The list was the following

1. Over stimulus (namely screens)
2. Music (fantasy, disconnection)
3. Superiority (pride/arrogance)
4. Alcohol (disconnection, drunkenness)
5. Knowledge (curiosity)
6. Happiness (stagnation)

Is happiness a drug? What separates an addiction from a fundamental need?

Like is the “need” for human companionship a drug, to not be solitary all the time? We aren’t “addicted to food”. Though on the flip side actual drugs (illicit substances) are things which lead to addiction, so where is the line?

Perhaps it’s some sort of rational utility measurement, like what actually helps you and what doesn’t, like a net benefit. Though how even to measure that? If using a monetary lens then food is pretty bad, especially nutritious food.

Though here then is an alternative hypothesis: things that are “drugs” push us towards subjective reality (the world we make up in our heads) and non “drugs” push us (or don’t push us away) from objective reality (what’s actually going on).

The reality is that it is super nuanced. There’s almost always no big idea to explain what’s going on, and if it somehow is straightforward it’s a broad answer without context. With all the complicated things being so simple, and all the simple things complicated. Where the price of moving forward is inordinately high (or meaningless if given as a default) and paying doesn’t guarantee success but not paying guarantees failure.

The reality that is so unkind, but that if tamed, loved as it really is, will grow to appreciate.

Anything that is irreplaceable would lead to something forever broken, and at best something inideal. Somethings seem irreplaceable, due to the burden of replication or replacement, but at a point it will make sense.

It is sort of an ideal, however, to be irreplaceable: to be the expert, the glue, the monopoly. Though how nice to be that forever? Maybe a monopoly, yes, but nothing lasts forever. How unfortunate those under what temporarily irreplaceable.

All that is was once what will be. All is an attempt to fulfill want, want being a specific end to a need, or derivative to do so. Every item has substitute.

How many autocratic regimes in desperate times played the sweet siren of promised certainty? All is ours. Those that were gone, and those that will go, all will.

Then what? How trapped? At the mercy of whatever system of choice, or better yet, a predetermined luck!?

Though it’s a freedom, and simultaneously an attention earned. It means all is replaceable, but what is there is chosen.

It’s a greater meaning in a way. It was all guaranteed nothing would be earned. A game with unlimited currency and level, it all becomes nothing, and all fake anyways. But a game where one may lose, and often do, and most do, try on.

Best of luck to all those trying, and especially those not trying.