Not Going Along

I first worshipped "not-going-along" after I left the monastery and read Heidegger. Today, I didn't turn on NPR in my car at the top of the hour to catch news/weather/traffic for 10 minutes on my way to work. I don't want to hear about any conventions or hear speeches from the people who routinely steal my money and give it to themselves. I'm not going along with America on the election journey.

I seem depressed more frequently than many people because I also restrict my participation in the massive dopamine reward cycle which we call society. Almost everything that causes good feelings is due to a dopamine reward. To be neutral is not good enough for most of us. We continually seek thrills. I look at the reward campaigns at work and see it. I look at how I feel about various relationships I have at work each day. I can clearly see physical chemical changes in my body during dopamine experiences. I think dopamine is why humans are alive at all; and perhaps we owe our very existence to this addiction. Inner peace does not produce thrills. We can't stand it.

Not-going-along produces the opposite of the dopamine reward. Not only does my brain react with fear, but other people behave in ways which cause my brain to produce guilt. Like, admitting you don't vote causes most people to lecture me about the freedom of our nation and all the people who died for me.

I had a good day at work yesterday. It started off with a dopamine reward experice from my boss. And, I was able to find errors in my colleagues work. My brain loved that. And, I got this big strong man to fix something on my golf cart. It occurs to me that I sometimes go to online communities just to get people to positively respond to me so I can get the dopamine without having the actual person around.

Being Somebody. Having a Life. Dopamine.

Solitude. Anonymity. Nothing.