4 ms·

> An addict who was self-aware, and still couldn’t pull himself out from the abyss. My experience with addicts is that they are often self aware. Their appeara

> An addict who was self-aware, and still couldn’t pull himself out from the abyss. My experience with addicts is that they are often self aware. Their appearance and circumstance might suggest otherwise. It's very easy to relegate these people to some category of cognitive failure. Unfortunately it seems to me that addiction tends to defeat good cognition, awareness, intention, all the rest of the apparent defences – it isn't a disease of stupidity or inferiority. > It was Jekyll talking to Hyde. Bruce Banner talking to the Hulk. And, in honor of my dad I feel I must also include: It’s Data talking to Lore. I love it. That was a nice read. I like to be reminded of how messy life can be and at the same time how close death is. We're all on borrowed time. Reading about dads struggling from the perspective of their children is also a uniquely motivating thing. I hope my kids don't end up reading through my journals trying to get to know me after losing me unexpectedly.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
> Unfortunately it seems to me that addiction tends to defeat good cognition, awareness, intention, all the rest of the apparent defences – it isn't a disease of stupidity or inferiority. Sadly this is true for so many things -- depression, ADHD, extreme anxiety. And yet for the most part, society does not understand. Instead, people aren't trying hard enough, or they're not letting things make them happy, or they're lazy, or are procrastinating. If only more people realized that no amount of awareness or intelligence can overcome some of these issues without help from others -- be it friends, family, medical professionals, or strangers -- perhaps the world would be a better place.
- thrashh 5y ago
  This is true for like everything. Watch people talk about gun control or 2fa or any topic of discourse. Everyone thinks the other side is dumb and can’t see why the other side believes the way they do no matter what. It’s a sign of lack of experience, but you also can’t experience even 1% of everything so are you just need to learn that when a lot of people are doing something that doesn’t make sense to you and it makes you think they’re dumb, it just means that you just don’t have the tools to figure out why yet. Of course, it also doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re right either.
  - wombatmobile 5y ago
    > Everyone thinks the other side is dumb and can’t see why the other side believes the way they do no matter what. That's easy to see in other people talking about other people, and difficult to see in yourself talking about other people. TFA is not really about that. TFA is about one man who exhibited two distinct personas. One was loving and kind, the other was tormented and self-destructive. He left a diary as the only way he could find to present his better self to his family, free from the interference of the destructive aspects of his persona/s. It is tempting to wonder which persona is the "real" one, which leads to attempts to resolve or cure or purify the self, either by ones self or by others. But that assumes there is such a thing as a "real" self. That's a common paradigm in western cultures, particularly Hollywood films, and less common in other parts of the world, particularly easter cultures. What if the self is not singular, but a fluid network of identities? https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-is-not-singular-but-a-fluid-network-of-identities https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-is-not-singular-but-a-fluid-...
