thesis work
For someone with a non-addictive personality, I sure do study addiction a lot. Addiction is not quite the correct word for it, more correct is the broader concept of impulse control. Then, beneath that, what are our impulses to start with? An impulse is a desire for a behavior, of which the desire itself is involuntary, compulsive, or automatic. The behavior may or may not be inevitable, but the impulse itself definitely is. Impulses range from personal (unique to you only), shared (common across a set of people whom you may or may not be introduced to), and societal (broadly applicable to the people in your environment). Here are some examples:
Personal: Turning off the TV whenever, within a single commercial block, a commercial is repeated.
Shared: To cure stage-fright, imagining the audience in their underwear.
Societal: Have a drink or two after a hard day at work.
Three sets of materials that have consumed me over the past decade, I realized this morning, have a topical intersection in this area of impulse control. I could spend a year teasing it all out, but let's say the study of all three in regards to explaining why impulse control can sometimes be poor, hypothesizing how impulse control could possibly be increased, and negating completely the need for this control in the first place, can be equally consuming.
David Foster Wallace "Infinite Jest." Yes, this is a novel, but one regarding addiction and one which gently teases the reader's aesthetics into a place where the control, then the impulse, then the reader themselves are questioned. It is a drowning, a borrowing of extreme experiences that lend to the reader a certain firsthand wisdom in the matter.
Eckhart Tolle "The Power of Now." A philosophical text which socratically supports the reader from all directions like a corset. What is presented is not a theory, but the simple fact that anticipation and dread are opinions, neither helpful nor true, that we take as truth and use to guide our every action, healthy or no. That our adherence to this truth is unyielding despite the evidence it does not perform for us. And further, that this truth is not just personal, but shared and societal, perhaps even global. It is the flawed premise of humanity.
Laurel Mellin "The Pathway." The program (which I am on, disclaimer) does not unpack the impulses or ask why. It instructs you to behave and think in a way that renders the impulses ineffective. Rather than addressing why we are this way, why humanity is this way, and how our philosophy (Tolle) and aesthetics (Wallace) elevate those impulses to practically the realm of physics, we are instructed to simply behave differently and relax once those impulses change or disappear. In a sense, in my opinion, this is the ultimate proof that you can fake it until you make it. To which I cannot help but observe perhaps faking has received a bad rap.
At any rate, the roots of our impulses form not a large part of the empathy I bring to users of software I have a role in creating. Rest assured I will never be so enlightened that I will fail to empathize with that shared group.