We Are All Addicts

It was a Tuesday when I knew my mother had covid-19. Since we had been in contact chances were I was also infected. Friday, my suspicion revealed to be true. Official quarantine had already been going for two months and what followed were three weeks of complete isolation without ever leaving my house. This experience was quite different. I was now paying attention: I read, researched, and studied not only the virus but how the world was reacting to it. More importantly, I began to watch myself. What was I doing?

For the first time in a long while I felt true boredom. The type of boredom that made me question my entire life. Nothing would satisfy me. Fear and anxiety crept in. What if I’m not the person I thought I was? Is my existence based on such shaky foundations? Deep philosophical questions usually so distant were becoming too real. Time seemed to stop and this confinement could not have ended soon enough.

I was living in a small apartment by myself. Each day the walls seemed to shrink and my mind got a little darker. I was fighting a two-pronged battle: one inside my head and another outside of it. Prolonged isolation was making me paranoid. There were periods where I felt weak, undisciplined and a slave to my emotions. I was my own biggest enemy. Conversely, there were moments I felt the world was against me – all my problems are their fault. They want to control me. But who?

I believe I was not alone in having some type of existential angst during quarantine. When the current pandemic invaded our lives, self-isolation became a new normal. Zoom meetings, face masks, or social distancing are now everyday things. If before the coronavirus people were turning into sedentary beings, now even more so. We spend our lives looking at screens with small devices in our ears talking to us, always entertained never bored. You are not expected to unplug without heavy social and professional consequences. Try telling someone you want to stop using email or WhatsApp and witness their reaction.

The path we, as a civilization, are taking is one where the individual is being crushed by the collective. Not to a tyrannical collective that wants to dominate its members but one that does not care nor needs them. Our personal desires are exploited like weaknesses and our differences as diseases to be treated. We become like the addict who hates his drug but cannot live without it. Quarantine and covid-19 made this toxic relationship more obvious.

 

I Can’t Control Myself

I never thought too much of discipline until I started working while graduating. In a naïve yet genuine outlook, it never made much sense to me. Why live a boring, repetitive life in the name of status and money? In my mind, I was too busy living exploring the world and its people. But when adult responsibilities began to pile up, I saw the value of discipline and since then developed a love-hate relationship.

When the second phase of my confinement began, I struggled with it once more. Playing videogames, eating junk food, or reading all sports news imaginable became daily habits. Habits that I thought long gone. Boredom has a way of awakening lost memories and nostalgia. And so, the more entertained I was, the more I despised my escapism. I felt guilty but just couldn’t stop. How could I? I can fight myself for a long time but not forever. What I learnt, no, remembered, is that humans, for all the wonders and achievements of the intellect, are still largely emotional beings.

For good reason too. Amidst my tedium there were also creative thoughts or insights not possible while busy with a normal life. More remarkably I felt they were mine, unadulterated by external influence, as a by-product of my “madness.” I wrote poetry for the first time, strengthened certain relationships, and developed new home workouts. I feel this type of inspiration is lost in modernity. There is no room for contemplation or existential doubt.

There are two sides to our addictions, one that dreads boredom and one that embraces it. Running away from boredom has us always chasing the next big pleasures as if permanently postponing time with ourselves. These pleasures don’t last long enough keeping us in an endless, unsatisfying cycle. On the other hand, true boredom elevates my addictions turning them into something that I just cannot not do. There is no need for discipline or effort because it happens naturally. It unleashes the genius within Man. It is what remains when all that is non-essential gets out of the way.

I cannot not be me. No amount of discipline will fundamentally change me. In other words, we are emotional creatures who think we are thinkers. If we can recognize this fact, we will stay addicts though selective ones. I know that I will always be addicted to something or someone, but I also know that the object of my addiction is my choice. That is my freedom. However, in a world too big and connected this freedom is at risk.

 

I’m Only a Man

If the selection of my addictions should be mine, it is clear there is an ongoing effort to choose them for me. It is no exaggeration to say that say we live in an attention economy. Companies and advertising constantly try to buy our focus. Political movements want us to think a certain way. Not even science is free of indoctrination (scientism pervades our education). We are all subject to propaganda and, like sponges, we absorb everything around us.

Modern propaganda works because human beings have a hard time dealing with the enormous amount of information available. For every fact there is a seemingly valid counter-fact. The term ‘post-truth’ era is one thrown around the media today. It is not that truth is outdated, it’s just that it has become considerably difficult to prove what is true and what is not. The world has become so complex that nobody can make accurate predictions or attribute clear cause and effect to events.

Eventually this external influence starts to change our opinions and beliefs. Slowly but surely, we transform into the object of our attention and forget ourselves. My thoughts are their thoughts. My dreams their dreams. We become simple and predictable regurgitators. Social media is a clear example of this mass standardization. Within a platform where it is possible to interact with all kinds of people to gain a broader understanding of Humanity, we see the exact opposite: polarizing stances and loss of nuanced thought. E.g., you’re either against or pro-Trump; you believe in climate change or you don’t. There is no in-between.

In this internet era, the challenge is not about accessing information but filtering it – to distinguish noise from signal. We are no longer kept in the dark by being ignorant but through confusion. It is no coincidence to witness extreme forms of thinking rising once again from both left and right, science, religion, activists, or entrepreneurs. In such a complicated world, a black and white belief system becomes attractive providing its believers with clear answers and a way forward. It becomes a safe port when everything else is in doubt.

