Positive psychology research models happiness as reducing to three components: pleasure (chocolate, sunsets and orgasm), flow (losing yourself in an activity; "action meditation") and meaning - feelings of value and connection and identity within a community. My fellow Americans and I have a tendency to reduce the pursuit of happiness to the pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure is important, but it's not the whole game, and modern consumer society may have specialized in that component and lost the other two.
We commonly think of addiction as a problem of pleasure and pain: pleasure when you consume the addictive substance (or perform the addictive activity), and suffering when you do not, after you're hooked. It's not hard to see how it's not just meth, but sex or food, that could be the subject of addictive behavior. Humans have continued to get better at creating goods and services that cause repetitive behavior in their targets - think brand loyalty, processed drugs (think coca leaves to cocaine; increasing the sugar in everything.) We have probably become better at identifying avoiding these addictive goods and services. Still, I'd bet good money that over time, they're becoming more addictive faster than we're getting better at resisting them.
Through the lens of positive psychology, this starts to look too narrow. It's not just the pleasure component of happiness that has been exploited. Addiction to flow and meaning exist too.
Probably the best example of addiction to flow is video games. They are designed for this purpose, and there is evidence that they are damaging the productivity of young people, particularly young males.
Then there is community addiction. The most harmless form is what Facebook exploits to get you to keep checking whether your friends have liked your post. The more concerning form is that of religious cults, or small ingroup-vs-outgroup communities (often based on unearned, non-opt-outable qualities like race or religion.) This is actually the one that has the most potential for harm. Postwar Japan and late 60s America both featured a shock to the automatic meaning-generating aspect of national community. This is happening in a second wave in the West. It pains me as a staunch atheist to say this, but it's becoming clearer that the disappearance of religion as a community-builder has not been a boon for everyone. If you're also an atheist and that sentence made you squirm, then here's a thought: a substantial part, maybe even the majority, of young American males who support Donald Trump are not religious.
I have enough confidence that these three types are legitimate subtypes that I think it would be appropriate to have them DSM as specifiers. Indeed, the discussion over video game addiction has been ongoing for some time.
Monday, March 2, 2020
Sunday, March 1, 2020
The 200 to 250 Year Life Cycle Of Great Powers
Any theory of cycles of 200 to 250 years in the life of empires or nations immediately brings to mind China. If such a phenomenon exists, it would be China where it first became apparent, and where in fact it did first become apparent to historians. In successive states established in the same physical territory (dictated by the geography of a fertile wet agricultural plain united by waterways) with basically the same people, many other variables are taken out of the equation. This was noticed at least by the Ming Dynasty by Persian travelers observing China; again by Tytler and/or Detoqueville in the nineteenth century; and most recently by John Glubb in Fate of Empires.
It's often instructive to swap out the lenses we use to view various regions of the world's history. In this way, China might have followed Europe's path (of a single empire followed by splintered states that never quite regained the same territory.) Or conversely, China is a Europe where the Roman Empire fell only to be replaced by a continent-wide Frankish Empire, then a Norse Empire, then a Habsburg Empire. In fact, what we think of as the Roman Empire is regarded by historians as having two periods that are almost like separate civilizations, the earlier Principate and the later Dominate, separated by the Crisis of the Third Century. Each of those two periods was around 250 years.
The Ottoman Empire was once viewed as having reached its peak under Suleiman and then declined, but more recent scholarship has reached the consensus that the Empire underwent a partly-intentional transformation (starting prior to Suleiman's death, and not entirely a negative one.) This divides the Ottoman Empire's history into two halves. The second is roughly 300 years but extends well into the period when the Ottoman Empire was regarded as "the sick man of Europe."
If we take the Byzantine Empire as starting with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, then the first three dynasties take it to 711 (235 years) - the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian families. (I avoid the use of "dynasty" because what we call a dynasty in Western empires is different than the way we use this word in Chinese history. In the Chinese sense, the Roman Principate and Dominate were dynasties, as was the Byzantine entity spanning the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian periods.) You could argue reasonably for an earlier start to the Leonid dynasty in 457, to make this period 254 years.) This was followed by the Twenty Years Anarchy. During that period the proto-medieval structures which appeared going in the Roman Dominate matured into a smaller fully medieval state which emerged from the anarchy a very different civilization. In Western Europe, we find it a bit comical that the Pope and Charlemagne thought they were still Romans, even superficially. But just as with China's dynasties, we shouldn't take medieval Byzantium's claims to being the same political entity, just because it happened to still occupy some of the same territory.
It's very easy to cherry-pick history, once you have a Great Theory. And it's always easy to draw parallels between periods in history (here are five to the modern day), but a 200-250 year cycle is of obvious interest to American readers.
It's often instructive to swap out the lenses we use to view various regions of the world's history. In this way, China might have followed Europe's path (of a single empire followed by splintered states that never quite regained the same territory.) Or conversely, China is a Europe where the Roman Empire fell only to be replaced by a continent-wide Frankish Empire, then a Norse Empire, then a Habsburg Empire. In fact, what we think of as the Roman Empire is regarded by historians as having two periods that are almost like separate civilizations, the earlier Principate and the later Dominate, separated by the Crisis of the Third Century. Each of those two periods was around 250 years.
The Ottoman Empire was once viewed as having reached its peak under Suleiman and then declined, but more recent scholarship has reached the consensus that the Empire underwent a partly-intentional transformation (starting prior to Suleiman's death, and not entirely a negative one.) This divides the Ottoman Empire's history into two halves. The second is roughly 300 years but extends well into the period when the Ottoman Empire was regarded as "the sick man of Europe."
If we take the Byzantine Empire as starting with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, then the first three dynasties take it to 711 (235 years) - the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian families. (I avoid the use of "dynasty" because what we call a dynasty in Western empires is different than the way we use this word in Chinese history. In the Chinese sense, the Roman Principate and Dominate were dynasties, as was the Byzantine entity spanning the Leonid, Justinian and Heraclian periods.) You could argue reasonably for an earlier start to the Leonid dynasty in 457, to make this period 254 years.) This was followed by the Twenty Years Anarchy. During that period the proto-medieval structures which appeared going in the Roman Dominate matured into a smaller fully medieval state which emerged from the anarchy a very different civilization. In Western Europe, we find it a bit comical that the Pope and Charlemagne thought they were still Romans, even superficially. But just as with China's dynasties, we shouldn't take medieval Byzantium's claims to being the same political entity, just because it happened to still occupy some of the same territory.
It's very easy to cherry-pick history, once you have a Great Theory. And it's always easy to draw parallels between periods in history (here are five to the modern day), but a 200-250 year cycle is of obvious interest to American readers.
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