August 13, 2023 • 44 mins
Mental performance and productivity optimizing techniques, like those popularized by Dr. Andrew Huberman, and the concepts of dopamine fasting, dopamine detoxing, and dopamine "addiction," partially popularized by Dr. Anna Lembke, have taken social media by storm, but do they really work and can they be causing harm to marginalized communities by creating false ideas about serious political and social problems? Could the obsession with dopamine be tied to strict religious ideas or even eugenics? Alternative methods can be a breakthrough for mental health that can help people improve their lives and change their circumstances, but we have to know that they work, respect people’s unique life and cultural experiences, and get systemic change to work in conversation with them so the working class can benefit, and not create blame and shame.
Episode Notes:
(Always rough, may contain errors.)
I do a few mental performance protocols on a regular basis: sun exposure, breathing, workouts, etc.
One of the treatments that has worked best for me is neurofeedback
The danger of ignoring systemic problems, and how systemic changes will improve productivity way more than any “hack’ or “habit”
Dopamine myths vs. facts
Some of these "low dopamine morning" methods can work for building new habits but are cloaked in falsehoods
Bender: CBT doesn’t say to restrict pleasurable activities; instead, it’s centered around replacing harmful compulsions with healthy habits. The key words here are healthy habits. It’s about replacing what isn’t working for you and finding something that does.
Standard person “optimization protocols” are based on: single white young man with plenty of disposable income, living on their own in a city, no family, no major obligations, no major health conditions. They don’t have family they are caring for, older parents, etc.
What do all these traits have in common? Agency! These are for people with a ton of agency.
This is a problem because it does not account for marginalized communities who have less agency and that need different protocols and to have their native knowledge incorporated.
Also there’s confounding variables: people who can afford in terms of time, money, and circumstance certain habits, and have the physical and mental fortitude for them, are more likely to be successful anyways.
Protocols are not “cost-free”: When you’re broke, the time you’d be spending on sun exposure, meditating, breathing, cooking special food is spent doing things to scrape by.
People lose their ability to do hard things after doing too many hard things.
Problems with super restrictive diets for performance. Why I prefer IIFYM and Layne Norton’s approach to diet.
These protocols often have little evidence backing them.
Jess says dopamine/optimization is based in Protestant work ethic, eugenics, covers Stanford’s origins in eugenics
Not sold on this all being 100% religious asceticism but it is a very powerful metaphor and something to think about
Jess talks about dissociating from a bad life as the reasons we seek dopamine: Dissociate from unpleasant social realities
Ties the book Dopamine Nation to moral panics around sex
Lembke calling for stricter churches, talking to pastors
Constantly looking around for sins in my own life as a result of churches preaching this kind of stuff was a very negative influence
Lembke seems very judgmental towards disabled people based on what Jess states.
I've written articles on the value of pain and fighting through it, but through a much different lens.
People get addicted to make up for something they're lacking, not because of a lack of pain or judgment
Once you have something worth fighting for then you will fight for it. Even better if you have people encouraging you on that journey. But pain alone just causes despair.
We need high performance protocols but we need flexibility and the resources to perform as well. Don't give up on improving performance or becoming better. This isn't a hard dichotomy.
Progressives must show that our ideas are not about giving up on yourself, but allowing you to have the resources to become the person you want to be.
Becoming a better version of yourself can help you become a better activist.
Activism is hard and requires high performance at times
There’s a lot more to this topic than I can get to in one episode…so be sure to subscribe to the podcast and sign up for emails on the website.
www.Fixerpunk.com
Episode references:
Jess videos on Dopamine Mythos:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8NUSCp4/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8NUBMne/
Jess article on Dopamine Nation and Dr Lembke
Episode Notes:
(Always rough, may contain errors.)
I do a few mental performance protocols on a regular basis: sun exposure, breathing, workouts, etc.
One of the treatments that has worked best for me is neurofeedback
The danger of ignoring systemic problems, and how systemic changes will improve productivity way more than any “hack’ or “habit”
Dopamine myths vs. facts
Some of these "low dopamine morning" methods can work for building new habits but are cloaked in falsehoods
Bender: CBT doesn’t say to restrict pleasurable activities; instead, it’s centered around replacing harmful compulsions with healthy habits. The key words here are healthy habits. It’s about replacing what isn’t working for you and finding something that does.
Standard person “optimization protocols” are based on: single white young man with plenty of disposable income, living on their own in a city, no family, no major obligations, no major health conditions. They don’t have family they are caring for, older parents, etc.
What do all these traits have in common? Agency! These are for people with a ton of agency.
This is a problem because it does not account for marginalized communities who have less agency and that need different protocols and to have their native knowledge incorporated.
Also there’s confounding variables: people who can afford in terms of time, money, and circumstance certain habits, and have the physical and mental fortitude for them, are more likely to be successful anyways.
Protocols are not “cost-free”: When you’re broke, the time you’d be spending on sun exposure, meditating, breathing, cooking special food is spent doing things to scrape by.
People lose their ability to do hard things after doing too many hard things.
Problems with super restrictive diets for performance. Why I prefer IIFYM and Layne Norton’s approach to diet.
These protocols often have little evidence backing them.
Jess says dopamine/optimization is based in Protestant work ethic, eugenics, covers Stanford’s origins in eugenics
Not sold on this all being 100% religious asceticism but it is a very powerful metaphor and something to think about
Jess talks about dissociating from a bad life as the reasons we seek dopamine: Dissociate from unpleasant social realities
Ties the book Dopamine Nation to moral panics around sex
Lembke calling for stricter churches, talking to pastors
Constantly looking around for sins in my own life as a result of churches preaching this kind of stuff was a very negative influence
Lembke seems very judgmental towards disabled people based on what Jess states.
I've written articles on the value of pain and fighting through it, but through a much different lens.
People get addicted to make up for something they're lacking, not because of a lack of pain or judgment
Once you have something worth fighting for then you will fight for it. Even better if you have people encouraging you on that journey. But pain alone just causes despair.
We need high performance protocols but we need flexibility and the resources to perform as well. Don't give up on improving performance or becoming better. This isn't a hard dichotomy.
Progressives must show that our ideas are not about giving up on yourself, but allowing you to have the resources to become the person you want to be.
Becoming a better version of yourself can help you become a better activist.
Activism is hard and requires high performance at times
There’s a lot more to this topic than I can get to in one episode…so be sure to subscribe to the podcast and sign up for emails on the website.
www.Fixerpunk.com
Episode references:
Jess videos on Dopamine Mythos:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8NUSCp4/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8NUBMne/
Jess article on Dopamine Nation and Dr Lembke
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
This is the fixer punk podcast,the podcast that barely musters up enough dopamine
to stay in the habit of recordinga new episode every week. I'm Grayson
Peltier. So, as the teaserwould have you believe, this episode is
about habits, productivity, and thewhole trend of dopamine detox, dopamine fasting,
(00:28):
productivity, and performance optimization, anda lot of the biases and issues
with these models, but also someof the potential of performance optimization, bio
hacking, all of these types ofthings. They're going around to help people
improve their productivity and their mental healthand their mental performance. And this podcast
(00:53):
seeks to bridge the divide between personaland social change. So this is going
to be a very key issue,and I probably am gonna have to do
multiple episodes on this. In fact, I'm almost certain of it, because
there are a lot of angles tothis whole productivity, optimization, biohacking dopamine.
The dopamine thing in and of itselfis a massive area of complexity and
(01:19):
a lot of myths and things thatare both wrong and right with what these
people are saying, And there area lot of philosophical angles that I am
actually just learning about as somebody whoreally focuses on these issues and how personal
becomes political. There's a lot moreto this than really meets the eye in
(01:41):
any respect. There was a TikTokerwho also has a substack called sluggish dot
substack dot com named Jess who wasdiscussing the dopamine detox trend specifically, and
there are some interesting philosophical origins ofthat that go back to religious asceticism.
(02:02):
And I think that's very interesting angleto look at it from. But I
want to take it back a fewmore steps and analyze it from a few
different angles actually and into the overallnot just the dopamine stuff, but the
overall productivity, health performance, allof like the health protocols, they're supposed
to make you perform better as aperson in the workplace or in those types
(02:28):
of settings, like the Andrew Hubermantype stuff that goes around a lot.