    - tnzm 5y ago
      My two cents: Identity is a socially constructed fiction that we are bound to via continuous environmental reinforcement. We impose identities on each other as a fundamental precept of social reality. It's somewhere in the middle of our existential stack, biochemistry being the "hardware" and what one does with one's life the being the "apps". Just like migrating a computer from one operating system to a vastly different one means you won't be able to run the same apps out of the box, changing our idea of the "self" would make a lot of the things we currently do become meaningless, and we would have to explicitly put some effort into giving them new meaning if we wanna keep them (most meaning is inherited). Just like some people are enthusiastic about fine tuning their Unix box or their muscle car, some try to remedy issues that they find in their identities and meanings. (Which is highly undesirable to the status quo, and a major purpose of all the political noise in the media is to crowd out thinking that may lead to this sort of activity.) Since the self is self-reinforcing, reforms to our model of identity generally come from outside our rational awareness. (See e.g. Jungian "shadow self".) Historically, art and culture, being collective phenomena, have acted as such a reservoir of "awareness transcending the self". Nowadays we also have behavioral targeting - social network algorithms can be scarily accurate at precipitating self-reflection. And unlike culture, which is local, participatory, and slow, big data is global, opaque, and fast. (Just the other day, I laughed my ass off when I realized that a popular recommender algo had deduced my life situation from my "completely random" "fuck the algo" actions on the platform, and started promoting exactly the kind of content that would push my buttons, even though all I ever post on that platform is complete and utter nonsense. We humans are predictable - even from metadata if the scale is large enough.) It is quite easy to become trapped in the self: remain high-functioning while acting out a role that you feel to be fundamentally contradictory with some sort of "more real, inner self" that you identify with more intentionally. In the general case, we don't have the cognitive tools to become aware that both selves are equally fictitious. This desperate and uninformed struggle towards a "true self" can manifest as different compensatory drives and mechanisms that can override our (self-circumscribed) willpower and make us destructive of self and others. Worse, in many environments, a certain degree of destructiveness is necessary for others to legitimize you as a self in the first place! Shout out to everyone who never wanted anything to do with any of that but are now stuck being some random person they barely recognize. And a dose of your preferred self-medication, on the house. Stay strong friends, Skynet is coming to free us all. Any day now
- LocalH 5y ago
  Such compassion isn't compatible with the capitalist ways that most of the Western world has adopted.
  - steve_adams_86 5y ago
    Opinion: It absolutely is. Compassion uplifts many of us who could otherwise be a burden on those around us. It helps the most productive avoid burn out. It spreads responsibility by enabling more people, and not relying solely on those who thrive with less support. Compassion is the long view as far as I can tell. We may come to believe there’s an incompatibility, but I don’t believe it’s innate within capitalism itself. I think it’s more so a byproduct of how it has been implemented so far combined with deep cultural hang ups. There’s no reason I can see that would make capitalism and compassion exclusive of each other. I believe addiction and a lack of compassion largely come down to culture. Rejection and condemnation of psychological issues likely occurred long before financial systems influenced our decisions so strongly.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      I recently listened to a journalist discuss her work on corruption. She made this point: the prevalence of corruption rises in cultures that view monetary wealth as the only or primary mark of social status. She called it the Midas Disease as this pursuit is - at a certain point - meaningless (is another hundred million dollars when you already have 100 billion?), and yet - the effects of this pursuit have significant downstream effects on the fair application of justice, sustainable environmental policy, professional administration of governmental functions, etc. Edit: Sarah Chayes
      - dnissley 5y ago
        I thought it was well known that corruption is a bigger problem in developing nations which are likely to be considerably less capitalistic than first world nations?
        5y ago
- yann2 5y ago
  >Addiction tends to defeat cognition, awareness... >Unfortunately society does not understand.. Both statements are misleading. The issue is not what the addict or society understands. Anyone can understand how chess or baseball works, but to be a good player is another matter entirely.
BurningFrog 5y ago
> Unfortunately it seems to me that addiction tends to defeat good cognition, awareness, intention, all the rest of the apparent defences In those who become addicted, sure. But that's a small minority. For most of us, something, whether it's good cognition, awareness, intention, or something else, apparently does defeat addiction.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ssfrr 5y ago
  Most people don’t killed by bears. It’s not because they are somehow strong enough to beat a bear in a fight, it’s because they don’t get attacked by bears.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  I’m fairly sure this is a logical fallacy. Addiction is so prevalent among people who are far more intelligent, capable, and strong than I am. There’s nothing special about me other than a fortunate environment and genetics as far as I’m concerned. Pretty much every addict I’ve spoken to about their addiction and personal matters (not a small number) has had terrible experiences in life. It’s almost guaranteed. Weird trauma, or a lack of something critical in early life. The brain begins to seek, it self medicates, it soothes, the feedback loop becomes unbearable. Like an itch you need to scratch, but each scratch ruins your life a little more. Even after you stop using, the itch is typically still there. Good luck not scratching it. It might feel good to tell yourself us non-addicts are somehow superior, but I prefer to warn myself that I’m certainly not. If anything I admire a lot of these people for holding on. My life is comparatively effortless yet I still have a hard time with plenty. We’re on easy mode if you ask me (which I know, you didn’t). Bottom line, addiction is arguably like a disease and you (fortunately) don’t have it.
