Toms Blog on Life and Livingness
…MKUlta, The Tuskagee experiment, cigarettes, aspartame, glyphosate, chemtrails, “safe and effective”, Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, global warming and the Voice and…
“Put a rat in a cage and give it 2 water bottles. One is just water and one is water laced with heroin or cocaine. The rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself in a couple of weeks. That is our theory of addiction.
Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do. Let’s try this a bit differently.”
So he built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything a rat could want is in Rat Park. Lovely food. Lots of sex. Other rats to befriend. Colored balls. Plus both water bottles, one with water and one with drugged water.
But here’s what’s fascinating: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use it. None of them overdose. None of them use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction.
What Bruce did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong.
The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard.
The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked.
Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
Now, we created a society where significant numbers of us can’t bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drink, drugs, sex, shopping… We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for many of us, more like the first cage than the bonded, connected cages we need.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not people. You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. In fact, we are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that.”
Credit: Johann Hari
There will always be those who do evil. We need to increase the number of people who recognise it, call it for what it is and fight back,. That is, after all, the price of freedom. Constant alertness, constant willingness to fight back.
My elder daughter sent me this 11 years ago. Just saw it again and thought it worth reposting.
Did the US government and CDC have enough scientific evidence before recommending mRNA vaccines to pregnant and breastfeeding women? And did Facebook censor those who shared accurate information about it?
Did you ever wonder why there are no dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica?
Where do they go?
Wonder no more!
It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life. The penguin is very committed to its family and will mate for life, as well as maintain a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.
If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other members of the family and social circle have been known to dig holes in the ice, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be rolled into, and buried.
The male penguins then gather in a circle around the fresh grave and sing:
“Freeze a jolly good fellow,
Freeze a jolly good fellow.”
You really didn’t believe that I know anything about penguins, did you?
Oh quit whining I fell for it, too!