All like those performance hacks. Yousee the people get together in the morning
doing sun exposure, meditating, allto make sure that their mind is optimal
for the workplace, and doing allthese little tricks and hacks to hack their
brain is getting a little bit moreproductivity, which first off, I try
(02:53):
to do some of these things myself. I have been trying to get up
do the sun exposure stuff. I'vebeen doing breathing protocols, a few different
types of breathing protocols, like onefrom Huberman and then another one that actually
a psychologist developed customized supposedly based onmy breathing rhythm. I even get that
stuff measured. One of the treatmentsthat's worked best for my own autism and
(03:15):
ADHD is neurofeedback, which is verypersonalized done by a doctor, and one
of the things that they do isthey do track your breathing rate to figure
out which breathing rate calms you downthe most. I guess so I am
into a lot of these things,and I think that a lot of these
types of performance optimizing mental optimizing techniquescan have a lot of benefit for individuals
(03:40):
on a health level, on anindividual health level. But the danger with
them, and I've alluded to thisa bit on the TikTok At fixer punk,
is that they cause us to ignorethe systemic problems that are causing people's
distress and the systemic reasons why peopleare not succeeding in life that have nothing
(04:01):
to do with whether or not somebodyhas undertaken a dopamine detox, how clean
their diet is, whether or notthey're deep breathing and meditating before going to
work, those kinds of things,and going in and just ignoring the fact
that people's productivity, performance and healthis largely dictated. A lot of it,
(04:23):
especially when we're talking about the lowerclasses of society, is dictated by
systemic factors, and we can createa much greater impact on performance by fixing
those systemic problems rather than just focusingsolely on the individual. And this gets
ignored pretty much all the time bythe productivity hacking all the people who have
(04:47):
even these very rigorous scientific backgrounds.They ignore the factors that cause people to
perform and have less optimal health thatare not on the individual level. And
also the ways that some of thesetechniques like Huberman will always say that a
(05:08):
bunch of his techniques are zero cost, but if we think about it,
yeah, in a monetary sense,going outside and looking at the sun for
fifteen minutes doesn't really cost you anybodygoing and meditating for ten fifteen minutes a
day, removing sources of stimulation fromyour life and not playing video games,
(05:30):
watching TV. All those kinds ofsupposed advices don't really don't cost you like
literal money, but there are otherways that systemic factors influence them. And
Jess in one of her videos,I'm not sure as that she had they
I'm not sure. I don't wantto miss gender. I apologize if I
did, but makes the point thatit is because we are trying to numb
(05:58):
ourselves from the thing that this societyand capitalism is causing us. And that
is a very important point to makebecause this isn't just individual vice and pleasure
seeking. This is people trying tomake the best of their own situation.
Which that's one of the biggest distinctionsin the fixer punk brand of self help
(06:19):
versus these other brands of self helpis that I genuinely believe that most people
are trying to do the best theycan based on their own individual circumstances,
and that your own knowledge of yourcircumstance and your community's knowledge within whatever group
you're in, especially if you're ina marginalized group, that knowledge has value
that is as valuable as the scientistwho is in a lab and has determined
(06:43):
that all your problems can be tiedback to a single molecule, which is
questionable science in and of itself,and there's some pretty good scientific debunkings of
it. I've read one by alicensed therapist who said that although these things
are extremely oversimplified, and a lotof the concepts behind dopamine detox in particular
(07:04):
are y are very much a myth. Scientifically, some of the things can
help, but in a more positiveway rather than this negative or, as
Jessica put an ascetic way of lookingat things. So when you have these
types of claims going out there,we have to look at the harms.
(07:29):
We have to look at what isbeing left out of them and the ways
that these cause you to judge yourself, and especially with this more philosophical angle
that deals with Christianity, which I'mstill a Christian, I still believe,
but I've had some problems with certainsegments of the church that have a very
(07:50):
judgmental angle to things. And it'svery easy when you see the self help
stuff to judge, to judge yourselfvery very easily, especially when they're telling
you cut out every form of pleasurefrom your life, dopamine detox, no
phone, no internet, no TV, even no music, no interaction with
(08:13):
others. All you do is meditateand journal. You need to cut out
all the food from your life.Some of the dopamine fasting ones wills to
tell you just to even completely noteat for the day so that you reset
your productivity. So it's very easyto judge yourself. But the thing is
that some of these methods I thinkcan be superior, Like some of the
(08:39):
Huberman productivity over my optimizing stuff,the Analemke stuff, the dopamine stuff.
I think that I haven't studied thatenough, and I may need to do
a whole separate episode on Lemky,but I think some of it can be
valuable, like the methods that moreinvolve actually recalibrating your brain's biology a little
bit. Like I don't think humanhasn't covered neurofeedback, but neurofeedback change my
(09:03):
life way more than any conventional therapyor conventional medication ever could. And some
people might classify it under this selfoptimization biohacking realm. So we don't want
to just throw away and this issomething that more progressive and leftist thinkers need
to be cautious of. Is justthrowing away the potential value to help people
(09:26):
with mental health conditions of some ofthese techniques. They can be a breakthrough
for people to improve their lives.But we have to What we have to
do is we have to get systemicideas into conversation with them, because the
model behind these ideas, the modelbetween of having the idea where you are
getting up in the morning, you'regiving yourself, your son exposure, you're
(09:46):
meditating. These are things I'm tryingto do myself. Sometimes it's pretty hard
though, but I do try.And I probably have a bit more privilege
than some other people do having toeat a very very clean, strict regimented,
very low carb diet that is likefree of preservatives and artificial processed food
(10:11):
whatever that means, because like assoon as you like you cut an apple,
that makes it processed. I thinkwell of the nutrition thinkers that even
though he's not I don't think he'sreally a progressive political guy. Doctor Lane
Norton, I think is probably oneof the most inclusive nutrition experts out there,
and he just and he really stressesthe if it fits your macro's approach,
(10:35):
which has been a life changing thingfor me because I grew up through
the era of like the super strictdiets, and the only way I've even
able to remotely get myself into shapeis because I've been able to find like
all kinds of little hacks that allowme to eat food that's convenient, that
works with my like sensory needs andmy likes and dislikes, all the interesting
(10:56):
quirks that I have because of myautism, and still like at least improve
my body composition to an extent.But these like Huberman diets and stuff like
that don't allow you that kind offlexibility. You have to basically just be
eating like mostly vegetables and some meat, like barely any carbs at least that's
at least that's my understanding of it. And then having the time to go
(11:18):
and to do your exercise, doyour zone two cardio, and to precisely
track that you are in zone twowhen you are doing your cardio, which
honestly, I was a distanced runnerfor a while. I kind of get
that stuff. But for some reason, I think, probably just because of
again the positive impacts of body composition, I've switched over to mostly a combination
(11:41):
of strength training and more higher intensitycardio as a finisher because that's a little
more efficient. But again that's there'sa matter of having the time and having
the energy. Somebody who is cominghome from their seven twenty five an hour
job working at some retail or somefast food place isn't going to go and
(12:01):
take prepare themselves a meal that's goingto take forty five minutes to an hour
to prepare. They're not going togo there and spend another hour doing resistance
training than doing their zone two cardioand monitoring all that. Even though these
things technically are not like it's notlike you're paying for a supplement or something
like that, people are not goingto be able to do that. There's
(12:22):
only a limit to how much stuffpeople can tolerate in a day. And
the analem keys of the world wouldhave you believe that pain that people need
more pain in their lives. Andthat is the problem. And I think
that's another topic we have to getback to a little bit more. But
(12:43):
the thing is is that, yeah, some of these loads dopamine morning things
can work, but the standard person'soptimization protocols, like the standard like person
that these optimization protocols are built for, it's a single white young man with
plenty of disposable income, living ontheir own, probably in a city,
(13:05):
no family, no major obligations,and no major health conditions. They're just
trying to get They're just trying toget themselves healthier so that they can move
up from being a junior software developerto being a senior software developer of to
being chief engineer or possibly starting theirown startup and getting more going from seed
(13:26):
around to your a round by optimizingand getting that little bit of performance out
of their brains. That's who thisstuff is built around, and native knowledge
is important. The optimization protocol thatis going to get somebody from being some
software engineer in Silicon Valley, whichis where a lot of this is based
(13:46):
around. Jess rightly brings up thata lot of this comes out of Stanford,
and as a USC trojan, Iam very very proud to dunk on
Stanford whenever necessary, but I don'tknow if I'm going to dunk on them
too hard necessarily. But that's whothis is based upon. The protocol that
(14:09):
is going to get somebody who isworking for seven to twenty five an hour
up to making fifteen dollars an houris going to be a lot different.
It's going to have to be.Their life is a lot different. And
I think that protocol should really beone thing, and that's called a union,
and maybe maybe we add another supplementalhack called an increased minimum wage.
(14:35):
I think those are those that youhave your you have your power combination,
you you have your power finisher moveof strength and optimization for your prosperity right
there in unions and increased wages andlabor laws. But that's just me.
(15:01):
It's going to be different for somebodythat has family obligations. So like there
are people that maybe you're making decentmoney, but you have kids, you're
caring for children you don't maybe youdon't have as good of acts as childcare.
Maybe you're in you're not making onehundred two hundred k here, maybe
you're making forty to sixty thousand.Maybe you're not able to afford as much
(15:22):
as good of like childcare. Youcan afford it for work maybe, but
you can't afford it for say,going and doing all this wellness stuff.
You don't have someone to leave thekids with. You're not going to be
able to completely rid your house ofevery dopamine invested. Sweet food because you're
raising a kid, or you're ina multigenerational household, you're of an ethnic
(15:48):
background that prefers that, and youhave and you're not You're you're not gonna.
