Dopamine Zombies: How to Spot Them, How to Deal With Them

by Charles Lyell on February 20, 2013

“What makes you think that human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told – and become upset if they are exposed to any different view.”
– Michael Crichton

As per Wikipedia.org, “The term [zombie] is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli.”

Wikipedia’s definition describes most Homo sapiens, starting with our primitive ancestors who had more in common with apes than human beings. Countless generations later, all man-made problems can be traced to creatures who grew increasingly addicted to the dopamine-induced survival behaviors we share with chimpanzees. Abraham Maslow called these survival behaviors deficiency needs for food, sex, safety (power), acceptance (approval, attention), and esteem (status).

Our more recent ancestors indulged inherited hungers by flooding the dopaminergic system with gratuitous dopamine triggered by drugs, gambling, belief systems, and money. The drive to satisfy insatiable cravings turned our progenitors into dopamine zombies (dombies) who spent their waking hours maintaining dopamine flow. Unconscious, unaware, and inhumane, the dombies plundered, massacred, propagated, and sidetracked human evolution.

Real-life dombies behave like fictional zombies because dopamine usurps free will. Sans free will, seemingly intelligent dombies think they‘re thinking when they’re actually reducing all choices down to “dopamine good, no dopamine bad.” “Dopamine good, no dopamine bad” might sound simplistic but those five words explain why the information on this site isn’t common knowledge.

Cursed with defective dopaminergic systems, dombies crave the dopamine triggered by illogical deceptions that inflate esteem and loathe the dopamine disruption caused by logical observations that threaten esteem. And nothing threatens esteem (and dopamine flow) more than information linking dopamine and addictions to safety, power, acceptance, approval, attention, esteem, status, money, and deceptive beliefs.

Zombie and Dombie Similarities

“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”  – Gore Vidal

  • Irrational, mindless, brutish destroyers, plunderers, and killers.
  • Calloused indifference to the havoc wreaked.
  • Incapable of assuming responsibility for mistakes, deceptions, and failures.
  • Barbaric flesh eaters.
  • Attack threats to inhumane behavior.
  • Lack the free will required to comprehend how dopamine usurps free will.
  • Unable to grasp how lying, cheating, stealing, collusion, wars, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, hatred, killing, destruction, and drug, sex, food, gambling, and other addictions are symptoms of a widespread brain disorder undermining human evolution since the dawn of humankind.

Zombie and Dombie Differences

Zombies

“A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.”   – George A. Romero

  • Easy to spot because they walk, talk, look, and behave inhumanely.
  • Poor conversationalists.
  • Driven by insatiable cravings for human brains.
  • Never dress up as normal humans.
  • Indifferent to being called inhumane or zombies.
  • N threat to species’ survival.
  • Fictional.

Dombies

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.  – George Gurdjieff

  • Difficult to spot. Look like humans and many inhumane behaviors, customs, and traditions are considered logical, acceptable, and even admirable.
  • Driven by insatiable cravings for neurotransmitters manufactured in primitive brains.
  • Rely on rational brains to rationalize dopamine-induced irrational choices, decisions, and deceptions.
  • Lie, cheat, steal, and kill to protect and trigger dopamine flow.
  • Obsess over dressing up as zombies.
  • Become upset, defensive, and dismissive when called inhumane or zombies.
  • Major threat to our species’ survival.
  • Seized control of our species’ fate eons ago.
  • Dangerous and frighteningly real.

How to Deal With and Influence Dombies:

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity.” – Dale Carnegie

Dealing with dombies starts with raising dopamine awareness to a point where it’s possible to understand the significance of a single observable fact — dombies reduce all decisions and beliefs down to maintaining dopamine flow.

That observation is as easy (for rational beings) to grasp, and impossible (for dombies) to ponder, as heliocentrism was for Galileo (who was willing to take an honest look) and his contemporaries (who protected their dopamine flow by refusing to look through the astronomer’s telescope). Galileo’s opponents weren’t rational beings concerned with truth, religion, facts, God, scriptures, or science. They were safety, power, and esteem addicts who demeaned, dismissed, and condemned a pioneer because that’s how past and present dombies react when their dopamine flow is threatened.

It doesn’t matter if dombies use nicotine, alcohol, heroin, gambling, money, food, sex, safety, approval, status, money, and/or beliefs to trigger dopamine. If and when they fear, rightly or wrongly, that anyone is, or might be, threatening their dopamine flow, even the nicest, friendliest, most charming, and seemingly rational dombies transform into bristling, irrational, dangerous creatures. Logic and facts never work with dombies because logic and facts threaten safety, esteem, and dopamine flow.

You can’t beat dombies and you don’t have to join them. But you can influence them. The key is to avoid threatening their dopamine flow with inconvenient truths, facts, and observations. Instead, provide their favorite dopamine-triggering foods, sex, safety, acceptance, status, games, money, deceptions, and/or drugs.

Do it correctly and you’ll have dombies eating out of your hand instead of biting your head off.

Discussion

One Response to “Dopamine Zombies: How to Spot Them, How to Deal With Them”

  1. Guess I am a Dombie but self-aware enough to control it – though this not always the case in the past.
    If you want to do a guest post on pocketinfo please contact via the site.

    Posted by Robert | February 21, 2013, 5:11 pm

Barnes and Noble Amazon