Oh Selfish Me(me)

There was an interesting article in the Atlantic called “The Selfish Meme” by Frank Rose
That describes research on how people's reward centres get activated by talking about themselves. Finally! A way to label self-involvement as addiction - the skies opened and the sun shone forth.

I mean if the glove fits...

Most of us know people who really can't stop talking about themselves. Christ, I love talking about myself, but I can a least function in polite society. I've certainly been recognizing how if I don't get my fix though, if I go out looking to bitch or otherwise soliloquize, and my careful “plan” is derailed by there being strangers present, it sours my mood - and can lead to antisocial behaviour like cranking up the sarcasm and general low level sadism.

Hell this blog is all about a semi desperate middle aged attempt to garner some attention - with a thin excuse of “well maybe other people will recognize something of themselves in it”. Or maybe it's more onanistic? Just the act of “over” sharing setting off some pleasure centres in my brain?

And could that be how the whole situation evolved? Why is it pleasant to talk about ourselves? Well, we know experientially that it relieves stress to share what is eating at us, we can do a secchi disk on our current depth of crazy, we can validate hypotheses about the world etc...and for the species this sharing may well be adaptive because vicarious experience does still have value. After seeing “Leaving Los Vegas” I was able to tell Smith “Well, at least between me and Cage’s character there's Kosovo...”

The car wrecks from the lives of others are at least road side memorials intimating we pay a little more attention driving quite so drunk around life's curves.

And I suppose why I liked the article so much - in addition to kind of universalizing my own addictive behaviours around FeelBad and Twatter, is the more general clues it gives to aspects of our motivations.

Why is working for others often unrewarding? Because it doesn't trigger the pleasure centres of when we’re self involved -- why do some people “need” to be the centre of attention? Well let's hook some pop stars up to fMRIs and find out. I suspect their self-stimulating centres aren't as strong as the average, so they need more validation from the outside world. Just like thrill seekers aren't as capable of self-excitation as their more anxiety prone compatriots.

Is this information useful? I think so - when I break down the things that really get my ass in motion - the chance to drink and windbag - maybe what I'm really experiencing is a fairly easily understood nexus of habits that trigger my reward centres.

And maybe, just , maybe that suggests there's ways to get the same high, with fewer units of alcohol. Possibly by actually producing artifacts that embody my experiences in a form that triggers something in others, sending me positive attention in return.

I must go and discuss this with Withnail at once. Withnail & I (Widescreen)


Except I still haven't purged sufficiently from the last time.