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Alienation

According to Carl Erik Fisher in his book “The Urge: Our History of Addiction” (2022), despite evidence that North American Native populations used drugs and alcohol prior to European contact, they did not experience any apparent addictive harms until after they had suffered the schismogenetic effects of war, disease, poverty, and forced relocation. The European colonists and traders “swapped whiskey for crushing debt and mortgages on Native land” in efforts to pacify and tie Natives to the new economy (p. 34).

Psychologist Bruce K. Alexander’s “Dislocation Theory of Addiction” (December 2010) states that the fundamental cause of addiction is not the biological effects of a broad swath of substances and destructive behaviours themselves, nor an inherent vulnerability in particular individuals, but rather, in Fisher’s paraphrasing, “society’s wounds” (2022, p. 37). Dislocation can refer to the effects of being torn from culture and society, the loss of freedom and sustaining connections between individuals and their families, or the loss of opportunity for self-determination and expression, and wherein addiction is defined as a means of adapting to the increasingly onerous and dominant nature of modern life. Social fragmentation results from these adaptations as having become excessive in many individuals. Not surprisingly, the compulsive drug use observed and reported in research on animals, including Alexander et. al’s “Rat Park”, was itself demonstrated to be an artifact of “the radically isolated conditions of the standard experimental situation” (July 2014).

The so-called Official View of Addiction drawing from nineteenth-century moral and medical perspectives sees it as a genetically-predisposed incurable disease of “deviant individuals within otherwise well-functioning societies” (2014). The problem with this view, according to Alexander, apart from stigmatizing addiction, is its apparent unassailability due to the force of rhetorical presentations and their corresponding shaping of popular opinion, notably in the late twentieth-century War on Drugs, as well as scientific community entrenchment including the widespread identification with hi-tech neuroscience, all of which continue to largely undergird addiction criminalization, policy, and treatment.

In an essay titled “Man neither Free nor Responsible” (1958), philosopher John Hospers uses examples of criminal activity and the legal notion of a guilty mind to state that maladaptive behaviour more generally can have deeper roots in trauma, as it is often “brought about by unconscious conflicts developed in infancy” of which the individual had no control or perhaps even knowledge (1958, p. 292).

Eminent sociologist Émile Durkheim refers to alienation as “anomie”; “the social breakdown of norms and values resulting in an existential lack of connection to meaning and purpose. Both this sense of dislocation and the actions of addiction supply industries, some scholars argue, are the core drivers of today’s opioid epidemic” (2022, p. 38).

Alexander, B. K. (December 2010), “Dislocation Theory of Addiction”, Simon Fraser University, Canada, [HTML document] retrieved from https://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/dislocation-theory-addiction/250-change-of-venue-3

Alexander, B. K. (July 2014), “The Rise and Fall of the Official View of Addiction”, Simon Fraser University, Canada, [HTML document] retrieved from https://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/277-rise-and-fall-of-the-official-view-of-addiction-6

Fisher, C. E. (2022) “The Urge: Our History of Addiction“. Canada: Allen Lane – Penguin Random House Canada

Hospers, J. (1958) “Man Neither Free Nor Responsible” in Hook, S. (Ed.), Determinism and Freedom in the Age of Modern Science (1958), reprinted in Minton, A. J. & Shipka, T. A. (Eds.), Philosophy: Paradox and Discovery Third Edition (1990), (pp. 292 – 299). New York, United States: McGraw-Hill.

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Schism

“A schism is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization, movement, or religious denomination” (Wikipedia, retrieved August 2022).

A central theme arising from the Indigenous critique of Western culture during the time of North American colonization was their assessment of European notions of hierarchy, ownership, and property. Indigenous Wendat statesman Kondiaronk argued:

“I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that’s not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’. I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living… In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as to look at silver?” (2021, p. 54).

Ruling classes are those which have organized society so they can extract the most of accumulated surpluses, displayed in apparent societal transitions from hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture. David Graeber and David Wengrow, in their thought-provoking book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” (2021), share new evidence that points to such trajectories as being anything but historically linear, and that there were instead cyclical transitions and fluid movement between both modes of society:

“They shifted back and forth between alternative social arrangements, building monuments and then closing them down again, allowing the rise of authoritarian structures during certain times of the year then dismantling them – all, it would seem, on the understanding that no particular social order was ever fixed or immutable” (2021, p. 111).

Hovering in and out of farming is something our species has done successfully for a significant part of its past, according to Graeber and Wengrow. An “ecology of freedom” may have involved alluvial soils that when flooded became temporary agricultural habitats, and wherein science was not one of ordering and classification, but of coaxing and bending the forces of nature to increase the potential for a favourable outcome. This “schismogenesis” was amplified not only in a moving into and out of farming, but in certain clear cases, between “upland” and “lowland” people, exemplified in the cultures that emerged from the Middle East Fertile Crescent. “The more that uplanders came to organize their artistic and ceremonial lives around the theme of predatory male violence, the more lowlanders tended to organize theirs around female knowledge and symbolism – and vice versa” (2021, p. 245).

