Addiction - Choice?

Addiction is everywhere.  While psychological dependencies of the mind are primarily associated with physical dependencies of substances such as drugs and alcohol, they also include uncontrollable behaviors relating to gambling, self-mutilation, overeating, cosmetic surgery, the internet, and just about anything else.  What I want to focus on is addiction as it relates to drugs and alcohol.

A Harvard psychologist, Gene Heyman, has written a book that is causing quite a stir in the world of addiction treatment.  In , “Addiction: A Disorder of Choice”, Heyman argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, addiction is not a disease, but rather a lack of individual self-control, an inability to take a long term perspective.  Not a disease, but a choice.  Wow! If this is true, it should throw a large wrench into the workings of a whole host of treatment programs and health-care policies.

Science appeared to have supported the view that addiction was a disease.  Neuroscience showed that the brains of addicts were uniformly abnormal.  Surely, this was evidence that addicts were just unfortunate souls, victims to the same sort of life lottery that claimed other victims of other diseases.  The uncontrollable behaviors of addicts had to be viewed sympathetically because these behaviors were beyond the influence of rewards, punishments and societal expectations.  But were the poor choices of addicts coming from their brain abnormalities or were the brain abnormalities coming from the poor choices?  For Heyman, the disease model of addiction just wasn’t adding up.  Why were addicts that never entered treatment programs more successful in achieving sobriety than addicts that went through treatment programs?  Why did 70 - 90% of addicts going through standard treatment programs, relapse within the first year of completing treatment?  Why did some treatment programs, such as those for airline pilots, which threatened job termination if the pilots were unsuccessful in their recovery, have success rates of over 80%.  For Heyman, the explanation for the poor success rate of treatment centers, came from research that showed that many of these addicts also suffered from other mental disorders.  As Heyman delved into the case histories of recovered addicts, the common thread for recovery was some cataclysmic event that ultimately led them to make the choice to quit their addiction.  Whether it was a car crash, a DUI charge, or their spouse leaving them, something occurred that made the addict realize they could no longer sacrifice the long term for their short term pleasure.

Heyman’s book reminded me of a Stanford University study involving marshmallows, four-year-olds, and choice.  Walter Mischel,  a Stanford professor of psychology, conducted the experiment on campus at the Bing Nursery School in the late 1960’s.  In a small room with a desk and a chair, the children were taken individually and asked to select a treat from an assortment of goodies.  Most chose the marshmallow.  Then the experimenter told the children they could eat the one marshmallow right away, or they could wait until the experimenter left the room to run a small errand, and when they returned, the child would get not one, but two marshmallows.  If, while attempting to wait for the second marshmallow, the four-year-old decided he or she couldn’t wait any longer, they just had to ring a bell and the researcher would return to the room, allow the child to eat the one marshmallow, but the second marshmallow would be denied.

Video tape of the experiment is quite revealing.  Some children ate the marshmallow right away.  Some agonized over the marshmallow, hiding their eyes, playing with their hair, kicking at the desk, until finally ringing the bell and eating the one marshmallow.  Most of the children lasted 3 minutes before ringing the bell and succumbing to their temptation.  However, 30% of the children held out for the required 15 minutes, and received their second marshmallow.  They delayed their gratification, and it paid off.

Starting in 1981, Mischel went back to locate the 653 children used in his experiment.  The children were now in high school.  He sent questionnaires to their parents and teachers and requested their S.A.T. scores.  There was evidence that children who delayed their gratification, had less behavioral problems at home and in school, dealt with stress better, had better relationships, concentrated better, and had higher S.A.T. scores than those children who could not wait to eat their marshmallow.  A child that waited 15 minutes to eat their marshmallow, on average, had an S.A.T. score 210 points above the child who waited only 30 seconds before eating his marshmallow.

Mischel tracked the subjects into their late 30’s, and found that the four-year-olds with little self-control, grew up to be adults with little self-control.  They had significantly higher body-mass indexes and often had problems with drugs.  Mischel’s research continues, but his findings say something about choice and delaying gratification.

But just what does it say?  Only, that we should be cautioned about making choices for the short term at the expense of the long term.  That, while we seek the freedom to do what we want, the desire for immediate gratifications often makes us irrational about the long term.  Lung cancer doesn’t enter the mind of a smoker as the next cigarette is lit up; addiction seems irrelevant as the next drink is downed by the border-line alcoholic; a troubled marriage is a distant thought as a spouse looks lustfully into the eyes of a stranger.  Our world today offers us more pleasure than ever before in history.  Unfortunately, without a little self-control, these pleasures will become curses.

