Bruce Alexander, a Vancouver psychologist, performed a groundbreaking experiment on the nature of addiction with regards to social conditions in the late 1970's that was quickly swept under the rug because it contradicted conventional wisdom on the nature of drug abuse.

Quote:Quote:

The Rat Park experiments, published in psychopharmacology journals in the late 1970s and early 1980s, flatly contradicted the dominant view of addiction in their day. They quickly disappeared from view, having evoked only negative responses in the mainstream press and journals. Lauren Slater’s controversial psychology book, Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century[5] helped to bring them back to public attention in 2005. These experiments are now widely known and cited.

The Rat Park experiments were among the first to show the error in the once dominant myth that certain drugs, particularly the opiates, convert all or most users into drug addicts. In the 1970s, this myth was said to be demonstrated by the high consumption of opiates and stimulants of rats isolated in specially modified Skinner Boxes that allowed drug self-administration. Alexander and his colleagues demonstrated experimentally that rats isolated in cages of about the same size as Skinner Boxes consume far more morphine than rats that are socially housed in Rat Park.[6] Subsequent research has confirmed that social housing reduces drug intake in rats[7] and that the dominant myth was wrong both for rats and for human beings.[8] Nonetheless, the myth is still embedded in popular culture.

To get an easy understanding of how Rat Park worked, read the comic here.

Afterwards, you can read the wiki for more details if you're interested. Rat Park experiments have been successfully reproduced in modern times, which you can read about here and here.

Alexander then went on to carry the implications of his research to cocaine in the 1990's. He conducted the world's largest study on cocaine but it was banned from public airing because it contradicted the War on Drugs. Thankfully, Wikileaks now has the results of the study online:

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In March 1995, the WHO and UNICRI announced the publication of the results of a global study on cocaine. Information had been collected in 22 cities and 19 countries about the use of the coca leaf and its derivatives, its effects on consumers and the community as a whole, and the answers of the governments concerned to the cocaine problem. Preparations for the research began in 1991. Over more than two years, three sub-projects were developed which "proposed to collect up-to-date information about cocaine at regional and national levels." The study was never published despite being "the largest study ever on cocaine use."

Reference to the study can be found in the UNICRI (United Nations Interregional Institute of Crime Investigation) library, where it is still marked as "RESTRICTED" [1].

The Director of the PSA, Hans Emblad, sent a copy of the Briefing Kit to the United Nations Drugs Control Programme (UNDCP), where it caused a sensation. Two months later, on 9 May 1995 in Commission B of the forty-eighth General Health Assembly, the destiny of these years of labour was determined by the intervention of the representative of the United States of America, Mr Boyer. He expressed his government's concern with the results of this study: "which seem to make a case for the positive uses of cocaine, claiming that use of the coca leaf did not lead to noticeable damage to mental or physical health, that the positive health effects of coca leaf chewing might be transferable from traditional settings to other countries and cultures and that coca production provides financial benefits to peasants".

The representative said that his government considered suspending funds to WHO research if "activities related to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches." In reply, the representative of the Director General defended the study claiming it was "an important and objective analyses done by the experts", which "represented the views of the experts, and did not represent the stated policy position of the WHO, and WHO's continuing policy, which was to uphold the scheduling under the convention." It was not the intention to publish the study in its current form, the representative explained as it might lead to "misunderstanding." The debate concluded with agreement on a peer review by "genuine experts."

"The United States Government considered that, if WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programmes should be curtailed. In view of the gravity of the matter, he asked the Director-General for an assurance that WHO would dissociate itself from the conclusions of the study and that, in substance abuse activities, an approach would not be adopted that could be used to justify the continued production of coca."

Peer review is a fundamental part of every scientific study, including those of the WHO. The timeline set for the peer review procedure was programmed in the terms of reference as to be concluded by 30 September 1997. In fact, from March 1995, names of potential researchers were listed and, in accordance with procedure, sent to the US National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) in charge of selecting the candidates. Over the course of almost two years, an intensive fax exchange took place whereby the PSA proposed names and NIDA answered by refusing each and every one of them.

There has been no formal end to this 'Cocaine Initiative'. The majority of the participating scientists never heard what was done with their work.[2]

The document was obtained by the unaligned think tank, the Transnational Institute.

You can read the full research here.

As a result of decades of research, Alexander generalized his findings to all addictions across all social settings:

Quote:Quote:

Alexander then explored the broader implications of Rat Park experiments for human beings. The main conclusions of his experimental and historical research since 1985 can be summarized as follows:

Drug addiction is only a small corner of the addiction problem. Most serious addictions do not involve either drugs or alcohol[9].

