That’s a beautiful and difficult question. “What is the natural state today?” implies a paradox: how can we speak of a ‘natural’ state in a world where nature itself has been thoroughly technologized, mediated, and rewired—down to our neurochemistry?
Let’s take a few approaches to this:
1. The Evolutionary Perspective
From this view, a “natural state” might refer to the conditions our brains evolved for:
• Long periods of stillness and low stimulation
• Deep focus on slow tasks (like making a tool, tracking an animal)
• Cyclical connection to light, seasons, physical surroundings
• Human intimacy in small tribes, face-to-face encounters
Dopamine fasting, here, would be a way of simulating ancestral balance in a context that constantly hijacks us.
But: can this past be recovered in the present, or is it just an imaginative anchor?
2. The Existential Perspective
Heidegger might ask: Are you authentically attuned to your being, or lost in distraction?
Our “natural state” would be less about biology and more about a condition of presence—being open to the world, not swallowed by it.
Dopamine fasting could then be seen as a withdrawal not to escape, but to clear space—for Being to shine through the noise.
But: even silence today can become another curated performance.
3. The Postmodern/Posthuman Perspective
There is no “natural state,” only assemblages: flesh plus screen, dopamine plus algorithm, selfhood plus data.
Our baseline is already synthetic.
So maybe the task isn’t to return to nature, but to compose new baselines—deliberate, thoughtful ones—where we reassert our agency in choosing what stimulates us.
From this view, dopamine fasting isn’t a return, but an act of resistance: a micropolitical reprogramming of self.
4. The Zen/Advaita Perspective
The “natural state” is not in the past, nor is it a goal. It is now, always.
Before dopamine, before fasting, before craving, before “you” decided anything—that is your natural state.
It’s not something to recover. It’s something to remember.
So, perhaps the real fast is not from dopamine but from identification with the self that craves.
In a way, your question touches the heart of a 21st-century koan:
Can we recover what was never lost—but always already distorted?
Do you want to explore this in the context of your van life philosophy or the wounded site of Ereignis? Because those feel adjacent.
