JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

Sometimes things can eat at you until the right connection and words come to mind. As I watch and learn more about people’s actions in general, I have to wonder if fame and/or fortune have become the “drugs” of this society. I saw what addictions can do to people in the ’80s. Some of the behaviors of people in search of more and more money seem to be very similar. “Addicts” are willing to do just about anything to get that next fix – lie, beg, and steal among a few. They don’t care who the victim is as long as the end justifies the means. Do the pressures of trying to be “better” than everyone else, and thereby achieving fame and recognition, lead some people to these behaviors? Or are the behaviors a manifestation of these people’s own characters, or possibly brains? I do know that the pleasure mechanisms of the brain are still not completely understood by experts. I can’t help wonder if these people get some perverse pleasure in enacting the behaviors? Are the messages to be “someone” in this world you have to be esthetically and materially “ahead of the Jones” creating a society of a new type of addict?