its human nature to try to prevent exessive risks, especially when we sense that there is no need to.
And that is what addiction does to us
addiction gives us the feeling that everything is fine, since it rewards us methododically and makes the “rules” of existence simple: take part in the addictive behaviour or take the substance and you feel good. As long as that works, there is no reason why the mind would want to break the mold.
Using evolutionary psychology, it makes sense for people not to take risks when what they currently do fulfills their necessities. Addictions take this to an extreme, where the normal behaviour required for feeling secure and nourished is made smaller.
To break the habit, it is necessary come to the conclusion that reaffirming the addiction isnt meeting our needs and desires of life any more. Thats when we realise that change, taking risks is necessary.
Anonymous-movements sort of fight around this necessity. They keep the person safe, moving the boulder of risk taking to a higher power, thus giving the person the idea that he is safe and wont have to make any radical changes to his consciousness.
Changing ones own mind while taking the responsibility on oneself is hard, because we are programmed by nature to prevent such situations! Its basic survival to do what one is supposed to and not challenge the system. Any kind of “tribal” social animals exhibit this behaviour, where there is a specific leader who makes decisions in the interest of others(this is in contrast with communal animals like the hordes of grasseating mammals and ants, who dont have a leader and rely on group intelligence)
That is also why big action like waging wars is only possible with the presence of a charming leader who takes the burden of responsibility on himself, while others by believing him, can take risks they wouldnt ever think of on their own.
And it might be for the better, since belief is enough to make something exist for the believer.
In the end we are enemies of our own nature in the context of global economy and resource management. Due to the nature of wanting to trust someone bigger, which works well under normal size tribes, like social animal groups, the crew of a ship or etc.
Since we crossed the border of living like we were meant to by us being perfected by mutation over millions of years, since the time foraging and hunting became replaced by farming which gave people a means of living that we werent inherently programmed for, for which inherently communal creatures like ants are great for, but people who have conflicts for power, will have them in scales that will hurt others if it is made possible, it is inevitable that the benefits of big scale coexistence and welfare will also have the side effects of our nature.
Man has tried to limit this effect by realising its threats and dividing power amongst many, but such a system is inherently unstable due to everyone who is a part of it and who subconsciously dreams of strong leadership.
But it also has its virtues. Due to everyone to some extent craving for leadership(tyranny) it is possible for private companies by competing with each other to make consumers happy to create a great environment for progress.
The main challenge of society then, is for those that have the ultimate power which much exist due to human nature, to realise that they must ignore their own instincts of trying to lead others by creation of large scale taxation and big government schemes and extending their power and instead realise that by extending their own power they reduce that of the general population and due to the size of a country being larger than that where concentrated power is effective, they must instead let people(entrepreneurs) make their smaller groups and let them compete on rules that by surpressing the instinct to physically crush opponents, must instead compete for economic domination and as a side effect make life