The original usage of the verb 'to addict' was as a word to describe the process of the sale of slaves in Roman times. A slave was said to be addicted to a new owner when sold and was recorded as such in the slave masters' ledgers.
In 2006 George W. Bush said in his State of the Union Address that America was addicted to oil. His choice of that word 'addict' is interesting. It may explain much of Western foreign policy when the dynamics of addiction are seen in the light of an individual addict's attempts to secure supply of the drug of choice. In drug addiction on the street turf wars are commonplace. In international turf wars where the fix is provided by oil and oil derivatives, the stakes are much higher.
We are all addicted to oil: the global turf wars are being fought by proxy in all our names by multi-national companies and their puppet governments. How can we help our leaders detox our body politic and our body economic?
"In as much as collectivities are mere accumulations of individuals, their problems are also accumulations of individual problems ... Such problems are never solved by legislation or tricks. They are only solved by a general change of attitude. And the change does not begin with propaganda and mass meetings, or with violence. It begins with a change in individuals. It will continue as a transformation of their personal likes and dislikes, of their outlook on life and of their values, and only the accumulation of such individual changes will produce a collective solution."[1]
[1] C. G. Jung, Psychology & Religion (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1938) 95.
"If dull people lose the idea of God nothing happens - not immediately at least. But socially the masses begin to breed mental epidemics, of which we have now a fair number."[2] [2] C. G. Jung, Psychology & Religion (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1938) 105. The remedy of challenging predictions and identifying malediction within addictive patterns of socio-economic globalism by utilising proven methodologies that release an individual inner world from destructive addiction may now be timely.
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"Since the idea of God represents an important, even overwhelming, psychical intensity, it is, in a way, safer to believe that such an autonomous intensity is a nonego, perhaps an altogether different or superhuman entity, 'totaliter'. Confronted with such a belief man must needs feel small, just about his own size. But if he declares the 'tremendum' to be dead, then he should find out at once where this considerable energy, which was once invested in an existence as great as God, has disappeared to. It might reappear under another name, it might call itself 'Wotan' or 'State' or something ending with -ism, even atheism, of which people believe, hope and expect just as much as they formerly did of God."[3]
[3] C. G. Jung, Psychology & Religion (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1938) 104. .
Individuals who successfully recover from their form of deep addiction through a 12 Step spiritual remedy have to navigate a simple ego reorientation programme that restores their I'ness to being able to function in submission to a Higher Power of their own conception that heals Jung's description of a sick -ism. If there is to be a successful globalisation, then perhaps recovery dynamics inform us that the revolution must come from the inside out.
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Fortunately this revolution has already started and how peculiar that as always, the eventual spiritual remedy for the many has established itself initially amongst the few, the outcasts in our society - the drug and alcohol addicts. In their proven recovery dynamic is the hope for the oil addicts to change from an unsustainable power source, toward whatever human ingenuity can discover, without melting down in withdrawal rigour.
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As the Muslims say, 'there is no God, but Allah.'
