We live in an ADHD world, and all manner of addictions have become preferable to sitting still with ourselves, delaying gratification or cultivating growth and change. Even meditation is packaged as a quick remedy for stress reduction. Yet everything we do, including fast-acting meditation techniques, only increases stress. The answers no longer come from within, but are not-so-hidden in something that is alien to my self, something that someone can give to me, an activity that will make life bearable, since achieving meaning or happiness was proved to be not worth all the effort in the Twentieth Century.
When the Internet became widely available, most of us became willing participants in a grand laboratory experiment based on how overstimulation, an abundance of external stimuli that bombard our senses while undermining our own imagination, and instant gratification affect our daily living. We gladly conclude that the benefits outweigh the costs, and quickly move on anxiously to our next Google search or Facebook entry, neglecting the fact that it is not big business or governments that control us, but everything that catches our fleeting attention in the moment.
The relatively recent love affair with the neurosciences and biological etiologies for a range of unwanted physical and psychological conditions have brought us to a place where chemicals are the treatment of choice to fight other chemicals and chemically-based physiological states and processes. We are all mostly in too much of a hurry to wait for the natural course of things to do its good work. With all this, the frantic man or woman never succeeds at anything meaningful. If I'm not "doing something," I am lost, without an anchor, bored, anxious, depressed and leading an empty life. But look! There is a way out! No waiting! The loud din of hyperactivity overrides my unwanted feelings and obsessive thoughts, replaces meaningful relationships and slowly destroys my inner goodness as a human being. I am alienated from my self, and my frantic race to each new activity as a poor but perfectly acceptable substitute for my own humanity. "Virtual reality," no longer a description of a mythical land or a come-on for a digital game, has become the go-to remedy for life's ills.
The headstones of modern man are replete with alienated, unwritten epitaphs. "I got used to my husband's porn addiction. After all, everyone does it, and he doesn't hit me." "My wife is emotionally absent, makes little effort in our relationship, and spends her life lying on the couch, but she was there for me when I needed her." "My boyfriend is emotionally and physically abusive, cheats on me, and never fails to remind me of how much of a loser I am, but he is my soul mate." "I don't have the time to save my life. And besides, what would other people think if they knew I needed help?" Yet there are no corpses buried below these simultaneously desperate and nonchalant Cliff Notes versions of personal memoirs; they are epitaphs for the living.
With addictions, a corner has long ago been turned, and there is no going back. People have long grown tired of recidivist criminals, revolving-door rehabbers, and treatment-resistant addicts. We abuse, criticize and laugh at a "spiritual remedy," insisting that science and evidence-based research are the Promised Land. Yet decades and billions of dollars worth of government- and privately- funded scientific research have yielded...Antabuse, Vivitrol, Naltrexone, and Suboxone. Where's the beef? It's like treating cancer with painkillers. Intensive, therapeutic treatments take too long, are costly, and are merely impotent when it comes providing what we truly crave: a quick and easy solution for life's troubles. Instead of embracing ambiguity we defer to instant gratification, desperately hoping that there is SOMETHING out there that will bring us relief in the next moment. And in every moment that follows, each of which provokes panic from within, lacking as they do guarantees or reassurances of an acceptable outcome.
We have arrived, not in George Orwell's 1984, but in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and we've learned to love it. Or whatever it is that we've learned is an adequate substitute for love, usually a quiet despair that tells us "Everything could be much worse." It is a sickness of the soul and a rejection of our own humanity that ails us, and we search for the answers in a pill, an activity, or any other quick way out, as long as it doesn't require that we sit with ourselves. We've learned and accepted that almost anything is better than being human.