Addiction

I notice people rarely talk about themselves and the environment. They'll express outrage, recount facts, and say what other people should do, but not about themselves. So I'm thinking more about why. Seeing the overlap between behavioral addictions like social media, binge-watching TV, and gambling, and behavior that requires polluting reveals the overlap with why talking to addicts about their addiction goes nowhere. Addicted people resist acknowledging hurting people and themselves. Polluting and depleting hurt other people and themselves. It follows that people don't like acknowledging how they're hurting people, violating their own values. Eugene, who hosts a sister This Sustainable Life podcast and the Verdant Growth blog, recently asked people who want to talk about sustainability and the environment why they don't. I never…

I recently wrote about how Trying to lead an addict to admit their addiction or that they are hurting others (or themselves) is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. I've been thinking about why. Generally addiction means you're acting against your own values, hurting others. An addict may say he or she doesn't see that he or she is hurting others, but likely some part of them knows, however they try to suppress or deny. In the case of addiction to behaviors that pollute or deplete, like consuming doof or buying stuff compulsively online, the addict gets the feelings of reward but others have to suffer the pollution, being displaced from their homes to get the fuel and minerals underneath, and…

I spoke recently with a guy who went through Alcoholics Anonymous. I tried to show him that we are addicted to behaviors that pollute and deplete. He agreed with that assessment. He agreed he was once addicted to alcohol, but he wouldn't acknowledge that he was experiencing addiction with his polluting, depleting behaviors. To clarify, he didn't disagree with anything. He just wouldn't acknowledge he was addicted today. He acknowledged that he wouldn't say he was addicted when he was addicted to alcohol, but wouldn't see that that denial could be happening now. He even acknowledged that addicted people deny, acknowledging the phrase "denial means don't even notice I am lying." You will go crazy trying to get an addict to acknowledge their addiction and…

A reminder: my point in posting about syringes and addiction is less about the people addicted to hard drugs and more about our culture of huge parts of America (and many other nations) addicted. Addiction to social media, doof, fast fashion, driving, wearing shorts inside in the winter and sweaters in the summer, and everything else is addiction too. Regarding syringes, I'm writing: 15 percent the people using them 10 percent other people equally addicted to doof, fast fashion, and so on even if legal, and 75 percent our culture that promotes addiction I saw the syringes below about 9:30am Saturday on the way to the library to write. The people I saw in the encampments and on Sixth Avenue nearby were staggering around more…

They put up umbrellas to be less obvious in one sense since you can't see they syringe as easily, but more obvious if you know the reason for the umbrella. I post about addicts because I only see quantitative, not qualitative, difference between this behavior and McDonald's, Starbucks, or other behavior that people can't stop despite it harming others. If we drive when we can walk or bike, or use disposable diapers, or fly for vacations, we're hurting people for our comfort and convenience. Our behavior may be legal, but it doesn't change that we're hurting more people by polluting and depleting, getting less pleasure, and no less addicted. They're mostly hurting themselves. We're mostly hurting others. Another day, I went to pick up the…

While talking to a friend about how what people call travel isn't travel any more, he told me his friend counted how many steps he took on a trip from New York to Los Angeles: 800. That's not traveling. That's being transported. If I take 801 steps, I've put more effort into traveling. And going from New York to L.A., he isn't visiting a different culture or learning about humanity or the world. On the contrary, he's likely viewing the continent in between as flyover country---once home to millions of people with many cultures. The diversity of those cultures has been wiped out by our culture of taking and using unsustainable resources and assimilating and homogenizing them, if not destroying them by killing their members.…

News pieces about Kool and Newport cigarette brands targeting blacks tend to portray the brands and their advertising as nefarious and racist. A quick search found stories like How the tobacco industry targeted Black Americans with menthol smokes, Why Big Tobacco Targeted Blacks With Ads for Menthol Cigarettes, Study: Newport Marketed Cigarettes Directly to Black Kids, and Newport, the top cigarette brand for black Americans, is aggressively targeting youths. Maybe I'm misreading those implications, but they seem there. A person in this video calls it exploitation and this video calls it predatory. Likewise, Philip Morris: How Virginia Slims Targeted Women to Sell Cigarettes describes marketing targeting women as sexist. I don't see the implications of nefariousness, racism, or sexism in Marlboro marketing to young white…

Things that are compostable aren't labeled. They're plants and fungi. Corn cobs and peach pits don't say compostable. Things that are labeled "compostable" are manufactured and generally need special composting facilities. Even if where you live has them, they required manufacturing. It's likely doof. People lived for 300,000 years with only things that biodegraded. Whatever convenience you think some salad bowl labeled "compostable" brings, it isn't clean, green, or renewable and your life will be better without it, even if you don't see how at first. Sometimes it takes changing your culture to one of stewardship. Likewise with recycling. Things labeled "recyclable", "recycled", "made from recycled material", or in bright cheery letters "recycle me!" are with rare exception garbage, pollution, unnecessary, and keeping you addicted…

Please tell me there's another way to see it: The way we as a culture consume doof and chase comfort and convenience over meaning and purpose, people using heroin, fentanyl, and other serious drugs aren't an aberration from our culture, they're it's future. They aren't behaving qualitatively different than, say, someone who buys from McDonald's, Trader Joe's, or other doof place. They differ only quantitatively. I don't blame any of them. Few people choose to become addicted, but even if someone got trapped in addiction, it's unfair, but only the addicted person can unaddict themselves, whether they're addicted to fast fashion, flying, doof, social media, gambling, or meth. To clarify, I don't post about syringes and addiction to bring people down, but to avoid denying…

You probably know the Sackler name, but if you don't, the Sackler family pushed the opiate Oxycontin on an unsuspecting public, playing the largest role in the opiate crisis that has led to millions of addictions and deaths. They avoid admitting wrongdoing and avoid prosecution through legal wrangling that looks like it's abusing the legal system in a way rich people can. Meanwhile, doof makers addict people with substances derived from plants like opiates from poppy. Doof isn't food, but doof manufacturers promote it as food, even to kids. Imagine marketing morphine to kids. The Sacklers must look at McDonald's, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Panera, Keebler, Ben & Jerry's, and all the other doof manufacturers with envy. Doof manufacturers do what the Sacklers did---selling addictive plant…

Syringes discarded in the park mean out-of-control addiction. By out of control, I don't mean in the addict. I mean in our culture. People shooting heroin, fentanyl, and meth in broad daylight are only one of the more blatant examples of our culture of addiction. Facebook, McDonald's, doof in general, social media in general, TV engineered to binge-watch, bucket lists, and so on par. At least heroin harms the user most. If you use the others, since they pollute and deplete so much, you're probably hurting more people than the heroin users. Here are a couple syringes I picked up in my usual picking up litter sidcha. To clarify, I see such stuff all the time, especially the orange caps. I don't usually pick it…