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 <[email protected]>
Date: 6/15/24 6:15 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: [email protected]
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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