“The highest art…sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood.” - Herman Hesse

 "Crime is stupid, delinquency is stupid, and the use of narcotics is stupid. What Synanon is dealing with is addiction to stupidity" - Charles E. Dederich

I  looked this one up to figure out what 'Synanon' is, and apparently it was a drug-rehabilitation organization-turned-evil-cult. It started out as a movement to break people of addiction by intensive 'attack therapy', but spooned turned into a organization aimed at intensely controlling people, subjecting them to psychological torture, and eventually turned into a church in order to escape from paying taxes. They were shut down for the IRS for tax fraud, and were also involved in several criminal investigations of more a more life-threatening nature shortly before their dissolution. I picked this quote because I think that this view is still something which we see today, still a point of view and a belief about dealing with addiction that many people have. 

Have you ever met someone who smokes or drinks, that tells you it is bad for them and they know it is bad for them, and they 'should' stop - but continues to do it anyway? Or perhaps you know someone who loves to gamble, and is always sure that their next big break is just around the corner. We are inspired to look at these folk and roll our eyes, to disparage them and their actions. We suspect that they can't really think that it is bad for them, or else they would stop. However, most of us have something like this to an extent. An ex you just can't seem to stay away from, an invitation to go out for drinks you just can't seem to refuse, or a hobby you just can't seem to not spend absurd amounts of money on. The difference, or at least what we think the difference is, between us with our hobbies and people with an addiction is not in the not being willing or able to stop, because that is understandable. Rather, the difference lies in the way in which a true addiction can take over your life, can re-order everything you do, and everything you care about, around that sole need. 

To an extent, addiction, crime, and delinquency is stupid. It is stupid because it is illogical, because it is a series of actions and reasonable decisions which descend from and relate directly to each other. Rather, these forces are like a field, like a wave which pushes, always pushes, you in some direction. There is always some reasonable choice that one can make in order to justify committing a crime, abandoning a post, or jabbing yourself with a needle. Just like gambling, we can always say 'one more, just one more then I' ll stop', or 'I only need a small hit', or 'I have to have this or I' ll die, I'll just die' - It might be stated out loud, it might be unstated and only thought or suspected, but that reasons is a real reason. It is a choice, conscious or unconscious - but not exactly a choice as we think of choices. 

Why does it require great willpower to stop once you start, to always forbear from taking even one more drink, or searching for one more hit, and why does the need to not go away? It is because The choice to imbibe, or the choice to steal, is a choice that some part of you has made. It's not an illogical or unreasonable choice, but it is a moral one, and a self-identifying one. The you that wants is a part of you, is a being to whom you can rightly refer to as 'I'. It is one part of you, and the part that does not want to take another drink, take one more picture, or go looking for one more chemical crutch, is also a part of you. We are complex beings, complex persons with many sides to us. This is why improving our understanding of ourselves often helps us deal with problems. This is why learning more about ourselves and how we work, on a chemical, mental, and emotional level, is not a weakness and not a throwing away of our autonomy, but is instead a further resolution of our freedom; Because we were Elway sin us, even if we didn't know it. 

So in a way, to fall to drugs or to crime is a choice, but that does not mean that it is an evil, mad, or unreasoned choice. Rather, it is most often the choice of the uninformed, the unhappy, and the unfree. How shall we react to them, how shall we think of them, those people we know who lose their house because of a gambling problem, their children because of a drinking problem, or their sanity because of a stalking problem? It seems like we often choose one of two paths: Either we blame them for all their misfortunes and say they need tough love, that they are ungoverned and ungovernable, just undisciplined and mental rabble on the street, or we say that they are poor unfortunate folk beaten by forces they can't control, just looking for a bit of happiness, who we need to help and nurture back to health. Sometimes we just want to get people off the streets because they are ringing the town, and sometimes we just want to give people everything they need to live better lives because we feel sorry for them. I think that at either extreme, we have a misunderstanding of who people are. 

