Nation of Addicts
Mar. 20th, 2008 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaThere's nothing like listening to a lecture series on psychology and behavior to really get you worried about the future of mankind.
So.. The primary focus of this psychology lecture series is on drugs and society and Lecture #22 is focused specifically on addictions and it's by far the most frightening thing he's covered... Not because of the addictive properties of certain drugs but more because of the implications of how the RRP works and how other things become addictive behaviors.
He was talking about how pure electrical stimulation of the RRP in rats will basically get you rats that are willing to sit and press a button all day that stimulates that pathway and they'll only go get food or sleep when they're on the verge of starvation or exhaustion. Doesn't require any drugs at all. Lots and lots of things hit the RRP pathway. Drugs are most obvious. Food, sex, fear, rage, excitement in just about every form. And it occurs to me that this really worries me.
It's a system that's worked great for animals for millions of years but we've badly broken it.Up until the last few decades man has had a fairly complex life. The number of skills you needed to survive were pretty high. A lot of people hunted, worked multiple jobs or had to cross train in a lot of physical or mental fields to get stuff done. Industrialization has let us specialize a lot more. We need fewer skills to survive and do stuff, and that means that RRP is getting excitement from a much more narrow set of inputs and that means those paths have a higher chance of getting burned in as a shortcut to pushing that button.
Even my job which is fun and exciting to me has a lot of routine to it. I enjoy finding those bugs and writing beautiful stuff but I'm pushing those buttons over and over. I imagine if you're in a dull job like a datacenter or something, it's even worse. The highs you have are fewer so you are in greater need of pushing them and because you have fewer outlets, they become more seductive.
People who argue on forums for instance may not really want to argue on forums. I know this is true of me. I've at times thought to myself, "Gee this is a waste of time." and kept right on writing that response because that anger/annoyance/thrill-of-smacking-down-someone-who's-completely-mistaken has become a shortcut to that RRP button. It explains why it became less seductive when I moved to a more creative job and began spending more of my personal time working on other rewarding projects.
I was thinking about this and I believe it's a pretty logical step. The fewer things someone is doing, the more likely it is they'll be overzealous about whatever pushes their button (And religion is absolutely no exception. Prayer hits the RRP nice and hard)
We're living in a world of junkies. Be it video games, sports, flaming, religion, politics, or whatever, we're all falling into ruts and acting like a bunch of addicts. It's pretty scary when you stop and think about it.
On the bright side, the key to breaking out of whatever thing you do that you don't like is pretty simple. You can either find some other way to press that button, whether it's happy or sad or painful or orgasmic. Something that you can do regularly in the same times and places that you'd do the other behaviour, and you'll probably find it easier to shift away from the behavior you don't like to the other one. OR, you can inject lots of new stimulus into your life at other times.
Break patterns. Constantly try new things. That's the secret to having a good and happy life. It's not any one way of living, in fact, adhering dogmatically to any one way of being is exactly the opposite of what we should really be doing. There are an infinite number of things to know and do in this world and we currently only have a finite amount of time in which to do them. Live. Really live.
Now to go apply it to myself.
So.. The primary focus of this psychology lecture series is on drugs and society and Lecture #22 is focused specifically on addictions and it's by far the most frightening thing he's covered... Not because of the addictive properties of certain drugs but more because of the implications of how the RRP works and how other things become addictive behaviors.
He was talking about how pure electrical stimulation of the RRP in rats will basically get you rats that are willing to sit and press a button all day that stimulates that pathway and they'll only go get food or sleep when they're on the verge of starvation or exhaustion. Doesn't require any drugs at all. Lots and lots of things hit the RRP pathway. Drugs are most obvious. Food, sex, fear, rage, excitement in just about every form. And it occurs to me that this really worries me.
It's a system that's worked great for animals for millions of years but we've badly broken it.Up until the last few decades man has had a fairly complex life. The number of skills you needed to survive were pretty high. A lot of people hunted, worked multiple jobs or had to cross train in a lot of physical or mental fields to get stuff done. Industrialization has let us specialize a lot more. We need fewer skills to survive and do stuff, and that means that RRP is getting excitement from a much more narrow set of inputs and that means those paths have a higher chance of getting burned in as a shortcut to pushing that button.
Even my job which is fun and exciting to me has a lot of routine to it. I enjoy finding those bugs and writing beautiful stuff but I'm pushing those buttons over and over. I imagine if you're in a dull job like a datacenter or something, it's even worse. The highs you have are fewer so you are in greater need of pushing them and because you have fewer outlets, they become more seductive.
People who argue on forums for instance may not really want to argue on forums. I know this is true of me. I've at times thought to myself, "Gee this is a waste of time." and kept right on writing that response because that anger/annoyance/thrill-of-smacking-down-someone-who's-completely-mistaken has become a shortcut to that RRP button. It explains why it became less seductive when I moved to a more creative job and began spending more of my personal time working on other rewarding projects.
I was thinking about this and I believe it's a pretty logical step. The fewer things someone is doing, the more likely it is they'll be overzealous about whatever pushes their button (And religion is absolutely no exception. Prayer hits the RRP nice and hard)
We're living in a world of junkies. Be it video games, sports, flaming, religion, politics, or whatever, we're all falling into ruts and acting like a bunch of addicts. It's pretty scary when you stop and think about it.
On the bright side, the key to breaking out of whatever thing you do that you don't like is pretty simple. You can either find some other way to press that button, whether it's happy or sad or painful or orgasmic. Something that you can do regularly in the same times and places that you'd do the other behaviour, and you'll probably find it easier to shift away from the behavior you don't like to the other one. OR, you can inject lots of new stimulus into your life at other times.
Break patterns. Constantly try new things. That's the secret to having a good and happy life. It's not any one way of living, in fact, adhering dogmatically to any one way of being is exactly the opposite of what we should really be doing. There are an infinite number of things to know and do in this world and we currently only have a finite amount of time in which to do them. Live. Really live.
Now to go apply it to myself.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 11:25 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I do think the skill of pattern breaking is a pretty sure cure. It's a skill that can be taught, and one that can be cultivated and cherished on a culture-wide scale. We don't yet, and I have some pretty cynical opinions about why that is of course. But I also think it's something that will penetrate the mass social consciousness someday -- that neurological pollution is every bit as dire as ecological pollution...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 11:32 pm (UTC)In fact, I'm just paranoid enough to see the tendency of religion to turn hierarchical and coercive as a direct attack upon those anti-RRP techniques by Bad Memetic Critters. Not a conscious attack, exactly, but directed and intentional in the same way that evolution is intentional. Parasitism, subverting your most dangerous potential predator, is a classic survival technique after all. Why just wipe out mysticism and its liberating potential, when you can subvert it and use it as a lure?
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