The Addiction of Power and the Addicted Society · 对权力的成瘾与成瘾的社会

Current understanding · 当前理解

Maté takes his clinical definition of addiction — any behavior that brings short-term relief and long-term harm that one cannot give up — and turns it on the society that condemns the street addict. By that definition the addiction to oil, consumerism, profit, and power dwarfs the drug user’s habit; “we are all hungry ghosts in this society.” The most consequential form is the addiction of power itself: power-addiction, like every addiction, is an attempt to fill an inner emptiness from the outside, and history’s great conquerors fit the pattern of insecure outsiders driven to acquire. Because a profit-and-power-addicted culture rewards exactly the behavior it should restrain — possessing cocaine gets you arrested while destroying a rainforest gets you rewarded — Maté describes the result as “a society run by addictions,” in which the people most addicted to power are often among the emptiest. This is the social-scale companion to his individual theory of addiction; the personal “ask why the pain, not why the addiction” account lives in the addiction domain, while this page concerns what addiction looks like when a whole culture organizes itself around it.

马泰把他对成瘾的临床定义——任何能带来短期缓解、长期伤害、却无法戒除的行为——转而对准那个谴责街头瘾君子的社会。以此定义衡量，对石油、消费主义、利润与权力的成瘾，远远超过吸毒者的习惯；“在这个社会里，我们都是饿鬼”。其中后果最严重的，是”对权力的成瘾”本身：与一切成瘾一样，对权力的成瘾是试图从外部填补内心的空虚，而历史上的大征服者正符合这种”被驱迫去占有的不安全外来者”的模式。由于一个对利润与权力成瘾的文化，恰恰奖励它本应约束的行为——持有可卡因会被逮捕，破坏雨林却得到奖赏——马泰把结果称为”一个被各种成瘾所驱动的社会”，其中最成瘾于权力的人，往往是最空虚的一些人。这是他个体成瘾理论在社会尺度上的对应面；个人层面”问为何疼痛、而非为何成瘾”的论述属于成瘾域，而本页关注的是：当整个文化围绕成瘾来组织自身时，成瘾会是什么样子。

Core claims · 核心论点

• Society scorns the drug addict while injecting toxins into the atmosphere and oceans through its own addictions to oil and consumerism — so the real question is which addiction is greater; we scorn drug addicts precisely because they are just like us. —— The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20 社会一边鄙视吸毒者，一边通过自身对石油和消费主义的成瘾，向大气和海洋注入毒素——所以真正的问题是：哪一种成瘾更严重；我们鄙视吸毒者，恰恰因为他们和我们一模一样。

• “We are all hungry ghosts in this society” — the Buddhist image of a being who can never fill the emptiness inside generalizes from the drug user to a whole consumer culture. —— The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20 “在这个社会里，我们都是饿鬼”——佛教中那个永远填不满内心空虚的形象，从吸毒者扩展到整个消费文化。

• The addiction of power is always about an inner emptiness one tries to fill from the outside; history’s power-addicts (Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin) were physically small outsiders driven by insecurity, while Buddha and Jesus refused worldly power because they held power within. —— The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20 对权力的成瘾，永远关乎一个人试图从外部去填补的内心空虚；历史上对权力成瘾的人（亚历山大、拿破仑、希特勒、斯大林）都是身材矮小、被不安全感驱使的外来者，而佛陀与耶稣拒绝世俗权力，因为他们的力量在内心。

• The perpetrators of colonial harm are themselves addicted: those who took the land and dignity of the Guarani in Brazil and First Nations in Canada are addicted to power, wealth and acquisition, while the colonized peoples became heavily addicted because what they needed was taken from them. —— The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20 殖民伤害的施加者自己同样在成瘾：夺走巴西瓜拉尼人、加拿大原住民土地与尊严的人，成瘾于权力、财富与占有；而被殖民的民族之所以重度成瘾，是因为他们所需要的东西被夺走了。

• A society addicted to profit and power rewards the very behavior it should restrain — possessing cocaine gets you arrested while destroying the rainforest gets you rewarded — which is why Maté calls it “a society run by addictions,” tying climate denial and rainforest destruction directly to collective addiction. —— The Wisdom of Trauma: A Dialogue on the Past that Lives Inside Us 一个对利润与权力成瘾的社会，恰恰奖励它本应约束的行为——持有可卡因会被逮捕，破坏雨林却得到奖赏——这正是马泰称之为”一个被各种成瘾所驱动的社会”的原因，他由此把气候否认与雨林破坏直接系于集体成瘾。

• Do not wait for the powerful — often the emptiest people in the world — to heal the world; the remedy is to find the light within ourselves and our communities, because human nature is fundamentally cooperative and generous. —— The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20 不要指望掌权者——往往是这世上最空虚的一些人——去疗愈世界；解药是在我们自己和社群之中寻找那束光，因为人的本性从根本上是合作而慷慨的。

• Smartphones are designed to addict, and food companies hire neuroscientists to find the precise combination of sugar, salt, and fat that hooks addiction-prone brain circuits — societal addiction is engineered, not accidental. —— Hooked: Dr Gabor Maté talks to Dr Brian Pennie on Trauma & Addiction | Full Interview 智能手机被刻意设计成令人上瘾，食品公司雇用神经科学家寻找最能触发成瘾易感脑回路的糖盐脂配比——社会性成瘾是被工程化制造的，并非偶然。

