Addiction as a Civilizational Mechanism: Compulsion, Cultural Ratcheting, and the Rise of Complex Society

Addiction is traditionally framed as a pathological hijacking of reward circuitry(DSM-5; ICD-11). Yet converging evidence in neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophysuggests compulsive drive is a basal feature of human motivation. This paper advancesthe thesis that addiction-like mechanisms underpinned civilization by canalizingrepetitive, high-reward behaviors—tool-making, ritual, and social bonding—intocumulative cultural evolution (“cultural ratcheting”). Drawing on dopaminergicreinforcement learning, dual inheritance theory, and archaeological case studies, Iargue that addiction is an adaptive compulsion toward patterned action that,paradoxically, enabled large-scale cooperation. Three core insights structure theaccount: (1) dopamine mediates wanting (incentive salience) rather than liking(hedonia); (2) repetition induces Hebbian plasticity that automatizes behavior,shifting control from goal-directed to habitual systems; (3) cultural rituals harnessthese loops to stabilize group cohesion and transmit practices across generations.Civilizational outcomes—from agriculture to urbanism—thus reflect compulsive repetitionmore than rational calculation. I outline empirical predictions and a research program(“pro-social addiction engineering”) to ethically harness these mechanisms forcollective goods.Keywords: addiction, compulsion, dopamine, incentive salience, cultural evolution, dualinheritance theory, habit formation, archaeology, ritual, cooperation