Tag: Vulnerability

Jobs and Addiction

More Than The Chemical: Jobs and Addiction

Posted on by jabittan
A simple view of addiction is that people become hooked on a powerful chemical and their entire life becomes focused on nothing but the drug. The chemical sinks into the brain of the addicted person, and their desire for the neurological high from the chemical drives them beyond everything else. If only we could stop the person from ever being exposed to the chemical, even once, we would prevent them from ever developing their drug addiction and chemical dependence.

 

This view, however, is incomplete. A lot of what I try to do with this blog is show that the world is more complex than we often realize. It is easy to sit at home, listen to a news story on TV, and call everyone an idiot while offering an obvious solution from the couch. In reality however, our first impressions of the world and its problems are woefully inadequate, and drug addiction is a good example.

 

I recognize that chemical hooks, neurotransmitters, and brain chemistry are major parts of addiction, whether to a chemical substance, to a behavior like gambling, or other forms of addiction, but research that Dave Chase’s book The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call presents is a good indication that there is more going on than just a drive to fill the brain with a chemical. Chase writes, “For every one percent rise in unemployment, there’s a four percent rise in addiction and a seven percent increase in emergency department visits.“

 

Our economy, it appears, is deeply connected with addiction. It is not hard to think of a causal model between economic performance and addiction. Having a meaningful job gives people a chance to feel valued, gives people a chance to contribute to society, and gives people an increase in their social status (in political science we might think of Social Construction Theory: working people are Advantaged or at least Dependents whereas the unemployed are simply Deviants).

 

When people lose their job, they feel a loss of social status, they may feel helpless if they cannot find another job of equal status, and they lose their feeling of importance. They become more vulnerable, and it appears are more likely to turn to substances to blunt the pain they feel, either physically, mentally, or emotionally. This sets people up for addiction.

 

In this model, addiction is not just a moral failure. It is a failure at more levels than just the individual and their ability to work and resist chemicals. Our society has isolated people and made it hard to maintain strong family connections. When jobs disappear and people don’t have close people and community connections and organizations to turn to for meaning, purpose, and participation, they will struggle, and in their empty void potentially turn to drug use. Economic data makes this clear, and the solution is not just to provide someone with a bleak call-center job, but to really develop community connections, meaningful work, and opportunities to improve social status while deepening relationships and opportunities to contribute to society. Drug use is not a simple issue, it is tied to larger economic and social forces, and we have to recognize that reality to solve our nation’s problems.

The Role of Gossip

Posted on by jabittan
Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson have an interesting idea about gossip in their book The Elephant in the Brain. Instead of seeing gossip as some terrible moral failure on the part of human beings, the authors take a more deep and close look at gossip to try to understand just what is taking place. By understanding the role gossip plays, the authors are able to provide a more concrete reason for why we gossip.

 

They write, “Among laypeople, gossip gets a pretty bad rap. But anthropologists see it differently. Gossip–talking about people behind their backs, often focusing on their flaws or misdeeds–is a feature of every society ever studied. And while it can often be mean-spirited and hurtful, gossip is also an important process for curtailing bad behavior, especially among powerful people.”

 

Some discussions are hard to have out in the open. It is hard to go around openly asking people if the president’s behavior is crossing a line and is inappropriate. It is hard to openly ask the office if a co-worker’s clothing is unacceptable, and it is hard to openly ask the world if someone else is trying to do something just to show off. If we are on the wrong side in these situations, we can look really bad ourselves, and we can be very embarrassed if our opinions and ideas are rejected by the rest of the group.

 

Instead of putting ourselves out in a vulnerable place, gossip allows us to test the waters. We can quietly get a sense of other people’s opinions and ideas without actually revealing our thoughts and ideas completely. We can start to moderate our ideas and opinions and update our model of what is and is not acceptable, tolerable, or popular at a given time. Gossip lets us connect with others in a way that broad publicity does not. It can encourage social bonding between small groups within larger groups and it can help enforce the norms that our culture develops. These can all be positive and negative aspects of gossip, but it happens because we live in a complex and confusing world where we develop opinions socially as opposed to just individually. Sometimes, we need some cover to develop opinions that align with our social group to reduce our vulnerability to attack and isolation.