Ayn Rand

The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:  I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.

-   John Galt from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

The givers are never blessed; the more they give, the more is demanded of them; complaints, reproaches and insults are the only response they get for practicing altruism’s virtues

- Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand, to say the least, was a complicated lady.  At her funeral, a 6 ft. floral arrangement stood next to her casket - in the shape of a dollar sign!  Even in death, she knew how to stick it to her critics.  Her philosophy,  objectivism,  while mostly misunderstood, has somehow become much clearer to me.  Since my father’s death five months ago, things have happened that have caused me to question my life’s philosophy, my moral-code, if you will.  In the past, I’ve scoffed at Ayn Rand’s belief that “altruism is immoral”.  Instead, I believed that the unselfish concern for the well-being of others is the measure of a life well-lived.  That, in fact,  a love-filled life can only come through sacrificing for others, and not just for those you love.  We’re not just talking about being kind and helpful to people, but sacrificing the enjoyment of your own life to do good.  Under this code, I have sacrificed career, financial security, and a lot of leisure time.  I have been the altruist that Ayn Rand despised.

Why Care?

My mother has Alzheimer’s Disease. It is a death sentence unlike any other.  Slowly, her memory will fade.  Eventually, she will not recognize her loved ones, her body will shut down, and she will die.  The process may take years.  In just 5 months, I have seen my mother deteriorate.  She now needs help walking and bathing.  She can’t make any of her own meals or do household chores.  She is often confused about time and place and is repetitive in conversation.  Most of the time, however, I still fully see her as the vibrant, loving, and beautiful woman, I have known my entire life.  But this will not last too much longer.  My wife and I are her primary caregivers and she now lives in our home with our three children.

So what is my future?  What is the future of the millions of caregivers like me, who will see their loved ones descend into darkness?  Ayn Rand said we should only sacrifice for things that we value.  But what value can I place on a person that is losing their mind?  On a person that one day will not even know who I am, and whose behavior will only become increasingly more annoying, nonsensical and unsettling.  When the only thing I know for sure, is that no matter how much more help I give, my mother will only get worse, how much of my life should I sacrifice for her?  How much of my health, financial well-being, peace of mind, and enjoyment of family and life, should I give up for my Mom?  In the end, she will not even be able to express a modicum of gratitude.  Life is short, haven’t I already wasted too much time trying to do good?

Ayn Rand warned altruists that they would ultimately be held in contempt.  I know this to be true.  Living your life for others?  What a waste of a life.  Nobody wants to compare their daily routines to that of an altruist.  People with challenging, time-consuming careers, work hard to enjoy the holidays, houses, toys, and fun they deserve.  They don’t want any guilt directed their way, especially from those that don’t have the gumption to rationally focus their energy on creating their own happiness.  On the other hand, I know more than a few altruists that question the divine justice that bestows lives of leisure on the selfish and hardship on the unselfish.  Contempt becomes a two-way street between altruists and the rest of society.

My Mom’s Alzheimer’s Disease has forced me to come face to face with the reality that my altruism may be immoral.  Doesn’t God want us to enjoy his creation?  Why is the sense of duty for the altruist so different from the duty that others are beholden to?  The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, believed that true goodness could only come from doing the right thing with no consideration for satisfying other desires.  That our goodwill should arise not from any good feeling we might get from being of service to others, but rather from fulfilling a duty  out of respect for an ever-reaching moral law.  Kant viewed this moral law as our knowledge of good and evil and that rational people acted in accordance to inner convictions which dictated the good they ought to do.  But altruists believe they are more aware of the moral law.

Altruism has a way of snowballing.  What begins with a few altruistic acts of kindness, can become an all-encompassing lifestyle.  The broader the sense of duty and responsibility an altruist has, the more he is willing to sacrifice.  Eventually the true altruist will take on more and more duties.  Inevitably these duties will end up completely absorbing the life of the altruist, and the altruist will lose the very things he values the most.  All of a person’s values exist on a hierarchy and eventually the hierarchy of the altruist’s values will end in complete shambles.  One only has to look at the burnout of humanitarians and caregivers to see the toll that altruism takes.

