Monday, December 03, 2007

• FAITH'S ADDICTION

  Currently Listening Radio By LL Cool J see related

  Someone once castigated me for getting an apple cider drink from Starbucks.

  “I don’t understand why you people always need to drink Starbucks,” she said.

  “What’s wrong with Starbucks?  And what do you mean by ‘us people’ and what makes you so different from us?” I asked.

  “Well, all the sugar that’s in your drink is so bad for you,” she answered matter-of-factly.

  “Does that mean that I should never eat sugar?”

  “No, natural sugar is okay, but refined sugar, like the stuff that’s in your drink, is bad for you.”

  “Why is refined sugar bad for me?”

  “It just is.  It’s man-made.  Anything man-made is bad.”

  “Why is that?  What is it about refined sugar that is so bad?  You need to tell me; otherwise I will have no reason to believe that it’s bad for me.”

  “Don’t you just know it’s not good for you?”  She was getting riled up.  “It’s because it’s fake.  It’s not real.  It’s like how organic food is better than regular food.  It’s the same concept.”

  “Okay, so can you tell me why organic food is good for you?”

  “It’s just common sense!  Everyone knows organic food is good for you!”

  “But why?”

  “Because it’s not man-made.”

  “Why is man-made stuff bad?”

  “IT JUST IS!  GEEZ.”

  “It seems like you have no idea what you’re talking about so I will tell you,” I said.  “Organic food is good for you not because ‘it just is’, and if that is your argument for it then I reject your argument.”  I paused for dramatic effect.  “It’s good for you because there are no drugs or additives or preservatives in it.  While there are drugs and preservatives that are considered safe by the FDA, it’s still better to eat food without drugs or preservatives because some of these could not only be harmful to your body, but they can be addictive as well.  Any drug is addictive, and that includes the drugs and hormones and preservatives that are pumped into meat and produce.  THAT is why organic food is good for you.  Now, as far as I know, there are no drugs or preservatives in refined sugar, and there are no drugs or preservatives in this cup of apple cider.  SO, can you please give me one good reason why refined sugar is bad for me?  And if you do, I promise I will not drink this apple cider.”

  “Whatever, Shane,” she stewed.

  “I see,” I said as I happily sipped my piping hot and delicious apple cider.

  I would later learn (from a different person) that refined sugar is bad for you because a lot of the minerals and nutrients in natural sugar are lost during the refining process.  These minerals and nutrients are beneficial to your body and they help metabolize the ingested sugar.  Because of that, refined sugar is empty calories.  (This was supposedly “obvious” information.  But how the hell should I know?  I’m not a sugar farmer.)  At the time of the Starbucks incident, I was probably being kind of an asshole by pressing the issue about the demerits of refined sugar.  This person, who considers herself to be health-conscious and has a strictly organic food diet, probably had my best interests in mind.  However, she couldn’t explain to either of us why she does what she does.

  This struck me as very odd.  I can certainly understand having strong beliefs about something, but I can’t understand having strong beliefs without basis.  I know I was educated under the discipline of science and reason, but I doubt that has anything to do with my confusion as to how people can have conviction but not understand why they do.  Behavior without reason is kind of mindless, and I have two hypotheses about it:  People who behave like this are either acting out of (a) addiction or (b) faith.

  Dictionary.com describes addiction as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.”  Everyone has some sort of addiction, and I’m certainly no exception.  I’m 100% certain that I’m a drug addict, though not in the traditional sense.  I don’t sniff blow out of a hooker’s ass crack twice a week.  I don’t hit the bong at 4:20pm every day.  I’m not a pill fiend who pops Vicodin™ every 2 hours.  I don’t smoke cigarettes habitually.  I don’t even drink alcohol to any significant extent.  (My boozing is limited to strictly special events, such as birthdays, weddings, and Saturday nights).  However, I, along with 95% of Americans, am addicted to the drugs in FDA-approved beef.  That’s why I can’t stop eating it.  While it’s possible that I can’t stop eating beef simply because I find the taste of bloody bovine carcass highly satisfying, it’s more likely that I’m addicted to the drugs that it’s laced with.  Any drug is addictive, and considering that I’ve been eating beef since I was about one-year old, I could steadfastly say that I’m a beef fiend.  While I am aware of the fact that the fat and cholesterol found naturally in beef are assaulting my heart and blood vessels, I’m also well aware that the added growth hormones and preservatives pumped into beef are slowly turning my brain into mush.  What can I say?  My name is Shane Varnet, and I’m a beef addict.

  If you consider addiction as an irrational tendency to act a certain way, then I guess it’s not that much different from blind faith.  A drug is a physical substance that is consumed and alters the body for some sort of beneficial purpose.  That could be to relieve pain (Vicodin™), or to keep you awake (speed), to be happy (Prozac™)or to be cool (Parliament™ has been scientifically proven to be 30% cooler than Marlboro™).  Regular consumption of the drug begins to alter the molecules in your body and changes it so that your body becomes physically dependent on it.  After a while you wouldn’t be taking the drug for its desired effect, but you’d be taking it because you would go loony without it.  Your conscious and logical need for the drug turns into an irrational and illogical need for it.  Dictionary.com defines faith as “a belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.”  Religious faith isn’t based on facts, it’s based on the concept of “it just is”.  If an addiction is a physical dependency manifested by irrational actions, then faith is a mental dependency manifested by illogical thought.  A drug addict will have faith that their addiction will make their life better, and a person with religious faith will be addicted to their concept of spirituality because it justifies their existence.  There is a thin line between addiction and faith, but in either case, the person loses their mind.  Addiction and faith are character flaws.

  I suppose I’ve admitted to my flaws by admitting to my addiction, and there was at least one time in my life when I consciously attempted to address this issue.  Shortly after graduating from college in 1999, I attempted to become a vegetarian.  I failed gloriously after nine days at a Black Angus in San Diego.  But, admitting to an addiction is always the first step to solving the problem.  A hardcore Christian who bases their spirituality on faith will never admit to having a mental problem.  But like a drug addict, they consume their faith without thinking about it, despite how illogical or irrational it is, because they like the way it makes them feel.  They fail to find spirituality in common sense, cognitive reasoning, and cold hard facts, and get caught up in a pseudo-spirituality that can only be described as a bad habit.  Like a drug will kill the body of a drug addict, faith will kill the mind of a cognizant human being.  Blind faith is the most dangerous drug of all-time.

  Conviction without reason is simply an addiction.  IT JUST IS.  Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it.

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