Some addictions are neutral for one's life overall, and some can be beneficial. — Terrapin Station
However, no such effect is present when for example abusing cocaine, still a cocaine habit is often called a disease. — Wilco Lensink
Does anyone know how people have come to the conclusion that addiction is a genetic disease rather than a product of psychological conditioning? — Wilco Lensink
Obviously. You just get on the pundit circuit. You all go on the chat shows and the colour supplements and violently disagree with each other about what answer I’m eventually going to produce. And if you get yourselves clever agents, you’ll be on the gravy train for life.
That's not a definition I'd agree with, obviously. One reason why is that what's adverse versus neutral versus beneficial is subjective, but I think it's useful to define addiction outside of that particular subjective assessment.Well, addiction is usually defined as "a medical condition characterised by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences [my emphasis]", and so can neither be beneficial nor "neutral". — Michael
Actually that's a classic them in philosophy. Hegel comes to mind.Humans seem to think in dualities - biological/psychological, nature/nurture, inside world/outside world' etc. - while these dualities are always somehow connected or even intermingled; at least related. I myself am convinced that all dualities can also be viewed as pairs (of opposites) that somehow complement each other and form a unity. Though that is just a little alchemical theory, which may be totally irrelevant here. — Wilco Lensink
Modern philosophy, culture, and society seemed to Hegel fraught with contradictions and tensions, such as those between the subject and object of knowledge, mind and nature, self and Other, freedom and authority, knowledge and faith, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called "the absolute Idea" (Science of Logic, sections 1781–3) or "absolute knowledge" (Phenomenology of Spirit, "(DD) Absolute Knowledge").
According to Hegel, the main characteristic of this unity was that it evolved through and manifested itself in contradiction and negation. Contradiction and negation have a dynamic quality that at every point in each domain of reality—consciousness, history, philosophy, art, nature, society—leads to further development until a rational unity is reached that preserves the contradictions as phases and sub-parts by lifting them up (Aufhebung) to a higher unity. — Wiki
I may be nitpicking here, but I wonder how we (as humankind) have come to these conclusions. — Wilco Lensink
I have to wonder: what are feelings and emotions? Are they the same or somehow different? — Wilco Lensink
Are these phenomena "simply" chemicals having a mental effect? Does every psychological phenomenon have a biological counterpart or neural correlate or something like that? — Wilco Lensink
When it comes to the nature/nurture debate I think it is clear that it's not really a matter of the one or the other. — Wilco Lensink
ArguingWAristotleTiff, is it perhaps that you somehow feel that if there is a biological component to addiction, one can feel less "guilty" of having been addicted? I think there is no shame in addiction either way, whether it be psychological or genes. I know how a little partying can, before you know it, turn into a full blown hard drug addiction. I know how something so "taboo" can become "normal" very soon. I know how there can be a paradoxical freedom in using: i felt temporarily free, though while actually I was imprisoned in an addiction. — Wilco Lensink
My pleasure. Kojeve's book on H is nice.Hoo, thanks for the Hegel reference! — Wilco Lensink
Big influence on me.I came to the insight through reading the works of Carl Gustav Jung, some of you may know him. — Wilco Lensink
I agree. This is the sort of thing I focus on. I also like the myths/projections that concern value. For instance, the hero myth. I think self-esteem is generally founded on identification with some myth of the hero. Maturity is the evolution of this myth. We not only change in pursuit of a possible future self. That possible future self also changes as we live and interact with others.They "project" their world view onto the world, and believe this is the world. Then they try to make this into an objective truth through the scientific method. However, all of this is man-made, even the scientific method and concepts like "truth" and "objectivity". We seem to be caught up in a world of projection, meaning: we realize not that there is a subject watching.
It is clear this applies to researchers who set up (design) an experiment and from this induce universal "truths". However, through this scientific method we may contemplate the concepts of subject and object thoroughly, and we may come to realize how and what we are projecting. — Wilco Lensink
I really relate to this, especially the symbol of fire. In T. S. Eliot's poem, "the fire and the rose are one." We give ourselves to death which is life. The opposite of death-life is undeath, a sort of entombment in some fixed crystallization of our selves. I found that idea in Norman O Brown, who wrote: "To be remember is the ambition of the dead." I wrestled with a hell of a lot of hell in my 20s. Now I feel self-liberation not only in fire but as fire. (A funny pop culture image is the T-1000 in T2. The self is liquid that pretends to be solid --until it stops pretending.)He comes to self-realization in the fire. The hero usually returns after a descend into the earth. He is resurrected and reborn. — Wilco Lensink
I had a psychedelic experience that came on as death terror. I had to affirm this death without ressurection, there among my friends (in my mind). But then a massive flood of love "poured" through my chest. I used Christian myths (as myths or passwords) to navigate from death terror, death affirmation, and then incredible love. I can't live everyday like that, but I reaffirm my death (in theory, less viscerally, in the distance) whenever thoughts of mortality return.When I withdrew the projections a painful realization dawned that I had made up everything I believed in and I was in fact mortal, would die, would perhaps not return, maybe there was no god, etc. This was devastating. — Wilco Lensink
I've been afflicted a few times in life with intense bouts of depression. Afterward I call such a bout "the black dragon." There's a Sugarcubes line: "with your own voice, I'll tell you lies." Well, the black dragon is a logical monster, and he wants to die, since he's too proud for the risk of humiliation that life demands for us. Here's the odd and crucial thing: it was an affair of the hear entirely. I have/had the same metaphysical system as my usual happy self as I did in these intense bouts. "Desire derailed from mortal things." That's the phrase that came to mind.To return to the hero myth: I felt like I had fought a dragon. This psychedelic experience of four months was so intense I felt like a survivor. — Wilco Lensink
Well, you certainly have a likable directness and honesty. I'm glad you're here. I get the sense that you indeed have seen/realized something.After that I was fully enlightened to the fact of how much value there is in giving meaning, to my experiences and to the world. — Wilco Lensink
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