Addiction is more a social problem than an individual problem. When socially integrated societies are fragmented by internal or external forces, addiction of all sorts increases dramatically, becoming almost universal in extremely fragmented societies.[10]

Addiction arises in fragmented societies because people use it as a way of adapting to extreme social dislocation. As a form of adaptation, addiction is neither a disease that can be cured nor a moral error that can be corrected by punishment and education.[11]

Therefore, the current NIDA Model of addiction, which Alexander refers to as the official view, is untenable.[12] Contemporary world society can only overcome mass dislocation (and addiction) by restoring psychosocial integration on a political and social level. This requires major social change.[4]

Alexander’s controversial conclusions have been celebrated by some mainstream sources outside the United States. Alexander received a 2007 Sterling Prize for Controversy in Canada, a 2009 high commendation from the British Medical Association, and an invitation to present at the Royal Society of Arts and Manufactures in London in 2011. Although all mainstream American sources have ignored Alexander’s work, it has acquired considerable recognition in outsider sources.[5]

Alexander's main website is here.



If people still think we live under free speech, the fact this research has been hidden from the public for over 25 years just shows how much of a controlled environment America really is.

The implications of this research for our studies of game is quite profound. Why are women so broken today? It's because they have no social validation through traditional means of human interaction. Instead girls are socialized in toxic school environments and have their relationships abruptly ended upon graduation, upon which their only forms of validation now come through social media and other technology. This creates an addiction dependence on their technology for socialization.

Because women are unable to function within communities as they normally have for millions of years, they are also unable to form strong pair-bonds with individual men to create families. Thus they fill the void of pair-bonds with the addiction of being gamed by various men and addiction to sex with different alpha males.

Men, in turn, having few ways to secure a wife who isn't completely fucked in the head, turn to addictions like drugs, video games, or endless sex with sluts in order to fill the void he would normally have from living in a community with a loving wife and children.

The end results of our fragmented social fabric is death: high divorce, high suicide, high drug abuse, high technology dependence, low marriage, and near-zero birthrates. Addictions are the symptoms of our fragmented social fabric, and not the cause.

The fact that our elites refuse to address these problems because they know it would mean less corporate profits or less chances of being elected is why this world is headed straight for the dustbin of history. It isn't sustainable in any sense of the term because it ignores the realities of humans as social animals.

Solid post.

Nothing will be fixed until we have this inhuman society.

I think more and more we were better off as hunter-gatherers. I am not sure what we have achieved with "civilization" was worth the cost...

Another addiction I forgot to mention that we all know and hate: food addiction. People turning to food is also another symptom of social fragmentation and an unhealthy social system.

Stefan Molyneux has some ideas along these lines. Basically, trauma in childhood caused by parents results in chronic shortages of serotonin and dopamine, which the brain needs to keep functioning. One way or another, the brain has to get its fill of these chemicals.

In a healthy community we get our "happy signals" from relationships with other human beings, and from genuine achievements. In an unhealthy society - porn, video games, drugs, food addiction.

Quote:Quote:

He expressed his government's concern with the results of this study: "which seem to make a case for the positive uses of cocaine, claiming that use of the coca leaf did not lead to noticeable damage to mental or physical health

Cause it doesn´t. When I was in Peru, I chewed coca leaves all the time, drank coca tea, ate coca flavoured chocolate, washed my hair with coca shampoo, etc. No damage whatsoever, except maybe coloured teeth after lifelong consumption. Actually, the opposite is true. Coca has many benefits, for tourists most prominently in treating altitude sickness. Coca is not cocaine.

Quote:Quote:

that the positive health effects of coca leaf chewing might be transferable from traditional settings to other countries and cultures

They are, and why not. I can see it becoming very popular, it´s very similar to green tea in its use.

Quote:Quote:

that coca production provides financial benefits to peasants".

Again, it does and why would that be a bad thing. It´s more profitable than it would be otherwise though, due to the higher market prices resulting from it being the base ingredient for the illegal and thus highly profitable cocaine, but then again, whose fault is that exactly?

Quote: (06-23-2015 03:11 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  

Nothing will be fixed until we have this inhuman society.

I think more and more we were better off as hunter-gatherers. I am not sure what we have achieved with "civilization" was worth the cost...

I'm going to woefully disagree. I have a journal of my family's patriarch who came to America from the "old country". This was written in 1854 central Germany.

