It’s funny Paul. Everyone talks about escaping the dopamine economy like it’s some mystical quest, but half the time it’s just remembering you used to have a prefrontal cortex before TikTok leased it out. Dark Value is real though. The richest parts of being human never show up on a dashboard or a progress bar. They show up in curiosity, wonder, and the five quiet minutes when no algorithm is shouting your name.
If we don’t learn to love the dark again, we end up like WALL E’s chair people. Spiritually padded, intellectually horizontal, and wondering why life feels like airplane mode.
Great article, but I wish you would’ve elaborated more on the section of finding solutions and seeking dark value, I.e. how does one appreciate art more? Or “don’t have any streaming apps.” I’m almost in full agreement with your main idea, but I’d like to hear more about things we can do to tap into this massive part of reality we don’t know or think about.
Your idea actually makes me think of John Vervaeke when he quotes Erich Fromm on the having vs. being mode.
When you talk about how, especially in the U.S., we only value what we can perceive, I see that as being stuck in the “having” mode:
I have to have something.
I even have to see something in order to value it.
But being mode is different. It’s about being someone of character, of virtue. Those are abstract qualities(not an exhaustive list!). I think they live in that “dark matter” space you describe: real, shaping everything, but hard to see directly.
The Dark Matter analogy works brilliantly here. Just like we can't directly observe dark matter but know it shapes galaxies, these deeper values invisibly structure what makes life meaningful. Your point about Light Value blinding us to the cosmos is particuarly striking. It reminds me of how cities have robbed us of stargazing, not becuase stars disappeared but because we've created too much noise. The same happens with constant dopamine stimulation drowning out contemplative experiences.
Your article makes me think that the "Dark Value" that humans inherently desire is that value in which they create, rather than consume. This value can take many forms: one may sit in front of abstract artwork and contemplate how the artist used a certain medium to convey a deeper meaning, or one may read an article and feel they have an original thought they must espouse...
That said, the essence is that the Dark Value comes from higher-order thinking or "creation" of unique ideas or interpretations. The modern world (social media in particular) compresses this natural human instinct. With a book or conversation, one is almost FORCED to use their higher-order capabilities vs. the cadence of a TikTok or IG Reels pulling you to another 15 second clip.
This consumption flywheel erodes key elements of higher-order thinking like attention, memory, and persistence, which hamstrings us from creating the Dark Value that we so desire. If you have not read a book in a decade, how are you meant to understand Dostoevsky? If you have not looked for motifs in a piece of art, how can you derive the artist's meaning? You don't have the prerequisite skills to harness the Dark Value without effort.
Even those who do not have the willpower or discipline to reject the Dopamine Economy are acutely aware of its consequences-- simply ask an everyday person if they feel fulfilled after a TikTok binge or if they feel satiated after eating a whole pizza. But they do not stop... and will not stop. My cynicism over this whole matter is that people predisposed desire Dark Value will, in large part, find it (although with some effort), while the majority of human animals engorge themselves on content.
Very good! I enjoyed your article very much. You may like Stephen Davis, Hacking the Hologram. He uses the hologram analogy to explain life, the hologram being “The Field” in physics, or in this case, the dark matter from which everything originates.
The Dark Value analogy was very clever. It is reminiscent of Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis. If you haven’t read The Master and His Emissary, you really should.
The Dark Value idea hits hard because it exposes what the modern attention economy has quietly stolen from us. Dopamine isn’t just a neurotransmitter anymore—it’s a commercial product. Entire industries are built on keeping us overstimulated, distracted, and incapable of engaging with anything that doesn’t deliver an immediate hit.
Your WALL‑E comparison isn’t hyperbole; it’s a forecast. We’re only a generation away from that outcome if we keep optimising our lives around micro‑rewards instead of meaningful effort.
What makes Dark Value so confronting is that it demands the one thing the Dopamine Economy has systematically eroded: the ability to sit with difficulty, ambiguity, and slow‑burn payoff. Sustained attention used to be a basic human skill. Now it’s almost a countercultural act.
