Buying Happiness, Then Dying? –
Oct. 19, 2019 – A recent book by University of North Florida historian and addiction expert David T. Courtwright, called The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business, tries to answer these questions in a fascinating history of corporate America’s efforts to shape our habits and desires.
What we have today is something Courtwright calls “limbic capitalism,” a reference to the part of the brain that deals with pleasure and motivation. As our understanding of psychology and neurochemistry has advanced, companies have gotten better at exploiting our instincts for profit. Think, for example, of all the apps and platforms specifically designed to hijack our attention with pings and dopamine hits while harvesting our data.
We’ve always had some form of limbic capitalism, Courtwright says, but the methods are much more sophisticated now and the range of addictive behaviors are much wider than they used to be. I spoke to Courtwright about the problems this has created, why the battle against limbic capitalism is seemingly endless, and if he thinks we’re destined to live in a consumerist dystopia.