There is nothing better about those dark days. The reason people seemed so "happy" was because life was quick and short. Anything and everything could kill you (Cholera and whooping cough)Of 7 kids that were born, only two survived. This was in the mid 19th century, in the true "hunter gatherer" days you'd be lucky to make it after 30.

First world problems, if I hear that someone is miserable I almost want to drop them in the middle of nowhere backwater country with an axe, bow, and flint. Most would probably die, but I bet you that any form of "depression" will disappear when survival is the only thing that matters.

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually. This forum exists to tell people that stagnation can be cured without mindless hedonism.

I'll take 2015 social bulls$it over a hunter gatherer lifestyle any day.

Quote: (06-23-2015 09:37 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

...

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually. This forum exists to tell people that stagnation can be cured without mindless hedonism.

I'll take 2015 social bulls$it over a hunter gatherer lifestyle any day.

Great post Beast1. I agree. We look at the past through rose coloured glasses.

As for stagnation. There is a solution, but it will be tricky to get people to apply it to themselves. In my mind the reason for stagnation can be boiled down to lack of randomness. Or put differently a contraction of individual outcomes because when we can choose actions we choose from only a narrow range. It ends up that the only way most people get out of their rut is through misfortune. Even people who believe they are "cool" really aren't. The cool thing they did today... is the same cool thing they did yesterday...... and the same cool thing they did last week.

It's tough to get out of the swamp because the luxury of choice almost inevitably results in a personal rut. Even if you recognise the problem what are you going to do? Plan to be spontaneous?

Good post. It reminds me of the term "addictive personality" and you can find it in many church pastors. Its common for them to have a story where they were addicted to drugs, alcohol and/or pussy and then became addicted to religion...hence their pursuit in life.

People with addictive needs/personalities will find a way to fill 'the void' its just a matter of how its filled.

Truly fascinating study and post. Thank you for sharing.

Quote: (06-23-2015 10:04 AM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

Quote: (06-23-2015 09:37 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

...

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually. This forum exists to tell people that stagnation can be cured without mindless hedonism.

I'll take 2015 social bulls$it over a hunter gatherer lifestyle any day.

Great post Beast1. I agree. We look at the past through rose coloured glasses.

As for stagnation. There is a solution, but it will be tricky to get people to apply it to themselves. In my mind the reason for stagnation can be boiled down to lack of randomness. Or put differently a contraction of individual outcomes because when we can choose actions we choose from only a narrow range. It ends up that the only way most people get out of their rut is through misfortune. Even people who believe they are "cool" really aren't. The cool thing they did today... is the same cool thing they did yesterday...... and the same cool thing they did last week.

It's tough to get out of the swamp because the luxury of choice almost inevitably results in a personal rut. Even if you recognise the problem what are you going to do? Plan to be spontaneous?

This^^^

This is the evolutionary force that is being applied to humans right now. Drive is very clearly something dictated by genetics. Those who have it learn how to pull themselves out of the hedonistic trap of western civilization and rise to even greater heights during this time of plenty. You can see it in the behavior of a lot of the gentlemen here. They will be the ones passing on their genetic lineages to the next generation.

Those fat, slovenly, and lazy will find themselves increasing locked out of finding a woman in the future. Their bloodlines and behaviors will die with them and their lazy ways. Right now we have homosexuality, transsexuality, video games, and in the not so distant future sex robots to fool the genetically deficient "intelligentsia" to remove their dysgenic behavior from the gene pool.

Make no mistake, any attempt at usurping man's ability to connect with his spiritual side through indulgences of the flesh will have their genetic lineages slowly culled and removed. Those who practice self restraint and traditional values (e.g. any truly devote religious group) will multiply.

People always fail to forget that evolution very much affects creatures during times of famine and feast. The forces i'm trying to describe are very different during both times as well.

Intelligence, especially high intelligence, is dysgenic because those who disconnect themselves from a higher calling for a "prison of logic" lose their ability to connect with a higher calling. They end up once again indulging in the pleasures of flesh, never rising up or esteeming to anything more. This happens a lot more during times of plenty which is what we are seeing today.

Drug addiction is clearly apart of all this as well.

Great post from Samseau and The Beast.

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"[A]ny form of "depression" will disappear when survival is the only thing that matters.

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually.

That was the best thing I've read today. I'm currently reading Anthony Robbins' Unlimited Power. He explains why he gets people to walk on hot coals and I feel like that could be relevant to this thread. For myself I felt "in state" as Mr. Robbins would call it after I did my first skydive. I've never done a tandem before so my first time was solo and it put in me a sense of confidence I've never felt before. For the whole of last summer and afterwards I didn't feel like drinking or doing any drugs that could alter my state in any way. It was clear and focused energy. All I wanted to do was chase the next experience.

