[FRIAM] Addiction and depression
Jochen Fromm
jofr at cas-group.net
Sun Jun 16 16:19:37 EDT 2024
Good questions and interesting topic. I am not sure. Levels of selection is a complicated topic because of the differences in scale in biological, cultural, economic and politcal systems. For the food industry clearly those companies are selected and survive which produce the products that have the biggest allure and the cheapest Ingredients - unfortunately not the ones that produce healthy food which is good for us (unless there is a market for it).For politcal movements those movements which are in tune with the times are selected. In times of crisis this are often populist or even fascist movements. In a sense populists have cheap answers but high allure too, just like the food giants. And they are not good for the system. Jan-Werner Müller argues in his book "What Is Populism?" that when populists have enough power, they will end up creating an authoritarian state that excludes all those not considered part of the proper "people."https://www.pennpress.org/9780812248982/what-is-populism/-J.
-------- Original message --------From: steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> Date: 6/15/24 11:57 PM (GMT+01:00) To: friam at redfish.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Addiction and depression
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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