
Your Brain Thinks Money Is A Drug - epi0Bauqu
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111579154&ft=1&f=100
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dkarl
_As far as your brain's concerned, money can act as a substitute for social
acceptance, reducing social discomfort and, by extension, physical discomfort
and even pain._

It makes sense. Money enhances your personal security just like social
acceptance and bodily health do. If you think of your brain as a tool for
genetic fitness, it's quite clear that your brain actually badly
underestimates the degree to which money enhances your ability to survive and
reproduce in a first-world country. If you have money, you're never dependent
on the goodwill of others for food, shelter, and physical security. If you
fall out with your friends, girlfriend, or employer, money ensures your
physical survival and gives you time to build new social relations.

It's interesting that our brains are able to grant money such deep
significance. I wonder how generic that ability is. Does it apply to any
object or substance that we think is a source of security -- like a gun, for
some people, or a good-luck charm, for others -- or only to objects of
recognized social value that we can trade for goodwill with others? How easy
is it for an object to assume that primal significance -- do me merely have to
rationally _know_ that it is valuable, or does it acquire that significance by
repeated association over time? More studies, please, guys!

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asdlfj2sd33
Money is security, control, power and yes even social acceptance in very real
non-metaphorical terms. Saying that may be cynical but it's reality.

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Herring
Misleading title. Pleasurable != drug.

