Addicted to Politics
Politics sparks dopamine, serotonin & oxytocin so we keep wanting more, but it leaves you feeling like your survival is threatened. Here's how to cure the addiction.
Addicted to Politics
Politics triggers happy brain chemicals, so it’s easy to see why people are addicted to it. (Get this on YouTube or my podcast.)
Politics triggers dopamine when you can’t wait to see what happens next. It triggers oxytocin when you feel like part of something big. It triggers serotonin when you feel more intelligent and virtuous than your political adversaries. Most important, it relieves cortisol when you think you’re monitoring a threat.
But in the long run, politics makes you feel bad because it floods you with threat signals. You may find yourself getting upset every time you check the news. You are constantly told that something awful is happening and it’s all the fault of people with another political persuasion. You may find it hard to be with people who don’t agree with your political views. You may even stop working toward your personal goals because politics has convinced you that it’s hopeless. Politics hurts you in so many ways, but you keep wanting more. That’s addiction.
The cure for addiction is to see how you’re hurting yourself and then find a new way to feel good. On this episode, I’ll explain how politics hurts you, and then suggest other ways to meet your mammalian needs. Then you can stop drugging yourself with politics.
You may not want to do this. You’ve been trained to believe that following politics makes you a good person, doing your share to stop us from going to hell in a handbasket. You’re trained to believe that the bad guys will run wild if you stop monitoring them. You’ve learned to believe that you can’t be happy until your team wins. This thought loop is strengthened each time you consume political news. People you respect think this way, so it’s hard to think otherwise.
I started questioning this world view after reading a book called Chimpanzee Politics. Chimpanzees are at war with their neighbors most of the time. A chimp participates in the war because it raises their status in the troop. More status brings more food and mating opportunity, so natural selection reinforced these behaviors. Chimps do not fight over nothing. They fight to control trees that fruit in the dry season because that promotes survival.
Chimpanzees are quite disciplined in their aggression. They cooperate with their allies and rarely fight until their leader chooses the moment. Their brains are skilled at distinguishing friend from foe. They do this without the abstract theories of good and evil that the human cortex creates. Chimps do it with chemicals. Oxytocin is released when they’re near those they trust, and cortisol is released when they perceive a threat. They control these chemicals with brain structures that we have inherited.
When you feel trust for a political ally or fear a political foe, the feeling is caused by a chemical released by your mammalian limbic brain. Animals can’t talk, so your mammal brain can’t tell you in words why it’s releasing a chemical. This is why our verbal brain comes up with fancy theories to explain why we trust one group and fear another. Our theories feel like facts because we don’t know how our brain works. Of course, the theories of your political adversaries seem like emotional craziness.
Animals can help us understand the raw impulses beneath our political responses. You may prefer to think animals have loving camaraderie in their herds and packs and troops, but in fact they get on each other’s nerves, so they only cluster when they sense a common enemy. Human leaders are always pointing to common threats because that’s what it takes to motivate mammals to stick together.
Here are some examples, so you can see why common enemies are so motivating. Herd animals prefer to go their own way to avoid eating grass that was soiled by others, but once they sense a predator, they rush back to the group. Monkeys have food fights when they forage too close to others, so they keep their distance until they sense a threat. Lions need a group to protect their kill from hyenas, but they hunt alone when it’s possible. Wolves hunt in groups because they live in harsh environments, but when good rains increase the food supply, they strike out on their own. We’ve been told that animals are inherently collectivist, but in fact they only stick together when it benefits them.
When you get protection from others, the good feeling of oxytocin is released. Politics can give you that feeling without the messiness of real-world relationships. But you pay a high price for political protection. You have to follow the herd wherever it goes to avoid being left behind. You may go along with things you don’t agree with because you can’t face the enemy without them. If politics is your reliable source of oxytocin, you keep going back for more politics despite the drawbacks.
Serotonin rewards us with a nice calm feeling when we gain the advantage over the mammal next to us. The urge for social dominance is easy to see in the bad guys, but it’s hard to see in yourself. We tell ourselves that we only care about the greater good instead of recognizing the things we do for a moment of social dominance. Serotonin is hard to spark in daily life, so it’s tempting to get it from politics. Political news puts you in the room with the big gorillas. It invites you to sneer at the “idiots in power.” It lets you rail at enemies from the safety of your living room, like a little poodle who barks at big dogs from the safety of its owner’s lap.