Quote:Quote:

That's what we do in the firewalk. If I asked you to put down this book and walk across a bed of hot coals, I doubt you would get up and do it. It's not something you believe you can do, and you may not have associated resourceful feelings and states with that task. So when I speak of it, you would probably not go into a state that would support you in taking that action.

The firewalk teaches people how to change their states and their behaviors in a way that empowers them to take action and produce new results in spite of fear or other limiting factors. People who walk on fire aren't different from the way they were when they came in the door thinking firewalking was impossible. But they've learned how to change their physiology, and they have learned to change their internal representations about what they can or cannot do, so that walking on fire is transformed from something terrifying to something they know they can do. They now can put themselves in a totally resourceful state, and from that state they can produce many actions and results that in the past they had labeled impossible.

The firewalk helps people form a new internal representation of possibility. If this thing that had seemed so impossible was only a limitation in their mind, then what other "impossibilities" are really very possible as well? It's one thing to talk about the power of state. It's another to experience it. That's what the firewalk does. It provides a new model for belief and for possibility, and it creates a new internal feeling or state association for people, one that makes their lives work better and enables them to do more than they ever thought "possible" before. It clearly demonstrates to them that their behavior is the result of the state they're in, for in one moment, by making a few changes in how they represent the experience to themselves, they can become so totally confident that they can take effective action. Obviously, there are many ways to do this. The firewalk is just one dramatic and fun way that people rarely forget.

I believe that drug addiction is caused by the state of mind of the individual using the drugs.

I worked as an admin at a Drugs counselling centre in London a long time ago, and basically all of our patients came from damaged backgrounds – kids came from either shitty families and/or were neglected by their parents and took drugs to get attention.

I remember the dentist prescribing me Vicodin when I had my wisdom teeth removed – did I get addicted? No
My mother was given a morphine (which is basically heroin) drip when she was in hospital for a broken leg. Did she get addicted? No

I remember going to a seminar on drug addiction the trainer said that a person’s life is like a pie chart, with slices meaning different things e.g. a person's life can be Friends, Family, Work, Hobbies

Some people take drugs so it becomes a piece of the pie. Many people get high on the weekends and are fine and back at work on a Monday morning. However, some people get into drugs a bit too much, and they start taking them on other days…

Taking drugs will make other things go away – e.g. money for drugs means no money for hobbies. Work may disappear because drugs affects your work performance and the person get fired. Friends might go away because they might not want to be around drugs. Family may abandon him because they don’t want to put up with his shit. At the end all a person may have in terms of lifestyle is drugs.

If you have all of your shit together and just get high on the weekends and don't overdo it you should be fine. There’s plenty of doctors, lawyers etc. who live this way.

Prof. Alexander just knocks them out of the park. Check out the start of this article:

The Eco-Crisis and Grim Psychological Realities

Unfortunately, this bourgeoning spiritual transformation is impeded by some grim psychological realities of the 21st century. Some of the grimmest are:

1. Severe Addiction. Many people in all social classes are severely and grossly addicted to alcohol, drugs, food, money, pornography, entertainment, gambling thrills, Internet games, social networking, energy guzzling cars and homes, career success (Hedges, 2012), and many other pursuits (Tiqqin, 2012). Many of these addictions seriously deplete scarce, non-renewable resources. All of these addictions consume human energy that might otherwise be devoted to spiritual transformation and environmental and social action. In other words, many people act as if they were spiritually committed to their addictions.

2. Severe Power and Wealth Addiction. A few people are so specifically fixated on addictions to power and wealth that they strive ruthlessly for command positions in corporations, financial institutions, and military bureaucracies and use these positions to feed their addictions, even when it means destroying the earth, the lives of their fellow human beings, and their cultural treasures (Slater, 1980; Cramer, 2002; Polk, 2014). Only a small number of people achieve such positions, and not all of them are addicted of course, but those who are dangerously addicted to power and wealth have millions of willing servants and employees, some of whom, hold powerful positions in governments (Gabriel, 2014; Buxton, 2014).

3. Everyday Excess. Many more of us who are not driven by gross addictions and who fully understand the eco-crises that face us still find it difficult not to consume more than our share for ourselves, our children, and our families. The cumulative effects of small, repetitive acts of overconsumption, multiplied by countless millions of slightly greedy practitioners, contribute to environmental crises in major ways (Briggs, 2012).