It really wouldn't be nice for youto just say no to whatever Awaya
is making, because you have tostay on this extremely regimented diet to optimize
your mental performance where you can onlyeat vegetables and you can't, and you
(16:10):
have, and you're constantly being temptedby Abela, and it's you have to
think about individual circumstances, is whatis what I'm saying here, And I
have to think about the protocol that'sactually gonna give you results, because who
knows. Heck, we could takethe seven twenty five an hour worker and
somehow magically put them on an allvegetable diet, have them do the have
(16:32):
them do their Zone two cardio,have them do their mental performance enhancing stuff
where they're blue blockers at night,no dopamine, no no phone, no
social media, and all they're goingto wind up is being more sad,
more depressed, more unhappy, andstill not moving up in that job.
(16:52):
They're still going to be stuck atlike the cashier level. They're not going
to move up to assistant manager justbecause they did these performance it's optimizing hacks.
And some people just are naturally betteradapted to these types of habits and
to hard work itself. And somepeople have been traumatized by their circumstances physically
(17:15):
and mentally to the point where theycannot reach the same peak as someone who
is more fresh and doesn't have thesetypes of circumstances in their lives, and
that creates confounding variables. People whocan afford in terms of time, money,
and circumstances to do these habits andhave the physical and mental forward to
to be able to do them areprobably more likely to be successful anyways.
(17:37):
Because the person who can perfectly followall of these protocols, who can completely
withdraw withdrawal from society without any negativeconsequences to do a dopamine detox, the
person who has the extra time inthe morning, which even though meditating and
all that that should take me likehalf an hour, it winds up taking
more like an hour because I haveto recover from each step mentally. The
(18:00):
person who has the extra time todo that and doesn't have to rush out
right away, get their kids toschool, use every last second to chase
after a bus to get to theirjob. That person who has that extra
time was probably already more likely tobe successful than the person didn't have the
time to do that. The personwho has enough money to go to Whole
(18:21):
Foods and buy organic food probably morelikely to become financially successful anyway. So
you have confounding variables, so youcan't go and you look at one.
You look at this person who's quoteunquote soft week and whimpy, and we
don't even know all the stuff they'refighting through. We don't know how tough
this person who looks like they're doingall these week whimpy habits of eating all
(18:42):
that junk food all day long.We don't know how tough that person is,
how hard that person's life is.Whether or not the chad software engineer
from Silicon Valley would even be ableto last a day in the shoes of
a underpaid construction worker who is inthe heat and sweating all day and not
(19:03):
given enough water breaks. We don'tknow how tough that person is. But
we're assuming we're ascribing this morality tothem that they're weak wouldn't being lazy for
going and getting fast food after ahard day. And that is that is
morally not right, but it alsoin a practical sense is not right.
And it's if we go and wetake this data when these things are are
(19:27):
are very very rarely studied, Likethere isn't good science on any of these
things. A lot of these thingsare just theoretical. Their protocols that are
maybe based on one study based onsome sort of theory that like came out
of Huberman's lab. Andrew Huberman willhe supposedly has he has a lab at
Stanford, but I'm not quite surehow active it is, but he is
(19:49):
a researcher there on maybe a smallgroup of people. It isn't like there
is some massive meta analysis study.But but we have to look at those
confounding variables if there were to bea study on this. Okay. Is
it that the low dopamine morning work? Is it that the optimization protocol worked?
(20:11):
Is that getting this one percent edgein terms of your mental performance is
what made the person rich? Isit that the stricter diet made the person
smarter and more able to succeed?Or is it that the people who are
able to adhere to that, we'realready going to succeed anyway. So you
look at Okay, you have thegroup of the people who fell away,
(20:32):
who cheated on the diet, whodidn't do their son exposure, who didn't
do their meditating, those people unsuccessful. Let's just say we got a study
that had this conclusion. I don'tthink one exists, but I haven't really
checked. I haven't spent any timeon Google scholar digging for this stuff.
But if such a study did exist, you would want to critically analyze it.
Okay, those people that didn't doit probably had all kinds of other
(20:56):
circumstances in their lives would make itharder for them to succeed anyways. The
people who did do it probably arethe ones who had more comfortable lives,
And we're more likely to be evenin the room and be considered for that
promotion to chief engineer or to assistantmanager or VP or whatever. Again,
(21:19):
this stuff does. Some of thesethings are good ideas even if you're in
a bad situation. This is thething. I don't want people to give
up on improving themselves just because theseideas come with a lot of toxic baggage
on them, and I'm going toget into some of that really toxic baggage
really soon. But I don't wantyou to give up on things necessarily.
(21:41):
You shouldn't give up on becoming yourbest self. And that's kind of a
lot of the point of this podcastis we're bridging the divide between personal and
social change. We're putting some ofthese ideas which are new and innovative ideas
of mental health, which I reallyhope someday that once people have that bare
minimum of what they need in life, if we can use that to help
people improve their lives so that youcan try these protocols see if they work
(22:04):
for you. Maybe they'll work foryou, maybe something else will work for
you. But we've got to giveyou that freedom and that ability, that
economic stability, that personal stability,that social stability that allows you the chance
to try and experiment and see whathelps you and not just do exactly what
the system tells you to do.Because I'm not saying we'll just give up
(22:25):
on it and just take antidepressence andjust do the standard stuff. Only maybe
these protocols could work for you.And there is some evidence, like on
a positive regard. I was readingan article again by a licensed therapist who
said that CB some of the lowdopamine stuff, low dopamine mourning stuff is
(22:48):
part of like habit building techniques inCBT, which is an evidence based form
of psychotherapy, which has its ownproblems. In my opinion, I think
CBT is a little overused. Butif you've gotten to therapy, you've almost
certainly gotten CBT. But there issome evidence too. She says, replace
harmful habits, harmful compulsions with healthyhabits, and it's to replace something that
(23:12):
isn't working and finding something that does, but not to restrict pleasurable activities,
which is what a lot of thefocus of some of these dopamine fasting things
are. I wouldn't say necessarily Huberman'smain focus is restricting pleasurable activities. I
think he covers a lot of differentsubjects, but he does bring on this
(23:34):
analem Kei who is apparently is orwas the head of the addiction clinic at
Stanford and Jess this commentator with asubstack with that sluggish dot substack dot com
page. What she does is shedoes say that this is a lot of
(23:57):
it is based on a Protestant workethic, and she even ties it back
to eugenics and some very problematic thingsin the history of Stanford University, the
fact that it was founded by aguy who was trying to escape workers who
are going after him, who wasinto eugenics around race horses. And she
(24:22):
also says that a lot of thisis based on sort of a religious asceticism,
that that people are seeking salvation throughbecoming entrepreneurs, and they believe that
by removing all these vices from theirlives that it'll make them closer to the
godly goal of being an entrepreneur,being able to break out of capitalism.
Which I think that's a very powerfulway to think about it, but I
(24:45):
don't think that's the entire thing.I think there is. Again, there's
some truth and some good ideas inthese habits potentially, but there are also
some ways you can really judge yourselffrom this. The Analemke seeks to really
make it a lot of stuff that'sabout like morality, Like she's gone and
talked to Christian pastors. She's calledfor stricter churches. Even her book Dopamine
(25:12):
Nation ties some of the whole dopamineaddiction. This idea that we were addicted
to our smartphones, were addicted toentertainment, we're addicted to sugar, we're
addicted to food, which has somewhatquestionable scientific backing to it period, but
she ties a lot of things backto, like moral panics around sex,
(25:37):
and especially with the way that itgets tied back to Protestant religion and Calvinism,
very morally rigid, Calvinistic Christian thought. Is a little bit triggering for
me because I did have my ownexperience with churches that were basically very very
strict. They were they didn't seemthat way on their face. These were
(26:03):
churches that were marketing themselves around theskateboarding community, the surfing community, punk
rock, things like that, butthey were very morally strict and constantly telling
you to look around your life forsecret sins, for anything that you put
before God that you need to getrid of, You need to sacrifice this
at the altar. And that wasa very negative influence in my life,
(26:25):
constantly judging myself and morally really puttingmyself in a position where I constantly felt
like I was the bad guy.And if you're familiar, if you've been
listening to the podcast for a while, I did mention how a quote from
pro wrestler hangman Adam Page kind ofbroke me out of that line of thought
(26:45):
of And it was from his monologueepisode on being the Elite, which I
think is a really good way todeprogram a lot of these kinds of ideas.
He said something to the effect of, I hope. I don't know.
Maybe I'm not remembering the quote exactly, but he's said, I said,
Am I the bad guy? AmI the bad guy in my own
drunken monologue in the woods? Oris that just the way the world has
(27:07):
conditioned me to think, when inreality I had no choice in the matter.