• Narcissism, like every addiction, is an attempt to fill an inner emptiness from the outside; those with narcissistic personality require perpetual external validation because of a profoundly weak sense of self rooted in unmet early developmental needs. —— Gabor Maté: The Psychology Behind Power, Narcissism & Donald Trump 自恋与一切成瘾一样，是试图从外部填补内心空虚的尝试；自恋人格者需要持续的外部认可，是因为根植于早期发展需求未被满足的极度脆弱的自我感。

• Addiction serves the system: the system fosters emotional pain and then sells products to temporarily soothe it — figures who gain media exposure for ideological value rather than scientific validity are themselves agents of a system that profits from unmet needs. —— Ex-Zionist Trauma Expert: The Epstein Files & The Myth of Normal | Dr. Gabor Maté 成瘾服务于制度：制度制造情感痛苦，再销售产品来暂时抚慰它——那些因意识形态价值而非科学有效性获得媒体曝光的人物，本身就是一个从未被满足的需求中获利之制度的代理人。

• Large pharmaceutical corporations marketed OxyContin as less addictive than other opioids despite knowing otherwise, devastating entire communities in Appalachia; they paid roughly $800 in fines while no one went to prison — illustrating how the addiction-tolerant society punishes those who use substances while rewarding corporations that engineer and profit from addiction at scale. —— War On Drugs: Why the Battle Never Ends 大型制药公司明知奥施康定具有高度成瘾性，却将其作为成瘾性较低的替代品加以推广，导致阿巴拉契亚地区整个社区遭受重创；涉事公司仅缴纳约800美元罚款，无一人身陷囹圄——这说明这个容忍成瘾的社会如何惩罚使用物质的个人，同时奖励那些大规模制造并从成瘾中获利的企业。

• Outward success — chasing achievement — never delivers inner peace and can pull a person away from themselves; the goal worth pursuing in life lies elsewhere, which is the personal counterpart to a culture that mistakes acquisition for fulfilment. —— Doctor Gabor Mate: I Regret My Interview With Prince Harry! The Shocking Link Between Kindness & Illness! 外在的成功——追逐成就——永远无法带来内在的平静，反而会把人从自我中拉走；人生中真正值得追寻的目标在别处，这正是一个把占有误认作满足的文化在个人层面的对应面。

• Traumatized, emotionally underdeveloped individuals routinely rise to power; a leader in denial of his own trauma may identify with the powerful and attack the vulnerable, a pattern not unique to any one country. —— Trump, Clinton and Trauma 带着创伤、情感发育不全的人往往登上权力顶峰；一个否认自身创伤的领导者可能认同强者而攻击弱者，且这一模式并非任何单一国家所独有。

• It is characteristic of those in power to condemn the crimes of rival nations and ideologies while being unable to acknowledge the same aggressive impulses they share with those they despise. —— Tories’ Cynical Monument to Victims of Communism 掌权者的典型特征是谴责敌对国家与意识形态的罪行，却无力承认自己与所鄙视者共有的那种侵略冲动。

• People extend empathy selectively to the group they identify with — grieving its suffering while turning a blind eye to its own aggression and sins — which makes officially sanctioned remembrance morally selective and dishonest. —— Tories’ Cynical Monument to Victims of Communism 人们只对自己所认同的群体选择性地施以共情——哀悼它的苦难，却对它自身的侵略与罪过视而不见——这使官方认可的纪念在道德上变得片面而不诚实。

• Oppression raises the question of what makes an oppressor “so ruthlessly blind to its own cruelty” — pointing to a disconnection and numbing within those who hold and exercise power over others. —— Where Olive Trees Weep 压迫引出一个问题：是什么让压迫者「如此无情地对自身的残忍视而不见」——这指向掌握并施加权力者内在的断联与麻木。

• The same acquisitive move is described at the personal scale: grasping outward is self-reinforcing, because each hit trains the brain that worth is externally supplied — so maturity is defined as turning the grasping gaze back toward oneself. —— Maturity Is Turning the Grasping Gaze Back Toward Yourself (MindVC essay on Maté) Where Love Is Absent, Addiction Appears (MindVC essay on Maté) 同一种攫取动作在个人尺度上被描述：向外抓取会自我强化，因为每一次得手都在训练大脑相信”价值由外部供给”——因此成熟被定义为把那道攫取的目光收回给自己。

Tensions & open questions · 张力与未决问题

• Stretching the clinical definition of addiction to cover oil use, consumerism, profit and political power is rhetorically powerful but conceptually broad: by this measure almost any culturally rewarded acquisitive behavior counts as addiction, and the corpus does not mark where the analogy stops being literal. —— The Power of Addiction and The Addiction of Power: Gabor Maté at TEDxRio+20 The Wisdom of Trauma: A Dialogue on the Past that Lives Inside Us把成瘾的临床定义扩展到涵盖石油使用、消费主义、利润与政治权力，在修辞上很有力，但在概念上很宽泛：以此衡量，几乎任何被文化奖励的占有性行为都算成瘾，而本语料并未标明这个类比在哪里不再是字面意义上的成瘾。

Related pages · 相关页面

• The Myth of Normal: A Toxic Culture as the Hidden Cause of Illness