4. Debilitating Recovery. Many of us who have been addicted in the past struggle for recovery from our addictions of all sorts are so taken up with our emotional baggage of traumas and failures, and our present needs for spiritual solace and social support, that we have no energy left to contribute to devote to solving the problems of society and the Earth, even if we are fully aware of them (Alexander, 2010, chap. 12). It is possible that people may become “addicted to recovery,” in a sense. As my current hero, Mary Pipher suggests, “It is not mentally healthy to sit idly by and watch the human race destroy its mother ship” (Pipher, 2013, p. 117).

5. Apathetic Acceptance. Many of us cannot help accepting myths about “green corporations”, “green technology”, “good corporate citizens”, and the “global warming standstill”, that are promoted by governments and corporations to distract us from ecological and political reality. We know in our hearts that these are deceptive generalities, but it is comfortingly easy to accept them rather than facing up to the harshness and uncertainty of the real world.

6. Half-Hearted Resolve. Even those of us who actively protest ecological degradation, limit our commitments. Many people – and I am one of them -- tend to drop out of the demonstrations when the police begin cracking heads and arresting people. We tend to withhold vital financial support to increase our personal nest eggs for an imagined future that may never arrive.

The spiritual change that can transform humanity into a protective force for life on Earth is impeded by grim psychological realities like these. Overcoming these problems may prove to be a matter of life and death, on a planetary scale.


Read More: http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-...-addiction

Quote: (06-23-2015 09:37 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Quote: (06-23-2015 03:11 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  

Nothing will be fixed until we have this inhuman society.

I think more and more we were better off as hunter-gatherers. I am not sure what we have achieved with "civilization" was worth the cost...

I'm going to woefully disagree. I have a journal of my family's patriarch who came to America from the "old country". This was written in 1854 central Germany.

There is nothing better about those dark days. The reason people seemed so "happy" was because life was quick and short. Anything and everything could kill you (Cholera and whooping cough)Of 7 kids that were born, only two survived. This was in the mid 19th century, in the true "hunter gatherer" days you'd be lucky to make it after 30.

First world problems, if I hear that someone is miserable I almost want to drop them in the middle of nowhere backwater country with an axe, bow, and flint. Most would probably die, but I bet you that any form of "depression" will disappear when survival is the only thing that matters.

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually. This forum exists to tell people that stagnation can be cured without mindless hedonism.

I'll take 2015 social bulls$it over a hunter gatherer lifestyle any day.

Although I think our problems today are less severe than they were in the past, I would still argue Glaucon does touch upon an important point:

Things are worse than they were in the past in many respects, especially in terms of community. People actually had good social networks in the past. Men did not need to worry about being divorced raped or ditched by their children at the sign of a high-paying job. Community gatherings occurred weekly in Churches and people trusted their neighborhood.

Today by contrast is spiritually dead. In the past, things were physically problematic, but it seems with the advances in the physical realm we've gone backwards spiritually.

It's arguable that our spirits are more important than our bodies, so it is very possible that most people today are worse off than their ancestors who lived under threat of famine or invasion.

However, I still think things are better today because it is definitely possible for an individual to break out of our sick society and form his own community. Forums such as this one are the first step.

Quote: (06-23-2015 04:19 AM)RawGod Wrote:  

Stefan Molyneux has some ideas along these lines. Basically, trauma in childhood caused by parents results in chronic shortages of serotonin and dopamine, which the brain needs to keep functioning. One way or another, the brain has to get its fill of these chemicals.

In a healthy community we get our "happy signals" from relationships with other human beings, and from genuine achievements. In an unhealthy society - porn, video games, drugs, food addiction.

From my volunteer experience with youth and addiction, as well as living a large part of my life in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside I will say that childhood trauma is indeed one of the most significant causes of lifelong addiction.

One of my cousins was left as a baby on his back for about 16 months. No idea why, his brother just a year older was not. When my grandparents rescued the brothers from this fucked up violent home my cousin could not even walk. At 16 months he had to learn to walk, talk everything. In no time he was doing all of these things with my grandparents.

When the mother demanded the kids back, suddenly the kid forgot how to walk as he was just dropped into his crib again. A short time later, they ended up with my grandparents who raised them until they were legal. The older brother finished school, got a job, married with kids and is doing OK. The younger brother dropped out, got high with anything he could get his hands on, killed another guy in a fight, went to jail, was released ended up in skid row somewhere and has not been heard from in over 7 years.

