There is an interesting connection between religion and addiction. Aside from what we think about religious hypocrisy, the correlation between spiritual belief and addiction is one of the most consistently replicated findings in the study of drug use. More notably, 12 Step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous more or less force their members to accept the existence of a higher power. Why is that?

Scientists think it’s because religion has what are called “prudential values.” In other words, they hold some authority over their believers, stepping in between them and their whims. The specific religious rules vary drastically across different faiths, yet there exists a common thread in the concept of belief that makes people less likely to abuse drugs. I think this connection is important and under-explored.

For example, when I sent out the first email in my Reading List, I had only one instruction: Don’t email me back to think aloud. What I got was just that. Rambling emails, people showing off how smart they are, almost no genuine questions. In fact, one person actually wrote THINKING ALOUD -just like that, unironically and in complete seriousness. What makes people do this?

I think these people are addicts. Or at least, wired similarly. They lack the ability to understand anything outside their own reality, that there is some ‘way’ to behave other than whatever they feel like. This is different than a malignant narcissist who manipulates others to to be like them, this almost a wide-eyed innocence, disbelief that other people don’t act like they do.

I think the reason religious people become addicts less often, or that recovering addicts liken their sobriety to a born-again spiritual awakening is because the two are rooted in humbleness. There is an implicit self-awareness that comes with accepting your place as somewhere other than at the center of the universe. You see with Penelope Trunk or awful bloggers an incredibly resilient refusal of this idea. They desperately lack prudential values – like self-restraint, or that maybe you just don’t say every single thought that pops into your head because it may be wrong, stupid or not in your best interest.

I don’t think you need to find this in religion. You can get it from many sources but you must have it. It’s critical to understand that you don’t always know what you’re doing, that learning requires deference and curiosity. There is certainly no way, as a young person, to coexist or succeed among older maturer adults, without it. Draw from a sense of shame or pragmatism or ancient wisdom or the fucking Bible – anything – so long as you can walk away with a sense of perspective that things matter other than you and that there are consequences when you behave otherwise.

There is this song that I like by Jackie Greene with a refrain in it that repeats “Oh, it’s just as well.” I think we should all be so lucky to have that be the chorus line after each event in our own lives. That our reaction to each occurrence is agnostic.

Marcus called it the Art of Acquiescence. Lincoln thought it that it was the one truly appropriate response for all situations. But this is too often misconstrued as “accepting” bad things that happen to you. Really the least important and easily accomplished half.

The idea is to take both the bad and the good equally, in stride. The subtle but critical difference between resilience and robustness is that resilience is about withstanding pressure while robustness – that is: vigor, strength, health – is the ability to withstand change.

When I see a restaurant with a flash heavy website, I see a web designer who tricked a company into paying for stuff they never needed. When I see roadblock ads and site takeovers and big network buys, I think about the lies the ad rep told the executive just trying to get people to hear about his product. I think about his 40% commission. When I read stories on blogs I can hear the few-thousand-dollars-a-month publicist breathlessly selling this inevitably defunct company he signed two days before. And every time someone calls themselves a ‘social media expert’ I know that what they really did was play some company’s genuine desire to stay on top of things into a bullshit job where they don’t do anything.

I see all sorts of web and PR companies that I could start and maybe turn into something. I know I understand the terrain better. But to do it, I’d have to traffic in the same deceptions and lies as everyone else. Fleecing real businesses out of their money for promises you can never deliver. Going door to to door rounding up clients you couldn’t care less about. Taking credit for things that happened on their own, pretending that what you read on a tech blog was “research.” Waking up each morning knowing that you’re trading off ignorance and the survivorship bias.

There is a lot of money in it, for sure. It’s seductive. You’re supposed to envy those people and their ambition. But it doesn’t matter about that. Or the coolness of doing your own thing. The cost of going down that path is enormous and you can only make the choice once. After it’s paid you can never earn enough to cash out.

So what I can’t see, when I look at myself, is ever becoming that person.