Chapter 2: Deficiency Needs and DIM

November 1, 2017

Abraham Maslow’s Deficiency Needs.

“Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.” – Scott Adams

Dr. Maslow wasn’t the first to notice and identify survival instincts, biases, cravings, dispositions, or predilections. His gift to humankind was grouping, what he called, lower and higher needs into a hierarchy that turned into a popular meme, long before memes became popular. The lower four he called deficiency needs, or D-needs for short. Level-1 D-needs are physiological, such as eating, sleeping, eliminating, and sex. The next three are psychological needs and include cravings for safety (the need to feel secure), peer approval (to be accepted/appreciated), and esteem (to feel significant).

The higher-level needs — associated with self-actualization — he called being needs, or B-needs. Maslow believed very few graduate to B-needs.

Our D-needs correlate with survival behaviors inherited from primitives who inherited them from less evolved progenitors. The system determining our choices is fueled by powerful neurotransmitters that encourage survival-friendly and discourage survival-threatening behaviors. When the system works, dopamine functions as a life-sustaining, evolutionary-fostering wonder. When the system malfunctions, dopamine turns into a life-threatening addictive drug responsible for dopamine dysfunction.

I refer to the most pervasive form of dopamine dysfunction as Dopamine-Induced Madness (DIM), a form of insanity so powerful it turns potentially aware humans into unconscious DIMwits who prefer the dopamine-appealing conceit that our species’ problems are too complicated to explain over compelling dopamine-repellent evidence that a brain chemical is capable of keeping geniuses from grasping how all human-related problems and disasters can be explained by DIM.

Why neurocentrism is a major breakthrough

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”  – Arthur Schopenhauer

Heliocentrism only challenged a benign misconception and righted an upside down wrong. Neurocentrism challenges multiple misconceptions and turns backward belief systems outside in by exposing how everything we think we’re doing out there (from shooting heroin into veins to vain attempts to achieve fame and fortune) is actually about scoring the same neurotransmitter inside our primitive brains.

In other words, the difference between junkies and the corrupt and corrupting movers and shakers destroying environments, economies, and lives is that the former crave opioids while the later are slaves to the money, status, power, and lies triggering the same dopamine.

In a nutshell

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to ourselves — that we’ve been so credulous.”
– Carl Sagan

We’re all nuts because we inherited primitive programming from an unbroken chain of driven, duplicitous, dopamine obsessed DIMwits, who were oblivious to genetic coding that drove them to pass faulty DNA into future generations. To complicate matters, we’re born and indoctrinated into societies where dopamine-triggering cravings for acceptance and dopamine-threatening fears of rejection keep DIMwits rejecting any evidence of the bamboozle. And then there’s the human heisenbug fix that makes dopamine-repellent thoughts too neurologically painful to think.

Granted, DIM, DIMwits, and heisenbug fix might sound like hokum, pseudo science, or bad fiction. But so did most ground-breaking discoveries, including heliocentrism. That’s because DIMwits instinctively dismiss dopamine-repellent ideas, concepts, information, and individuals.

Guts not brains

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.” – Aristotle

It’s OK to be a DIMwit. It’s not our fault. We inherited defective DNA from ancestors who benefited from primitive programming that stacked the deck in favor of easily frightened, unconscious, insecure, approval-craving, status-seeking, colluding, co-dependent, unethical, immoral, unquestioning gangs of killers and against independent, insightful, aware, conscious, questioning individuals handicapped by honesty, integrity, morality, ethics, compassion, and disdain for killing.

One result is the glut of craven, self-deceptive, like-mindless DIMwits responsible for all man-made problems and dearth of independent thinkers capable of dealing with the challenges.

Your grasp of neurocentrism will depend on how courageous you are which, in turn, will determine whether you understand how the human heisenbug fix can and will prevent you from computing what you’re reading.

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