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What the Opioid Crisis is Really All About
There is a wonderful post by Avner Zarmi that compares the clash between traditional and contemporary culture to a Twilight Zone episode. In that episode, people with beautiful faces were shunned because the average face was horribly misshapen. Worse, those with beautiful faces had to live in a restricted area away from the normal, ugly people.
Zarmi contrasts traditional, religiously observant individuals of our own day with everyone else. He compares these shunned traditionalists to the beautiful faces in the Twilight Zone episode. By contrast, those who go with the flow and live by more casual standards are the normal, ugly people in the Twilight Zone episode.
Per Zarmi, people are less content today than when they lived more traditional lives. Proof of this is increased drug use. Life is too much to bear, despite increased material prosperity, and people demand drugs to hold their own in an upside down world where beautiful is ugly and ugly is beautiful.
Based on my own experience as a rehab counselor, I can assure you that the increased legalization of marijuana is extremely troublesome. Marijuana use may lead to use of hard drugs and, even when it does not, marijuana itself can easily become addictive.
Brave New World, a book written by Aldous Huxley in 1931, painted a picture of a future where people lived an anesthetized existence perpetuated by consumption of soma, an anti-depressant and hallucinogenic drug. Less than 100 years later, Huxley’s dystopian nightmare has become a desirable reality among increasing numbers of lost souls.
Zarmi calls for a return to “Biblical morality,” which could be interpreted every which way, but I think a good starting point would be observance of the Ten Commandments. If we could only follow them — especially #10, not to envy — our lives would certainly be a lot simpler and less in need of substances to make us feel better.
Published in General
Is there?
Relative to other geographic/demographic domains?
I think what he means is “even in the suburbs,” which you would probably not think of as fertile ground for opioids
Seems to me that you could throw something as common as cell phones into this list, too. I’ve wondered for years if the near-constant conversations that some people seemed to be engaging in were a desperate attempt not be alone with our own thoughts.
Dude, maybe relax a little bit and have a beer. No one is building any camps.
The unexamined life is all any one of them has left.
I was listening to a podcast some time ago where a British citizen was simultaneously cheering their secular society and bemoaning the rise of jihadism in their midst.
“Lemme know how beating something with nothing goes, Nigel,” I thought.
Yes, and sharing your own thoughts on a minute-to-minute basis is bad medicine too.
Most thoughts are crazy. All kinds of nutty things pop into our heads, all day long. We have an ongoing internal stream of conciousness monologue, batting things back and forth, accepting some ideas and rejecting others. We are mostly unaware of this process, because we are so used to doing it. (I understand that most forms of meditation are attempts to pause this stream for a few minutes.)
Anyway, eventually, when we are reasonably comfortable with an idea, when we have quieted most of the crazy and remembered principles and history and whatever, and we might actually say it out loud to someone.
Imagine a technology that would allow every individual to actually broadcast the entire inner monologue, every crazy thought. And receive every crazy half-formed thought from everybody else, practically in real time (cough-twitter-cough). What kind of bat-s*** crazy world would that be to live in?
Sometimes hyperbole is useful to make a point.
Extreme secularism can lead to jihadism. Needing to believe in something is as much a human need as food or sex. When secularists emerge from the cave in which they have nullified the Judeo-Chrisitan tradition, they will follow the first believers they meet — who might just happen to be jihadists.
From the “Greatest Lines that G. K. Chesterton Probably Never Wrote” file:
That’s just plain gorgeous.
Dude, you copied the whole article. Not cool, or legal. Please edit your post down to a paragraph or two.
Rebbe,
I believe that you’ve pointed our anxious eyes toward the only path to recovery from the hideous and fatal illness that afflicts modern society. Also, that you’ve done that in the only way that one can find a solution to a problem: by identifying the cause.
