This is http://www.essayz.com/a9005011.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %KINDS ADDICT RATIONALIZE GOOD ADDICTION IDEALS 900501 All kinds of addicts rationalize their addictive behavior in terms of their own kinds of values and ideals. Each kind of addict is seeking to make sense of their own kind of unbalanced excess; and finds reasons for respecting their own kind of excess in terms of their own peculiar unbalanced set of ideals and values. The alcoholic may be proud of the quality of beverages used in excess; or perhaps may be proud of the surroundings, the time of day, the company, the small concentration of alcohol, etc. In each instance some reason may be found in terms of which to rationalize the excessive fixation upon alcoholic beverages as the means to fixing what is wrong but not understood. The foodaholic may in a similar way be proud of the quality, surroundings, time of day, company, low concentration of cholesterol, calories, etc. In each instance some reason may be found in terms of which to rationalize the excessive fixation upon good foods as the means to fixing what is wrong but not understood. Wealthy drug addicts may be proud of the fact that they use only the highest quality drugs which are prescribed by physicians or respected businesses. They may use the drugs only within the company of successful business, professional and political leaders. In the confusion of their addictive rationalization they cannot see that their lives and ideals lack balance and honesty. Highly respected sexaholics may be proud that the company they keep involves only highly respected people, or that their sexual relationships occur only within the context of legitimate marriages. They may rationalize their behavior as being consistent with some cleverly chosen code of personal conduct which they follow with great care to be sure that they can regard themselves as fulfilling their own rationalization ideals. The highly respected researchaholics are proud of the number and quality of publications in which they report new discoveries of obscure truths which only a select few people can ever hope to understand. They rationalize their unbalanced behavior in terms of impersonal scientific values and ideals which are the foundation of their unbalanced paradigm. They claim that their findings will lead to practical uses, but show no interest in relating their truths to the education and lives of the vast majority of humans. The compulsively objective scientists are professionally proud of their systematic objectivity and seek to transcend humility through the generation of an exponential explosion of objective knowledge which they agree is unquestionably true. It is unthinkable to them to question the value, meaning, or personal significance of their explosion of sophisticated objective knowledge which stands between them and honest human dialogue. Their collusions protect their objective paradigm regardless of costs. The powerful defensaholics are proud of the sophistication and destructive power of their weapons of instant delivery and violence which they perceive as the means to personal and national security. They rationalize their inventions as reasonable ways to achieve security through intimidation control. They serve all sides of all conflicts with no ability to relate the focus of their addiction, on the one hand, to integrative human ideals which they presume to be serving, on the other hand. They lack integrity and balance. Religious fanatics are proud of how close they see themselves as being to their chosen conception of god. They rationalize their victimization of other humans in terms of the god whom they conceived to help them rationalize their addiction to judgmental legalism, moralism, or ritualistic preoccupations. They know how to pass judgement upon others, but cannot see how confused and out of balance their own ideals and behaviors are with respect to their knowledge of good and evil which they achieved by eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the Garden of Eden. Each kind of addict may be characterized by a set of ideals, values and related rationalizations of their own peculiar from of addictive imbalance. To understand and cope with the dilemmas of each kind of addiction, we may need to recognize respected addictive values and ideals as tools used by addicts to rationalize each particular kind of addiction. The rationalizations are perceived by the addict as good, as holding the key to transcending the addict's problems. The very ideals, values and tools which entrap the addict are perceived by the addict as the keys by which to transcend addiction. Each kind of addict seeks to transcend their addiction through rationalizations based upon the disintegrative ideals, values and attitudes which are the foundations and tools of their own addictive paradigm. Such foundations and tools are associated with respected behavior only so long as addicts can maintain their dishonest appearance of respectability. Eventually their games of mutual self deception break down. The alcoholic ends up on skid row, and/or dead in one or more ways. The foodaholic becomes dysfunctionally fat or their or has a heart attack. The wealthy addict becomes criminally dysfunctional or goes bankrupt in one of many possible ways. The sexaholic becomes personally dysfunctional in meaningless dishonest intimacies and becomes involved in other forms of addiction. The researchaholic become alienated from most humans in thoroughly objective ways and contributes to the dishonest efforts of the defensaholics. The defensaholic leads us all in arms races towards comprehensive destruction of all forms of life and love. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================