But you pay a high price for this fast, easy path to social dominance. It distracts you from the challenge of building your strength as an individual. You have to stay with the group to feel strong, like a member of a cult or a gang. If you don’t develop other serotonin pathways, you stay addicted to politics.
The dopamine aspect of politics is fascinating. Dopamine rewards you with a good feeling when you meet a need. Our distant ancestors sparked dopamine by finding food or water after a hard day of foraging. In today’s world, physical needs are met more easily, so we find other ways to spark dopamine. But most ways have bad side effects, so the dopamine of politics is valuable. Political leaders make you feel like the promised land is around the corner if your team wins. You spark more dopamine each time you turn on the news and find evidence of a win for your team. Of course your team loses sometimes, but intermittent reinforcement is known to strengthen a dopamine pathway.
In the animal world, survival depends on making good predictions about where food can be found. The joy of dopamine is released when the brain sees evidence that confirms its prediction. This is why we spend so much time predicting things, like the weather, the stock market, sports, and the quality of a movie or restaurant. Politics gives you a constant opportunity to make predictions and enjoy dopamine when you’re right. In addition to predicting who will win, you predict that all will be right with the world if your team wins.
Politics is a soap opera for people who are too sophisticated for soap operas. You can’t wait to see what happens next. You can dish on the private lives of leaders in ways that you can’t in real life. For most of human history, people lived in large groups so they were always part of a soap opera. Today, most people live in small groups or alone, and politics is a convenient way to satisfy the natural urge for gossip. This is not meant to be a criticism of solitary life, since people clearly choose to leave big groups when they have a chance. This is a reminder that monkeys spend a lot of time staring at the high-ranking members of their troop. Horses are always following the individual they trust to escape predators. Your natural urge to learn from others will lead you to political news unless you satisfy it elsewhere.
You may be wondering how a person chooses which political alliance to trust. I haven’t mentioned that yet because I want to focus on what we all have in common. But you have surely heard theories about the character flaws of your political adversaries and the superior virtue of your political allies. They persuade you that there’s a deep difference between the good guys and the bad guys. But let’s look under the hood at the wiring we all have in common.
We humans are all born with billions of neurons but very few connections between them. Our neurons connect each time we have an emotional experience. Whatever sparked your oxytocin and serotonin in youth wired you to seek those good feelings in similar situations. Whatever triggered your cortisol in youth wired you to fear threats in similar settings. By the time we’re old enough to notice politics, these pathways are well established. Each of us is wired to seek good feelings in ways that worked for us before. Each of us filters information because it flows so easily into our well-developed neural pathways Each of us ignores unfamiliar inputs because it’s so hard to activate undeveloped neurons. And none of us is aware of doing this.
You may change your political views in your lifetime, but they still build on the same core pathways. That may seem hard to believe, so let’s see how it works. When you were a toddler, you learned a word for “water,” and you also learned the physical experience of water. If you study a foreign language later on, you learn a new word for water, but it takes its meaning from your old experiential pathway. Early experience builds the branches of our neural network and later experience adds leaves to these neural trees. We keep linking new experience to old branches because it’s so hard to build new branches.
Our early experience varies, but we have more in common than you may think. We are all weak and vulnerable at birth, so we all learn to look for protection. We all get disappointed by our protectors at some point when we realize they are not always there. Disappointment triggers cortisol, which wires you to anticipate the threat of lost protection. So when a high school teacher tells you that the government has failed to protect you, it feels true because you’re already wired to feel like someone has failed you. Disappointment is inevitable, as all humans must face the end of childhood and the inevitability of death. We all start life needing complete support and we all get disappointed by the limits of that support, so we all have a neural pathway that responds to political finger-pointing.
Our brain evolved to act fast to relieve a threat once cortisol turns on. It’s hard to relieve threats when you don’t know what caused your threatened feelings. Politics is there to help. It keeps alerting you to threats and promises to fix it. Different political alliances tout different threats and different solutions, and you flow effortlessly into the one that best fits your past experience.