So childhood trauma, in my experience is absolutely one of the major reasons for addiction. Fuck these parents, they have one purpose in life and that is to raise these helpless kids into adolescence as best as possible, to give them the tools to survive in the (usually) ugly world. Instead they failed them, handicapped them, and the ugly cycle continues.

Quote: (06-23-2015 09:37 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Most would probably die, but I bet you that any form of "depression" will disappear when survival is the only thing that matters.

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually. This forum exists to tell people that stagnation can be cured without mindless hedonism.

Fantastic post. We've eliminated so many of the threats and obstacles to our daily lives that now we have to make them up to have something to struggle against.

Man is best when he is striving for a goal, pushing the limits toward the next horizon. He is made to face adversity, adapt and overcome. Without something to struggle against, he turns on himself and his fellow man.

Marijuana is not much more difficult to obtain than beer. The reason for this is that a liquor store selling beer to a minor stands to lose its liquor license. Marijuana salesmen don't have expensive overheads, and so are not easily punished.
- William F Buckley

The drug war is perhaps the best example of doing what is effective and efficient vs what is popular. And no one faced the battle with more logic, articulation, and brevity than the late great William F Buckley.

I was trying to get some clips of him talking about drug recidivism rates, but couldn't. Here are some gems about the $$$ drug war.













Ahh, here it is:





God rest his soul.

Quote: (06-23-2015 03:06 PM)Aenigmarius Wrote:  

Fantastic post. We've eliminated so many of the threats and obstacles to our daily lives that now we have to make them up to have something to struggle against.

Man is best when he is striving for a goal, pushing the limits toward the next horizon. He is made to face adversity, adapt and overcome. Without something to struggle against, he turns on himself and his fellow man.

Ironically (or not), isn't that what the machines realized in The Matrix? They tried for a perfect simulation and people were miserable. So they gave them misery, and it worked. I suspect a lot of modern pathologies (SJW, feminism, etc.) are almost entirely due to the spiritual and physical decay.

Quote: (06-23-2015 02:37 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote: (06-23-2015 09:37 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Quote: (06-23-2015 03:11 AM)Glaucon Wrote:  

Nothing will be fixed until we have this inhuman society.

I think more and more we were better off as hunter-gatherers. I am not sure what we have achieved with "civilization" was worth the cost...

I'm going to woefully disagree. I have a journal of my family's patriarch who came to America from the "old country". This was written in 1854 central Germany.

There is nothing better about those dark days. The reason people seemed so "happy" was because life was quick and short. Anything and everything could kill you (Cholera and whooping cough)Of 7 kids that were born, only two survived. This was in the mid 19th century, in the true "hunter gatherer" days you'd be lucky to make it after 30.

First world problems, if I hear that someone is miserable I almost want to drop them in the middle of nowhere backwater country with an axe, bow, and flint. Most would probably die, but I bet you that any form of "depression" will disappear when survival is the only thing that matters.

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually. This forum exists to tell people that stagnation can be cured without mindless hedonism.

I'll take 2015 social bulls$it over a hunter gatherer lifestyle any day.

Although I think our problems today are less severe than they were in the past, I would still argue Glaucon does touch upon an important point:

Things are worse than they were in the past in many respects, especially in terms of community. People actually had good social networks in the past. Men did not need to worry about being divorced raped or ditched by their children at the sign of a high-paying job. Community gatherings occurred weekly in Churches and people trusted their neighborhood.

Today by contrast is spiritually dead. In the past, things were physically problematic, but it seems with the advances in the physical realm we've gone backwards spiritually.

It's arguable that our spirits are more important than our bodies, so it is very possible that most people today are worse off than their ancestors who lived under threat of famine or invasion.

However, I still think things are better today because it is definitely possible for an individual to break out of our sick society and form his own community. Forums such as this one are the first step.

Oh definitely, socially things were better. Make no mistake about that.

But when you're staring death in the face caused by starvation, freezing, or just straight up disease caused by germs you don't even know exist you'd learn to enjoy the occasional pleasantry here and there.

Just read a similar article posted on Reset.me

http://reset.me/story/isolation-breeds-a...not-drugs/

Quote:Quote:

Isolation Breeds Addiction — Not Drugs

“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.” That’s the conclusion that Johann Hari came to while writing his new book, Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.

Nations, particularly the United States, have been prosecuting and locking up people who struggle with drug addictions for a century now. Not only has the approach not worked, it misses the whole point of what is driving addiction in the first place, the author argues.

“Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love,” Hari writes in an article he penned for Huffington Post. “But we have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live — constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.”