In 2007 and 2008, Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, ranked 542 on Amazon’s online bestseller list.  However early this year, it shot up to number 33, surpassing Barack Obama’s, “Audacity of Hope”.  Why the surge in interest in the philosophy of Ayn Rand?  The fallout from the financial crisis is definitely peaking some interest, but isn’t it possible that a generation of altruist are also turning to a belief in “rational self-interest”?

A new report from the American Alzheimer’s Association, predicts that the 5 million Americans currently suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease will rise to 7.7 million by 2030 and 11-16 million by 2050.  The annual cost for caring for a person with Alzheimer’s today is a staggering $33,007.

God help us if the battle for the caregiver’s soul is won by Ayn Rand.

The Vampire Louis

On October 4th, 1941, a pretty, little girl was born in New Orleans.  Her parents named her Howard Allen.  That’s right! Howard Allen, after her father, Howard O’Brien.  Howard Allen would go on to become the best selling author, Anne Rice.

After spending 38 years of her adult life as an atheist, Rice returned to her Roman Catholic faith.  As part of her conversion, the author of the Vampire Chronicles gave up writing about the darkness of vampires, and pledged to devote her literary skills to God.  After completing two books about the life of Jesus, Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord, The Road to Cana, Rice has written her memoir, Called Out of Darkness; A Spiritual Confession.

Rice describes turning away from the “glamor of evil”,  once again finding peace in the faith she abandoned as a young adult.  The glamor of evil is an interesting concept.  In every Roman Catholic baptism there is an exorcism, and the renouncing of the glamor of evil and Satan.  Evil often disguises itself in altruism or beauty, and many seemingly innocent actions are cloaked with evil.  In a chilling story from her childhood, Rice revealed that she pushed a small boy down a flight of stairs, just to see the look on his face.  The look the boy gave her, made her vow she would never repeat such an evil act.  But did her struggle with good and evil, continue not in her actions, but in the stories and characters of her writings?

The books Anne Rice wrote during her time as a devout atheist, center around the glamor of evil.  The vampires are beautiful, sensual beings, gifted with powers, but powerless to refuse their dark desires.  They are captivating, but captive.

Rice has left the world of darkness, but she may have one more vampire book in her.  More than a few of her characters await the redemption and salvation, she seems to have found.  Adam and Eve gave into temptation when they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  For Anne Rice, after 38 years of searching, she has left this knowledge where it belongs - with God.

Socrates drinks his Hemlock

Philosophy can trip me up at the best of times, but the death of Socrates in 399 B.C. has really puzzled me.  How could Athens, the birthplace of democracy and free speech, condemn a feeble, 70 old man to death, simply for some disrespectful blabbing?

The charges against Socrates were dubious at best.  Corrupting the youth of Athens? Impiety towards its Gods?  Please!  Socrates had been teaching for decades, and playwrights of the day could openly question Athenian involvement in its wars or ridicule its gods.  So why did the government come after Socrates near the end of his life?  And what lessons can we learn from this dark chapter of Western civilization?

Socrates’ students, Plato and Xenophon, gifted history with two decidedly biased cases for the defense, but absent from the record is a fair portrayal of the prosecution’s case.  For that we can turn to the little known father of blogging - I.F. Stone.

I.F. Stone

I.F. Stone was a fascinating, independent journalist, who from 1953 to 1971, self-published I.F. Stone’s Weekly.  At its peak in the 60’s, the four page political publication had a circulation of over 70,000.  Stone dared to go where the main stream media of his day wouldn’t.

I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone, without organizational or party backing, beholden to no one but my good readers. I am even one up on Benjamin Franklin-I do not accept advertising.

Stone sought justice and truth and his exposés were backed up by meticulous research.  He fought against the Vietnam War, government lies, McCarthyism, and racial discrimination.  It is likely that his standing in journalism’s history would be much greater, except for the fact that he leaned a little too far to the left.  Kind of like a Noam Chomsky - if Chomsky was a newspaperman instead of a linguistics professor.  For the blogger, Stone should be an inspiration.  His stories were unique, informative, and groundbreaking. But he didn’t rely on special contacts, access, or insider information.  Instead, Stone delved deep into the public record.  He did his homework better than most of the affiliated journalists - poring over documents, Congressional records and hearings, connecting dots that others couldn’t see, and providing his readers with factual stories that couldn’t be found in any other publication.  Stone succeeded in giving the radical viewpoint.  In 2008, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, initiated the I.F. Stone Medal for journalistic independence.  The first award went to John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers.

