Homo Sapiens Sopranos

Most people don’t know and/or don’t care that our species is on the brink of extinction for the exact same reason that we’re speeding towards self-annihilation. Recent scientific discoveries have revealed that a majority of us are addicted to the neurotransmitter dopamine. Eons ago the biggest dopamine addicts stole control of the species and their descendants have been in charge ever since.

Getting a handle on how we ended up in this predicament is as easy as watching reruns of HBO’s The Sopranos. The Sopranos might be fictional, but Tony and his crew, like the real-life crime families they’re based on, provide a glimpse into the workings of the primitive gangsters we call Homo Sapiens Sopranos who replaced survival of the fittest with survival of the dopamine addicts. And they did it using the same tricks of the trade that still work for both modern-day mobsters and primitive chimpanzees — collusion, bribery, and murder. Because like every crime boss before him, Tony understood that if you want to steal from Peter all you have to do is cut Paulie Walnuts in for a piece of the dopamine.

Once the first crime families cut to the head of the evolutionary line they started the tradition of letting cronies slip in behind them in exchange for their assistance with eliminating anyone who had a problem with the fix. As a reward for their inhumanity, the flunkies, cheats and enforcers got to sire more flunkies, cheats and enforcers. By corrupting the natural laws of genetic inheritance with malleable legalities and propping up their inferior offspring with extra helpings of possessions, positions, and gratuitous certainty, the bosses turned gangs into nations and their kin into kings. With the selection process perverted to fit the mobsters’ needs it was only a question of time before the only contenders left were the cogs bred by and for warring crime machines that took turns winning and losing the title for most aggressive and least humane.

Think Lord of the Flies. Think “D” students taking over by organizing the “F” students and offering the “A” “B” and “C” students the choice of falling in line, torture, or death. Think firmly entrenched, amoral, unconscious, murderous, self-deceptive chimpanzee-hybrids purging the new-humans-on-the-block who were shackled by reason, awareness and conscience. Same difference: the dummies stealing control and bequeathing an addiction to dopamine that requires deception, cheating, stealing and killing. Inured to taking what they wanted, the brutes stole the title human beings and whitewashed the notion that the need to cheat is indicative of inferiority with the flattering lie that their power and position established their superiority. The miscreants threatening our species’ viability might prefer to be called financiers, bankers, hedge fund managers, congressmen, CEOs, wheelers, dealers, capos, and dons, but when you strip away their pricey suits and veneer of respectability what’s left are a pack of destructive, depraved, out-of-control, mindless criminals feeding insatiable dopamine addictions.

To learn more, read The Perfect Pandemic.