Life as an Addiction

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

What is ADDICTION?

Wikipedia - “Addiction the continued behaviour despite adverse consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors.”

What is the behaviour?

Acting on all the drives.

What are the adverse consequences of the addiction to Life?

The prevention of death. Perhaps the greatest peace imaginable.

Dictionary.com - [addiction is] “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.”

Enslaved to life? Check.
Life is Habit-Forming? Check.
Cessation of Life causes severe trauma? The very idea cessation (death) is traumatic to those who Live. Absofuckinglutely CHECK!

Life is an escape from death.
We know life, we don’t know death.
This is why we escape death.

Why is life the escape? Why isn’t death the escape?
As living beings, all we do is fight death.
It’s the process of constantly escaping death.

Addiction is life affirming.
It’s the truest drive.
It’s result is the escape from death.

What’s the difference between a good and bad addiction?
Drugs, violence and gambling are addictions.
But they’re bad addictions, they don’t enable survival.
This is why drives (addiction) has continued.
Because they enable continuity of the agent / ‘host’.
They are meta-addictions. Offspring of the one true addiction.

I love life, so I avoid the bad addictions.
I seek the greatest addictions possible.
Love is an addiction. I’m addicted to life.
Life is an addiction, the ultimate addiction.

Conclusion

Life’s an addiction.

2

What ‘Life as/is an Addiction’ represents to me is further deterioration of bias that we have had towards Life, and a step closer, for me at least, to understanding what is truly valuable to me.

We were born into the addiction of Life, we’ve never known a moment of ‘sobriety’, as it were. No wonder we are so addicted to Life.

Consider a baby addicted to a drug. The child grows into an adult and throughout their life, has fed the addiction. How could we show this person that there’s something beyond the addiction? How could we show this person that there’s a reason to break the addiction?

Well, we’d try to express to them what our experience is, without the addiction. We’d try to show them what they’re missing out on. This may motivate them to change.

Now, let’s step back to life as/is an addiction. No one who has ever moved beyond life and been able to express what death entails to those still feeding the addiction. No one can convince us that there’s something much greater beyond the addiction. Something that one should rationally seek.

How then could we expect someone to even consider breaking the addiction? Without knowledge of what the alternative truly represents, and how the addiction harms said addict, we couldn’t rationally expect it.

Here’s a thought though. What if an addict of life sought a kind of temporary sobriety in order to escape the negative affects of the addiction (life). How could one be temporarily sober?

Well, one could ignore all actions that feed the addiction. This isn’t a true definite sobriety, for they are still leaving the possibility of embracing the addiction again. In this case, it would be acts such as eating and sleeping, without giving into larger ‘life affirming’ desires.

Now, what could one do with this temporary sobriety? Well, one could get a glimpse of what is beyond the addiction. The addict themselves, could break down the walls of their addiction, slowly but ever surely. In this case, it would destroying all the illusions that affirm life, and seeing them for what they are.

Given all this, is it not possible for someone within the addiction, to break free of the addiction, even when they’re still under deep influence of the addiction? Isn’t it possible to find reasons to break it? To understand what is beyond it?

The odds are stacked against it, but it’s possible. This is what Life as/is an addiction represents to me.

Does this sound overly pretentious and tripe? Has this all been said before?

I’d really like input.

3

Suicide cases, given your paradigm, would seem to represent a cold-turkey break from the habit of living. The reasons are multiplicitous and nuanced, to be sure, but for our purposes here, we might name depression, a crippling case of anxiety, psychosis, and so on. To understand what is beyond it? Death, most certainly. Finitude. The end. Which is to say: nothing.

No, just trivial. I’m not sure what this image of thought does for you, if anything. In all honesty, I’m only responding to pass the few minutes it takes for my coffee to properly brew.

4

Life is not so much the negative addiction of avoidance of death, but rather the positive addiction to accomplishments of surviving.

5

I think the op is quite profound, suddenly drinking, sex, music, form, art and all our many addictions make sense. Rather than falling from one to another all we have is addiction, and that’s why its so seamless.

I’d say that gambling is possibly done in the idea of potential gain, ~ not necessarily a negative thing in and of itself. A friend of mine gambles, and I asked him if he gambles on-line and with fruit machines, he said yes, I pointed out that mostly he’s gambling against computers programmed to win most of the time. Strangely he had a look on his face as if he thought he knew some way around that, so I asked if he wins most of the time, he said no.