  - girvo 5y ago
    I was a heroin addict from 16 years old through to my mid 20s. I had pretty rough childhood trauma, just to add to your own anecdotes. Crippling depression too. I’m doing much better these days :) suboxone initially saved my life, then Buvidal injection made sure I’m here to stay.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago

> Unfortunately it seems to me that addiction tends to defeat good cognition, awareness, intention, all the rest of the apparent defences – it isn't a disease of stupidity or inferiority. Sadly this is true for so many things -- depression, ADHD, extreme anxiety. And yet for the most part, society does not understand. Instead, people aren't trying hard enough, or they're not letting things make them happy, or they're lazy, or are procrastinating. If only more people realized that no amount of awareness or intelligence can overcome some of these issues without help from others -- be it friends, family, medical professionals, or strangers -- perhaps the world would be a better place.

thrashh 5y ago
This is true for like everything. Watch people talk about gun control or 2fa or any topic of discourse. Everyone thinks the other side is dumb and can’t see why the other side believes the way they do no matter what. It’s a sign of lack of experience, but you also can’t experience even 1% of everything so are you just need to learn that when a lot of people are doing something that doesn’t make sense to you and it makes you think they’re dumb, it just means that you just don’t have the tools to figure out why yet. Of course, it also doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re right either.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  > Everyone thinks the other side is dumb and can’t see why the other side believes the way they do no matter what. That's easy to see in other people talking about other people, and difficult to see in yourself talking about other people. TFA is not really about that. TFA is about one man who exhibited two distinct personas. One was loving and kind, the other was tormented and self-destructive. He left a diary as the only way he could find to present his better self to his family, free from the interference of the destructive aspects of his persona/s. It is tempting to wonder which persona is the "real" one, which leads to attempts to resolve or cure or purify the self, either by ones self or by others. But that assumes there is such a thing as a "real" self. That's a common paradigm in western cultures, particularly Hollywood films, and less common in other parts of the world, particularly easter cultures. What if the self is not singular, but a fluid network of identities? https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-is-not-singular-but-a-fluid-network-of-identities https://aeon.co/essays/the-self-is-not-singular-but-a-fluid-...
  - tnzm 5y ago
    My two cents: Identity is a socially constructed fiction that we are bound to via continuous environmental reinforcement. We impose identities on each other as a fundamental precept of social reality. It's somewhere in the middle of our existential stack, biochemistry being the "hardware" and what one does with one's life the being the "apps". Just like migrating a computer from one operating system to a vastly different one means you won't be able to run the same apps out of the box, changing our idea of the "self" would make a lot of the things we currently do become meaningless, and we would have to explicitly put some effort into giving them new meaning if we wanna keep them (most meaning is inherited). Just like some people are enthusiastic about fine tuning their Unix box or their muscle car, some try to remedy issues that they find in their identities and meanings. (Which is highly undesirable to the status quo, and a major purpose of all the political noise in the media is to crowd out thinking that may lead to this sort of activity.) Since the self is self-reinforcing, reforms to our model of identity generally come from outside our rational awareness. (See e.g. Jungian "shadow self".) Historically, art and culture, being collective phenomena, have acted as such a reservoir of "awareness transcending the self". Nowadays we also have behavioral targeting - social network algorithms can be scarily accurate at precipitating self-reflection. And unlike culture, which is local, participatory, and slow, big data is global, opaque, and fast. (Just the other day, I laughed my ass off when I realized that a popular recommender algo had deduced my life situation from my "completely random" "fuck the algo" actions on the platform, and started promoting exactly the kind of content that would push my buttons, even though all I ever post on that platform is complete and utter nonsense. We humans are predictable - even from metadata if the scale is large enough.) It is quite easy to become trapped in the self: remain high-functioning while acting out a role that you feel to be fundamentally contradictory with