This is a strong and generous piece. You articulate the flattening effect of attention capture with real care, and the distinction you draw between immediately legible value and harder-to-access value is important and timely. The metaphor work does real lifting, especially in naming what gets lost when stimulation becomes the primary proxy for meaning.
One question I’m left with: how do you distinguish depth from intensity in the wake of an altered state? In other words, what constraints help separate durable value from amplified salience over time?
I ask because the diagnosis feels right, and the intuition is sharp — the remaining challenge seems less about seeing into the dark, and more about how we test what we bring back from it.
Ironically, boredom is the key to unlock the door to dark value. It hurts to take a shit with out our phones. Painful if we misplace our phone while the microwave is on. The longer we sit in boredom, the more opportunity for contemplation. To day dream. Perhaps we should emabrace boredom more to avoid being boring.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I have a LONG way to go before I venture into Hegel's realm, but I've just recently started reading Alfred North Whitehead's interpretation of ideas. I am deeply fascinated by ideas and your writing here helped to frame where they might come from - a dark space. I think it makes sense because how else do new ideas announce themselves in my dreams?
I am currently trying to rewrite an essay on what I call Distributed Creativity Technologies (a term delivered to me in my sleep (not joking)). I picture every single mind of every single person as a mountain with a unique mix of resources that just need to be excavated. But I'm trying to figure out how to express that it is crucial that we - Humanity - maintain ownership over this space at the individual level. We have to define it, like you have, but also in economic terms because I think there is a market, or more like an entire economy, waiting to be uncovered. We can't hand this over to corporations as we did with out labor. And likewise we shouldn't hand a portion of it over to our governments to simply waste.
I would love nothing more than to bounce ideas off of you because I think we (and many others on substack) are circling this same concept. Or we're ready to burst through that door into the dark space or something. But I think we desperately need a framework that shows people how to claim ownership over their own dark space.
I just finished reading your article, and I must say, it's been an absolute pleasure to immerse myself in it.
As I read through your article, I couldn't help but feel that we're living in a world where "Light matter" has gradually become the very essence of our existence - the main driving force behind our lives, whether we like it or not. However, I think that this phenomenon is not a natural process, but rather a set of patterns and models to follow, deliberately created by humans to manage "the other humans". Now with the help of machines and AI, so your analogy from WALL-E certainly is spot on. We've become a society that's more concerned with instant gratification than true fulfilment. Fulfillment? Do people really know what to look for? We're conditioned to crave dopamine spikes, to be stimulated by the whims of technology, and to surrender peacefully to the "rhythm of the global herd". But at what cost? The privileged few reap the benefits while the rest of us are left to trudge along, when our lives are reduced to hopping from one predictable, uninspired moment to another. At least with some (any) stimulation.
Do we have a possibility of transforming our world from one of consumers to thinkers? While I'm aware that this might not be possible on a global scale, I still believe that it's worth striving for. Perhaps it's not about changing the status quo, but rather about creating space for those who dare to question and seek knowledge. We're living in an era where we [still!] have the freedom to ask important questions, to challenge the norms, and to explore the unknown. It's a privilege that shouldn't be taken lightly, and one that I'm grateful to have. I am sure I am not alone.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Paul. Your article has not only provided me with food for thought but also reminded me of the power of endless human curiosity and the importance of seeking knowledge for its own sake. It's not too bad to be a conscious human, after all! :)
| but rather about creating space for those who dare to question and seek knowledge.
I want to share something that Balaji Srinivasan has written about in his book, The Network State, and that is about the frontier. It is on the frontier that new ideas are not just tested but implemented, and then from there can gain popularity because there's so much space around the idea.
A frontier does not need to be physical.
And I believe new frontiers are opening through the Internet and there's corners like Substack here that promote leaders to help people around them locally or on the network.
It’s funny Paul. Everyone talks about escaping the dopamine economy like it’s some mystical quest, but half the time it’s just remembering you used to have a prefrontal cortex before TikTok leased it out. Dark Value is real though. The richest parts of being human never show up on a dashboard or a progress bar. They show up in curiosity, wonder, and the five quiet minutes when no algorithm is shouting your name.
