2 November 2020
Caged rats were used in studies to determine the efficacy and appeal of cocaine to a captive audience. Subjects were confined and given a choice between instant gratification, or food, water, and isolation. They tended to hit that cocaine bar until they died of exhaustion, dehydration, and/or starvation. This “proved” (to some minds) that cocaine is much more powerful than food or water.
But these tests were conducted in rat prison, and not in rat skate park or rat retirement village or rat discotheque. The rats’ choices were too severely constrained to give meaningful results about what a mind might choose given a variety of options. The results don’t reveal anything meaningful about cocaine, but much about despair and loneliness. It’s kinda like trying to divine the sexual preferences of young men by studying prisoners. Somehow, NONE of them seem to select benign, wholesome, or enriching relationships of respect and mutual regard, but tend instead to confine their acts to celibacy, masturbation, or random rape in the showers.
So what’s killing those rats, then, if it’s not cocaine? They’re not choosing cocaine over food, fellowship, and freedom. They’re choosing palliation over purposelessness. Am I one of those rats? Not quite. I haven’t been captured and caged, per se. My “isolation” is mainly voluntary. I found it preferable to the prospect of eight hours of uninterrupted vertical waterboarding. Unfortunately, and probably too late, I find that I do miss many of the social aspects of the job, in spite of the many much more annoying social and logistical aspects of any job. I miss the good parts of the job as much as I miss the fellowship of my church (whether that’s my golf club, or my political party, or my local library, or amateur theatre, or even supernatural cult rituals.) Many of the social and cultural phenomena that help to transform existence into living are now missing.