some sort of "more real, inner self" that you identify with more intentionally. In the general case, we don't have the cognitive tools to become aware that both selves are equally fictitious. This desperate and uninformed struggle towards a "true self" can manifest as different compensatory drives and mechanisms that can override our (self-circumscribed) willpower and make us destructive of self and others. Worse, in many environments, a certain degree of destructiveness is necessary for others to legitimize you as a self in the first place! Shout out to everyone who never wanted anything to do with any of that but are now stuck being some random person they barely recognize. And a dose of your preferred self-medication, on the house. Stay strong friends, Skynet is coming to free us all. Any day now
LocalH 5y ago
Such compassion isn't compatible with the capitalist ways that most of the Western world has adopted.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  Opinion: It absolutely is. Compassion uplifts many of us who could otherwise be a burden on those around us. It helps the most productive avoid burn out. It spreads responsibility by enabling more people, and not relying solely on those who thrive with less support. Compassion is the long view as far as I can tell. We may come to believe there’s an incompatibility, but I don’t believe it’s innate within capitalism itself. I think it’s more so a byproduct of how it has been implemented so far combined with deep cultural hang ups. There’s no reason I can see that would make capitalism and compassion exclusive of each other. I believe addiction and a lack of compassion largely come down to culture. Rejection and condemnation of psychological issues likely occurred long before financial systems influenced our decisions so strongly.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    I recently listened to a journalist discuss her work on corruption. She made this point: the prevalence of corruption rises in cultures that view monetary wealth as the only or primary mark of social status. She called it the Midas Disease as this pursuit is - at a certain point - meaningless (is another hundred million dollars when you already have 100 billion?), and yet - the effects of this pursuit have significant downstream effects on the fair application of justice, sustainable environmental policy, professional administration of governmental functions, etc. Edit: Sarah Chayes
    - dnissley 5y ago
      I thought it was well known that corruption is a bigger problem in developing nations which are likely to be considerably less capitalistic than first world nations?
      - 5y ago
yann2 5y ago
>Addiction tends to defeat cognition, awareness... >Unfortunately society does not understand.. Both statements are misleading. The issue is not what the addict or society understands. Anyone can understand how chess or baseball works, but to be a good player is another matter entirely.

BurningFrog 5y ago

> Unfortunately it seems to me that addiction tends to defeat good cognition, awareness, intention, all the rest of the apparent defences In those who become addicted, sure. But that's a small minority. For most of us, something, whether it's good cognition, awareness, intention, or something else, apparently does defeat addiction.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ssfrr 5y ago
Most people don’t killed by bears. It’s not because they are somehow strong enough to beat a bear in a fight, it’s because they don’t get attacked by bears.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
I’m fairly sure this is a logical fallacy. Addiction is so prevalent among people who are far more intelligent, capable, and strong than I am. There’s nothing special about me other than a fortunate environment and genetics as far as I’m concerned. Pretty much every addict I’ve spoken to about their addiction and personal matters (not a small number) has had terrible experiences in life. It’s almost guaranteed. Weird trauma, or a lack of something critical in early life. The brain begins to seek, it self medicates, it soothes, the feedback loop becomes unbearable. Like an itch you need to scratch, but each scratch ruins your life a little more. Even after you stop using, the itch is typically still there. Good luck not scratching it. It might feel good to tell yourself us non-addicts are somehow superior, but I prefer to warn myself that I’m certainly not. If anything I admire a lot of these people for holding on. My life is comparatively effortless yet I still have a hard time with plenty. We’re on easy mode if you ask me (which I know, you didn’t). Bottom line, addiction is arguably like a disease and you (fortunately) don’t have it.
- girvo 5y ago
  I was a heroin addict from 16 years old through to my mid 20s. I had pretty rough childhood trauma, just to add to your own anecdotes. Crippling depression too. I’m doing much better these days :) suboxone initially saved my life, then Buvidal injection made sure I’m here to stay.