If we don’t learn to love the dark again, we end up like WALL E’s chair people. Spiritually padded, intellectually horizontal, and wondering why life feels like airplane mode.
Great article, but I wish you would’ve elaborated more on the section of finding solutions and seeking dark value, I.e. how does one appreciate art more? Or “don’t have any streaming apps.” I’m almost in full agreement with your main idea, but I’d like to hear more about things we can do to tap into this massive part of reality we don’t know or think about.
Your idea actually makes me think of John Vervaeke when he quotes Erich Fromm on the having vs. being mode.
When you talk about how, especially in the U.S., we only value what we can perceive, I see that as being stuck in the “having” mode:
I have to have something.
I even have to see something in order to value it.
But being mode is different. It’s about being someone of character, of virtue. Those are abstract qualities(not an exhaustive list!). I think they live in that “dark matter” space you describe: real, shaping everything, but hard to see directly.
This is what I have seen as the Be-Do-Have model. People who over-emphasize the Light Value, as mentioned in this article, have that model reversed.
The Dark Matter analogy works brilliantly here. Just like we can't directly observe dark matter but know it shapes galaxies, these deeper values invisibly structure what makes life meaningful. Your point about Light Value blinding us to the cosmos is particuarly striking. It reminds me of how cities have robbed us of stargazing, not becuase stars disappeared but because we've created too much noise. The same happens with constant dopamine stimulation drowning out contemplative experiences.
Your article makes me think that the "Dark Value" that humans inherently desire is that value in which they create, rather than consume. This value can take many forms: one may sit in front of abstract artwork and contemplate how the artist used a certain medium to convey a deeper meaning, or one may read an article and feel they have an original thought they must espouse...
That said, the essence is that the Dark Value comes from higher-order thinking or "creation" of unique ideas or interpretations. The modern world (social media in particular) compresses this natural human instinct. With a book or conversation, one is almost FORCED to use their higher-order capabilities vs. the cadence of a TikTok or IG Reels pulling you to another 15 second clip.
This consumption flywheel erodes key elements of higher-order thinking like attention, memory, and persistence, which hamstrings us from creating the Dark Value that we so desire. If you have not read a book in a decade, how are you meant to understand Dostoevsky? If you have not looked for motifs in a piece of art, how can you derive the artist's meaning? You don't have the prerequisite skills to harness the Dark Value without effort.
Even those who do not have the willpower or discipline to reject the Dopamine Economy are acutely aware of its consequences-- simply ask an everyday person if they feel fulfilled after a TikTok binge or if they feel satiated after eating a whole pizza. But they do not stop... and will not stop. My cynicism over this whole matter is that people predisposed desire Dark Value will, in large part, find it (although with some effort), while the majority of human animals engorge themselves on content.
Very good! I enjoyed your article very much. You may like Stephen Davis, Hacking the Hologram. He uses the hologram analogy to explain life, the hologram being “The Field” in physics, or in this case, the dark matter from which everything originates.
Thank you for your work and effort!
The Dark Value analogy was very clever. It is reminiscent of Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis. If you haven’t read The Master and His Emissary, you really should.
The Dark Value idea hits hard because it exposes what the modern attention economy has quietly stolen from us. Dopamine isn’t just a neurotransmitter anymore—it’s a commercial product. Entire industries are built on keeping us overstimulated, distracted, and incapable of engaging with anything that doesn’t deliver an immediate hit.
Your WALL‑E comparison isn’t hyperbole; it’s a forecast. We’re only a generation away from that outcome if we keep optimising our lives around micro‑rewards instead of meaningful effort.
What makes Dark Value so confronting is that it demands the one thing the Dopamine Economy has systematically eroded: the ability to sit with difficulty, ambiguity, and slow‑burn payoff. Sustained attention used to be a basic human skill. Now it’s almost a countercultural act.
This is a strong and generous piece. You articulate the flattening effect of attention capture with real care, and the distinction you draw between immediately legible value and harder-to-access value is important and timely. The metaphor work does real lifting, especially in naming what gets lost when stimulation becomes the primary proxy for meaning.