This becomes particularly harmful for the individual considering he’s embedded in many layers within a world he doesn’t understand. The average Joe identifies himself with his family, his country, his political beliefs, his sports team, his religion, his musical taste, etc. What is then left of Joe? One could argue that this combination of affiliations is precisely what makes Joe unique. But that only reinforces the previous point – he’s a combination of systems sprinkled with Joe’s individuality, not the opposite. The genius of Joe is completely squashed by society. Our interests and addictions are already chosen without us even realizing it.

Collectively we’re smarter than ever but individually we’ve never been so dependent, fragile and relatively ignorant. It’s always been the case that human beings were heavily influenced by their environment, however, there was never an artificial influence this deep and on this scale. The scariest fact is that these forces created by us depend less and less on their creators. With new technologies evolving and a growing population there’s no reason to believe it will stop here.

 

A Boring Dystopia

What are these forces that keep on growing and detaching from us? They can take many forms and are not necessarily good or evil. Envisioned to serve its creators, they gradually become the masters as if gained a will of their own, and the more successful the more pervasive they become. The rise of capitalism is one such example that’s directly tied to our addictions. Emerging as an economic system to privatize means of productions, it made for a more democratic and efficient allocation of resources. It proved to be one of Humanity’s best inventions by raising the world’s average standard of living, removing millions out of poverty, promoting scientific progress, among many other achievements.

But we now face ourselves victims of its success. The benefits of growth and prosperity are no longer the goal but growth itself is the measure of success. Money is our new god. Like parasites, we kill our host by exploiting the world’s natural resources. Debt is out of control and the inequality gap keeps growing. And we’re unable to stop or slow down the machine. I can’t give up my daily news, my country needs to pay its enormous debt, and large corporations are too big to fail. Capitalism has Humanity by the throat with a chain long enough to give the illusion of progress while choking us at the same time.

As a result, this force supposed to be democratic in nature, is no longer so. Using Rousseau’s terminology, markets shifted their direction from the general will (Humanity’s best interest) to the will of all (a sum of the most powerful private interests). It logically follows that if such strong forces represent the interest of a few we then become subjects to their leadership. With the power of technology in conjunction with our innate tendency for addiction, these private interests get to decide what we should consume and think.

Whichever the political doctrine, religion, or economic system in power, it should be remembered that these exist to serve Humanity not the opposite. In the same fashion, these forces ought to exist to tame our personal addictions not their own collective madness, unlike what is happening now with the brain drain from applied jobs (e.g., engineers, doctors) to bureaucratic ones (e.g., administrators). The latter exists to prevent individuals from going too far and intervene in extreme cases; therefore, their numbers should be considerably inferior to the former. The current unbalance reveals a sickness where an industry or organization self-preservation becomes more important than the purpose they serve (the goal of a hospital is not to hire more doctors but to treat more patients).

Why are we so powerless to stop this? We are a pacified society obediently marching towards a boring dystopia. Boring because it’s invisible and subtle. Dystopian due to the disappearance of the individual as it exists today. Unlike what we see depicted in the movies, there isn’t an epic battle full of heroes fighting against a tyrannical enemy. It’s easier to fight oppression than irrelevancy. As long people are distracted, the death of the individual becomes possible. How much freedom and genius have we lost to pornography, videogames, Netflix, or social media? These are not individual addictions – they are a form of population control that only serve to fill corporations’ pockets and allow governments to be more corrupt than they already are. But as long as we get our daily dose we don’t care.

 

Reclaiming Our Individual Sovereignty

I believe we are all addicts in one way or another. From the heroine junky craving for a new high to the ascetic monk obsessed in denying its own pleasure which is also a form of addiction. Accepting this part of our nature is perhaps the hardest step to take. Few of us see themselves as addicts which is made worse by the fact that everyone has the same vices. When madness is universal, it’s the sane who’s mad.

This is not a warning against all addictions though. As an addict, I try to accept it as best as I can knowing that some of my vices are in my nature while most are imposed upon me. That is the crucial distinction that boredom and, ironically, covid-19 outbreak might help us realize. As a personal rule of thumb, habits that make me passive and a pure consumer are to be avoided. Those that challenge and encourage a production mindset (not necessarily related to productivity or profit) usually fulfil me. While it’s unrealistic to aspire for complete independence of thought and originality, this criterion helps me point towards a path of individual expression.

Being a proponent of a bottom-up approach for most structures, it would only be consistent to argue that personal change should happen before a systemic revolution. While we remain unaware and slaves to modern life luxuries things will follow the current path. However, it is undeniable that various entities are taking advantage of this evolutionary mismatch to exploit our compulsions. Often times under the guise of comfort, convenience, or efficiency we abdicate of something much more precious – our freedom. With 21st century technology, companies and governments are able to exert a form of control never seen before by never letting us get bored or think too much. Eventually, through repetition and subconscious manipulation, civilization is nudged into their desired direction.

Ultimately this is about individual sovereignty. To simply reclaim the right to choose my own addiction. No man is ever completely free, but we still have choices to make that depend on our free-will. My shackles may look like wings to another and vice-versa. In that sense our vices can become liberating or a burden and it’s up to the individual to discover them. But that quest is his alone and no one else’s.