The Molecule of More

[According to] Ashleymadison.com, a dating Web site for married people looking 
for extramarital affairs, . . . [Washington, DC] topped a list ranking the country’s 
most adulterous cities for the third year in a row . . . And the neighborhood with 
the most cheaters? Capitol Hill, the land of politicians, staffers and lobbyists.
—
Washington Post
, May 20, 2015
The essence of government is control. People may submit to being con-
trolled as a result of conquest, or they may voluntarily give up some of
their freedom in exchange for protection. Either way, a small number 
of people are given power to exert authority over the rest of the popula-
tion. It’s a dopaminergic activity because the populace is governed from 
a distance through abstract laws. Although the threat of H&N violence 
is used to enforce the law, most people never experience it. They submit 
to ideas, not physical force.
Since government is inherently dopaminergic, liberals tend to be 
more enthusiastic about it than H&N conservatives. Five hundred lib-
erals marching down the street are probably staging a protest. With 
conservatives, it’s more likely a parade. In addition to their enthusi-
asm for engaging in the political process, liberals are also more likely to 
pursue advanced degrees in public policy, and they’re often attracted 
to fields such as journalism in which they are involved in the political 
process on a daily basis. Conservatives, by contrast, are more often dis-
trustful of government, especially government that acts at a distance. 
Conservatives tend to prefer local governance, with power exerted at 
the state or local level rather than federally.
Distance matters. Thinking back to the trolley problem, it’s eas-
ier to maximize resources when emotions are taken out of the picture. 
Pushing a person onto the tracks to stop a train is nearly impossible. 
Flipping a switch from far away is easier. Similarly, many laws bene-
fit some people but harm others. The farther away you get, the eas-
ier it is to tolerate some degree of harm in the service of the greater 
good. Distance insulates politicians from the immediate consequences 

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of their decisions. Raise a tax, cut funding, send someone to war; the 
person taking home less pay, receiving less help, or hunkered down in 
a foxhole will rarely be in the company of the person who put him in 
that position, as long as that person is in Washington, DC. There’s no 
opportunity for H&N circuits to trigger distressing emotions that would 
make these decisions more difficult.
WHY WASHINGTON MUST ALWAYS 
“DO SOMETHING!”
Apart from distance, another way in which government is fundamen-
tally dopaminergic is that it is about doing something. It’s almost unheard 
of for a politician to campaign on a promise that he will go to Wash-
ington and do nothing. Politics is about change and change is driven by 
dopamine. Whenever tragedy strikes, the cry goes up, Do something! So 
airport security is beefed up after a terrorist attack despite evidence that 
the long, humiliating rituals travelers must endure don’t really increase 
safety. Undercover TSA agents who test the system can almost always 
get weapons through. Nevertheless, the mandate to do something gets 
fulfilled.
According to GovTrack.us, the federal government enacted 
between 200 and 800 laws during each two-year congressional session 
since 1973. That’s a lot of laws, but it’s nothing compared to what pol-
iticians tried to do. During these sessions, Congress made attempts to 
pass between 8,000 and 26,000 laws. When the people think something 
ought to be done, politicians are happy to oblige.
This desire for control is unavoidable. Some people in Washing-
ton call themselves liberal and others call themselves conservative, but 
pretty much everyone involved in politics is dopaminergic. Otherwise 
they couldn’t get elected. Political campaigns require intense moti-
vation. They require a willingness to sacrifice everything to achieve 
success. Long hours take a toll on family life in particular. H&N peo-
ple, who make relationships with loved ones a priority, can’t succeed 
in politics. In the United Kingdom, the divorce rate among members 

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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
of Parliament is double that of the general population. In the United 
States it’s common for members of Congress to live in Washington, 
while their families live back in their home states. They rarely see their 
spouses, and there are plenty of young staffers enamored with power 
that are available to satisfy dopaminergic desires. To a politician, rela-
tionships aren’t for enjoyment; they’re for a purpose, whether it’s to 
get elected, pass a bill, or satisfy a biological urge. As President Harry 
Truman is credited with saying, “If you want a friend in Washington, 
buy a dog.”
CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE, LIBERAL LAWMAKER
The need to be dopaminergic in order to get elected is a problem for 
conservatives because having dopaminergic politicians represent H&N 
constituents doesn’t always work well. In recent years conservatives have 
experienced growing frustration with so-called establishment Republi-
cans who campaign on promises to scale back the government but end 
up growing it instead. The Tea Party is the most visible manifestation 
of this frustration. This conservative group generated unusual enthusi-
asm, yet so far it has been unable to achieve its goal to slow the growth 
of government.
Growth may never stop. Dopamine’s mandate is more. Change— 
representing either progress or loss of tradition, depending on one’s 
point of view—is inevitable. Only H&N circuits can bring about feel-
ings of satisfaction, feelings that the end has been reached and it’s time 
to stop. Endorphins, endocannabinoids, and other H&N neurotrans-
mitters tell us that our work is done, and now it’s time to enjoy the fruits 
of our labor. But dopamine suppresses these chemicals. Dopamine 
never rests. The game of politics is played 24 hours a day, seven days a 
week, and stopping to take a breath or saying the word “enough” leads 
to failure.
That’s not to say that more government is necessarily bad. Growth 
of power wielded for the public good can have a positive influence on 
the lives of millions of people. If the government is benevolent and 

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effective, growing centralized power can help safeguard the rights of
the weak and lift the destitute out of poverty. It can protect workers and 
consumers from exploitation by powerful corporations. But if politi-
cians pass laws that benefit themselves instead of their constituents, if
corruption is widespread, or if lawmakers simply don’t know what they 
are doing, liberty and prosperity will suffer.
Historically, the only way to reverse the expansion of power is to 
replace incremental change with cataclysmic change in the form of
revolution. John Calhoun, the nineteenth-century South Carolina sen-
ator and vice president, showed an understanding of the type of per-
son who plays the game of power—whether the player is a rebel or 
a tyrant—when he said that it is easier to obtain liberty than it is to 
preserve it. Rebels are dopaminergic and politicians are dopaminergic. 
The goal of both is change.
DON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN
In the end, the fundamental obstacle to achieving harmony is that the 
liberal brain is different from the conservative brain, and that makes 
it difficult for them to understand each other. Because politics is an 
adversarial game, this lack of understanding leads to demonization of
the other side. Liberals believe conservatives want to take the country 
back to a time when minorities were treated with gross injustice. Con-
servatives believe liberals want to pass repressive laws that control every 
aspect of their lives.
In reality, the vast majority of people on both sides of the politi-
cal divide want what’s best for all Americans. There are exceptions; 
there are bad people everywhere, and it’s the bad people who get all the 
press. They’re more interesting than good people, and they’re useful 
as political weapons. But they don’t represent the typical Democrat or 
Republican.
Most conservatives just want to be left alone. They want the free-
dom to make their own decisions based on their own values. Most liber-
als want to help people live better lives. Their goal is for everyone to be 

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healthier, safer, and free from discrimination. But political leaders bene-
fit from stirring up hostility between the two groups because it strength-
ens the allegiance of their followers. The important thing to remember 
is that liberals want to help people become better, conservatives want to 
let people be happy, and politicians want power.

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FURTHER READING
Verhulst, B., Eaves, L. J., & Hatemi, P. K. (2012). Correlation not causation: The 
relationship between personality traits and political ideologies. American Jour-