Our serotonin circuits have more in common than you may think. We’re all born weak and vulnerable, but at some moment each child experiences the pleasure of being in the one-up position. Maybe you demand a cookie and get it. Maybe you grab your toy back from a playground bully. Maybe you are the bully. Each moment of social dominance builds the neural pathway that turns on your serotonin in situations that fit the same basic pattern, even though you’re no longer focused on toys or cookies. The mammal brain is always scanning for opportunities to be in the one-up position, but they’re hard to come by. So when a high-school teacher suggests that people in power are the bad guys and you can be a good guy if you embrace a particular viewpoint, you feel great. You enjoy serotonin each time you see yourself as a good guy fighting bad guys. Repetition builds the pathway that defines good and bad in your mind, without conscious awareness.
We think we’re just responding to the facts because we’re not aware of our own wiring. We have a strong urge to check the news again but don’t know why. You can escape this loop when you understand your inner mammal. Here are three ways to disentangle yourself from political negativity and spark your own happiness, regardless of what others do.
1. Face your mortality
The thought of death is so distressing that we learn to put it out of mind. Politics is a convenient way to do that. The government can’t outlaw death, but you can demand that the government stop the threat that most triggers you. That relieves threatened feelings for a moment, and you can always relieve more cortisol by making more demands. Another way to relieve mortality fears is to create something that will live on after you’re gone. Politics promises to do that for you. Its grand promises may not materialize, but they bring a moment of relief and you can always get more by activating more thoughts of the promised land you are creating.
For most of human history, death was more present in daily life because people died at home and child mortality was high. People learned to manage this fear by believing in an afterlife and focusing on their grandchildren. Today, mortality fears are often managed with substance abuse and obsessing over your health. These solutions have their flaws, of course, so politics seems a better option. You can free yourself of politics if you find another way to make peace with the inevitable end of everything you know. A simple way to do that is to build something lasting on your own. More on that is in my book 14 Days to Sustainable Happiness.
2. Don’t Hang Your Happiness on the State of the World
We have been taught that something has gone wrong with the world to deprive us of nature’s happy state. You learn to think you can’t be happy unless the world is fixed, and politics promises to do that. Each time the world fails to make you happy, politics seems more attractive. You would be better off learning that unhappiness is natural and happiness is a learned skill. But instead, you are taught that happiness is an entitlement, so unhappiness must be solved through political action. The genetic view of happiness dovetails with the political view because it defines unhappiness as a disorder that can be cured through political action. This politicized view of our inner life has come to substitute for religion. Indeed, much political thought is explicitly anti-religion because it’s competing for the same niche in your brain. You will be addicted to politics until you believe in your own power over your happy chemicals instead of giving that power to a political belief system.
Politics triggers dopamine by promising rewards, but you can learn new ways to seek rewards. Politics sparks oxytocin by giving you a team, but you can find new ways to give your inner mammal the sense of a team. Politics sparks serotonin by making you feel superior in ethics and intellect, but you can find other ways to satisfy your natural urge for social importance. Of course, it’s hard to achieve goals, build a team, and feel confident in your own ethics and intellect. That’s why politics is so appealing. But you can learn to notice the price you pay for this addiction and spark dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin without it. More on this is in my book Why You’re Unhappy: Biology vs Politics.
3. Read History
Humans have always had politics. The earliest civilizations had big social hierarchies with elites controlling the resources. Early explorers always found a state of war when they landed in new places. Even in our times, neighboring tribes speak languages that are mutually unintelligible because they don’t talk to each other. These facts were never mentioned in my “good education.” My social science classes were rooted in the peace-and-love view of human origins, so discrepant facts were left out. But I started reading history on my own and discovered the constant conflict of our distant ancestors. The point is not that conflict is good. The point is that your political enemies did not cause the conflict, and your team will not end the conflict, even though it feels that way. When our information is filtered through politics, it always feels like we are living in terrible times. But when you study history, you see that life was always hard. Then you can start appreciating the time you have instead of waiting for the promised land. More on this is in my book Status Games: Why We Play and How to Stop.
The political lens on life is so pervasive that it’s hard to avoid. You may keep seeking happiness through politics, and keep ending up with bitterness and resentment. But you have power over where you focus your attention. You can stop giving your attention to political appeals for your support. You can find new ways to meet your natural mammalian needs so you’re not dependent on a political alliance. You can free yourself from the negativity of politics and feel good no matter what’s in the news.