Addicted to Love, Or What Else You Got?!

I'm nearly 400 pages into David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest." It is sort of like Melville's "Moby Dick," a monster of a novel. It tries your patience, and asks you to push past it.  And if you do, and I am determined that I will, I think you, I mean I, will be captivated. I mean, I am captivated. One paragraph at a time. I have swallowed it hook, line and sinker!

One thread of the narrative is about AA and it became apparent to me, that the AA's 12 step credo can be applied to everyone in our society.  It is an organization dedicated to helping recovering alcoholics but really, we should all be in recovery.  Our society is addicted to entertainment, amusement, shopping, the internet, pop culture - you name it. We all need our fixes all the time.

Our lifestyles are built on our addiction to cheap fuel: toxic substances like oil and coal, which are choking our planet. We are addicted to cheap labor, clothes and fancy gizmos made by sweatshops and third world workers barely making it. We are addicted to cheap thrills on cable tv.

Oh yeah, and don't forget our addiction to fast food: processed, chemically altered to hook us, advertised to death over the airwaves to seduce us with cool pictures and flashy packaging.

We have filled our lives with substances and products and life-choices that actually are harmful to us and to nature and to all it's wonder.  We are all "substance abusers" of one kind or another, out of control, out of our heads. Addicted!

We could use a little humility, humbleness. Admit we have a problem. And try to see a little more clearly, through more sober eyes and minds.  I was surprised by this thread of the book, but I can see it's a major theme.  Kind of blew me away. I love, love, love this book.  Kind of addicted to it too!