The role that a lack of connection plays on addictions is well illustrated through a variation on an experiment made famous by the Partnership for a Drug Free America. In the original version of the experiment, rats were given a choice between normal water and water laced with cocaine or heroin. The rats almost invariably chose the later, and then drank and drank until they eventually died. The study was used as an example of the dangers of drugs and their addictive properties.

However, psychologist Bruce Alexander recreated the experiment, only instead of isolating individual rats in a cage with no stimulation, he made the drug-laced water available to rats living together in a larger cage with plenty of toys and other things to occupy them.

“The compulsive drug use of these animals has been shown to be an artifact of the radically isolated conditions of the standard experimental situation,” Alexander said in a speech about his work. “Socially housed animals have little trouble resisting ‘addictive drugs.’”

What’s more, when Alexander tried the experiment with isolated rats again, they showed the typical signs of over-consumption and addiction, but they stopped as soon as they were returned to the cage with their companions.

Addictions aren’t limited to just substances like opiates and alcohol, either. Many people become addicted to other pursuits like gambling and sex.

“You can have all the addiction, and none of the chemical hooks,” Hari writes. “Nobody thinks you inject a pack of cards into your veins.”

Of course, the chemicals implicated in substance abuse do play some role in addiction by breeding physical dependence. However, Hari points out, consider the case of cigarettes: Only 17.7 percent of smokers are able to quit using a nicotine patch, which supplies the chemical hook that is supposedly at the root of dependence and addiction. Clearly, there are other factors at work.

“I define addiction as any behavior that has negative consequences, that one is compelled to persist in, and relapse into and crave, despite those negative consequences,” said Dr. Gabor Maté, an addiction specialist who practices in Canada, in a video about his work.

“The addictive personality is someone with the sense of deficient emptiness, with the sense of inchoate distress, without the capacity to sooth themselves and regulate themselves without that external source of relief.”

Hari’s findings are yet another strike against the misguided and failed U.S. War on Drugs. Not only has attempting to deal with addiction through the criminal justice system caused vast amounts of unnecessary and counterproductive human suffering, the very premise of drug laws, that you can fight addiction by outlawing the chemicals involved with it, are rendered absurd.

In fact, Hari notes, the marginalization, stigmatization, violence and isolation that result from prosecuting drug users only make the root causes of addiction worse.

There are other options. In Portugal, for example, instead of jailing people addicted to drugs, the state in 2001 decided to provide them housing, jobs, treatment and other support. Now, according to a study published in the British Journal of Criminology, intravenous drug use has dropped by half.

“Contrary to predictions, the Portuguese decriminalization did not lead to major increases in drug use,” the study states. “Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding.”

A better solution than criminalization, Hari suggests, is love. “For a century now, we have been singing war songs about addicts,” he writes. “We should have been singing love songs to them all along.”

I consider myself to be a recreational drug user and every year when I go to Colombia, at least once, I go on a multiple day bender that would make Keith Richards blush. Its pretty fun but after 2-3 days its done, I stop taking drugs, check out of the sleazy hotel and go sober up, usually somewhere peaceful with clean air and good hiking. I can honestly say that I have a harder time adhering to a paleo diet and giving up carbs than I do giving up cocaine.

Quote: (06-23-2015 09:24 PM)scotian Wrote:  

I consider myself to be a recreational drug user and every year when I go to Colombia, at least once, I go on a multiple day bender that would make Keith Richards blush. Its pretty fun but after 2-3 days its done, I stop taking drugs, check out of the sleazy hotel and go sober up, usually somewhere peaceful with clean air and good hiking. I can honestly say that I have a harder time adhering to a paleo diet and giving up carbs than I do giving up cocaine.

   

TheLastPsychiatrist has a glorious, meandering article that is four parts: (1) the most amazing argument against introspection and therapy that I've ever read, (2) a deep explanation into what a repetition compulsion is, how it works, and how to get rid of it, (3) a side-splitting expose of certain elements of male/female interaction, and (4) an explanation of addictions, how they work, and how to cure them.

The article is life-changing, and I've quoted it many times, in many places, in many forums.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/06/a..._look.html

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Here's the relevant part about addictions:

Quote:TheLastPsychiatrist Wrote:

So the thing that addictions-- drugs, internet, sex, etc-- all have in common is that they displace and replace something else. If you think of yourself as containing an amount of stuff, or energy, or emotion, addiction isn't in addition to that, the total amount of emotion and energy stays constant. The nature of the emotions change, but the overall quantity of anger+sadness+happiness+ etc is the same. The addiction replaced something, and you can't get rid of an addiction unless something replaces it.

