The famous introduction to
Naked Lunch
quoted here
Karsh Kale
"Empty Hands"
"Do We Consume Too Much?"
"We consume too much when market relationships displace the bonds of community, compassion, culture, and place. We consume too much when consumption becomes an end in itself and makes us lose affection and reverence for the natural world."
"Do We Consume Too Much?" by Mark Sagoff
a page on this site on
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"... police and drug enforcement officials ended two days of discussions on the possible source of the bad heroin that killed Howard's friends and at least 100 others from Chicago to Philadelphia. ...
Its deadliness doesn't appear to have dissuaded hardened drug addicts.
After Chicago police publicized one street corner where samples of fentanyl-laced heroin had been handed out -- thinking addicts would steer clear of the area -- drug users flocked there hoping to score free heroin, Police Supt. Philip Cline said.
'We have willing victims here', he said. 'That's part of the problem.' "
"I was a full-time member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), or Hare Krishna Movement, for 10 years. ... While the precepts and practices of Krishna consciousness are benevolent, the organization (at least in North America) had spiritual psychological trouble."
Disclaimer: I don't claim to know much about the issues discussed.
This author's treatment seems quite balanced to me.
(For example, Muster does not claim that the flaws in ISKCON
are not found equally in other organizations.)
Though I have a lot of doctrinal disagreements with them,
I'm sympathetic to the "Hare Krishna" ethos and think they're
generally unjustly denigrated.
" Nicotine became our Master. ... Welcome to our world of lies!Superb!
... The lies started almost immediately and over time they grew very very deep. Below are a few of the false rationalizations that we nicotine addicts use to justify continuing the madness, to avoid withdrawal or as another excuse for relapse."
"In a study conducted at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, a majority of alcoholics and drug addicts scored as poorly on a test measuring the ability to make decisions as people with damage to a brain region that helps control decision-making.
People who abuse alcohol or drugs often behave similarly to people who have experienced damage to a part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VM), which is involved in decision-making. For instance, both groups of people often deny they have a problem or are unaware of it. And when given a choice to do something that will bring them immediate pleasure but will lead to negative consequences later, they often opt for instant gratification.
A test called the Iowa Gambling Task, which simulates real-life decisions, can detect malfunctioning in the decision-making in people with this type of brain damage. To see how alcoholics and drug abusers would fare on the test, Dr. Antoine Bechara and colleagues studied 41 substance abusers, 5 patients with VM damage, and 40 healthy people.
Considerably more alcoholics and drug abusers than healthy people fared as poorly on the test as those with brain damage, the researchers report in a recent issue of the journal Neuropsychologia. Sixty-one percent of addicts scored as poorly as brain-damaged patients, compared with only about 33% of healthy participants."
"... researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and two other institutions found that human neural responses accompanying the anticipation and experience of winning and losing in a laboratory gaming situation were similar to those noted in animals responding to tactile or gustatory stimuli or to euphoria-inducing drugs. ... The researchers including Hans C. Breiter, M.D., co-director of the Motivation and Emotion Neuroscience Center in the Department of Radiology at MGH; Peter Shizgal, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology at Concordia University in Montreal; Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D., Princeton University; Anders Dale, Ph.D., MGH; and Itzhak Aharon, Ph.D., MGH, published their findings in the May 24 issue of Neuron.
The investigators found that the same regions of the brain respond to the prospects of winning and losing money while gambling that have been reported to respond to an infusion of cocaine in subjects addicted to that drug, and to low doses of morphine in drug-free individuals.
These common patterns of response support the view that dysfunction of neural mechanisms and psychological processes crucial to decision-making and behavior may contribute to a broad range of impulse disorders such as drug abuse and compulsive gambling.
The experiment used by the investigators incorporates ideas from "Decision Affect Theory," developed by Barbara Mellers and colleagues in the 1990s, and from "Prospect Theory," developed by Dr. Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1970s. Prospect Theory has profoundly influenced the development of the field of behavioral economics."