Everywhere, Big Dopamine, addictive experiences have restructured our neurolandscapes. We need to take our brains back, and we have, at least we have if we are consciously ritualing for Little Dopamine.
When we return from a ritual to a routine, we are changed by the qualia we have noticed. What really happened, in our ritualing, to change us? We have begun to rewire our brain, that’s what has happened. Conscious ritualing strengthens the synaptic connections – the synaptic sensitivity – for Little Dopamine. Big Dopamine, of course, floods the synapses and makes us less sensitive to anything but.
Qualia, in the natural environment – in ecosystems – is a Little Dopamine phenomenon, and the mental experience of noticing it combined with physical experience of acknowledging it, is what makes new neurons fire and wire together.
This firing and wiring – brain plasticity – is how we got into this mess in the first place, getting rewired as addicts. Yes, we can blame an economic system that is founded on addiction (a system that has us consuming more and more of everything, new and ever improved year after fiscal year, from smart phones to fentanyl), but it really starts with you and me.
We have knowledge, we make choices. We know better, but we have lost the meaning of ritual; when we set aside the time to ritual, we don’t do it consciously. We are like Skinner’s superstitious pigeons, going through the same motions over and over again, mistakenly thinking they caused us to get the reward. But alas, we are programmed to consume products, as surely as the pigeon is programmed by its genes to superstitiously go through its motions.
BUT – we have the power to reflect – we are thoughtful creatures who can ritual consciously, with purpose, to find more fulfillment in our lives.
It is not so much the chemicals in our brains, but the pathways they use, that makes all the difference. The chemicals are material, but the pathways – the patterned webs of connections – are qualiadelic, because they reveal the meaning and the patterns that help us to endure and to climb higher up Maslow’s hierarchy. The pigeons’ superstitious patterns do not help it endure – its pathways are not meaningful, not conscious.
Ah, the pathways. Well, it is our choices, our decisions, our minds that use ’em or lose ’em. We lost the Little Dopamine pathways because we stopped using them. We let them be overrun by Big Dopamine pathways. Consciously ritual and bring them back to life. It is the fundamental step in getting back to harmony with ecosystems.