The Problem of Addiction
By addiction we refer not only to alcohol, tobacco, and drugs but to television, video games, pornography, complaining, gossip, sleep, food, worrying, resentment and anything by which the person finds themselves at odds with their true self and innermost desire.
Clearly, one is not addicted to a substance but to the experience of the effects of the substance on the subject. Thus, a person is not addicted to cocaine but to the experience of the effects of cocaine on the person. These effects are not merely biochemical but encompass the entire subject: body, mind, and soul. Since it is not the substance but a powerful experience that is sought after, we can honestly say that addiction is addiction to experience. All addictions, whatever the favored substance or object, are addictions to experience. Though the addiction is putatively a self-coping, self-medicating mechanism it paradoxically reduces the overall ability of the person to cope.
Is there a general form of this experience that we can categorize? The experiences, though varied, essentially removes the need for the individual to face squarely the natural anxiety and tension he or she feels in regard to their existence and for the higher purposes of life to seek meaning, understanding, and love. One turns to their favored addictions in order to reduce tension; in order to stop the train of Reflux and to shut off their higher calling. Whatever the addiction may be, it stands against and in opposition to the obtaining of higher levels of being, deeper levels of understanding, and to the most truly powerful and pure of all experiences - love.
Thus, an addiction is a decision to say No: no to understanding, no to love, no to freedom and a saying of Yes to stagnation, yes to ignorance, yes to superficiality. Most of all, addiction is an aversion to work - hard work. For one must go through the night to get to the day and must wrestle with angels to receive the blessing. We can not truly go around the mountain to bypass it - we must go through it; becoming one with it through realization that the mountain is within and not "out there." If you have faith (unshakeable knowledge) as small as a mustard seed, you can say (actualize) to this mountain move and it will surely move.
With a better grasp now of what addiction entails, we can see that it encompasses far more than what is typically considered an addiction, for it encompasses virtually every activity under the sun that does not lead to progress. What is more, we can witness that the addiction is contingent, not necessary, and even counter-productive to the truest, purest, and most elemental desires of the human being.
Instead of nutrition, the person desires junk food
Instead of knowledge, the person seeks junk entertainment
Instead of beauty, the person seeks pornography
Instead of satisfying thirst, the person consumes alcohol
Instead of intuition, the person engages in gossip
Instead of worship, the person seeks a concert of bad music
Had the person fulfilled the original desire the process would stop, the circuit close, the tension relax. With addiction, the desire becomes infinite and insatiable. For the eyes never see enough; the ears hear enough. There is always more money to be made, more games to play, more things to collect, more women to look at. Experience is not an object so it cannot be taken and put on a shelf and told to shut up. You are fused to the experience and the experience is you. Eventually, the experience has a life of its own, an artificial intelligence using heuristics to run the show; a demonic entity of your own creation.
No longer will it be a Person seeking to have an experience but Experience seeking to be a Person. The person taking the drugs becomes Drug Addict. The person gambling his paycheck away becomes Gambler. The person becoming obsessed with having money Miser. We can go on but the point is hopefully well made.
Since man is moved by desire and even defined by desire, if we may be so bold, there are really only two modes of being - addiction and freedom; One is either defined by their most salient addiction or is undefinable. The closer one moves to The Source of All, the more unified one becomes and the more one can say "neither/nor". The Dialectic progress exists only in the Reflux, never the Efflux.
Another aspect of Addiction is that there is no actual desire for fulfillment though prima facie it appears to be so; there is no actual end desired. For it is the sustaining of the experience - experience for experience sake - that is the kernel of addiction. Addiction is Pursuit. Pursuit of what you say? Pursuit of newer experiences, more novelty, more offspring. Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention in maintaining what exists, but in breeding more offspring to sustain itself. Addiction is Samsara.
The person is freed, at least momentarily, from the burden of being free and the task of understanding. Although we can point to the natural depressors of alcohol and narcotics, this effect is not mutual among all addictors. Lust, for instance, has a contrary effect that excites rather than depresses.
In further consideration of the ostensible phenomena of multiple wills observed in addiction, we come to a seeming impasse. For the man has willfully made the first steps leading to an addiction yet not necessarily (and unlikely) the addiction itself. The addiction thus seems the result of poor choice and yet the addiction itself is not a choice. If the addiction is not a choice how can it be unchosen?
The person wills to be free of addiction but continues to will the addiction by making wrong choices as if the left hand builds up and the right hand tears down. In other words, even if the addiction has deteriorated the man's ability to choose, he still has a will whereby he sincerely chooses freedom and thus takes steps to free himself from addiction, yet often failing miserably despite his own will. This phenomena then appears to point in the direction of multitheletism, or multiple wills. For if the function of choice in man is identified with the Will in man then it appears that only by the presence of multiple wills can there be any such conflict, even if we admit that not all wills are of human origin. If there is any sense by which a man does something that he did not "really want to do" then there is a conflict of will, and thus multiple wills.