And I think that if you've beenjudging yourself a lot, whether it's
because you're listening to self help peoplesay and you're like, I can't get
off this dopamine. I can't getoff of all these dopamine things, like
my phone, like the food,like like all these things that give me
pleasure in life I'm addicted to andI can't get myself to just be productive
(27:30):
and only do productive things and onlydo low dopamine things. Maybe you'll help
you to rid yourself without judgment alittle bit, but does also kind of
leave open what the next step is. I think I'm probably because I pretty
much just learned about this angle tothese performance and productivity optimizing things as being
(27:55):
part of a more religious set ofideas maybe a few days ago. So
I may need to investigate that alittle bit more and come back with another
episode. But I do have tosay that we have to be very careful,
we have to be very vigilant aswe're looking into these ideas, which
they are very positive ideas, wehave to understand that these are many like
(28:18):
these Huberman. Huberman has a lotof positive things to him. I think
that a lot of this is verygood scientific developments. But just like any
other type of scientific development medicine,whether it's a new medication, new surgery,
the access and the implementation are goingto be far different for people in
marginalized backgrounds than they are going tobe for people in a normal background.
I always like to refer back todoctor America brachos ted talk, which is
(28:42):
about Latino health access and her effortsto help Latinos improve their health, specifically
around diabetes and things of that nature, and she spoke about how doctors would
always call these people non compliant patientsbecause they wouldn't go out and walk around
the block, and they wouldn't cookhealthy food and all that. But it's
(29:04):
really because these people were These werereally good people. These were people that
are really trying their absolute best,but they just couldn't. Their neighborhood wasn't
safe, so they didn't feel safegoing out and walking or running around the
block at night when there's a lotof crime in the neighborhood. There wasn't
a public park where the kids couldplay. So we have we take these
(29:26):
ideas, we look at them,we see if they work, we see
if they're actually evidence based, evenin the ideal situation, if they're if
they're functional, if they help people, and then we find ways to adapt
them ways that may not be perfect, but find ways to use them in
the lives of people who who needthe help without being judgmental toward them.
(29:47):
And that's one of the things aboutLemky is Lemky is pretty from the way
the way I read in the Jessarticle, Lemky seemed like a pretty judgmental
person. She was involved in alot of drug war related stuff, promoting
a lot of information about about drugaddiction and opioid addiction that turned out to
(30:10):
be false and judgmental towards chronic painpatients. She has a narrative around saying
that society, the reason why peopleare so unhappy is because they avoid pain.
They don't do enough painful things thatwe're constantly trying to avoid pain,
and of course tying that back topeople in pain are malingering. And the
(30:30):
disability benefits, she's extremely judgmental todisabled people and and wants and even has
thought about certain types of disability benefitsis like a moral harm, which that
in and of itself is ridiculous becausedisability benefits barely pay any money. Nobody
would go on them my choice.And I do think that there is a
(30:59):
value to you going through a levelof pain, but it has to be
for a purpose, and I thinkthis is where people get lost. Jez
brings up that a lot of thesequote unquote dopamine habits are not addictions that
people are doing to constantly just pleasurethemselves and increase their level of pleasure.
They are a response to being ableto basically dissociate from societies, from the
(31:26):
problems in society and from the lackof economic opportunity. Jez brings up an
example about the lottery and citing astudy that says that gambling represents one of
the few actions that they can taketo address lack of opportunities and freedoms that
they experience. They are referring topeople in lower socioeconomic statuses. And that's
(31:48):
the thing is that I do believethat to an extent, tolerating pain and
toughness and grit and all that stuffhas value. But it has value when
pursuing something and when you feel supportedin doing so. I think that once
you have something worth fighting for,then you will fight for it. And
(32:09):
it's even better if you have peopleencouraging you on that journey. But pain
alone, just giving people more painin their life causes despair, and especially
when you're causing people to fight againstan opponent that they will never win against,
and you are giving people false hopeabout saying that if they just reduce
(32:31):
all the dopamine from their lives,all their problems are going to get better,
when in fact, what you reallyneed to do is you need to
be using that energy to make systemicchange. Because you have all these ideas
and all these things of how you'resupposed to deprive yourself, but never the
people that are sitting in lush luxurywho could easily make your life better without
(32:52):
depriving themselves of really any pleasure atall, They're not being criticized by this
model, and that's a problem,and we have to we really have to
bring things together for both, forboth of these ideas. So I do
(33:13):
believe in I've done I've even donearticles on this stuff about about using pain
in a positive way. But peoplelose their ability to do hard things after
doing too many hard things. Soat some point you need to give people
that comfort. You need to givepeople that assurance, You need to give
people that security that they know thatsomething positive is going to come out of
(33:37):
this, because if all you seeis negative, all you see is pain
around you, that's not going tohelp you. In fact, in many
cases, positive pleasurable things are whatmotivates people to be able to do harder
things, especially in someone like myselfwho as ADHD that's definitely the case.
(33:59):
But if you just deprive people entirely, that's not going to help them in
any way, shape or form.And these types of things, these higher
dopamine activities are what's keeping people apartand keeping people together, or keeping people
together and keeping them from falling apartmentally going through a very hard situation.
Should it be this way? No, we need to alleviate the root causes
(34:21):
of this suffering and get people toa point where they feel like they have
something that is worth the pain,that is worth the suffering, that is
worth the trouble in their lives.But more importantly, get people to a
level of security, a bare minimumlevel of security, where they feel like
(34:42):
things can be better. Disability payis not a moral hazard. I just
don't get that line of thinking.Social safety nets aren't some sort of moral
hazard that keeps people from working.In fact, they keep people working.
The fact that we continue to havethese programs is largely be because they subsidize
the wages for large corporations who don'tpay people enough. I think Walmart employees
(35:07):
are like the largest recipients of foodstamps, So that is we have to
I'm going to probably have to getinto the more political end of this and
some of the stuff Lemkey is doingin a separate episode, and especially this
call back into the religious space andhow this is tied to religious asceticism.
(35:27):
Do I think that this is allbased on religious asceticism and eugenics? No?
Do I think that there are someinfluences They are very problematic in these
things, and a lot of influencesin a lot of ways that these things
can just make people feel horrible.Yes, because once you have an idea
that tells you that you are wrong, and you have to deny yourself and
(35:52):
deny that identity and that uniqueness withinyourself and your knowledge of your situation in
service of some stricter idea, thestricter churches, stricter social organizations, and
the way Lemkey even puts it aslike we need to structure society in that
way, so it's stricter on peoplewho are freeloading and mooching off of society.
Which I agree that we should bestricter on people who are freeloading and
(36:15):
mooching off society. But I'm nottalking about the people on welfare. I'm
not talking about the people who arecollecting disability, and I'm not talking about
the people who are getting any sortof public benefits. I'm talking about the
people who are changing the tax codeto benefit themselves and keep money that they're
not entitled to and paying less intaxes than their kids' school teachers, or
(36:35):
paying less in taxes than their secretaries. Those are the kinds of moochers and
freeloaders that we need to go after. But of course that's not what they're
talking about here. When we havea set of ideas that basically just blames
people and judges them and represses whoyou are, then that really isn't something
(37:00):
that leaves you wanting to go throughthat pain. And I love talking about
wrestling storylines in this way, andespecially the Adam Page storyline from AW But
he was being judged a lot,and he didn't feel like he was being
accepted, and that caused him togo into addiction, caused him to feel
(37:22):
to feel sad and to not wantto perform at his best. But when
he felt accepted and when he feltlike he had what he needed and he
had good people around him and hewas able to be himself and find what
worked for him, he was ableto become a champion. And yes,
(37:43):
I know it's a wrestling storyline,but I think it's a good way of
thinking about things. Is once youhave that fundamental sense of security in your
life, once you have people thatcare about you, once you have an
environment that allows you to perform well, and not all this judgmental stuff just
judge, mental judgment, pain,pain judgment. That's not going to turn
you into a productive superhero, superhuman, performance, optimized. Everything's all it's
(38:12):
going to do is just send youinto despair. The way that you become
a winner, the way that youbecome better in life, is when you
have the support you need, andthat's when you want to take on the
pain. When you feel like whenyou see that there is actually a light
against the tunnel, that makes youmore likely to go and pursue that.
It makes you more likely to actuallytake the time and spend the energy,
(38:34):
go through all the pain, allof the discipline, all the hard work,
when you see that it is goingto be worthwhile and that's not going
to be futile. So we haveto make a world where going through that
pain is not futility. And thenyou'll see people perhaps going into less dopamine
inducing habits, but maybe people chooseto engage in more dopamine inducing habits because
(38:58):
they help you get through that dayafter the hard fought match, you really
look forward to that nice Wendy's burger, and you can feel like you've earned
it, and you can feel goodabout yourself. You know that you're getting
it, you're going in that directionthat you want to go to. But
you're also having the fun and you'rehaving a life that you want to live,
(39:22):
and you can see glimpses of thatand and you can feel good about
it to some extent. It's notjust all misery. If we have all
this misery around us and that isall we see, then of course everybody
is going to be sad if weare just increasingly putting higher and higher standards,
which just brings this up with theSilicon Valley folks who they talk about
(39:45):
depression and people in Silicon Valley asbeing because they have everything and they've fried
out their dopamine receptors. No,it's because they're being asked to go higher
and higher and higher and never beingable to give that chance to be content
or accepted in life. Of course, that's make somebody depressed. We don't
need some overly complex, probably falseneuroscientific explanation for those things, and for
(40:09):
those of us while rey understand theseprogressive ideas. Don't dismiss the idea of
performance optimization, improving your own personalhealth fitness habits. Just don't judge yourself
too much when you can't do something, because these protocols aren't built for you
if you're in a marginalized population.But they can help. And activism itself.
