Spinoza frames addiction as humanity’s standard state, not an aberration

Evidence

In fact, Spinoza has immense resources for analyzing the affective regime of late capitalism, the video-drome-control apparatus described by Burroughs, Philip K. Dick and David Cronenberg in which agency is dissolved in a phantasmagoric haze of psychic and physical intoxicants. Like Burroughs, Spinoza shows that, far from being an aberrant condition, addiction is the standard state for human beings, who are habitually enslaved into reactive and repetitive behaviors by frozen images (of themselves and the world). Freedom, Spinoza shows, is something that can be achieved only when we can apprehend the real causes of our actions, when we can set aside the ‘sad passions’ that intoxicate and entrance us. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 149

Categorization

• XREF: Runs directly parallel to the Deep Listening material on becoming free of reactive patterns and to Burroughs’ control rhetoric. — connects to: Addiction, not its absence, is the normal human state under capitalism — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 149; Spinoza offers a progressive alternative to both therapeutic and rationalist emotion models — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1927; Not being hooked on anything is more deadly than addiction itself — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1193
• DEEPTHINKING: The bridging of Spinoza’s ‘sad passions’ with a media-addiction theory of the subject is dense enough to repay re-reading.

Related

• Addiction, not its absence, is the normal human state under capitalism (similarity 0.87)
• Spinoza offers a progressive alternative to both therapeutic and rationalist emotion models (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Not being hooked on anything is more deadly than addiction itself #corroborates (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1193
• Spinoza offers a progressive alternative to both therapeutic and rationalist emotion models #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1927