Hospicing Modernity - reading notes
APA: Machado de Oliveira, Vanessa. (2021). Hospicing modernity : facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. North Atlantic Books.
Link: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL25457087W/Hospicing_Modernity
pages 115-117:
... What kinds of neuropathways are created by the material, intellectual, affective, and relational economies of modernity?
... a tentative and oversimplified metaphorical speculation ... exploratory framework of the neurobiology of modernity ....
... Separability creates a sense of separation between humans and nature ...
... at a basic level modernity reorients the production, release, and absorption of seratonin ... causes us to feel separated ....
...
... the most basic chemical cocktail that modernity offers as a way of filling the gap [left by serotonin lack] consists of dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, and adrenaline.
page 117-118:
... If dopamine is mobilized for social change, the message is one of conquest, occupation, or defeating your opponent. ... the motivation to produce knowledge and engage in politics within modernity is ... driven by dopamine.
Oxytocin is a necessary chemical that ... makes us focus on exclusive relationships. ... If oxytocin is mobilized for social change, the message is one of paternalistic charity.
...
Endorphins are chemicals similar to opioids, produced in the body to relieve stress and pain. Endorphins are the neurochemicals we seek when we want to numb ourselves to physical or emotional pain .... If critique or moral economies start to be largely driven by a dependence of endorphins, the social fabric that modernity relies on is irreversibly torn.
Adrenaline is a neuro-chemical normally associated with responses to fear, panic, and threat ...[and] it can be intentionally triggered as a source of heightened energy, excitement, strength, and alertness. ... My intuition is that when adrenaline is mobilized in social change it is associated with different forms and orientations of disobedience, moving people on different sides of an issue to seek confrontations to interrupt existential boredom and social numbing. Adrenaline works as modernity's pressure valve ... so that business can go on as usual.
page 119-120:
If, at a fundamental level, we have become addicted to the neurochemical cocktails authorized by modernity's economies, we are collectively experiencing a cultural dis-ease. Symptoms manifest as an obsessive compulsion to consume feelings ....
... the cocktail metaphor ... invites us to think about our current predicament not only in abstract, intellectual ways that can be addressed with "right" thinking or policies, but in physiological and metabolic terms that require a ... more complex approach taking account of intellectual, embodied, and social/system landscapes.
// summary of the proposed connections /
// dopamine: rewards getting things done; lookin' good; feeling better than others /
// oxytocin: rewards exclusive relationships; paternalistic charity /
// endorphins: numb ourselves to emotional pain; tears social fabric /
// adrenaline: modernity's pressure valve; supports the status quo /