PICKING FLEAS?

Dick Pountain/16 March 2008/10:25/Idealog 164

One of the more disturbing phenomena I've encountered recently is the "box-opening" ritual, to which I was tipped off by Paul Ockenden's Mobile Computing column last issue: people order a new laptop, phone or other gadget, video themselves lovingly unpacking the box in striptease slow motion, then post the video on YouTube for others to drool over. And the manufacturers have sussed that this happens and started to sex up the packaging...  I don't know why this unsettles me so much because it only makes explicit what was fairly obvious anyway, that we're rapidly degenerating into forms of fetishism that would make the cargo culters of Vanuatu giggle with embarassment. Another example, the other night I flicked onto Top Gear (on that new channel that shows nothing but) and listened briefly as the gormless presenters compared medium-priced family saloons to different breeds of dog. And then there's the camera porn on Flickr, pictures of people taking pictures of cameras, or panting over the crackle enamel on a vintage lens hood.

It's tempting to place oneself way above all such nonsense. Tempting but impossible, because I feel the stirrings of my own addiction (for that's what we're talking about) which I appear powerless to resist. For me it all starts with the scoring system on Flickr, which rewards pictures in several different coinages like views, favourites and comments. I find myself briefly logging onto Flickr several times a day to look for the telltale orange "new comments" link that shows someone has looked at my pictures, and seeing it gives me a little rush of satisfaction not unlike that which a drag on a cigarette once provided. I start to analyse the views totals of my pictures, seeing which ones people prefer and trying to guess why, then providing more of whatever it turns out to be. I decide that Flickr rewards sharpness, and while skill can maximise this for a particular camera (by  aperture and shutter control), ultimately I'm going to need a better lens. Most modern digital cameras take extraordinarily good pictures with extraordinary ease, but now I'm scouring the reviews pages and comparators to find out how to achieve a 1% increase in a quantity that brings me no financial reward, just a minor dopamine rush several times a day. Why not cut out the middle-man and go straight onto heroin?

This is of course the motor that powers all advanced consumer economies. Make people dissatisfied with what they have, typically through advertising, and they'll buy more stuff. That expands the economy and puts more money in their pockets to buy more stuff. Until raw materials run out (but that's a different column). All that's new is that we're getting too sophisticated for advertising, and social networking sites enable us to advertise and review products among ourselves, which is bad news for consumer publishers like, er... The purpose of all this activity is less about utility than making us feel good. It might seem like a wild jump from this to the much-derided ethic called Political Correctness (PC), but fundamentally they're both about the same thing: trying to raise a mental substance called "self-esteem", or to avoid lowering it through "abusive" language and practices. It's all ultimately about altering the balance of the brain amines that control our moods.

Everyone knows that fear triggers release of noradrenaline, preparing the body for flight-or-fight by increasing heart rate, voiding the bladder and bowels and mobilising glucose stores. Biochemists and neuroscientists now understand a lot about the hormones and neurotransmitters that work in combination to generate those involuntary responses to events that we call emotions. Dopamine and serotonin mediate reward, satisfaction and joy; oxytocin and vasopressin govern bonding and affection; androgens and estrogens mediate lust; and anxiety releases glucocorticoid stress hormones that can have long-term ill effects. Each substance affects different brain and body systems and their effects overlap and interact in complex ways to play different chords on our emotional keyboards.

Many of you will now be bristling at my reducing free-will to mere chemistry, but of course I'm suggesting no such thing. These chemical processes occur not in isolation but in a social context that further modulates their effects through language and those shared beliefs that make up our culture - and our politics. In an interesting book "On Deep History and the Brain", US historian Daniel Lord Smail views human history through the looking-glass of brain chemistry. Rulers quickly learn that keeping people scared makes them more passive and obedient, an observation that applies all the way from alpha-male chimps through medieval robber barons, to Al Qaida bombers and New Labour home secretaries. Meanwhile the Ruled learn to stiffen their own brain amines against such onslaught by binge drinking, praying, smoking weed, popping Es, watching football or soap operas, whatever. History as the battle of the amines. Any behaviour that raises levels of the good guys like dopamine or serotonin, or lowers the bad guys like cortisol can become more or less addictive. Videoing your box-opening ritual, furtively glancing at my Flickr score, drooling over car and camera porn, all produce the same kind of biochemical buzz that chimps get from picking fleas out of each others' fur. But chimps may have the last laugh because fleas are far more sustainable...