one of those "Yes We Can" signs. And at the first sign of him backing down from some of what he promised, I just thought again about how good it felt when he won, and how at least he was better than others had recently been. I retreated into emotions, but I caught myself not willing to accept to the truth. In a way I’d made an emotional commitment to feel good about him and my brain was set to automatically let that happen.
Well, they say the first step is admitting you have a problem.
