ne of the striking things about society is that it beginning to blur the distinction between an addiction and an intensely strong desire.  The two are simply not the same.  By definition, an addiction effectively minimizes, if not entirely destroys, a person’s will to resist engaging in a certain mode of behavior.  The best evidence of an addiction is that (a) it manifests itself even in the face of a clear and present harm that will follow the addictive behavior and (b) the failure to behave in accordance with the desire tends to have harsh withdrawal symptoms that cause genuine pain to the individual.  This is why our classic example of an addiction is drugs. 

At this point in time, addictions have become rather wonderful things to have.  Or so it is at least from the standpoint of diminishing personal responsibility.  Why, people have an addiction for just about everything: gambling, porn, sex, and so on.  But we must be careful not to blur the distinction between an addiction and an intensely strong desire.

It think that it is next to impossible to be human and not, on some occasion or the other, to experience an intensely strong desire—a desire that seems to be disruptive even—that nonetheless one should not satisfy.  A simple example would be intense desire that upon occasion a person feels for another person’s spouse.  The married person could seem to represent everything we ever wanted in a partner.  Yet, if the individual is married (and, let us suppose, the marriage is a good one), then I trust that it is an incontrovertible truth that we should not give in to our desire to have sexual relations with that individual and attempt to do something. 

This need not be easy at all.  It may require showers, visits to the gym, classic music jogging, and who knows what else.  But a desire that is difficult to resist is not on that account alone an addiction. 

Most desires that are difficult to resist rarely destroy rational behavior and foresight.  So if we have intense feelings for a person’s spouse, it is not as if we must come on to the individual the minute we see the person.  Truth be told, that sort of thing rarely happens; and the expression “I couldn’t help myself” is rarely to be understood literally as a form of internal coercion.  After all, an affair that is fully the result of coercion isn’t quite an affair, is it? 

Now, I think that it is difficult to find a desire more intense and persistent than the sexual desire.  So if that desire rarely constitutes an addiction, then it is rather interesting to me that nowadays gambling and pornography are often said to be an addiction.  An addiction to gambling or porn makes about as much sense to me as an addiction to spending money.  And as the amount of debt that people are in shows, individuals are about as compulsive and ridiculous in their money spending habits as they are with gambling or porn. 

It is my view that society is on the road to cultivating the mindset that an intense desire thereby makes an action excusable; and the language of “addiction” simply gives an air of respectability to this way of thinking.  One most fascinating consequence of this is that now people even excuse themselves—having taken note of just how intense this or that desire is. 

If there is anything that Kant got right, it is that the mark of humanity lies in our ability to rise above our desires—including our rather intense desires.  And the most fundamental law of every legal system presupposes this truth.  No matter how angry a person gets, no matter how full of rage the individual might come to be, no one thinks for a moment that the individual must kill the person who harmed him or her.  Thus, a person’s utter rage at the on-line thief who stole every penny of his retirement does not excuse his killing her. 

But if self-control can be expected here, then it is just plain misguided to suppose that it cannot be exercised in the typical case where gambling or watching pornography is involved.  The idea of not committing murder notwithstanding our intense angry and rage is more compelling, I believe, than the earlier example of respecting marital fidelity.

The trajectory of manufacturing additions is most disconcerting and calls to mind the zombies that pass for people in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

For if indeed we embrace a conception of ourselves according to which yield to our every intensive desire constitutes an excusing condition, then the idea of taking pills to control this or that intense desire increasingly makes greater sense.  And in so doing we diminish the reality of being masters of our own destiny. 

If I am right, then the addiction approach to intense desires, far from being an exercise of compassion, serves to chip away at our human dignity, part of which is tied to the belief that we can make a difference for the better in our lives by persevering and being diligent in the pursuit of our aims. 

The very idea of human dignity is tied to the idea that we can resist strong but inappropriate desires.  Indeed, it is tied to the idea that we can be utterly creative in doing so. 

Intense desires are an inescapable part of our human reality.  Our wherewithal to avoid acting upon inappropriate desires via creative means is a measure of our human dignity.  The idea that others will ignore this truth in the name of being compassionate is but a Pyrrhic victory.  For a social pattern of being compassionate in this way is tantamount to a vision of humanity that is incompatible with the view that a defining feature of human beings is that they can rise above their desires. 

Those who get off today for their crimes—thanks to compassion—pave the way for a less—rather than more—human world, as we come to have less robust view of the wherewithal of human beings to resist desires.

The last thing we need, then, is a world replete with the idea of addictions for each and every unbelievably intense desire that human beings are apt to have, as the example of murder given above makes abundantly clear. 

We cannot have it both ways: We cannot insist that murder is wrong—rage, intense desires, and anger notwithstanding—and at the same time maintain that we have an addiction—meaning an excuse for a person’s behavior—whenever a person can point to an incredibly intense desire as an explanation for her or his behavior.  The thought that we can is but a delusion that will come back to haunt us.

In an earlier blog entry (“Human Dignity and Modern Technology”), I noted that although human beings would not simply chose to give up their dignity, it is possible for human beings to end up doing so by a series of steps the accumulative effect of which is that human beings end up shorn of dignity.  I have in this blog entry given another example of precisely this kind of moral slippage.