I don’t know if its just the thrill of winning more than an effort to defeat death. Certainly not consciously; we don’t think that anything we do will achieve ultimate victory, we just play the game.

6

Exactly.

What it also does, is bring into question the assessment we’ve made of what’s beyond the addiction. Any addiction clouds the mind’s judgement. I see death as being very traumatic and empty, but this is expected if I admit I’ve an addiction to Life.

The question becomes, is feeding the addiction truly in our interest?

7

As you’ve seen me say, the ‘positive’ we feel to accomplishment towards survival emerged and continued because it aided the addiction to Life. Those that are addicted to Life, survive better, than those who are sober.

Life entails pain. Life entails pleasure. They both comprise Life. Both continue, because both feed the addiction. Pain is the avoidance of harm to survival, pleasure is the embrace of benefit to survival. Life is about survival.

What else is there to life but the addiction?

8

In case of an addiction, a being can exist without the addicting element.

In case of life, a being cannot exist without it. Life and being are bound and inseparable. There cannot be an “addiction to” life. It’s like saying you are addicted to being you…as if there is another you out there somewhere.

There is no other you.

9

I don’t agree that it’s only an addiction if it can removed and you survive. We can see that for commonly accepted addictions that a person can be so dependant on them, that removal causes death.

I believe the criterion of addiction should rely on whether it is good or bad for survival, but rather whether it is good or bad for the individual.

I’m saying that to remove the addiction life entails, would result in one’s death. I’m not saying there’s another ‘me’ out there.

What I’m saying is that death is the result of going cold turkey. Why might one seek to go cold turkey? One might do this if the positives of the addiction are outweighed by the negatives of the addiction. This is why people suicide. Do you think suicide can be justified? If so, then what I say isn’t instantly unjustified.

anthropo-eccentricism pointed out how to escape it. I also spoke about this exact thing in my Beyond Existentialism thread with James. You also shared some of your thoughts in this topic.

I agree with this, but he went on to give his interpretation of what we are. If you’d like to read about that, please revisit the thread, but for your sake, i’ll leave that out.

To say we are addicted, is part of my journey to understand what I am. This is the relevance of what I’m saying. I think my life is an addiction, and I’m still trying to make sense of it.

10

Well, I agree that life is an addiction to self-harmony without which death would ensue.
But I don’t see the point in stating it… :-k

11

See above. I’m trying to understand who I am. The fact that life is an addiction, is very relevant information if one’s trying to assess their identity.

Also, I don’t think we’re fair to the idea of death, because to be fair to death, goes against our self-harmony. Does this mean death may not be as bad as we represent it? Yes.

If death involves the lack of all the bullshit life entails, hey, that doesn’t sound so shabby after all.

12

Is it?
In what way?

Usually one speaks of an addiction as something to cure and be freed from. Many social engineers would love for people to be free from their addiction to trying to stay alive. Is that your incentive for thinking of life as an addiction?

13

When I say Life, I mean our experience of being alive. I’m trying to say our life entails addiction from the get go. A survival mechanism. A Life affirmation mechanism.

In your terms, life is Self-harmony. Beyond self-harmony, is death.

Social Engineer comes with the idea of manipulation for X result. If X = So people don’t suffer in their pursuit to find Self-Harmony - then yes, this is very appealing to me.

You were there as the ‘pill’ idea was being spoken about. ‘insta-bliss’ it may be called. This is the train of thought.

14

That would kind of depend upon who is in charge of the “dark side” wouldn’t it.
If those in charge are of the Jesus type of ethic, you wouldn’t have a problem.
But if they are the socialist utilitarian type who proclaimed, “those Americans have no right to squander their resources while we suffer”, then what you can’t see becomes what is keeping you in anxiety, confused, blinded, ill, and always wanting for what you don’t have.
Cain vs Able.

but how much would you really pay for that “pill”?

15

Joe

We probably cannot do anything but feed the addictions. Do they cloud our thoughts and judgements? I don’t know, I think at times I can think with great clarity, other times not. Usually the cloudiness increases with worldliness ~ in my experience anyhow.