(40:30):
Fighting for a union, advocating forworkers rights, advocating for legislative change,
social change, doing mutual aid work. These are all things that require
productivity and performance. To be ableto work a job and then go and
help your mutual aid group, goand serve the homeless, to go and
advocate legislatively, to deal with difficultsituations where you have to collectively present demands
(40:55):
to a boss, or to goon strike, or to deal with a
legislator who's not going to be veryfriendly to you. These are all things
that are stress inducing activities. Theseare things that require high performance mental performance.
Activism and advocacy is a high performanceactivity. It's a high stress activity.
(41:16):
And there are some ideas that wecan take to instead of just maybe
just letting ourselves go to be betterat doing those kinds of things. And
if the other side, if everybodywho is fighting for and advocating for the
ideas that are going to hurt us. Are following all these performance optimizing ideas
(41:36):
and they're able to go out thereand really show their best and we're not
at our best, then that's onlygoing to negatively impact the left and progressive
and pro labor causes. So maybeyou find the habits and the techniques and
the methods, whether that's improving yoursleep, your diet, your exercise,
all those things, those are positivethings. They also make you a good
(41:58):
example for people who want to become better in their lives. And knowing
that progressive ideas, which is thisis the thing I talk about. Progressive
ideas are not akin to accepting failureand just becoming weak and soft and lazy.
And we shouldn't just chricaturize performance optimizingideas as being something that's bad in
and of themselves. It is themoral judgment that comes with them and the
(42:19):
unscientific nonsense that is the bad part. But becoming a better version of yourself
can help you to be a betteractivist and to better seek social change.
There's a lot more to cover.There's a lot more to this topic than
I can get to in a singleepisode ever, no matter how optimized I
try to make this episode or not, so please subscribe and please join me
(42:42):
for the next episode. Follow alongon the social media at fixer Punk on
Instagram, TikTok on Twitter, orx or whatever it's called at Grace and
Nation g EISN N A t IO N. If you have any stories
of things that you're dealing with inyour life, many stories of performance optimization
gone right gone wrong, any strugglesyou have with activism, with union organizing,
(43:06):
if you're on strike. If youhave any comments on this episode at
all, or on any issue ofsocial importance that you want me to cover
or discuss, something you're going through, some form of oppression you're going through
that you think needs to get outthere and needs to be discussed, Please
call in eight four four four sevenseven seven eight six five eight four four
(43:28):
four seven seven punk. Leave amessage twenty four seven, day or night.
Just leave a message. I willlisten to it. Thank you so
much for taking the time to listentoday, and I hope you'll join me
again for the next episode. Thispodcast is not professional advice of any sort.
This content is for entertainment and generalinformational purposes only. You not warrant
(43:49):
or guarantee the accuracy of the informationhere in. The listeners should not rely
solely upon such, and consult acompetent professional before signed to follow any course
of action. If any medical ormental health concerns or suspected, please promptly
contact a qualified physician,
This is the fixer punk podcast,the podcast that barely musters up enough dopamine
to stay in the habit of recordinga new episode every week. I'm Grayson
Peltier. So, as the teaserwould have you believe, this episode is
about habits, productivity, and thewhole trend of dopamine detox, dopamine fasting,
(00:28):
productivity, and performance optimization, anda lot of the biases and issues
with these models, but also someof the potential of performance optimization, bio
hacking, all of these types ofthings. They're going around to help people
improve their productivity and their mental healthand their mental performance. And this podcast
(00:53):
seeks to bridge the divide between personaland social change. So this is going
to be a very key issue,and I probably am gonna have to do
multiple episodes on this. In fact, I'm almost certain of it, because
there are a lot of angles tothis whole productivity, optimization, biohacking dopamine.
The dopamine thing in and of itselfis a massive area of complexity and
(01:19):
a lot of myths and things thatare both wrong and right with what these
people are saying, And there area lot of philosophical angles that I am
actually just learning about as somebody whoreally focuses on these issues and how personal
becomes political. There's a lot moreto this than really meets the eye in
(01:41):
any respect. There was a TikTokerwho also has a substack called sluggish dot
substack dot com named Jess who wasdiscussing the dopamine detox trend specifically, and
there are some interesting philosophical origins ofthat that go back to religious asceticism.
(02:02):
And I think that's very interesting angleto look at it from. But I
want to take it back a fewmore steps and analyze it from a few
different angles actually and into the overallnot just the dopamine stuff, but the
overall productivity, health performance, allof like the health protocols, they're supposed
to make you perform better as aperson in the workplace or in those types
(02:28):
of settings, like the Andrew Hubermantype stuff that goes around a lot.
All like those performance hacks. Yousee the people get together in the morning
doing sun exposure, meditating, allto make sure that their mind is optimal
for the workplace, and doing allthese little tricks and hacks to hack their
brain is getting a little bit moreproductivity, which first off, I try
(02:53):
to do some of these things myself. I have been trying to get up
do the sun exposure stuff. I'vebeen doing breathing protocols, a few different
types of breathing protocols, like onefrom Huberman and then another one that actually
a psychologist developed customized supposedly based onmy breathing rhythm. I even get that
stuff measured. One of the treatmentsthat's worked best for my own autism and
(03:15):
ADHD is neurofeedback, which is verypersonalized done by a doctor, and one
of the things that they do isthey do track your breathing rate to figure
out which breathing rate calms you downthe most. I guess so I am
into a lot of these things,and I think that a lot of these
types of performance optimizing mental optimizing techniquescan have a lot of benefit for individuals
(03:40):
on a health level, on anindividual health level. But the danger with
them, and I've alluded to thisa bit on the TikTok At fixer punk,
is that they cause us to ignorethe systemic problems that are causing people's
distress and the systemic reasons why peopleare not succeeding in life that have nothing
(04:01):
to do with whether or not somebodyhas undertaken a dopamine detox, how clean
their diet is, whether or notthey're deep breathing and meditating before going to
work, those kinds of things,and going in and just ignoring the fact
that people's productivity, performance and healthis largely dictated. A lot of it,
(04:23):
especially when we're talking about the lowerclasses of society, is dictated by
systemic factors, and we can createa much greater impact on performance by fixing
those systemic problems rather than just focusingsolely on the individual. And this gets
ignored pretty much all the time bythe productivity hacking all the people who have
(04:47):
even these very rigorous scientific backgrounds.They ignore the factors that cause people to
perform and have less optimal health thatare not on the individual level. And
also the ways that some of thesetechniques like Huberman will always say that a
(05:08):
bunch of his techniques are zero cost, but if we think about it,
yeah, in a monetary sense,going outside and looking at the sun for
fifteen minutes doesn't really cost you anybodygoing and meditating for ten fifteen minutes a
day, removing sources of stimulation fromyour life and not playing video games,
(05:30):
watching TV. All those kinds ofsupposed advices don't really don't cost you like
literal money, but there are otherways that systemic factors influence them. And
Jess in one of her videos,I'm not sure as that she had they
I'm not sure. I don't wantto miss gender. I apologize if I
did, but makes the point thatit is because we are trying to numb
(05:58):
ourselves from the thing that this societyand capitalism is causing us. And that
is a very important point to makebecause this isn't just individual vice and pleasure
seeking. This is people trying tomake the best of their own situation.
Which that's one of the biggest distinctionsin the fixer punk brand of self help
(06:19):
versus these other brands of self helpis that I genuinely believe that most people
are trying to do the best theycan based on their own individual circumstances,
and that your own knowledge of yourcircumstance and your community's knowledge within whatever group
you're in, especially if you're ina marginalized group, that knowledge has value
that is as valuable as the scientistwho is in a lab and has determined
(06:43):
that all your problems can be tiedback to a single molecule, which is
questionable science in and of itself,and there's some pretty good scientific debunkings of
it. I've read one by alicensed therapist who said that although these things
are extremely oversimplified, and a lotof the concepts behind dopamine detox in particular
(07:04):
are y are very much a myth. Scientifically, some of the things can
help, but in a more positiveway rather than this negative or, as
Jessica put an ascetic way of lookingat things. So when you have these
types of claims going out there,we have to look at the harms.
(07:29):
We have to look at what isbeing left out of them and the ways
that these cause you to judge yourself, and especially with this more philosophical angle
that deals with Christianity, which I'mstill a Christian, I still believe,
but I've had some problems with certainsegments of the church that have a very
(07:50):
judgmental angle to things. And it'svery easy when you see the self help
stuff to judge, to judge yourselfvery very easily, especially when they're telling
you cut out every form of pleasurefrom your life, dopamine detox, no
phone, no internet, no TV, even no music, no interaction with
(08:13):
others. All you do is meditateand journal. You need to cut out
all the food from your life.Some of the dopamine fasting ones wills to
tell you just to even completely noteat for the day so that you reset
your productivity. So it's very easyto judge yourself. But the thing is
that some of these methods I thinkcan be superior, Like some of the
(08:39):
Huberman productivity over my optimizing stuff,the Analemke stuff, the dopamine stuff.
