The dopamine republic

Here’s a molecule that runs empires.

- BY SUHAIB AYAZ

Not gold, not oil, not even information, but something far smaller. It can fit inside a single thought. Yet it decides who rules, who kneels and who keeps scrolling. Its name is dopamine.We built an entire civilisation around it. Every addiction, every scroll, every conversation that quietly asks, “Do you want this?” — all of it is dopamine’s architecture. It’s not pleasure itself that drives us. It’s the promise of it. The anticipation. The maybe.

Somewhere between the hunter sharpening his first spear and the teenager refreshing Instagram for likes, that same chemical spark powered both. It made us explore, invent and build. But somewhere along the way, the direction flipped — we stopped chasing survival and started chasing stimulation.

Today, the modern human being lives in what I’d call a Dopamine Republic. Every citizen is both the addict and the dealer. Companies manufacture hits; creators peddle them. Politicians bait outrage; news channels feed it on loop. Even the self-proclaimed enlightened are chasing the same high — only with more sophisticated toys. Likes, validation, virality, outrage — it’s all the same circuitry, repackaged and sold back to us.

Dopamine made humanity restless enough to evolve. Now, that same restlessness threatens to consume us...

People love to talk about “the system” as if it’s an external machine built by someone else. But the truth is, we built it ourselves — precisely because it rewards the one thing we all crave: that brief hit of yes. That invisible tap on the brain that whispers, you could feel better than this.

And so, we keep scrolling.