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.
I loved this. And there is a simple way to unearth the dark matter and the unseen in our own lives and psyche: every night we descend into dreams, the anithesis of all that is visible and uni-dimensional. Dreams pull us into our depths and bring meaning that is not reliant on acquisition or on co-opting our attention. The trouble is, the world of the dream has been so de-valued in our culture that many see dreams as nonsense, or no longer have access to their dream lives. Psychedelic journeys like the one you alluded to Paul, are a fast path to opening up this radically intelligent realm. Dreaming can be an ongoing relationship with it, one that values the dark as well as the light. Here's a sampling from my Substack: https://dreamsdemystified.substack.com/p/dreaming-through-darkness-on-melancholy
Thanks Leslie, I agree that dreams have been thrown in the trash-bin in the modern world due to a scientific skepticism about subjective experience. The dreamworld is definitely worth exploring at least to some extent.
I resonate with this and I live the similarity you highlighted (better highdarkened) between the real, intangible, values we have in life with the dark matter in space. It's undeniable that we tend to focus our attention more on what's visible and easy than on what's intangible and articulated. The strong man, the beautiful car, are good examples of what material things really are: appearances. And you are right saying that a lot of such material things are appealing due to some ancestral, innate, instincts that we bring ourselves with since birth. That's what makes me think about instinct, thought and judgement. Judgement and thinking is the only real value we can control and use to make better choices, that then translate to a better and more meaningful life. Satisfying our instincts for the sake of feeling good and surviving is just as living as animals, nothing more. At this point, it doesn't matter if one lives in a cage or not, the result is unique: destroying the wonderful and stunning potential that every human being owns, intrinsically, waiting for a miracle (I don't have other words to describe it nowadays) to bloom.
I love this idea “Judgement and thinking is the only real value we can control and use to make better choices, that then translate to a better and more meaningful life”. This really resonated with me.
A big part is that the internet - like Instagram / tinder / YT overvalues what looks good and attractive at the expense of what you can’t see - depth, ideas, intelligence because it can’t be seen. On MBTI it’s the sensing Vs the intuition. But substack has more depth.
The difference is often just a shift in focus on the outcome you want rather than the immediate cost.
If you would, write a thought about the supreme court, who should be chosen, what they ought to "posses" as knowledge, the method by whom gets to choose them remains a logical one?
What does supreme means?
Is it impossible for an individual to obtain four of five PhDs?
What is supreme in the supreme judges?
I ask because you seem the right person to inquire about it.
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.
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.
Mate, so much to explore here (reckon we should do so dialogically at some point. I'll do us a disservice by rushing through all I want to explore in an initial comment). Two brief references that may be interesting to you...
Thank you for writing this. One of the things I have always been grateful for in my life is that I seem to come in contact with great teachers. People who make me think and wonder. I really believe that's what the best teachers do, they feed your curiosity, not just fill your head with facts. Thanks for the new tangents I'm going to wander through.
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.
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.
I loved this. And there is a simple way to unearth the dark matter and the unseen in our own lives and psyche: every night we descend into dreams, the anithesis of all that is visible and uni-dimensional. Dreams pull us into our depths and bring meaning that is not reliant on acquisition or on co-opting our attention. The trouble is, the world of the dream has been so de-valued in our culture that many see dreams as nonsense, or no longer have access to their dream lives. Psychedelic journeys like the one you alluded to Paul, are a fast path to opening up this radically intelligent realm. Dreaming can be an ongoing relationship with it, one that values the dark as well as the light. Here's a sampling from my Substack: https://dreamsdemystified.substack.com/p/dreaming-through-darkness-on-melancholy
Thanks Leslie, I agree that dreams have been thrown in the trash-bin in the modern world due to a scientific skepticism about subjective experience. The dreamworld is definitely worth exploring at least to some extent.
I resonate with this and I live the similarity you highlighted (better highdarkened) between the real, intangible, values we have in life with the dark matter in space. It's undeniable that we tend to focus our attention more on what's visible and easy than on what's intangible and articulated. The strong man, the beautiful car, are good examples of what material things really are: appearances. And you are right saying that a lot of such material things are appealing due to some ancestral, innate, instincts that we bring ourselves with since birth. That's what makes me think about instinct, thought and judgement. Judgement and thinking is the only real value we can control and use to make better choices, that then translate to a better and more meaningful life. Satisfying our instincts for the sake of feeling good and surviving is just as living as animals, nothing more. At this point, it doesn't matter if one lives in a cage or not, the result is unique: destroying the wonderful and stunning potential that every human being owns, intrinsically, waiting for a miracle (I don't have other words to describe it nowadays) to bloom.
I love this idea “Judgement and thinking is the only real value we can control and use to make better choices, that then translate to a better and more meaningful life”. This really resonated with me.
A big part is that the internet - like Instagram / tinder / YT overvalues what looks good and attractive at the expense of what you can’t see - depth, ideas, intelligence because it can’t be seen. On MBTI it’s the sensing Vs the intuition. But substack has more depth.
The difference is often just a shift in focus on the outcome you want rather than the immediate cost.
If you would, write a thought about the supreme court, who should be chosen, what they ought to "posses" as knowledge, the method by whom gets to choose them remains a logical one?
What does supreme means?
Is it impossible for an individual to obtain four of five PhDs?
What is supreme in the supreme judges?
I ask because you seem the right person to inquire about it.
Supreme refers to the authority of the courts relative to lower courts.
This doesn’t mean that the judges have supreme wisdom or intelligence, they are fallible.
What’s supreme is that they have demonstrated a certain level of seriousness, intellectual depth, and care in their work.
But judging requires judgment, not perfect knowledge.
The method of choosing them needs to change in my opinion, its too political.
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.
This basically summarized the main point of my article. Spot on.
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!
Thanks Terry!
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.
Thanks Jacob. I will check this out!
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.
Mate, so much to explore here (reckon we should do so dialogically at some point. I'll do us a disservice by rushing through all I want to explore in an initial comment). Two brief references that may be interesting to you...
The first re a change to the DSM recently: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7396094782688636930/
The second is Kemp's 'Goliath's Curse'.
I reckon the 'value' of both will be obvious once you get a moment to check them out.
Appreciate you as always.
Thanks for this on the DSM updates.
Pleasure. It seems likely to be rather significant.
Thank you for writing this. One of the things I have always been grateful for in my life is that I seem to come in contact with great teachers. People who make me think and wonder. I really believe that's what the best teachers do, they feed your curiosity, not just fill your head with facts. Thanks for the new tangents I'm going to wander through.
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.