Comment by ninetyninenine
2 months ago
That’s not a common reaction with humans. When people are the best, there’s a huge serotonin rush. Like literally this is measurable in humans.
Serotonin regulates dominance hierarchies and is associated with happiness. It’s so biological in nature that the same effect can be witnessed in lobsters. People or lobsters high in dominance have more serotonin and are generally happier.
Your story is not only anomalous. But it’s anomalous to the point where it’s unrealistic too. I can’t comment on this but if you did not feel the associated come down of serotonin I’m more inclined to say you’re not being honest with yourself more then you’re a biological anomaly. There’s likely enough variation in genetics to produce people like you so I’m not ruling it out.
It sounds like the commenter above is just less insecure about themselves and more excited for opportunities to discuss and learn than you and whoever you're describing here are.
No im saying dominance hierarchies are the natural order of things and it’s ingrained in biology.
Pretending that hierarchy doesn’t matter and that you don’t care where you are in that hierarchy is lying to yourself.
It’s like saying the janitor is equal in respect to the software engineer. We don’t like to admit but the janitor is less respected and looked down upon. I’m annoyed by people who pretend it doesn’t matter.
I don’t know if some people are just wired differently, but I can back up the feeling of not caring at all where I fall in a hierarchy or how much people respect or don’t respect me.
The things I find most thrilling always relate to being challenged. Finding someone better than me qualifies. Having ideas challenged or being proven wrong are the most positive experience I’ve had, especially being forced to change deeply held beliefs. I mention this because it’s one of those things that I always hear people say that everyone hates, but I’ve always felt the opposite, just from a pure chemical feeling perspective. I don’t think I could possibly be unique in that experience.
Human instinct is a complex of different things acting in opposite directions, including things that work against hierarchy.
I'm shocked that you think this is an unbelievable reaction, I know lots of people who really do think like that.
I wonder if you might find C S Lewis's lecture on the "inner ring" interesting.
https://archive.org/details/1944-the-inner-ring
I don’t think they said anything about their serotonin. They just described their reaction to the situation. If we were able to ask lobsters about their self-experience we might learn something about them too.
You sound like Jordan Peterson.