Schismogenesis underscored sociologist Émile Durkheim’s noting of the Polynesian term “Tabu”, whose rough translation of “not to be touched” had particular religious overtones, and highlighted a “profound similarity between the notion of private property and the notion of the sacred” which more generally rippled through the stratification of societies, the subordination of women, and the sacrifice of basic freedoms (2021, p. 159, 432). What does this reveal about current interpretations of hierarchy, property, and the sacred? In his essay titled “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Between Men” (1754), Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau suggests:

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, This is mine, and found peoples simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes… you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody” (1754, p. 245).

Graeber, D. & Wengrow, D. (2021) The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Toronto, Canada: Signal – McClelland & Stewart – Penguin Random House Canada

Rousseau, J. J. (1754), Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men; The Social Contract and Discourses, in Everyman’s Library (1913), (pp. 177 – 246). New York, United States: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., excerpted and reprinted in Hoople, R. E., Piper, R. F., & Tolley, W. P. (Eds.), Preface to Philosophy: Book of Readings (1946), (pp. 242 – 256). New York, United States: The Macmillan Company (1952 ed.).

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Culture

“If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably – after careful considerations of their relative merits – choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best” (Herodutus; c.480 – c.429 BCE).

Theologian Hans Küng, referencing sociologist Emile Durkheim, states primitive religions have a core of reality nested not in some divine power, but rather in the notion of kinship; both with nature, expressed through totems of animals, plants and natural phenomena; and with each other, expressed in the notion of clan. Early nature-bound traditions thus defined a template for moral behaviour in these contexts, and importantly, Küng adds, throughout the whole long history of humanity, “no people or tribe has been found without any traces of religion” (1984, p. 49).

Anthropologist and folklorist Ruth Benedict states culture evolves around a central mode of behaviour, which yields a set of “core values” (1934). Some of which, antithetical to what one’s own culture might consider rational, are instead the cornerstones of another’s societal structure, as in the case of magic practices on certain south east Asian islands, exemplified in one society,

“built on upon traits which we regard as beyond the border of paranoia. In (this) particular tribe the exogenic groups look upon each other as prime manipulators of black magic, so that one marries always into an enemy group which remains for life one’s deadly and unappeasable foes. They look upon a good garden crop as a confession of theft, for everyone is engaged in making magic to induce into his garden the productiveness of his neighbours …” (1934, p. 3).

Philosopher James Rachels explores the challenges of cultural relativism; that different cultures have different moral codes, where what is correct by one culture, can be seen as abhorrent by another, and vice versa. Such templates take the form of folkways and mores passed down through generations which contain the powerful “authority of ancestral ghosts”. The fundamental error of this view, according to Rachels, is that “right and wrong are only matters of opinion, and opinions vary from culture to culture”, and which if we are to take seriously, would need to admit that waging war, taking slaves, or destroying an ethnic minority are rational, and that such behaviour can remain inoculated from criticism. Moreover, fundamental notions of moral progress, including basic rights and equality, could be called into doubt (1986).

Despite its shortcomings, the theory of cultural relativism has utility insofar as it warns us many of our moral standards are solely societal peculiarities, and we should not assume that all our preferences are based upon some absolute rational standard. Rachels suggests this view can thus lead us to be more understanding in our views towards others across the cultural divide:

“It is an attractive theory because it is based on a genuine insight – that many of the practices and attitudes we think so natural are really only cultural products. Moreover, keeping this insight firmly in view is important if we want to avoid arrogance and have open minds” (1986, p. 20).

Benedict, R. (1934), A Defense of Ethical Relativism, from Anthropology and the Abnormal, in The Journal of General Psychology, Issue 10, 1934, (pp. 1 – 8 ). [PDF document] Retrieved March 2022 from http://public.callutheran.edu/~chenxi/Phil315_031.pdf

Herodotus (N. D.), Herodotus the Moralist, Livius.org [HTML document] Retrieved March 2022 from https://www.livius.org/articles/person/herodotus/herodotus-7/

Küng, H. (1984) Eternal Life? Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem, translated by Edward Quinn. Garden City, United States: Doubleday & Company Inc.

Rachels, J. (1986), The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, in The Elements of Moral Philosophy, Ninth Edition (2019), (pp. 1 – 21). New York, United States: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. [PDF document] Retrieved March 2022 from https://sites.middlebury.edu/fyse1496/files/2020/08/Rachels-Challenge-of-CR.pdf