A key insight or dreconceptualization
Uzależnienie behawioralne

Behavioral addictions

Dominance Fetishes – The Struggle for Status and Hormonal Infusion as the Driving Force of Human Activity

Introductory Note: I state with full conviction that the civilization of a human being, the process of socialization and raising a young person (including the instilling of the key ability of self-control), in the earliest phase of these processes involves remodeling and retuning the functioning of the brain, and more precisely – a radical, physiological reconstruction of the structures responsible for motivation.

The most important of these is the dopaminergic system. This note was written after extensive consideration of the content of dozens of books ranging from ancient didactic narratives, through anthropology and the issue of restrictions on sexual behavior, to contemporary military and intelligence training manuals.

A trained individual is no longer driven by animal instincts for survival – obtaining food and reproduction. Its rewards and punishments become approval and punishment for pro- and anti-social behavior. Ideally, the individual becomes an element that enhances the collective survival capacity of an ultra-cooperative community (p. 454). This survival capacity is the result of biological coevolution (based on inheritance, DNA code) and cultural coevolution (based on intergenerational transmission).

In other words, each of us is part of a larger whole – a community that has developed a package of cultural software, installed within us from the cradle. The conflict between primal instincts and the cultural superstructure, between "egoism" and the interest of the community, manifested in Western culture as the struggle between Good and Evil, has been and always will be the deepest essence and the material from which all creators of motivational systems draw their building materials: ideologies such as capitalism or powerful empires.

Second note: My own vision-hypothesis of dominance fetishes presented in this essay—though based in part on the work of psychologists, psychiatrists, and anthropologists—does not deserve to be called fully scientific. It is merely a conceptual framework intended to serve a specific practical need. It is intended to reduce informational chaos and support the identification of people exhibiting toxic behavior. In other words, in my opinion, it has predictive and guiding power over human behavior. A magical concept present in contemporary psychology that summarizes the entire argument below in a way that is closer to methodological correctness is "behavioral addictions."

The Theory of Fetishes as a Key Mechanism of Hormonal Addictions

We are all hopelessly addicted to drugs with no hope of escaping the addiction. This addiction is the essence of our lives and an integral part of human nature. What we can do – and that's quite a lot – is to achieve what's known as a secondary adaptation of biological neurophysiological mechanisms to harness them for the construction of civilization... To manage this addiction so that its effects are beneficial to us and society. Our hormone addiction is governed by three simple rules:

• Each of us has our own "favorite" way of producing "reward hormones." This method works like a fetish, meaning each of us develops our own complex procedures, sets of behaviors, rituals, and habits – their activation results in achieving hormonal stimulation.
• We satisfy our drug cravings in a more or less positive way, on two scales: nuisance and usefulness to the environment. Often, these same addicts gain social approval for their determination, effort, and sacrifice, while dominatingly oppressing anyone they encounter.
• Behavioral addictions underlie a whole range of individual and group identities, which are the main factor determining membership in sects, subcultures, associations… even entire civilizations.

The examples listed below, but also the entire "theory," are a form of reconceptualization. For me, this theory serves as a tool for controlling my own behavior and that of others. The ability to predict human behavior it provides stems from our biological makeup and cultural programming, which exhibit nonlinear, difficult-to-control plasticity.

Fig. 1. Dopaminergic pathways in Homo sapiens – ideogram.

Mechanism of action of drugs and dopamine

The "dominance fetish theory" combines two observations: the reconceptualization that the actual drug is hormones produced by the brain, not psychoactive substances, and the existence of an entire market for behavioral addiction treatments.

Addicts can be influenced by the strangest stimuli. One former drug addict had to avoid cartoons because the packages his dealer once sold him featured cartoon characters.

"Drugs jump to the craving circuit"—this is how Alan Leshner, former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the US, described their effect. The brain's dopamine-driven motivational system is stimulated much more intensely by psychoactive substances than by natural rewards like food and sex. Control over the brain systems that evolved for the crucial purpose of keeping us alive is taken over by the addictive chemical. Incidentally, this explains why food and sex addiction have so much in common with drug addiction.

"Hard" drugs artificially trigger the dopamine system: they bypass the complex "surprise" (anticipatory arousal) circuits. The connection between the rapid increase in drug levels in the blood and the intensity of the dopamine release causes addicts to eventually switch to intravenous injection. Previously practiced routes of dosing no longer provide the desired thrill. The addiction deepens, and the addict is left with only a gnawing craving for the next fix.

In its natural state, this system fires three to five times per second. The frequency increases to twenty or even thirty times per second when stimulated by a stimulus. The dopamine system shuts down when the expected reward is not presented. Then, the frequency of reward hormone releases drops to zero, and the addict "falls into a black hole." The shutdown of dopamine leads to a feeling of resentment and deception.

Game designers apply this knowledge of these mechanisms of the human motivational system to practice. Online games are an excellent tool for studying human nature, based on quasi-evolutionary selection. They collect information about moments of interruption, play time, and what stimuli prolong this time.

Tom Chatfield, a game theorist, has stated that the largest games have collected terabytes of data on players. They know exactly how to stimulate and suppress dopamine release. To illustrate, the optimal percentage of chests containing items a player needs is a magical 25 percent. The optimal number of items needed to advance to the next level of the game is 15. This ratio causes players to spend the most time playing the game. In some countries, laws are being created with the intention of prohibiting the implementation of the most addictive game mechanics.

The mesocortical pathway is the result of socialization and civilization of human beings to function in [ultra-]cooperative communities.

Tip: view human characters through the lens of a "fetish that supplies happiness hormones."