Yet if there is a true conflict of wills in man (such as an Id and Superego) what is the arbiter of ultimate choice in man? Is there another will or another function of man that can arbitrate between the various wills? This can then lead to the problem of an infinite regress.
What if there really is only one will in man but it can be inversed? So that bad choice is really not a choice at all for the inverse of will is a deterministic automaton. Thus, the will in man can function either as a Pneumatos or a Thanatos and that all wrong choices are really choices for death, and thus addiction and a comatose state of unknowing. Furthermore the only real choice is a choice for life so that Socrates' Anti-Akrasia - that no man willingly does wrong - seems incredibly brilliant. Since the Thanatos, like evil, is not a "real thing" but an absence of the real, then the Thanatos inverse of will is not really will and not really choice but a failure to choose so that the apparent phenomena of multitheletism is in actuality the distinction between choosing that which is good and true and failing to choose. All goodness and truth flow from one source only and yet it seems that Man must constantly say 'YES' to this stream and flow or die. So then Will implies Not Willing or Failure to Will and only he wills that wills rightly.
If reality is truly One and this reality is Omnibenevolent, then it would appear that there is no possibility of good proceeding from anything other than the original source of all there is. There is also no possibility of this good failing so there can be no second will that wills wrongly.
This revelation has many important ramifications. If no man truly wills wrongly then there is no problem of sin. The problem is not with man's behavior but with man's knowledge. To tell a sinning man that he should stop sinning is like telling a corpse to stop lying on the ground. Restore health by choosing life and the disease will be gone. Restore truth by choosing knowledge and the error will be gone. Restore freedom by choosing spirit and the addiction will be gone. Do not fight against disease, error, or addiction for then you would be creating monsters out of chimeras and boogeymans out of darkness.
So addiction is to the will what disease is to the body and what error is to the mind.
Clearly, one is not addicted to a substance but to the experience of the effects of the substance on the subject. Thus, a person is not addicted to cocaine but to the experience of the effects of cocaine on the person. These effects are not merely biochemical but encompass the entire subject: body, mind, and soul. Since it is not the substance but a powerful experience that is sought after, we can honestly say that addiction is addiction to experience. All addictions, whatever the favored substance or object, are addictions to experience. Though the addiction is putatively a self-coping, self-medicating mechanism it paradoxically reduces the overall ability of the person to cope.
Is there a general form of this experience that we can categorize? The experiences, though varied, essentially removes the need for the individual to face squarely the natural anxiety and tension he or she feels in regard to their existence and for the higher purposes of life to seek meaning, understanding, and love. One turns to their favored addictions in order to reduce tension; in order to stop the train of Reflux and to shut off their higher calling. Whatever the addiction may be, it stands against and in opposition to the obtaining of higher levels of being, deeper levels of understanding, and to the most truly powerful and pure of all experiences - love.
Thus, an addiction is a decision to say No: no to understanding, no to love, no to freedom and a saying of Yes to stagnation, yes to ignorance, yes to superficiality. Most of all, addiction is an aversion to work - hard work. For one must go through the night to get to the day and must wrestle with angels to receive the blessing. We can not truly go around the mountain to bypass it - we must go through it; becoming one with it through realization that the mountain is within and not "out there." If you have faith (unshakeable knowledge) as small as a mustard seed, you can say (actualize) to this mountain move and it will surely move.
With a better grasp now of what addiction entails, we can see that it encompasses far more than what is typically considered an addiction, for it encompasses virtually every activity under the sun that does not lead to progress. What is more, we can witness that the addiction is contingent, not necessary, and even counter-productive to the truest, purest, and most elemental desires of the human being.
Instead of nutrition, the person desires junk food
Instead of knowledge, the person seeks junk entertainment
Instead of beauty, the person seeks pornography
Instead of satisfying thirst, the person consumes alcohol
Instead of intuition, the person engages in gossip
Instead of worship, the person seeks a concert of bad music
Had the person fulfilled the original desire the process would stop, the circuit close, the tension relax. With addiction, the desire becomes infinite and insatiable. For the eyes never see enough; the ears hear enough. There is always more money to be made, more games to play, more things to collect, more women to look at. Experience is not an object so it cannot be taken and put on a shelf and told to shut up. You are fused to the experience and the experience is you. Eventually, the experience has a life of its own, an artificial intelligence using heuristics to run the show; a demonic entity of your own creation.
