The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

And do let me say that I seriously enjoy these blogversations. Consider that an open invitation to take part.

As before, WindKiller's thoughts are in italics, my responses in normal text.

Interesting question that I kind of answered in Rules of Competition. My goals tend to be more personally oriented, therefore I don't count myself as even existing on anybody's social order. For example, I've recently started studying mathematical statistics. People who know my might find that statement odd because I regularly work with probability solids, bohmian relationships and such.

But I think I need to understand mathematical statistics better than I do. My goal isn't to be a great statistician, only to be able to understand better. I don't care much what others think of my doing this, therefore where they place me in their social order based on my taking on this task is irrelevant to me or my increasing my understanding.

Likewise, I don't strive to not achieve a high position. People will form opinions of others and largely disregarding empirical knowledge, or they will assume that the person someone was early in their life is the same person they are later in their life (this happens in politics a lot. "So-and-so published this opinion when they were an undergraduate. It shows they're un-whatever!" Forget that so-and-so is now in their fifties, held a job, raised a family, been in combat, ... Whatever they said or did or write as an undergraduate is entirely their metaphysic for life. See Change (which is constant) and managing the work-life balance for more of my take on this).

Perhaps the people who are prey to addictions, guilts, etc., conceive of themselves as being lower in the social order than those who...ahem...don't suffer from such maledictions are also quite desirous of the higher position in the social order. Perhaps the addictions are simply distractions from other perceived social inadequacies. Or perhaps those with addictions recognize one the effect of their addictions is diminished social position, but the diminished social position is not a cause of addiction.

There is a theory in psychoanalysis that psychological addictions occur when someone non-consciously perceives a hole in their social makeup and manifests the behaviors associated with the addiction to fill the hole, thus completing their social makeup. That (I think) goes to the first part of what you suggest.

The second part of what you write is (I think) more attuned to the concept of biological addictions. The difference between a biologic and psychologic addiction is that the former stems from genetic makeup and the latter from psychologic makeup. There can be a double curse here because a neural genetic disorder can be the root cause of a biologic and psychologic condition in which both elements are constantly reinforcing each other.

Perhaps the unfortunate guffaw is you have not yet confronted the addiction, guilt, etc. that has driven your perception of your social position. Perhaps that is WRONG ..., but you know what they say about the search for the truth.

I'm very fortunate in that I know my perceptions are just that, my perceptions. I'm doubly fortunate in knowing that my perceptions are true for myself and myself alone. Others may accept them about me or themselves (something that has always amazed me. Why should someone else care what my opinion is of them? Why did they elevate me to such a role of importance in their lives that what I think is a concern to them?) and that is (aHA!) their perception, not mine.

So do I have a perception of my social position? Yes, I do. Thankfully, that perception is of little relevance to me.

Is there addiction, guilt, etc., that has driven me to that perception?

Good question. The response depends on how one defines addiction and whether or not one is willing to recognize certain things as being addiction vectors. Plus one has to recognize that for any kind of addiction to manifest there has to be a social network willing to support the addiction and accept the behaviors associated with that addiction.

Let me give you an example in the context of information addiction, something that came up in discussions here at NSE Central...

A question came up when I was putting together What Tivo Guilt, etc., tells us about ourselves, "Is it possible to be addicted to "information"?

The basic response is "Yes, especially if the pleasure centers of the brain are fired when information is presented." If the only times the pleasure centers fire is when information is presented then the individual has a survival based need to get an information jones and the addiction is biologic (and I'm not an expert on differentiating psychologic from biologic).

The pushback on this was "But the carryover, for it to be addiction, would be psychological fallout if the information production was denied" based on the belief that a biological addiction carries biological and psychological repercussions in denial of the addictive substance.

The challenge there is that psychological repercussions to addiction-based behaviors are fairly recent in history. They didn't exist until long after the advent of the Christian church in the west and the influx of western mores in the east, south and north.

The question remained, "Is a biological addiction to information possible?" becomes one can then wonder if information denial is plausible (beyond some type of solitary confinement). And how would the biological repercussion manifest as compared with a biological addiction to alcohol?

I've never heard of a biologic addiction to information in the literature. Then again, the literature on narcotics addiction didn't appear until there was sufficient narcotics available at low enough cost to create a "user" class that caused economic hardship to the community, at which point it became profitable to point at some diagnoses and say "Look, narcotics addiction". Look through the DSM-IV(4) and you'll see lots of stuff that wasn't diagnosable until there was profit in diagnosing it. Now that "information" is causing recognizable economic hardship to the community, a "cure" won't be far behind.

(Note: when I was actively in the biz (early 1990s) we had the DSM-IV(4). It's still on my shelf and we still use it for ETish things like understanding emails. The DSM-V won't be out until 2012 at best guess)

What about "guilt"? Oh, I'm guilty of quite a few things, many of them I have no knowledge of until someone comes forth with their j'accuse. Then the response is to consider if their statement is valid in a greater frame than their own and if so, apologies are made. Fortunately, because I don't consider myself high on people's social orders and encourage others to do the same, I'm often not worth j'accuseing. Especially when I ask for detailed explanations of what they're talking about. As Marv Stone once told me, "Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience." Let me go on the record that I have so much experience being an idiot...

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