f I were writing a novel, and a section was about parents who so addicted to video games that they seriously neglected their children, most people would probably think that is way too silly of an idea for anyone to take it seriously.  Such a premise might make for bad science fiction, but it would be very much in keeping with reality.  For this is the story of Michael and Iana Straw, who jointly and individually neglected their 22 month old baby boy and 11 month old baby girl.  Their explanation: Addicted to video games. (the article is attached below).

It is striking that newspaper story reports that the couple neglected their children.  It does not report that the couple neglected themselves.  Had the story read “The couple was found undernourished and in clothes that they had been wearing for weeks on end”, I might buy claim of addiction.  But if, while playing video games, these two adults managed to take of their own needs while neglecting the needs of their two children, then we what have as an explanation for their neglect of their children is not video addiction but unvarnished child neglect.

As I reflected upon the story, I asked myself time and time again the following question: What is the difference between the absence of self-discipline and addiction?  I am going to offer an answer.  But first a few remarks. 

Like so many people nowadays, I absolutely enjoy the internet and computers and various programs.  And it may very well be argued that I spend more time doing things in this area than I ought to.  But am I addicted?  I think not.  Here is why.  I have never missed a flight, because I was on-line.  Nor have I been late to a meeting or failed to show up for class, and so on, owing to my involvement with some computer activity.  So if, against the foregoing backdrop, I am spending time playing computer games when I should be writing articles, then I should think that what I have is not an addiction problem but a self-discipline problem. 

For if I were really addicted to games, then I really ought to show up late for some of my important dates, even when it was clear that doing so would be rather costly to me in some way or the other.  But since that sort of thing has never happened, then the absence of self-discipline would the best explanation available for why it turns out that I playing video games when I should be writing articles.

Iana and Michael Straw had no trouble attending to their own needs.  Neither, for instance, was glued to the computer screen in a pool of their own feces.  Nor were they malnourished.  So clearly, some things other than the video games mattered to them.

The simple truth of the matter is that their children did not matter to them as much as their video games.  This truth does not the scaffold of an addition.  It needs only indifference coupled with the utter lack of self-discipline.  I mention self-discipline because one of the defining features of good parenting is that meeting a child’s basic needs unequivocally takes precedent over the parents doing what might give them mere pleasure. 

Two parents could be in the middle of having the most extraordinary sex that humankind has ever known; and if they hear the baby choking, then the sex most certainly should come to an abrupt ending, at least momentarily.  I mention sex because sex at its best speaks to a veritable mountain of desires.  Sex at its best is certainly a good competitor to whatever satisfactions video games might afford. 

The ability to turn away from what we find most physically satisfying in order to do what is morally important is one of the defining features of a human being.  There are indeed substances that can impede our doing this.  But nothing impedes our so behaving more than the lack of self-discipline itself. 

Now, once upon time the self-discipline for parents to behave in the right way towards their children received enormous reinforcement from the community in which people lived.  There were prevailing standards of what counted as a good parent; and a person could not thwart those standards without being the object of considerable scorn. 

The community helped many a set of parents to do right by their children even when the parents were sorely inclined to behave differently.  To be sure, the burden fell primarily upon the mother.  This reality, however, does not count against the substance of the point, namely that prevailing community standards often served as a bridge-over-troubled-waters when the mother was sorely inclined to be irresponsible. 

It is a defining feature of self-discipline that those who lack it simply cater to their desires, even when there are fundamentally important reasons not to do so.  An enormously wealthy person with no responsibilities at all who played video games from sun-up to sun-down has problems.  But the absence of self-discipline, as such, is not first among them. 

So the absence of self-discipline does have something in common with being addicted.  But there is this difference.  The addicted person is, with respect to the addiction in question, no longer in control of her or his own will.  Accordingly, the addicted person seeks satisfaction of the relevant desire (1) even though he knows that doing so would be exceedingly and immediately harmful to him and (2) even though he recognizes that he ought to behave otherwise and (3) even though he grasps that unless he acts on his own behalf then he is simply doomed.  That is, a defining feature of the addicted person is his ability to discount immediate harm of great significance to him, even when it is clear that unless he acts on his own behalf he is doomed.  All of us can be quite good at discounting distant harm of great significance to us. 

If my analysis of addiction points in the right direction, then much of what passes for an addiction these days is not that all.  Moreover, the analysis explains why a paradigm example of being addicted remains the case of, say, being addicted to cocaine.  It seems that even at the risk of losing his life at gun point a cocaine addict will seek to satisfy his desire for the drug. 

Needless to say, what most people countenance as an addiction does not come even close to being anything like being addicted to cocaine.  Road rage has been called an addiction.  Others claim to have an addiction to sex or to shopping.  I am willing to bet that no person claiming to be so would ever give a single thought to having sex while being awarded the Nobel Prize.  And I bet no one who claims to “suffer” from a road rage addiction would manifest such behavior in traffic if someone offered the person several hundred thousand dollars.  By contrast, a person addicted to cocaine might act out regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself.

Likewise, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iana and Michael Straw have an addiction to video games that is even close to being on a par with an addiction to cocaine. 

Modern technology does not afford us more ways to become addicted to things.  Rather, it has become an increasingly greater challenge to self-discipline.  No more; no less.