I think that I haven't studied thatenough, and I may need to do
a whole separate episode on Lemky,but I think some of it can be
valuable, like the methods that moreinvolve actually recalibrating your brain's biology a little
bit. Like I don't think humanhasn't covered neurofeedback, but neurofeedback change my
(09:03):
life way more than any conventional therapyor conventional medication ever could. And some
people might classify it under this selfoptimization biohacking realm. So we don't want
to just throw away and this issomething that more progressive and leftist thinkers need
to be cautious of. Is justthrowing away the potential value to help people
(09:26):
with mental health conditions of some ofthese techniques. They can be a breakthrough
for people to improve their lives.But we have to What we have to
do is we have to get systemicideas into conversation with them, because the
model behind these ideas, the modelbetween of having the idea where you are
getting up in the morning, you'regiving yourself, your son exposure, you're
(09:46):
meditating. These are things I'm tryingto do myself. Sometimes it's pretty hard
though, but I do try.And I probably have a bit more privilege
than some other people do having toeat a very very clean, strict regimented,
very low carb diet that is likefree of preservatives and artificial processed food
(10:11):
whatever that means, because like assoon as you like you cut an apple,
that makes it processed. I thinkwell of the nutrition thinkers that even
though he's not I don't think he'sreally a progressive political guy. Doctor Lane
Norton, I think is probably oneof the most inclusive nutrition experts out there,
and he just and he really stressesthe if it fits your macro's approach,
(10:35):
which has been a life changing thingfor me because I grew up through
the era of like the super strictdiets, and the only way I've even
able to remotely get myself into shapeis because I've been able to find like
all kinds of little hacks that allowme to eat food that's convenient, that
works with my like sensory needs andmy likes and dislikes, all the interesting
(10:56):
quirks that I have because of myautism, and still like at least improve
my body composition to an extent.But these like Huberman diets and stuff like
that don't allow you that kind offlexibility. You have to basically just be
eating like mostly vegetables and some meat, like barely any carbs at least that's
at least that's my understanding of it. And then having the time to go
(11:18):
and to do your exercise, doyour zone two cardio, and to precisely
track that you are in zone twowhen you are doing your cardio, which
honestly, I was a distanced runnerfor a while. I kind of get
that stuff. But for some reason, I think, probably just because of
again the positive impacts of body composition, I've switched over to mostly a combination
(11:41):
of strength training and more higher intensitycardio as a finisher because that's a little
more efficient. But again that's there'sa matter of having the time and having
the energy. Somebody who is cominghome from their seven twenty five an hour
job working at some retail or somefast food place isn't going to go and
(12:01):
take prepare themselves a meal that's goingto take forty five minutes to an hour
to prepare. They're not going togo there and spend another hour doing resistance
training than doing their zone two cardioand monitoring all that. Even though these
things technically are not like it's notlike you're paying for a supplement or something
like that, people are not goingto be able to do that. There's
(12:22):
only a limit to how much stuffpeople can tolerate in a day. And
the analem keys of the world wouldhave you believe that pain that people need
more pain in their lives. Andthat is the problem. And I think
that's another topic we have to getback to a little bit more. But
(12:43):
the thing is is that, yeah, some of these loads dopamine morning things
can work, but the standard person'soptimization protocols, like the standard like person
that these optimization protocols are built for, it's a single white young man with
plenty of disposable income, living ontheir own, probably in a city,
(13:05):
no family, no major obligations,and no major health conditions. They're just
trying to get They're just trying toget themselves healthier so that they can move
up from being a junior software developerto being a senior software developer of to
being chief engineer or possibly starting theirown startup and getting more going from seed
(13:26):
around to your a round by optimizingand getting that little bit of performance out
of their brains. That's who thisstuff is built around, and native knowledge
is important. The optimization protocol thatis going to get somebody from being some
software engineer in Silicon Valley, whichis where a lot of this is based
(13:46):
around. Jess rightly brings up thata lot of this comes out of Stanford,
and as a USC trojan, Iam very very proud to dunk on
Stanford whenever necessary, but I don'tknow if I'm going to dunk on them
too hard necessarily. But that's whothis is based upon. The protocol that
(14:09):
is going to get somebody who isworking for seven to twenty five an hour
up to making fifteen dollars an houris going to be a lot different.
It's going to have to be.Their life is a lot different. And
I think that protocol should really beone thing, and that's called a union,
and maybe maybe we add another supplementalhack called an increased minimum wage.
(14:35):
I think those are those that youhave your you have your power combination,
you you have your power finisher moveof strength and optimization for your prosperity right
there in unions and increased wages andlabor laws. But that's just me.
(15:01):
It's going to be different for somebodythat has family obligations. So like there
are people that maybe you're making decentmoney, but you have kids, you're
caring for children you don't maybe youdon't have as good of acts as childcare.
Maybe you're in you're not making onehundred two hundred k here, maybe
you're making forty to sixty thousand.Maybe you're not able to afford as much
(15:22):
as good of like childcare. Youcan afford it for work maybe, but
you can't afford it for say,going and doing all this wellness stuff.
You don't have someone to leave thekids with. You're not going to be
able to completely rid your house ofevery dopamine invested. Sweet food because you're
raising a kid, or you're ina multigenerational household, you're of an ethnic
(15:48):
background that prefers that, and youhave and you're not You're you're not gonna.
It really wouldn't be nice for youto just say no to whatever Awaya
is making, because you have tostay on this extremely regimented diet to optimize
your mental performance where you can onlyeat vegetables and you can't, and you
(16:10):
have, and you're constantly being temptedby Abela, and it's you have to
think about individual circumstances, is whatis what I'm saying here, And I
have to think about the protocol that'sactually gonna give you results, because who
knows. Heck, we could takethe seven twenty five an hour worker and
somehow magically put them on an allvegetable diet, have them do the have
(16:32):
them do their Zone two cardio,have them do their mental performance enhancing stuff
where they're blue blockers at night,no dopamine, no no phone, no
social media, and all they're goingto wind up is being more sad,
more depressed, more unhappy, andstill not moving up in that job.
(16:52):
They're still going to be stuck atlike the cashier level. They're not going
to move up to assistant manager justbecause they did these performance it's optimizing hacks.
And some people just are naturally betteradapted to these types of habits and
to hard work itself. And somepeople have been traumatized by their circumstances physically
(17:15):
and mentally to the point where theycannot reach the same peak as someone who
is more fresh and doesn't have thesetypes of circumstances in their lives, and
that creates confounding variables. People whocan afford in terms of time, money,
and circumstances to do these habits andhave the physical and mental forward to
to be able to do them areprobably more likely to be successful anyways.
(17:37):
Because the person who can perfectly followall of these protocols, who can completely
withdraw withdrawal from society without any negativeconsequences to do a dopamine detox, the
person who has the extra time inthe morning, which even though meditating and
all that that should take me likehalf an hour, it winds up taking
more like an hour because I haveto recover from each step mentally. The
(18:00):
person who has the extra time todo that and doesn't have to rush out
right away, get their kids toschool, use every last second to chase
after a bus to get to theirjob. That person who has that extra
time was probably already more likely tobe successful than the person didn't have the
time to do that. The personwho has enough money to go to Whole
(18:21):
Foods and buy organic food probably morelikely to become financially successful anyway. So
you have confounding variables, so youcan't go and you look at one.
You look at this person who's quoteunquote soft week and whimpy, and we
don't even know all the stuff they'refighting through. We don't know how tough
this person who looks like they're doingall these week whimpy habits of eating all
(18:42):
that junk food all day long.We don't know how tough that person is,
how hard that person's life is.Whether or not the chad software engineer
from Silicon Valley would even be ableto last a day in the shoes of
a underpaid construction worker who is inthe heat and sweating all day and not
(19:03):
given enough water breaks. We don'tknow how tough that person is. But
we're assuming we're ascribing this morality tothem that they're weak wouldn't being lazy for
going and getting fast food after ahard day. And that is that is
morally not right, but it alsoin a practical sense is not right.
And it's if we go and wetake this data when these things are are
(19:27):
are very very rarely studied, Likethere isn't good science on any of these
things. A lot of these thingsare just theoretical. Their protocols that are
maybe based on one study based onsome sort of theory that like came out
of Huberman's lab. Andrew Huberman willhe supposedly has he has a lab at
Stanford, but I'm not quite surehow active it is, but he is
(19:49):
a researcher there on maybe a smallgroup of people. It isn't like there
is some massive meta analysis study.But but we have to look at those
confounding variables if there were to bea study on this. Okay. Is
it that the low dopamine morning work? Is it that the optimization protocol worked?