No longer will it be a Person seeking to have an experience but Experience seeking to be a Person. The person taking the drugs becomes Drug Addict. The person gambling his paycheck away becomes Gambler. The person becoming obsessed with having money Miser. We can go on but the point is hopefully well made.
Since man is moved by desire and even defined by desire, if we may be so bold, there are really only two modes of being - addiction and freedom; One is either defined by their most salient addiction or is undefinable. The closer one moves to The Source of All, the more unified one becomes and the more one can say "neither/nor". The Dialectic progress exists only in the Reflux, never the Efflux.
Another aspect of Addiction is that there is no actual desire for fulfillment though prima facie it appears to be so; there is no actual end desired. For it is the sustaining of the experience - experience for experience sake - that is the kernel of addiction. Addiction is Pursuit. Pursuit of what you say? Pursuit of newer experiences, more novelty, more offspring. Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention in maintaining what exists, but in breeding more offspring to sustain itself. Addiction is Samsara.
The person is freed, at least momentarily, from the burden of being free and the task of understanding. Although we can point to the natural depressors of alcohol and narcotics, this effect is not mutual among all addictors. Lust, for instance, has a contrary effect that excites rather than depresses.
In further consideration of the ostensible phenomena of multiple wills observed in addiction, we come to a seeming impasse. For the man has willfully made the first steps leading to an addiction yet not necessarily (and unlikely) the addiction itself. The addiction thus seems the result of poor choice and yet the addiction itself is not a choice. If the addiction is not a choice how can it be unchosen?
The person wills to be free of addiction but continues to will the addiction by making wrong choices as if the left hand builds up and the right hand tears down. In other words, even if the addiction has deteriorated the man's ability to choose, he still has a will whereby he sincerely chooses freedom and thus takes steps to free himself from addiction, yet often failing miserably despite his own will. This phenomena then appears to point in the direction of multitheletism, or multiple wills. For if the function of choice in man is identified with the Will in man then it appears that only by the presence of multiple wills can there be any such conflict, even if we admit that not all wills are of human origin. If there is any sense by which a man does something that he did not "really want to do" then there is a conflict of will, and thus multiple wills.
Yet if there is a true conflict of wills in man (such as an Id and Superego) what is the arbiter of ultimate choice in man? Is there another will or another function of man that can arbitrate between the various wills? This can then lead to the problem of an infinite regress.
What if there really is only one will in man but it can be inversed? So that bad choice is really not a choice at all for the inverse of will is a deterministic automaton. Thus, the will in man can function either as a Pneumatos or a Thanatos and that all wrong choices are really choices for death, and thus addiction and a comatose state of unknowing. Furthermore the only real choice is a choice for life so that Socrates' Anti-Akrasia - that no man willingly does wrong - seems incredibly brilliant. Since the Thanatos, like evil, is not a "real thing" but an absence of the real, then the Thanatos inverse of will is not really will and not really choice but a failure to choose so that the apparent phenomena of multitheletism is in actuality the distinction between choosing that which is good and true and failing to choose. All goodness and truth flow from one source only and yet it seems that Man must constantly say 'YES' to this stream and flow or die. So then Will implies Not Willing or Failure to Will and only he wills that wills rightly.
If reality is truly One and this reality is Omnibenevolent, then it would appear that there is no possibility of good proceeding from anything other than the original source of all there is. There is also no possibility of this good failing so there can be no second will that wills wrongly.
This revelation has many important ramifications. If no man truly wills wrongly then there is no problem of sin. The problem is not with man's behavior but with man's knowledge. To tell a sinning man that he should stop sinning is like telling a corpse to stop lying on the ground. Restore health by choosing life and the disease will be gone. Restore truth by choosing knowledge and the error will be gone. Restore freedom by choosing spirit and the addiction will be gone. Do not fight against disease, error, or addiction for then you would be creating monsters out of chimeras and boogeymans out of darkness.
So addiction is to the will what disease is to the body and what error is to the mind.
posted by Keith D. Hansen | 9:03 PM
1 Comments:
One shouldn't confuse addiction with habit. Addiction defined as attachment to experience is a distortion of the term's true meaning, which is a chemical dependency. Cocaine, heroine, tobacco, anti-depressants, and even certain laxatives, etc., cause a physical and chemical addiction the withdrawal of which substances makes the body sick and unable to function properly. The rather unfortunate tendency in modern psychology to make a disease out of everything goes along side the unethical practice of lying in order to force a certain medical opinion on society. Obviously, habits are not addictions. We get into bad habits often these days because every where one looks there is subversive media and an absence of authentic tradition.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home