When the individual becomes supremely important, and where people are in life is a result of the choices that they have made, then it is easy to blame the homeless and the addicted for their lives. When we think of people through a social lens, then it is easy to think that people aren't living terrible lives because they want to, but because they have to. In both cases, the assumption is - who wouldn't want to have a nice stable life with a steady job, a nice house, and a relaxing life filled with meaningfulness? If the individual can achieve what they want, then if they haven't achieved that, it is because they don't want that, and so they are obviously a malignant and damaged sort of person, probably a dangerous and immoral one. If the individual cannot achieve what they want, then if they do not have the 'nice life', it is because they are not able to, because something is stopping them; Probably society, government, economics, racism, or health. We can say - if only they would get off their lazy asses and stop taking handouts, if only they were willing to work, if only they could be put away in a box somewhere to be taken care of, then maybe we won't see people like that all the time, we wouldn't have to be afraid of people like that all the time. Or perhaps we can say - If only we could get them enough help, if only we could emphasize with them, train them, feed them, teach them, then perhaps folk wouldn't have to live such horrible lives as these, at the mercy of the bottle or the breeze. Some people say that crime, delinquency, and narcotics are due to stupid choices, due to a love of stupidity.. Others say that it is us who are stupid to shift the blame and ignore the problems. For my part, I think that the real answer is somewhat more complicated. I don't work with these problems on a daily basis, I don't try to solve them, and so take anything I have to say with a grain of salt here, for I speak only of what I have encountered, not what I have studied. 

The problems of addiction and stupidity are things that we all deal with on a daily basis, in our own ways. Mostly they don't rise to levels that concern us, and mostly we have balanced lives, but that is not always the case and it is not the case for everyone whom we know. The people I now who have escaped the cycle of a downward spiraling life have done so because they themselves realized what they were doing, and where they were going. To change required time and effort, help and self-reflection. Lives don't get worse all in an instant, and they don't get better that quickly either. Rather, the improvement or degradation of a life takes time, for we grow into it. A helping hand at the right time can be the step that is needed to allow someone to land back on their feet again - but that step is useless if they don't want to. For the folk who remain even after help and time, the ones who you can't help, there are three kinds - First are the mental, the people who are just too mentally ill or too drug-addled to really know what they are doing. They can't choose to get better because there isn't enough left of them, for them to choose. They need actual physical help, the kind that takes their self-control and bodily autonomy away from them. Or it would, if they had any left. Perhaps some of them can be healed, and can have their freedom given back to them - but not all of them, not all of us, will be so lucky. The second type is the person who cannot recognize his own self-responsibility. He is choosing not to choose, m deciding to blame it all on somebody else, and thus absolve himself of any reason to change. This is either the result of a total loss of self-autonomy, or a lie he tell sin order so that he may continue to do what he wants and never feel blame or shame over it. This is the liar who smiles at you and promises you that he'll change, the one who gets mad at you because you won't give him money for his drugs so that he can be happy, and it is thus obviously your fault that he is unhappy. The only cure is to teach them responsibility - if you can. The third and last type, among the general types I have encountered, is the type who is truly happy where he is. I've met many a man who lives by the river in a tent alone, and is quite happy to survive just like that. He troubles nobody, does no violent crime, and spends his days doing as he wills. This is the person who has the option to sleep in the shelter for a night, but instead chooses, again and again, to sleep on the park bench because he doesn't like the rules.For many folk, when they say that don't like the rules what they really mean is that they don't like that they can't bring alcohol or drugs in with them to the shelter, and while this is true for most of the people you will meet, it is not true for everybody. This is a rare sort of person, a member of the second oldest profession in the world, the part-time scavenger, beggar, and monk-like figures who have always existed on the edge of society. They don't want help, are not a danger, and there are so few of them that they are not a societal issue. (There is reportedly a fourth kind, who are both responsible and malicious, the amateur gangster, novice mobster, and psycho torturer. I am sure they exist, I have simply never positively identified one who was not actually addicted only to power, and not to crime, narcotics, or delinquency. The addiction to power is a whole other issue al by itself. ) 

Of the types of people who suffer from addiction who I have known, some are functional and some are not. Of the criminals I have known, some of them are relatively Benin, while ethers are desperate. Of the delinquents I have known, some fall down into the pits and others simply need a little time to work out the direction of their lives. It is too easy to place all people into one category, to think that there is only one correct way, and that your view of the situation is the right one. We can help and guard, but better to do so effectively and clearly. So, an admonishment - Keep your eye out for addictions to stupidity: being or seeing.