Broadly speaking, addiction replaces one of two things: human connection or change. Jim Norton frequently complains that his sex addiction prevents him from pursuing a show or writing scripts, but the verb is wrong: the sex addiction allows him not to work on scripts. Doesn't he want a pilot? Sure. But this way he doesn't have to do the mental work of change and eventually he can die. "Is he afraid of success?" No, why would he be? The more invested you are in your "self"-- not happy with, but invested in-- the more you will resist the potential of change. "Self"-loathing means there is a strong "self" that you loathe, and that self doesn't want to disintegrate.

In the other category is human connection. What I don't mean is that a person lacking human connections turns to addiction, ha, you don't get off that easily: what I mean is that the addiction satisfies the same needs as human connection, but better. It bypasses the mental work of maintaining human connections. Say a married guy becomes an alcoholic, and this pushes his wife away, which of course makes him drink more. The problem now is that if he stops drinking, his wife doesn't automatically come back, right? She's pulled away as much as he's pushed. I'm sure she wants him to get clean and etc, but the energy math doesn't balance: he goes sober, the relationship may improve, but there's still a gap, still some emotional connection lost. Ergo: he cannot give up drinking.

More optimistically, the only way he is going to stop is: a) they split up; b) they double down on each other and talk MORE to each other, more than they do now, maybe that means that he skips rehab in order to go to couples therapy. "But the problem isn't the marriage." It is now.

This idea of having a finite "amount" of emotion seems preposterous, and weirdly it's usually most preposterous to the people who don't believe in soul or God or whatever yet also don't want to believe we are finite human beings with finite capacities.

Anyway, here's a very real example of it. Two wives are talking, "after ten years of marriage, we don't cuddle anymore. He used to always hug and kiss me, and now...." And the standard interpretation is kids + work + age = lost a connection, took it for granted, relationship is worse than it was. And then she sees her newlywed friends or anyone on ABC and they're constantly touching each other. Sigh. So maybe you misread one of my posts or studied Deepak Chopra for a decade and think, "ok, I'll just DO it, I'll just force myself to touch/kiss/cuddle and then behavior will lead emotion and we'll connect again." You try it and---- it feels fake.

Eventually the marriage ends, and you tell your friends: "when he stops touching you, it's the first sign."

That may be the interpretation, and if you're merely dating it probably is the interpretation, but there's another to consider: all that touching/cuddlying is now more appropriately given to the kids, it is more correct for them, and so doing it to an adult seems fake because it IS fake. You can't touch a 5 year old the same way you touch a 40 year old, not unless you're a [TBD priest/football joke here]. The point isn't that your relationship is worse, the point is that it is different because it has to be different because otherwise you would explode. What remains is for you to figure out some new, adult way to "touch", whether that's backrubs or a bondage mask I have no idea, but your love has to grow up or else you will think you've fallen out of love. "How can you incorrectly think you've fallen out of love?" How many times have you incorrectly thought you were in love?

Quote: (06-23-2015 10:04 AM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

Quote: (06-23-2015 09:37 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

...

People are depressed because they can sense their stagnation both physically, mentally, and spiritually. This forum exists to tell people that stagnation can be cured without mindless hedonism.

I'll take 2015 social bulls$it over a hunter gatherer lifestyle any day.

Great post Beast1. I agree. We look at the past through rose coloured glasses.

As for stagnation. There is a solution, but it will be tricky to get people to apply it to themselves. In my mind the reason for stagnation can be boiled down to lack of randomness. Or put differently a contraction of individual outcomes because when we can choose actions we choose from only a narrow range. It ends up that the only way most people get out of their rut is through misfortune. Even people who believe they are "cool" really aren't. The cool thing they did today... is the same cool thing they did yesterday...... and the same cool thing they did last week.

It's tough to get out of the swamp because the luxury of choice almost inevitably results in a personal rut. Even if you recognise the problem what are you going to do? Plan to be spontaneous?

Totally agree. I have always suspected that Jorge Luis Borges' Lottery in Babylon has some very deep message. In the story people's choices in Babylon are continuously governed by a state lottery, which functions as a kind of religious ritual (really, it looks like only a religion could make people to accept such social organization when you must accept to be a beggar or a rich by the sheer power of fate). The lottery functions also on the meta-level, as participants do not know WHICH of their life choices will be decided by lot. Therefore, the repetition is eliminated and replaced as much as it is possible be with random choices.
Actually it would be interesting to make such an experiment to answer whether such a life had a more thrill and a fulfillment. Surely it would be a great way to practice and to learn detachment.