(20:11):
Is that getting this one percent edgein terms of your mental performance is
what made the person rich? Isit that the stricter diet made the person
smarter and more able to succeed?Or is it that the people who are
able to adhere to that, we'realready going to succeed anyway. So you
look at Okay, you have thegroup of the people who fell away,
(20:32):
who cheated on the diet, whodidn't do their son exposure, who didn't
do their meditating, those people unsuccessful. Let's just say we got a study
that had this conclusion. I don'tthink one exists, but I haven't really
checked. I haven't spent any timeon Google scholar digging for this stuff.
But if such a study did exist, you would want to critically analyze it.
Okay, those people that didn't doit probably had all kinds of other
(20:56):
circumstances in their lives would make itharder for them to succeed anyways. The
people who did do it probably arethe ones who had more comfortable lives,
And we're more likely to be evenin the room and be considered for that
promotion to chief engineer or to assistantmanager or VP or whatever. Again,
(21:19):
this stuff does. Some of thesethings are good ideas even if you're in
a bad situation. This is thething. I don't want people to give
up on improving themselves just because theseideas come with a lot of toxic baggage
on them, and I'm going toget into some of that really toxic baggage
really soon. But I don't wantyou to give up on things necessarily.
(21:41):
You shouldn't give up on becoming yourbest self. And that's kind of a
lot of the point of this podcastis we're bridging the divide between personal and
social change. We're putting some ofthese ideas which are new and innovative ideas
of mental health, which I reallyhope someday that once people have that bare
minimum of what they need in life, if we can use that to help
people improve their lives so that youcan try these protocols see if they work
(22:04):
for you. Maybe they'll work foryou, maybe something else will work for
you. But we've got to giveyou that freedom and that ability, that
economic stability, that personal stability,that social stability that allows you the chance
to try and experiment and see whathelps you and not just do exactly what
the system tells you to do.Because I'm not saying we'll just give up
(22:25):
on it and just take antidepressence andjust do the standard stuff. Only maybe
these protocols could work for you.And there is some evidence, like on
a positive regard. I was readingan article again by a licensed therapist who
said that CB some of the lowdopamine stuff, low dopamine mourning stuff is
(22:48):
part of like habit building techniques inCBT, which is an evidence based form
of psychotherapy, which has its ownproblems. In my opinion, I think
CBT is a little overused. Butif you've gotten to therapy, you've almost
certainly gotten CBT. But there issome evidence too. She says, replace
harmful habits, harmful compulsions with healthyhabits, and it's to replace something that
(23:12):
isn't working and finding something that does, but not to restrict pleasurable activities,
which is what a lot of thefocus of some of these dopamine fasting things
are. I wouldn't say necessarily Huberman'smain focus is restricting pleasurable activities. I
think he covers a lot of differentsubjects, but he does bring on this
(23:34):
analem Kei who is apparently is orwas the head of the addiction clinic at
Stanford and Jess this commentator with asubstack with that sluggish dot substack dot com
page. What she does is shedoes say that this is a lot of
(23:57):
it is based on a Protestant workethic, and she even ties it back
to eugenics and some very problematic thingsin the history of Stanford University, the
fact that it was founded by aguy who was trying to escape workers who
are going after him, who wasinto eugenics around race horses. And she
(24:22):
also says that a lot of thisis based on sort of a religious asceticism,
that that people are seeking salvation throughbecoming entrepreneurs, and they believe that
by removing all these vices from theirlives that it'll make them closer to the
godly goal of being an entrepreneur,being able to break out of capitalism.
Which I think that's a very powerfulway to think about it, but I
(24:45):
don't think that's the entire thing.I think there is. Again, there's
some truth and some good ideas inthese habits potentially, but there are also
some ways you can really judge yourselffrom this. The Analemke seeks to really
make it a lot of stuff that'sabout like morality, Like she's gone and
talked to Christian pastors. She's calledfor stricter churches. Even her book Dopamine
(25:12):
Nation ties some of the whole dopamineaddiction. This idea that we were addicted
to our smartphones, were addicted toentertainment, we're addicted to sugar, we're
addicted to food, which has somewhatquestionable scientific backing to it period, but
she ties a lot of things backto, like moral panics around sex,
(25:37):
and especially with the way that itgets tied back to Protestant religion and Calvinism,
very morally rigid, Calvinistic Christian thought. Is a little bit triggering for
me because I did have my ownexperience with churches that were basically very very
strict. They were they didn't seemthat way on their face. These were
(26:03):
churches that were marketing themselves around theskateboarding community, the surfing community, punk
rock, things like that, butthey were very morally strict and constantly telling
you to look around your life forsecret sins, for anything that you put
before God that you need to getrid of, You need to sacrifice this
at the altar. And that wasa very negative influence in my life,
(26:25):
constantly judging myself and morally really puttingmyself in a position where I constantly felt
like I was the bad guy.And if you're familiar, if you've been
listening to the podcast for a while, I did mention how a quote from
pro wrestler hangman Adam Page kind ofbroke me out of that line of thought
(26:45):
of And it was from his monologueepisode on being the Elite, which I
think is a really good way todeprogram a lot of these kinds of ideas.
He said something to the effect of, I hope. I don't know.
Maybe I'm not remembering the quote exactly, but he's said, I said,
Am I the bad guy? AmI the bad guy in my own
drunken monologue in the woods? Oris that just the way the world has
(27:07):
conditioned me to think, when inreality I had no choice in the matter.
And I think that if you've beenjudging yourself a lot, whether it's
because you're listening to self help peoplesay and you're like, I can't get
off this dopamine. I can't getoff of all these dopamine things, like
my phone, like the food,like like all these things that give me
pleasure in life I'm addicted to andI can't get myself to just be productive
(27:30):
and only do productive things and onlydo low dopamine things. Maybe you'll help
you to rid yourself without judgment alittle bit, but does also kind of
leave open what the next step is. I think I'm probably because I pretty
much just learned about this angle tothese performance and productivity optimizing things as being
(27:55):
part of a more religious set ofideas maybe a few days ago. So
I may need to investigate that alittle bit more and come back with another
episode. But I do have tosay that we have to be very careful,
we have to be very vigilant aswe're looking into these ideas, which
they are very positive ideas, wehave to understand that these are many like
(28:18):
these Huberman. Huberman has a lotof positive things to him. I think
that a lot of this is verygood scientific developments. But just like any
other type of scientific development medicine,whether it's a new medication, new surgery,
the access and the implementation are goingto be far different for people in
marginalized backgrounds than they are going tobe for people in a normal background.
I always like to refer back todoctor America brachos ted talk, which is
(28:42):
about Latino health access and her effortsto help Latinos improve their health, specifically
around diabetes and things of that nature, and she spoke about how doctors would
always call these people non compliant patientsbecause they wouldn't go out and walk around
the block, and they wouldn't cookhealthy food and all that. But it's
(29:04):
really because these people were These werereally good people. These were people that
are really trying their absolute best,but they just couldn't. Their neighborhood wasn't
safe, so they didn't feel safegoing out and walking or running around the
block at night when there's a lotof crime in the neighborhood. There wasn't
a public park where the kids couldplay. So we have we take these
(29:26):
ideas, we look at them,we see if they work, we see
if they're actually evidence based, evenin the ideal situation, if they're if
they're functional, if they help people, and then we find ways to adapt
them ways that may not be perfect, but find ways to use them in
the lives of people who who needthe help without being judgmental toward them.
(29:47):
And that's one of the things aboutLemky is Lemky is pretty from the way
the way I read in the Jessarticle, Lemky seemed like a pretty judgmental
person. She was involved in alot of drug war related stuff, promoting
a lot of information about about drugaddiction and opioid addiction that turned out to
(30:10):
be false and judgmental towards chronic painpatients. She has a narrative around saying
that society, the reason why peopleare so unhappy is because they avoid pain.
They don't do enough painful things thatwe're constantly trying to avoid pain,
and of course tying that back topeople in pain are malingering. And the
(30:30):
disability benefits, she's extremely judgmental todisabled people and and wants and even has
thought about certain types of disability benefitsis like a moral harm, which that
in and of itself is ridiculous becausedisability benefits barely pay any money. Nobody
would go on them my choice.And I do think that there is a
(30:59):
value to you going through a levelof pain, but it has to be
for a purpose, and I thinkthis is where people get lost. Jez
brings up that a lot of thesequote unquote dopamine habits are not addictions that
people are doing to constantly just pleasurethemselves and increase their level of pleasure.
