Safar Book Group

What we do:
We post books on monthly basis; everyone who reads or has read the book on their own time can join in. We get together, share opinions and thoughts about the book. We are here for the love of reading and sharing thoughts.

Book of choice:

The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
By Daniel Z. Lieberman, Michael E. Long

4.14 stars - 17,108 ratings - 1531 reviews

Why are we obsessed with the things we want and bored when we get them?
Why is addiction "perfectly logical" to an addict?
Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference?
Why are some people diehard liberals and others hardcore conservatives?
Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times--and so good at figuring them out?

The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas--and progress itself.

Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more--more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander.

From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something--anything--that's new. From this understanding--the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it--we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion - and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others.

In This book, the authors present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.