One question I’m left with: how do you distinguish depth from intensity in the wake of an altered state? In other words, what constraints help separate durable value from amplified salience over time?
I ask because the diagnosis feels right, and the intuition is sharp — the remaining challenge seems less about seeing into the dark, and more about how we test what we bring back from it.
I enjoyed reading this article.
The degree to which ontological starvation renders us progressively incapable of appreciating all that is truly important is staggering.
Ironically, boredom is the key to unlock the door to dark value. It hurts to take a shit with out our phones. Painful if we misplace our phone while the microwave is on. The longer we sit in boredom, the more opportunity for contemplation. To day dream. Perhaps we should emabrace boredom more to avoid being boring.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I have a LONG way to go before I venture into Hegel's realm, but I've just recently started reading Alfred North Whitehead's interpretation of ideas. I am deeply fascinated by ideas and your writing here helped to frame where they might come from - a dark space. I think it makes sense because how else do new ideas announce themselves in my dreams?
I am currently trying to rewrite an essay on what I call Distributed Creativity Technologies (a term delivered to me in my sleep (not joking)). I picture every single mind of every single person as a mountain with a unique mix of resources that just need to be excavated. But I'm trying to figure out how to express that it is crucial that we - Humanity - maintain ownership over this space at the individual level. We have to define it, like you have, but also in economic terms because I think there is a market, or more like an entire economy, waiting to be uncovered. We can't hand this over to corporations as we did with out labor. And likewise we shouldn't hand a portion of it over to our governments to simply waste.
I would love nothing more than to bounce ideas off of you because I think we (and many others on substack) are circling this same concept. Or we're ready to burst through that door into the dark space or something. But I think we desperately need a framework that shows people how to claim ownership over their own dark space.
Thank you, Paul. Now if you were raised to dismiss Hegel, I'd like to understand what philosophy means for you now in Hegelian terms.
I just finished reading your article, and I must say, it's been an absolute pleasure to immerse myself in it.
As I read through your article, I couldn't help but feel that we're living in a world where "Light matter" has gradually become the very essence of our existence - the main driving force behind our lives, whether we like it or not. However, I think that this phenomenon is not a natural process, but rather a set of patterns and models to follow, deliberately created by humans to manage "the other humans". Now with the help of machines and AI, so your analogy from WALL-E certainly is spot on. We've become a society that's more concerned with instant gratification than true fulfilment. Fulfillment? Do people really know what to look for? We're conditioned to crave dopamine spikes, to be stimulated by the whims of technology, and to surrender peacefully to the "rhythm of the global herd". But at what cost? The privileged few reap the benefits while the rest of us are left to trudge along, when our lives are reduced to hopping from one predictable, uninspired moment to another. At least with some (any) stimulation.
Do we have a possibility of transforming our world from one of consumers to thinkers? While I'm aware that this might not be possible on a global scale, I still believe that it's worth striving for. Perhaps it's not about changing the status quo, but rather about creating space for those who dare to question and seek knowledge. We're living in an era where we [still!] have the freedom to ask important questions, to challenge the norms, and to explore the unknown. It's a privilege that shouldn't be taken lightly, and one that I'm grateful to have. I am sure I am not alone.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Paul. Your article has not only provided me with food for thought but also reminded me of the power of endless human curiosity and the importance of seeking knowledge for its own sake. It's not too bad to be a conscious human, after all! :)
| but rather about creating space for those who dare to question and seek knowledge.
I want to share something that Balaji Srinivasan has written about in his book, The Network State, and that is about the frontier. It is on the frontier that new ideas are not just tested but implemented, and then from there can gain popularity because there's so much space around the idea.
A frontier does not need to be physical.
And I believe new frontiers are opening through the Internet and there's corners like Substack here that promote leaders to help people around them locally or on the network.
The yin and the yang; the stagnant and the dynamic; the masculine and the feminine... The reconciliation of the extremes... Synthesis.
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