Easy there, Phil…YB-E, perhaps point us to the article first – as you’ve done – then tell us how your experience meshes with its premises, or doesn’t? We’d like to hear from *you*, actually. :-)
This is correct. Quoting a paragraph or two and linking to the full article is the correct way to do this. Please edit your post, @yehoshuabeneliyahu.
I agree. But we feel in hyperbole rather than think in hyperbole. And since we live in a culture where feelings matter more than thought I would suggest caution with regard to hyperbole.
Southpark beat you on that.
This is a complete falsity, empirical research has consistently shown that baby boomers as a cohort had an average number of sexual partners at around 11. The latest data we have going back to brides is the 1970s and only around 20% of all brides were virgins on their wedding nights. This happening despite the fact that those who consider themselves religious, attend services each week, has remained stable (at around 40%) till the last decade, where it is declining in the younger generations.
Again empirical research has shown that it is single white blue collar males in rural or exurban and single blue collar black males in urban areas who make up a near super-majority of opioid overdose victims.
This article seems to be heavily reliant on nostalgia and identity rather than argument.
Note: I originally copied Zarmi’s entire post but now have only provided a link to it.
As Drew Klavan said on a recent podcast — we’re born with a God-shaped hole in our souls, and we’re busy filling it with shtuff. Opioids are just one of many “substances” making up that shtuff.
Complex problems usually have multiple causes. In addition to moving away from God, and social media, perhaps the drugs/dealers are better!
Huxley did a urine-poor job of illustrating why the society he described was a “dystopia”. If (nearly) everybody in that society is happy, and the very few people who aren’t happy get promoted to an exclusive island where free-thinkers are allowed to live as they see fit (sorta kinda like the seasteading ideal), then how is that a dystopia? It’s pretty easy to interpret the society of BNW as a win-win situation.
Orwell’s 1984 works as a dystopia because the society doesn’t work. People aren’t happy and healthy with all their needs taken care of in a world free from war, poverty, hunger, etc. contrary to Big Brother’s promises. In BNW, by contrast, the society functions exactly as promised by the powers-that-be and dissent is rewarded (though sequestered).
I completely believe that.
Tucker Carlson had a very compelling psychiatrist on about this topic. His opinion was, it was about the lack of agency and the lack of friends people have these days. That completely dovetails with my view of the economy. The power and the prosperity is just far too centralized in this country. I’m not going to get into a big argument about it.
I had to take Demerol for 24 hours once. It’s absolutely shocking how happy it makes you feel. I thought I was the Dalai Lama.
I also think it’s idiotic to legalize pot. Just leave it the way it is.
The tenth commandment is hard to do without a reason, that is without a hope of a good God, a good future, final justice, making everything right, righting every wrong, wiping away every tear, confidence that God will be with you now and forever, and that even if everything goes wrong, it will still be alright.
[I mean, if this doesn’t happen then what’s the point? We’re just animals. We might as well eat and drink because tomorrow we die.]
This is some really good neuroscience or whatever on this topic generally, but not specifically about addiction. It’s based on the research of Porges and Schore. You can see some good interviews of these guys by Dr. Drew Pinsky.
Not to mention the incredible amount of boring thoughts we have. Such as; ‘this meal I was just served is visually pleasing.’
*snap*
*post*
Drugs are the ultimate in non-sustainability.
BNW was horrific when written.
Our sensibilities have changed.
Actually, people have been questioning whether the society in BNW is truly dystopian since the day it was published. That’s precisely why Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited, in which he attempts to explain what BNW was supposed to be about.
I say, if you have to write a book to explain what the first book was supposed to be about, you’re a terrible writer.
If you look at my comment #24, I guess what I’m saying is, for some people there is both a neuroscience problem and a meaning of life problem and the structure of the economy is just making it worse.
My dad has narcissistic personality disorder and I can vouch for that book completely. I had a psychotherapist that told me to read it. People need people and they need to feel agency. You can get off that track and it’s very hard to get back on.
Maybe.
Please allow me to explain my previous post to you….