I saw two photos of an experiment done with spiders [on QI ~ a British panel show], one had excessive caffeine the other LSD, one moved in an erratic tracked pattern which looked like a scribble, the other made all sorts of geometric shapes ~ well ordered. The contestants on the show all guessed that the erratic spider was on LSD, the other on caffeine, wrong! It was the one on LSD which made the clever patterns.

.

16

Determinism willing.

Let’s say I’m a socialist utilitarian (I know I’m not so far from it). What can’t I see? Is it Cain and Abel that I can’t see?

Also, I look at larger systems than nations. So what I’d say would be more like “We’re hurting ourselves. This is unnecessary. I wont condone this.”

What am I willing to pay for it?

Well, I said I would take this pill, even if it would result in my death. So there’s an insight as to what I’d be willing to trade.

17

Removing the addiction, is a product of the addiction. One could say, our addiction is to kill our addiction. Our drive, is to remove drive. Death is the lack of drive, therefore an effective solution.

Clarity is relative. When you say you’re thinking with clarity, it’s to say, you’re acting to your interest very keenly. I say our interests (drives) are in conflict with Life.

If we attain bliss, which is our truest drive, then we are closest to death. One might say upon the attainment of ‘bliss’, we are already in a state of death, the death of conflict. The absence of conflict. Our truest drive, it to attain death, lack of conflict.

This doesn’t mesh well with Life, unless our drive is constantly fleeting and unattainable, such is the pursuit of happiness. James puts it’s well, it is the momentum that enables survival. I would replace the world momentum, with struggle. For the only drive is to remove struggle, therefore, if we’re moving, it’s because there’s still conflict.

I see where you’re coming from, but this doesn’t really change what I said. You’re claim is that LSD, an addiction, provides clarity because it produces ‘good’ results. Spiders make ‘good’ webs, even when they’re not affected by LSD. But both situation scenarios, affected by LSD, or not affected by LSD, lead to results based on one addiction or another. The results are completely subjective, based on our bias. When one admits that our only drive is comfort, then speaking of clarity in such an abstract way as spiders and their webs, doesn’t address that we didn’t want clarity, we want comfort.

Clarity is a means to an end, not the end itself. So say that Life provides clarity, therefore addiction is fine, doesn’t sit well by me.

18

Yes life is an addiction, or rather, life is addiction. To what are we addicted? Not “life itself” (nor are we addicted to “avoiding death”) but rather to all the various modes and methods of “living”, which is to say to the stimulus of our organism.

Pleasure adopts the form of addiction, while suffering the form of reflection, understanding. Pleasure motivates only the passive need to continue or replicate conditions productive of pleasure, while suffering motivates active need to reformulate conditions and alter them.

“We love life not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving”, as Nietzsche’s Zarathustra noted. Love, pleasure, happiness, contentment, ecstacy, and especially novelty, these are all the forms in which the addictive impulse takes. And what grounds this addictive impulse itself? Intoxication. But we “free thinkers” can at least satisfy ourselves with an intoxication with truth, which is to say, with philosophy.

19

As Lacan said, “Suicide is the only successful act.”

If you mean beyond addiction, beyond addictive consciousness, there are progressively higher, more refined states of addiction. We can improve ourselves, and we can change to what we are addicted, and how, and why. The addiction to truth, truth itself and our relation to it can motivate much “overcoming” of addictions, we can learn to act ethically, which is to say teleologically, by submitting the law of our addictive organism to a higher utility, purpose and end. In otherwords, we can learn to act rationally, to perceive and make use of truth.

If you mean beyond living, there is nothing. Death is the abstract idea of life’s nonexistence, of the oblivion of life. Death is not “peace”. When life dies, it dies, and that’s it. No remainder in that equation. But certainly to a life which no longer wishes to live, death is indeed “escape” from living, from needing to live, if by escape we mean non-existence.

20

I agree broadly with everything you said, up until this point. Which I don’t think is accurate.

The search for truth is as intoxicating as any other ‘pleasure’ we may find in life, but there is no guarantee that one can continually find pleasure in truth.

If anything, once one believes their thoughts, we go to a place beyond pleasure. The most relevant truth, is beyond pleasure. This truth regards the addiction, but is not the addiction. At this point, we see that removing the addiction, would be aligned with a desire for comfort/bliss.

I’d refer you to my most recent reply to Amorphos. In this reply I give my interpretation of what Death is, and why it isn’t so bad.