In the early 70’s, after Stone’s health deteriorated, he gave up his weekly, learned Greek, and focused his boundless energy on studying the classics.  His book, The Trial of Socrates, gives a new perspective on the prosecution’s case against Socrates.  While Plato portrayed the 510 male jurors that condemned Socrates to death as a mobocracy, Stone gives evidence that Socrates was not just a harmless gadfly.  Socrates did not believe in egalitarianism or democracy and his teachings emboldened would-be tyrants.  After bloody, but short-lived,  tyrannical revolutions in 411 and 404 B.C., the citizens of Athens were fed-up with letting Socrates continue his anti-democratic rants.  The reign of the Thirty Tyrants resulting from the 404 B.C. revolution was particularly damaging to Socrates’ position in society.  A former student of Socrates, Critia, was one of the most vicious tyrants, and he led the violence against the democrats.  In less than a year, 1400 Athenians were killed and 5000 or 1/10th  of the city’s population were banished.  Socrates, however, was just fine.  He freely walked the streets, safe from persecution and fully complaisant to the dictatorial forces that rounded up, assaulted, killed, or exiled those around him.  Socrates spoke of virtue, but his actions were less than virtuous.

Imagine the fallout from a similar situation today.  Suppose a university professor set up a camp for radicals in some Washington D.C. neighborhood. Teaching students to loathe the elected government of the day, the teacher preached the virtues of a divine monarchy and inspiring one of his more ambitious students to actually attempt a violent coup d’ état.  After successfully killing off the freely-elected president in the White House, this new dictator then sets about killing off his opposition, and living large, until his tyrannical regime is defeated by democratic forces.  Luckily for the professor, a general amnesty is issued to quickly restore order in the society, so he is saved from prosecution. However, rather than sheepishly withdrawing from public, and counting his lucky stars he wasn’t a target of retribution, the professor proceeded to go right back to riling up a new set of potential revolutionaries.  Is it any wonder that a jury of Athenians would make a political decision to convict Socrates, and possibly spare themselves from a another Socrates-inspired tyrant?

The jury’s decision to convict Socrates was a political one, calculated to protect their democracy from a return of a violent and unfair dictatorship.  The death sentence for Socrates, however, was a reaction against Socrates’ intransigence.  Socrates wanted to turn the tables on his jurors, put Athenian democracy on trial, and prove to history the shortcomings inherent in a democracy.  Socrates goaded the jury into issuing their harsh sentence.  He could have paid a fine or accepted an exile, but he wanted to go out with a bang.

Lesson #1:  A single act of indifference can destroy your future.  At his trial, Socrates, defended himself as a man of virtue,  telling his jurors that he refused an unjust order by the Thirty Tyrants to arrest a wealthy land owner, so that the tyrants could seize his property.  However, Socrates did nothing to warn or help this innocent victim.  This glaring, act of indifference, tainted Socrates in the eyes of his jurors.

Lesson #2:  Get the facts before making a judgment. Plato’s Apology (defense of Socrates) is a beautiful example of how the masterful use of words can obscure the reality of a situation.

Lesson #3:  Be careful who you piss off.

Lesson #4:  Actions speak louder than words. Socrates spoke of virtue, but when it came time to “walk the walk”, he could only “talk the talk”.

Lesson #5:  Be careful what you unleash. It is unlikely that the unjust, tyrannical regime of those that included Critias, was in any way the type of preferred government that Socrates envisioned when he railed against democracy.  However,  he contributed to its possibility.

Lesson #5:  You’re never too old to make a contribution: In the eyes of many, I.F. Stone’s career ended in 1971 when his I.F. Stone Weekly stopped publication, and he retired from political journalism.  However, Stone carried on.  His book, The Trial of Socrates, is an exciting read that stands in sharp contrast to most of the staid, scholarly writings of Socrates’ demise.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.

Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

What to do with China?

Let’s face it, the financial crisis is nothing but confusing.  But if you want to see complete and utter confusion, take a look at how the Obama administration is dealing with China.  On January 23, Obama’s soon to be Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, accused the Chinese of “manipulating their currency”.  Basically Geithner scolded the Chinese for keeping its currency artificially low, spurring domestic employment and exports, and then increasing their foreign exchange reserves by buying U.S. treasury securities with the proceeds.