They are a response to being ableto basically dissociate from societies, from the
(31:26):
problems in society and from the lackof economic opportunity. Jez brings up an
example about the lottery and citing astudy that says that gambling represents one of
the few actions that they can taketo address lack of opportunities and freedoms that
they experience. They are referring topeople in lower socioeconomic statuses. And that's
(31:48):
the thing is that I do believethat to an extent, tolerating pain and
toughness and grit and all that stuffhas value. But it has value when
pursuing something and when you feel supportedin doing so. I think that once
you have something worth fighting for,then you will fight for it. And
(32:09):
it's even better if you have peopleencouraging you on that journey. But pain
alone, just giving people more painin their life causes despair, and especially
when you're causing people to fight againstan opponent that they will never win against,
and you are giving people false hopeabout saying that if they just reduce
(32:31):
all the dopamine from their lives,all their problems are going to get better,
when in fact, what you reallyneed to do is you need to
be using that energy to make systemicchange. Because you have all these ideas
and all these things of how you'resupposed to deprive yourself, but never the
people that are sitting in lush luxurywho could easily make your life better without
(32:52):
depriving themselves of really any pleasure atall, They're not being criticized by this
model, and that's a problem,and we have to we really have to
bring things together for both, forboth of these ideas. So I do
(33:13):
believe in I've done I've even donearticles on this stuff about about using pain
in a positive way. But peoplelose their ability to do hard things after
doing too many hard things. Soat some point you need to give people
that comfort. You need to givepeople that assurance, You need to give
people that security that they know thatsomething positive is going to come out of
(33:37):
this, because if all you seeis negative, all you see is pain
around you, that's not going tohelp you. In fact, in many
cases, positive pleasurable things are whatmotivates people to be able to do harder
things, especially in someone like myselfwho as ADHD that's definitely the case.
(33:59):
But if you just deprive people entirely, that's not going to help them in
any way, shape or form.And these types of things, these higher
dopamine activities are what's keeping people apartand keeping people together, or keeping people
together and keeping them from falling apartmentally going through a very hard situation.
Should it be this way? No, we need to alleviate the root causes
(34:21):
of this suffering and get people toa point where they feel like they have
something that is worth the pain,that is worth the suffering, that is
worth the trouble in their lives.But more importantly, get people to a
level of security, a bare minimumlevel of security, where they feel like
(34:42):
things can be better. Disability payis not a moral hazard. I just
don't get that line of thinking.Social safety nets aren't some sort of moral
hazard that keeps people from working.In fact, they keep people working.
The fact that we continue to havethese programs is largely be because they subsidize
the wages for large corporations who don'tpay people enough. I think Walmart employees
(35:07):
are like the largest recipients of foodstamps, So that is we have to
I'm going to probably have to getinto the more political end of this and
some of the stuff Lemkey is doingin a separate episode, and especially this
call back into the religious space andhow this is tied to religious asceticism.
(35:27):
Do I think that this is allbased on religious asceticism and eugenics? No?
Do I think that there are someinfluences They are very problematic in these
things, and a lot of influencesin a lot of ways that these things
can just make people feel horrible.Yes, because once you have an idea
that tells you that you are wrong, and you have to deny yourself and
(35:52):
deny that identity and that uniqueness withinyourself and your knowledge of your situation in
service of some stricter idea, thestricter churches, stricter social organizations, and
the way Lemkey even puts it aslike we need to structure society in that
way, so it's stricter on peoplewho are freeloading and mooching off of society.
Which I agree that we should bestricter on people who are freeloading and
(36:15):
mooching off society. But I'm nottalking about the people on welfare. I'm
not talking about the people who arecollecting disability, and I'm not talking about
the people who are getting any sortof public benefits. I'm talking about the
people who are changing the tax codeto benefit themselves and keep money that they're
not entitled to and paying less intaxes than their kids' school teachers, or
(36:35):
paying less in taxes than their secretaries. Those are the kinds of moochers and
freeloaders that we need to go after. But of course that's not what they're
talking about here. When we havea set of ideas that basically just blames
people and judges them and represses whoyou are, then that really isn't something
(37:00):
that leaves you wanting to go throughthat pain. And I love talking about
wrestling storylines in this way, andespecially the Adam Page storyline from AW But
he was being judged a lot,and he didn't feel like he was being
accepted, and that caused him togo into addiction, caused him to feel
(37:22):
to feel sad and to not wantto perform at his best. But when
he felt accepted and when he feltlike he had what he needed and he
had good people around him and hewas able to be himself and find what
worked for him, he was ableto become a champion. And yes,
(37:43):
I know it's a wrestling storyline,but I think it's a good way of
thinking about things. Is once youhave that fundamental sense of security in your
life, once you have people thatcare about you, once you have an
environment that allows you to perform well, and not all this judgmental stuff just
judge, mental judgment, pain,pain judgment. That's not going to turn
you into a productive superhero, superhuman, performance, optimized. Everything's all it's
(38:12):
going to do is just send youinto despair. The way that you become
a winner, the way that youbecome better in life, is when you
have the support you need, andthat's when you want to take on the
pain. When you feel like whenyou see that there is actually a light
against the tunnel, that makes youmore likely to go and pursue that.
It makes you more likely to actuallytake the time and spend the energy,
(38:34):
go through all the pain, allof the discipline, all the hard work,
when you see that it is goingto be worthwhile and that's not going
to be futile. So we haveto make a world where going through that
pain is not futility. And thenyou'll see people perhaps going into less dopamine
inducing habits, but maybe people chooseto engage in more dopamine inducing habits because
(38:58):
they help you get through that dayafter the hard fought match, you really
look forward to that nice Wendy's burger, and you can feel like you've earned
it, and you can feel goodabout yourself. You know that you're getting
it, you're going in that directionthat you want to go to. But
you're also having the fun and you'rehaving a life that you want to live,
(39:22):
and you can see glimpses of thatand and you can feel good about
it to some extent. It's notjust all misery. If we have all
this misery around us and that isall we see, then of course everybody
is going to be sad if weare just increasingly putting higher and higher standards,
which just brings this up with theSilicon Valley folks who they talk about
(39:45):
depression and people in Silicon Valley asbeing because they have everything and they've fried
out their dopamine receptors. No,it's because they're being asked to go higher
and higher and higher and never beingable to give that chance to be content
or accepted in life. Of course, that's make somebody depressed. We don't
need some overly complex, probably falseneuroscientific explanation for those things, and for
(40:09):
those of us while rey understand theseprogressive ideas. Don't dismiss the idea of
performance optimization, improving your own personalhealth fitness habits. Just don't judge yourself
too much when you can't do something, because these protocols aren't built for you
if you're in a marginalized population.But they can help. And activism itself.
(40:30):
Fighting for a union, advocating forworkers rights, advocating for legislative change,
social change, doing mutual aid work. These are all things that require
productivity and performance. To be ableto work a job and then go and
help your mutual aid group, goand serve the homeless, to go and
advocate legislatively, to deal with difficultsituations where you have to collectively present demands
(40:55):
to a boss, or to goon strike, or to deal with a
legislator who's not going to be veryfriendly to you. These are all things
that are stress inducing activities. Theseare things that require high performance mental performance.
Activism and advocacy is a high performanceactivity. It's a high stress activity.
(41:16):
And there are some ideas that wecan take to instead of just maybe
just letting ourselves go to be betterat doing those kinds of things. And
if the other side, if everybodywho is fighting for and advocating for the
ideas that are going to hurt us. Are following all these performance optimizing ideas
(41:36):
and they're able to go out thereand really show their best and we're not
at our best, then that's onlygoing to negatively impact the left and progressive
and pro labor causes. So maybeyou find the habits and the techniques and
the methods, whether that's improving yoursleep, your diet, your exercise,
all those things, those are positivethings. They also make you a good
(41:58):
example for people who want to become better in their lives. And knowing
that progressive ideas, which is thisis the thing I talk about. Progressive
ideas are not akin to accepting failureand just becoming weak and soft and lazy.
And we shouldn't just chricaturize performance optimizingideas as being something that's bad in
and of themselves. It is themoral judgment that comes with them and the
(42:19):
unscientific nonsense that is the bad part. But becoming a better version of yourself
can help you to be a betteractivist and to better seek social change.
There's a lot more to cover.There's a lot more to this topic than
I can get to in a singleepisode ever, no matter how optimized I
try to make this episode or not, so please subscribe and please join me
(42:42):
for the next episode. Follow alongon the social media at fixer Punk on
Instagram, TikTok on Twitter, orx or whatever it's called at Grace and
Nation g EISN N A t IO N. If you have any stories
of things that you're dealing with inyour life, many stories of performance optimization
gone right gone wrong, any strugglesyou have with activism, with union organizing,
(43:06):
if you're on strike. If youhave any comments on this episode at
all, or on any issue ofsocial importance that you want me to cover
or discuss, something you're going through, some form of oppression you're going through
that you think needs to get outthere and needs to be discussed, Please
call in eight four four four sevenseven seven eight six five eight four four
(43:28):
four seven seven punk. Leave amessage twenty four seven, day or night.
Just leave a message. I willlisten to it. Thank you so
much for taking the time to listentoday, and I hope you'll join me
again for the next episode. Thispodcast is not professional advice of any sort.
This content is for entertainment and generalinformational purposes only. You not warrant
(43:49):
or guarantee the accuracy of the informationhere in. The listeners should not rely
solely upon such, and consult acompetent professional before signed to follow any course
of action. If any medical ormental health concerns or suspected, please promptly
contact a qualified physician,
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