[FRIAM] Addiction and depression
steve smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Sat Jun 15 17:56:19 EDT 2024
J -
so how do we think of this as different "levels" (apologies to Glen) of
selection. The individual near-copy organism/self (humans across a
small spectrum of genome and larger? spectrum of culture) is selected
for at several levels (bodily comfort, ego/identity, existence,
likelihood of propogation, influence on others) while the
industrialized food industry as a whole, consumer-focused product
industries, and a specific food company (conglomerate or single
sub-brand) and the government/political-philosophical-movement/political
parties/factions-in-power, etc also are being selected for success on
several measures.
The cancer cell is a Libertarian and "freedom fighter" trying to assert
it's individual rights about most everything while it's ancestors and
the other tissue/organ-cells surrounding it are deferring their
short-term *optimal* survival for long-term and group survival/thriving.
I personally defer a *lot* in my life to the "tissue/organ" I am a
participating cellular member of. I think any individual who does not
is implicitely a "sociopath" and where there are rule-based systems in
place to be enforced, a criminal (technically "outlaw"?).
Is it a coincidence that the Q followers at the capitol on J6 had(ve) a
slogan: WWGOWGA (where we go one, we go all), an informal "loyalty oath"
that suggests that out of the blue the simple idea of aligning with the
manifesto and words of a psuedonymnous or fictitious individual ('Q') is
enough to bind you meaningly into a coherent group (metastasizing tumor?)
Is a healthy, functioning political group or government (if these are
not total oxymorons) or more likely entire culture a truly copacetic
multi-level structure whose "levels" range from that which is "healthy"
for the individual cell, the organ/tissue, the organism, the larger
social-ego/self of an individual, the family, the neighborhood, the
cultural subgroup, etc a unit of selection?
The Kushan/Axam/Sassanian cultures/civilizations co-existed (and
competed/traded) with the Roman empire and to some extent they all
provided similar levels of "healthy existence" to their
citys/villages/families/individuals in spite of varying degrees of
different approaches to "being".
- SS
On 6/15/24 2:51 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
> The hijack metaphor is not uncommon. Judson Brewer writes in his book
> "The Craving Mind" (Yale University Press, 2017) that drugs hijack the
> dopamine reward system. He defines addiction as the continued use of a
> particular substance or specific behavior, despite adverse consequences.
>
>
> The food giants have apparently found ways to hijack the reward system
> too. They have made their products addictive and their profits larger,
> as Michael Moss writes in his book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food
> Giants Hooked Us" (Random House, 2013).
>
>
> One could say that the food giants exploit our reward system for their
> profits in the same way that despotic rules exploit our emotions to
> stay in power, for instance by promising protection against an
> imagined threat ("The country is not safe! I will make it safe" as
> Judson Brewer writes in the epilogue of his book).
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
> Date: 6/15/24 6:15 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Addiction and depression
>
> I'm probably behind the times with pop-lingo but I was caught by a new
> (to me) phrase of "limbic hijack".
>
> I'm left wondering what the adaptive value of this (apparent)
> exaptation is? My interests have been focused about the competition
> between individual (human) organismal adaptation and societal and even
> biospheric scale collective adaptation...
>
> Mob responses (BLM protests, Capitol Invasion, ...) and collective
> down-regulation of collective "bad behaviour" (e.g. economic
> recessions/depressions as a self-regulating response to unbound
> growth/exploitation?)
>
> My personal experience with addiction/depression is limited but not
> absent. I have experienced depression almost exclusively as the "rain
> shadow" (nod to Nick and SG) of anxiety... where some threat (real or
> imagined) exhausts me to the point of a depressive response (which
> almost always breaks the anxiety and enforces a rest/recovery
> phase). Addiction is slipperier for me as I don't know that most of
> us recognize our addictions while we are indulging in them, or in
> their "thrall". Most here might not be surprised that one of my more
> self-recognized addictions is "ideaphoresis", or getting high on my
> own supply of never-ending tangential ideas. This would fit your
> (Jochen) idea of dysregulated otherwise adaptive phenomena... wild
> ideation as a form of forced breadth-first exploration of problem
> space, up to and including making up problems that *might* but don't
> clearly yet exist. I noticed this (making up problems that don't
> exist) first with my fascination with Post-Apocalyptic fiction.
>
> Regarding food addiction, most of my life I had an
> addictive/compulsive response to lowered electrolytes of seeking salty
> food or more notably salting my icewater. After decades of puzzling
> over this (often there was no obvious reason like
> exercise/persperation) I had someone suggest that my craving wasn't
> for sodium chloride but rather other electrolytes. I picked up some
> liquid magnesium and potassium based salt-substitute to add to any
> drink (formerly water, now home-brewed kombucha) if I ever feel the
> slightest salt craving. It clears it immediately... and I notice that
> the mineralized kombucha tastes a great deal like coconut water (which
> is specifically high in potassium) which was another craving I knew
> before I discovered the mineral-electrolyte supplements. I have
> shifted my diet over the last few years to foods which are also
> potassium/magnesium rich in the process for other reasons and my
> background taste for salt is almost absent.
>
> On 6/15/24 8:22 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>>
>> I was reading a book about addictions (Addictions - A Social
>> Psychological Perspective edited by Catalina E. Kopetz and Carl W.
>> Lejuez, Routledge, 2015) and was wondering if addiction and
>> depression are two extremes on the same spectrum. Addiction is in a
>> sense the opposite of depression: we feel either forced to do
>> something or compelled to do nothing. We either can not stop doing
>> something or can not do anything at all.
>>
>>
>> Rock stars and rich people or their kids often suffer from drug
>> addiction to alcohol or cocaine or other drugs, while ordinary people
>> are more affected from junk food and porn. Junk food is to supper
>> time what porn is to pairing time. They hijack the ancient mechanisms
>> which ensure that we maintain our bodies (by ingesting food) and
>> maintain our species (by having sex). The reward system in our brains
>> is triggered without providing the benefits the rewards were meant to
>> guarantee.
>>
>>
>> What do you think, could you say that addiction and depression are
>> two related phenomena where inbuilt reward mechanism go awry?
>>
>>
>> -J.
>>
>>
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