However one month later, Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, traveled to Beijing and all but begged the Chinese government not to sell their U.S. Treasury securities and to please, please, continue to buy them in the future.

China has become the world’s largest foreign holder of U.S. treasury securities, with $780 billion of the $3.1 trillion in U.S. treasury securities held by foreign interests.  The U.S. needs China to finance their stimulus packages but China themselves are going to have to finance their own stimulus package.  China, however, is sitting on the world’s largest stash of cash, with $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

Some think the financial crisis is signaling the end of the American Empire, and with it the end of the U.S. dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency.  The fact is, however,  that while the credibility of the U.S. dollar is at risk, conditions are not yet right for a run on the dollar.  The mere prospect of an Obama administration implementing better foreign and domestic policies is enough to postpone a massive liquidation of U.S. dollars by foreign investors.  I believe the seemingly contradictory policy statements of Clinton and Geithner, are in fact a reflection of a coordinated Obama strategy.  The dollar lost 15% to the yen and 40% to the euro over the 8 years that Bush pretended to be following a strong dollar policy.  Obama comes from the Paul Volker school of, “a country is stronger with a strong currency, not weaker”, and so he is just more believable than Bush when promoting a strong dollar.  There is a lot of deflationary pressure with the unwinding of leverage around the world, but I suspect Obama would support a Federal Reserve decision to start raising interest rates if inflation was on the horizon.  While Obama’s policies and stimulus will cost plenty, his withdrawal from Iraq will save the U.S. Treasury plenty.  The Nobel-prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, has estimated that the Iraq war will have cost U.S. taxpayers $3 trillion dollars.  At the very least, Obama is moving America in a new direction.

The dollar is in jeopardy, not because the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low in the face of inflation, but because of the “twin deficits” (current account and fiscal), that the U.S. has allowed to balloon.  In this era of globalization, a country’s current account is a vital barometer of its economy.  When a country spends and invests more than its domestic income and savings, it has to fund the deficit with large inflows of foreign capital.  The U.S. consumer has been the driving force of much of the world’s economy, but this consumption has occurred on borrowed money.  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the U.S. to have a current account deficit of $615 billion in 2008, while China will have a current account surplus of $386 billion.  Could the renminbi be the world’s reserve currency of the future?

The other crucial deficit affecting the dollar is the U.S. fiscal deficit.  This deficit is likely to reach $2 trillion in 2009, before dropping to $1.5 trillion in 2010.  Again, this deficit has to be financed mostly by non-residents, and while the world community is likely to bet on Obama in the short term, a protracted failure of U.S. policies will result in a flight from the American currency.

The pressure on Obama is immense.  By the end of his first term we should know if the reign of the American Empire will continue or be replaced by regional financial powers (China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Iran), and a much diminished role for the American dollar.  If there is the perception that the U.S. is falling into the abyss, the first sign of the dollar’s collapse may come from discussions in the Gulf countries revolving around revaluing their crude oil sales based on a basket of currencies.  A lot of very smart people are betting against the dollar  (Nouriel Roubini, Jim Rogers, Nassim Taleb), but I believe the U.S. will have one more kick at the can.  This optimism can be explained in two words - Chu and Varmus.  Huh! That’s right Chu and Varmas.  When Obama named Steven Chu as his Energy Secretary and Harold Varmus as his co-chair of the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, he signaled that the U.S. government was going to embrace science and technology to get us out of this mess.  The two Nobel prize laureates are a reflection of Obama’s intelligence.  Obama is smart enough to get technology leaders into policy making positions and to lead us in a new direction.  My belief is that he will do the same in finance and foreign policy.

Those that think we are in for a prolonged (some say 10 year) deep recession/depression, don’t understand the speed at which the global economy now works.  Policy decisions, good and bad, that played out over years during the depression of the 1930’s, now would play out in a matter of days.  Let’s hope this fact is good news for Barack Obama and the American dollar.

War on Indifference

On January 20th, Barack Obama gave his inaugural address. His delivery was more somber than fiery, but in terms of content, it rates as one of the greatest speeches in history.  One line in particular stands out for me.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders

Indifference.  What is indifference?  On April, 12th 1999, Elie Weisel, holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, gave another of the world’s greatest speeches entitled, “The Perils of Indifference”

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century’s wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

You can listen to the entire speech here.