Brain drug: The deadliest "addiction" isn't a drug. It's something much worse | Hacker News Reader

Brain drug: The deadliest "addiction" isn't a drug. It's something much worse

slate.com

23 pointsDocFeind7 comments

"When I read the story to a group of about 100 psychiatrists at an American Psychiatric Association convention in New York City and asked them what punishment Billy should receive, the most popular suggestion was that he should be locked in a cage with vicious dogs and torn to pieces."

I come across info bits like this every once in a while and I can't help be think... were they really answering the question truthfully, and just having a little laugh to themselves? Or, are we really this close to reverting to midieval behavior if our modern justice system crumbles

I wonder how this works/worked from an evolutionary perspective. Are vengeful people effective enforcers of tribal norms and customs? It would be a good deterrent to not cross someone if you knew they would destroy themselves to destroy you.

Still, one doesn't have to look far to find talking heads who will happily tell you that some group of people has slighted you and that you need to respond (by voting for [X]). So even if vengefulness is helpful, and even if forgiveness is the answer for unhelpful vengefulness, is there any way to keep it from being hijacked at scale?

Is it religion?

I think it's mindfulness.

You can find this in religion, or generic spirituality, or meditation, or any number of activities. Putting in the effort to be aware of yourself in the moment, in your mental context, and in the context of the group you find yourself in, your place in society and in the world, and where you are now and where you want to be before you shuffle off the mortal coil, all of these things are important and matter.

Of course, if you can fully grasp onto all of this at once then you're a better person than I, but it's still a task worth attempting since it can let you meta analyze your life and your feelings and increase the chance that your decisions are made intentionally, which is nice because you have to live with them no matter what.

Be wary of attempts to explain behavior via evolution. Not every trait is adaptive, so the right question is often not "What good does this do?" but "How did people survive despite this?"

Before attempting to apply such explanations, you'd need to have an extremely broad cultural perspective. Practically everybody you know is WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). You can't really draw a pattern without including a lot of other cultures, both existing and extinct.

How did people survive despite their predilection for revenge?

Ideally by refraining from doing stuff makes other people vengeful toward them. I thought I saved a link about that but can't find it now.

And the punchline?

> To help people safely release their revenge cravings and experiment with forgiveness, I’ve created a method known as the Nonjustice System that’s contained in my book and in the free Miracle Court app.

"Buy into my self-help program"

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