Transcript of a Lecture Given by Dr Mousab Azzawi at Academy House
Edited by Academy House Team
From an evolutionary perspective, the reward and motivational system in the mesolimbic part of the brain is responsible for preserving the organism and increasing its fitness, which means maximizing the probability of its survival and reproduction.
Recent scientific research has unmasked the anatomy and physiology of this system within the brain, which can be divided into two main neural networks.
The first network is mainly dominated by the neurotransmitter dopamine and occupies more than 90% of the mesolimbic system. This dopaminergic part of the mesolimbic system is responsible for wanting or seeking the reward, regardless of the amount of liking or pleasure that the reward brings.
The other 10% of the mesolimbic system is reserved for a smaller and fragile neural network that is not dependent on dopamine but on other neurotransmitters, mainly the endocannabinoid neurotransmitters. These are the brain's naturally and internally secreted heroin-like and marijuana-like neurotransmitters that amplify the liking, enjoyability, and pleasure that the reward triggers in the brain.
In other words, the reward system in the brain is divided unevenly between two forces. 90% of its neural capabilities are reserved for wanting, seeking, and searching for the reward, regardless of its pleasurability and likability. The other 10% of the mesolimbic neural power is reserved for feeling the pleasure and joy of obtaining the reward.
When the human being reaches adulthood, the dopaminergic wanting part of the reward system is in the driving seat. It pushes the individual to pursue new opportunities and seek new avenues that may enable him (or her of course) to gather more resources to maximize his fitness in terms of survival and reproduction. Such resources can include wealth, power, status, and the like.
As humans progress from early adulthood to late adulthood and old age, there is a gradual decline in the dopaminergic wanting force within the mesolimbic system. This decline allows more space for the minuscule network of liking to show more neural and physiological effects.
In evolutionary terms, as people get older, they tend to avoid risks and adventures because of the limitations they face in their power, energy, and mental capability. It becomes essential at this stage of life to settle down and stick to the familiar without too much risk-taking and focus on the most important job for the organism, which is to maximize its evolutionary fitness from a different perspective by protecting the individual's progeny without taking too many risks that could jeopardize this protection umbrella and the likelihood of this individual genes being passed on to the next generation.
However, some people may become stuck in this evolutionary cycle due to genetic, developmental, or sociological reasons, falling into a trap called behavioural addiction. Humans are predisposed at different levels to falling into the traps of addiction due to their genetic makeup and the interaction of their genes with the external environmental factors.
Scientific research shows that wealth and power are addictive, and the cues associated with them can trigger addiction. The addiction to power and wealth is not very different from the behavioural addiction to gambling, as the rewards are intermittent, unpredictable, and random, making them efficient in triggering addiction, especially in predisposed individuals.
In such cases, the mesolimbic system remains stuck in the dopaminergic dominant phase, which should have transformed from being in overdrive during early adulthood to being tamed in middle adulthood and then decline by late adulthood to allow more space for settling down to live within the familiar space without too many unexpected surprises and to enjoy accumulated resources in the earlier stages of life.
Even as individuals age, if they are stuck in the dopaminergic phase, they cannot break the dopamine wanting overdrive and will continue to behave like adolescents who are always motivated to accumulate more resources, in a similar manner to other types of addiction. It is important to note that individuals trapped in the supercharged dopaminergic phase of brain maturation become addicted to accumulating more wealth and power like any other behavioural addicts to pornography, social media, internet, or gambling. They are not after what wealth and power can bring, but rather, wealth and power become needs in themselves that the wanting and seeking systems in their brains are focused on, regardless of the consequences or results of this unhealthy process of wanting. This is very similar to how an addictive gambler seeks the addictive experiences, regardless of its impact on the pleasure or any other feeling he may have later, as the dopaminergic system is solely focused on diverting all its attentional powers towards reaping the reward of the dopamine surge in the reward system in the brain upon winning, regardless the highly probable ruinous consequences of this engagement which is fully understood by the gambler but cannot tame the raving wanting urges of addiction. This typical scenario of behavioural addiction is truly dangerous within the realm of addiction to wealth and power as this kind of addiction affects the lives of many other people by the sheer magnitude of wealth and power societal effects radiating from the wealthy and powerful individual to a very large circle around him.
