photo by TEDxRio+20
Gabor Maté, a medical doctor and renowned author and columnist, reflects at TEDx Rio+20 (watch or listen at this link) about why addiction is so powerful, and why some of us are more susceptible to it… “the real question in addiction is not Why the addiction, but Why the pain.” And he significantly widens the typical lens of the conversation:
…We say to the drug addict, ‘how can you possibly do this to yourself? How can you possibly inject this terrible substance into your body, that may kill you? But look at what we are doing to the earth. We are injecting all kinds of things into the atmosphere, and the oceans, and the environment — that is killing us, that’s killing the earth. Now which addiction is greater… Which causes the greater harm?
What are the people who are perpetrating it addicted to? Power, wealth, acquisition…
They needed power to feel ok in themselves, to make themselves bigger. And in order to get that power, they were quite willing to fight wars and to kill a lot of people… the addiction to power is always about the emptiness that you try and fill from the outside.
His examples refuse the temptation of power,
because they have the power inside of themselves, they don’t need it from the outside… they don’t want to control people, they want to teach people by example and by soft words, and by wisdom, not through force…
His advice for us?
Let’s not look to the people in power to change things. Because the people in power, I’m afraid to say, are very often some of the emptiest people in the world, and they’re not going to change things for us. We have to find that light within ourselves, we have to find the light within communities and within our own wisdom and our own creativity. We can’t wait for the people in power to make things better for us, because they are never going to, not unless we make them.
They say that human nature is competitive, that human nature is aggressive, that human nature is selfish. It’s just the opposite; human nature is actually cooperative, human nature is actually generous, human nature is actually community-minded.… people committed to the better world, that’s actually human nature… If you find that light within, if we find our own nature, we’ll be kinder to ourselves, and we’ll also be kinder to nature.
TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events, with general guidance from the TED Conference.
Curated by The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com