Summary of Robert H. Lustig's The Hacking Of The American Mind

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 The pursuit of happiness is a myth. We’ve been told that happiness is the goal, but in reality, it is right there in front of us, behind the curtain of our own brain. It matters because it explains the differences between pleasure and happiness, and it explains why so many people are miserable.

#2 Pleasure is the visceral readout of activity in a specific brain area known as the reward pathway. It is the motivation for a given reward, and the consummation of that reward as a visceral experience called pleasure.

#3 The science of happiness is very complex, and there is not one definition of it. What it means to be happy is different depending on the times in which you live, your religious and cultural affiliations, and likely the language you use.

#4 Happiness has been the main stated goal of life since the Renaissance, when people were asked their primary desire. But despite our five-hundred-year gaze on the prize, as a whole we consistently miss the target.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669351924

IRB Media

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Book preview

Insights on Robert H. Lustig's The Hacking of the American

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The pursuit of happiness is a myth. We’ve been told that happiness is the goal, but in reality, it is right there in front of us, behind the curtain of our own brain. It matters because it explains the differences between pleasure and happiness, and it explains why so many people are miserable.

#2

Pleasure is the visceral readout of activity in a specific brain area known as the reward pathway. It is the motivation for a given reward, and the consummation of that reward as a visceral experience called pleasure.

#3

The science of happiness is very complex, and there is not one definition of it. What it means to be happy is different depending on the times in which you live, your religious and cultural affiliations, and likely the language you use.

#4

Happiness has been the main stated goal of life since the Renaissance, when people were asked their primary desire. But despite our five-hundred-year gaze on the prize, as a whole we consistently miss the target.

#5

Positive psychology studies positive emotions, positive traits, and positive institutions in an attempt to make your life more positive. However, many confuse pleasure with happiness. You can’t fix the problem if you don’t know what it is.

#6

The difference between pleasure and happiness is that pleasure is gratification or reward, and happiness is well-being or human flourishing.

#7

This book is about the two most unhappy states of the human condition: addiction and depression. They are the result of chronic excessive reward, which eventually leads to both addiction and depression.

#8

You are in charge of your own thoughts and emotions, but you share the process of emotion generation and its experience with every other human on the planet. Your feelings of reward and contentment are just downstream readouts of your neurochemistry.

#9

The brain’s limbic system is made up of three major pathways that send and receive chemical information that is translated into positive and negative emotions. The interplay between these three pathways dictates both the perception of emotion and the resultant behavioral responses.

#10

The first system is the stress-fear-memory pathway, which consists of three areas. The