Imagine what happens with the ultra-rich and powerful individuals who behave sometimes like youngsters and keep accumulating wealth beyond their capacity to consume it or enjoy the fruits of this wealth; in addition to showing a pressing interest to have a forever youth and keep chasing power without any plan to retire. These people behave as if they will live forever, without realizing that they are getting old and it is time to take a break, slow down, and prepare the grounds for the next generation to take over. I don't need to give you names for examples of these people. I believe that the innumerable list of names of such people is easy to envisage given their popularity and dominance at the political scenes, as well as the economic and business stages worldwide.
After understanding the problem of protracted brain maturation and fixation on the supercharged dopaminergic phase without being able to transition to the next stage of less dopamine and more endocannabinoid neurotransmitters, which means a slowdown of the wanting urges and ascendance of liking and cherishing what the individual really has in his possession, along with preparing the grounds for the next generation to take over, a pressing question present itself naturally: what can be done to overcome this ubiquitous and pervasive problem in our lives and societies i.e. addiction to power and wealth?
As usual, there are no simple solutions, and these solutions should be formulated through the collective effort in each individual society and most probably by humanity as a whole because the consequences of addiction to wealth and power are universal problems and there is no single living organism on planet earth is not affected by its severe and ubiquitous consequences which will increase in their magnitude if left to its current destructive course.
However, one solution that may come to mind is that wealth should be controlled and regulated by the society, as any controlled addictive drug. Empirical evidence shows that if you don't have access to cocaine, then the likelihood that you will get addicted to cocaine is less even if you are unlucky with a genetic background that makes you at a high risk for developing addiction. On the other hand, look at addiction to nicotine or alcohol, which both are not controlled or regulated in any meaningful manner, and you see that not regulating or controlling these addictive substances did result in severe detrimental effects on every society worldwide. According to the World Health Organisation alcohol is the leading risk factor for death in males ages 15–59, mainly due to injuries, violence and cardiovascular diseases. Globally, 6.2% of all male deaths are attributable to alcohol, compared to 1.1% of female deaths. Also, according to the World Health Organisation Tobacco is the world’s largest preventable cause of premature death which cost the global economy US$ 1.4 trillion each year. We should not forget that most of the pathological effects of nicotine and alcohol addiction are seen in the body of the consuming individual. However, most of the detrimental effects of addiction to power and wealth are projected on those who are affected by their consequences that can be so wide and great in magnitude.
Social justice might mean that being an ultra-rich may not be feasible, and any excess of wealth produced within the society should be redistributed within the society itself to increase the quality of life for everybody. This may mean preventing any excess of wealth to be accumulated in the hands of a single individual per se.
The second approach that may come to mind regarding solving the problem of the addictive and corruptive effects of wealth and power might stem form the idea of regulating power itself by not allowing too much concentration of power in the hands of any single individual; given the fact that power is addictive and people who seek to ascend in the power ladder and persevere in the strive to ascend are most probably predisposed more to the risk of the addictive effects of power as they sense power and its cues as rewards more than the others, and they could be genetically predisposed to behavioural addiction, which might be one reason for their perseverance in the bloody arena of ascending to power whether this in politics, corporate governance or even mafia networks. We should not forget that some people can get addicted to a hard drug or alcohol from a single exposure because they are genetically predisposed to get hooked to the addictive effects of these substances more than their peers, which make them work incessantly to obtain these substances again even after a single encounter with them.
Regulating power is not an easy task, but we can revert to the basic principles of democracy as envisaged, practised, and flourished where democracy emerged in the first place. I mean in Athens between the 6th and 4th centuries before the common era (BCE), where democracy was not representative but was direct and participatory. Everybody was required to participate in managing the societal control of the society and was demanded to participate in taking direct roles of managing the responsibilities of looking after the interests of the others, and this was available to everybody regardless of their educational background, wealth, or connections. Even the less educated and the less affluent were required to participate as the well-off and the better-connected other members of the society.
In other words, we need more democracy, more true direct democracy in which people can participate in managing their own affairs without having to delegate this task to other people who may get corrupted by the effects of the addictive powers of power itself.
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