Damien Thompson’s ‘The Fix’ is an outstanding, and if he’ll excuse the pun, addictive account of how our everyday human preoccupations and obsessions are rapidly turning into destructive addictions, made all the more potent by the speed and availability afforded by the internet. When I first learned that Thompson worked for the Telegraph warning bells started to ring. I anticipated some dire reactionary diatribe against modernity and change. My fears proved totally unfounded. Thompson has produced a highly intelligent and thoughtful discussion that is anything but conservative.

In fact, I would suggest he is at the cutting of his field. But this is not some dry academic paper, on the contrary. Thompson’s journalistic skills make for a compelling read with great personal anecdotes mixed with the latest scientific research. I turned each page in morbid fascination at how our heightened addictions are not only threatening to destroy our ability to socialise but how they might also be actually rewiring our brains.

Thompson deals with all the usual suspects; drugs, both illegal and legal, alcohol, junk food, and the rapidly expanding world of on-line gambling, gaming and pornography. He also touches on addictive consumerism which is also increasingly done on line. He might also have mentioned the addictive nature of globalised sport, of 24 hour news, and of some religions, all of which can be equally debilitating in their own way. We are all becoming junkies it seems, though some addictions are clearly more harmful than others. The big disappointment for me was the concluding chapter which I imagined was going to offer some radical perspectives of where all this addiction might lead. Sadly it petered out rather tamely. Also missing in the conclusion was a deeper discussion of just why we humans are so prone to obsessive and addictive behaviour. If Thompson’s book is a little lightweight in the concluding remarks he should at least be congratulated for stimulating his readers into drawing their own conclusions, which is precisely what I have been doing for the past few days.

It could be argued that there are roughly two views of the universe two diametrically opposed camps. Camp one insists that there is some sort of Supreme Being, an omniscient god that plans everything, sees everything and generally orders everything. A child gets brutally raped and murdered it’s all part of god’s plan. Ten million children starve to death each year and once again we put it down to god’s master plan’. God moves in mysterious ways. Six million people get rounded up and fried in Nazi industrial scale ovens. Oh well, god must know what he’s doing. And so it goes.

Camp two rejects all this god stuff and instead reconciles itself to the understanding that we live in a meaningless, purposeless universe. A meteorite could smash into our planet tomorrow wiping all life out in an instance. 3.5 billion years of evolution destroyed in one random happening. Tough! No meaning, no greater purpose other than to survive. Any meaning that there is, is what we imagine for ourselves. We imagine that humans should progress ‘forward’ but we can’t really explain what forward means and just why we humans should have the right to move forward anyway. Our dreams of utopia are really just schemes that we imagine will give us, as individuals, the best chance of survival. Cooperation seems a better bet than endless ruthless competition. But even on that we might be mistaken.

Two diametrically opposed existential views each, in their own way, as preposterous as the other. Me, I firmly fall into the second camp and dedicate my rambling blog to the furtherance of a supposedly rational and harmonious world free of god’s and superstitions. But I am equally aware that a world without gods is a tricky place to be. It’s very easy for us second campers to fall into a bleak existential void, a dark, dark place where there are no sign posts and no reassuring company. A world without meaning, without purpose. Little wonder then that we humans from camp two and a good number from camp one, fall prey to one addictive behaviour or another. The soothing benefits are usually rather short term and an ever stronger hit is required just to get the same feel good factor. Pretty soon things start to go into reverse and a downward spiral begins. Thompson fell into that downward spiral so when he writes he writes with real passion, real knowledge. He has been there.

So what is to be done? Fill our world with silly superstitions and fanciful gods or risk a life of emptiness, bland consumerism and anti-social addiction? I dare to suggest to myself that there is a third camp, or at least a sub-set of camp two. I am referring more to a Richard Dawkins type view of the world, one where we have an on-going appreciation for the wonders of the universe and our place in it. Not a universe created by a god-sent miracle but a miraculous place nevertheless. A place to find joy in. A place that is infinite but knowable. A place where, free from scarcity, we can each aspire to both know the world and to celebrate it. A world where each of us could aspire to stand on the shoulders of Marx and Darwin, Einstein and Mozart. And this would not be the end of the story but rather the beginning. Destructive addictions would, like the other irrationalities of war and greed and poverty, fade into human pre-history. Just to imagine such a world is enough to get the dopamine flowing in overdrive.

Damian Thompson does not allow himself to have these dreams, at least not in print. But when you think rationally about it, only by a qualitative leap in consciousness, only by adopting a definitively coherent, humanist ideology, can we hope to outwit those that would addict us to this or that commodity, which after all is the very reason heart of capitalism’s endless pursuit of profit. Thompson repeated asserts, correctly in my view, that at the centre of our addictions is the tendency to replace people with things. Though Thompson may not like to admit it, this is precisely the essence of Marx’s humanist philosophy, in which he argues that culture will inevitably reflect the dominant economic mode of production.

Little wonder that if capitalism’s core purpose is to produce commodities for profit, we ourselves should find ourselves little more than commodities caught in capitalism’s giant wheel. Our modern day addictions are not accidental. They are carefully manufactured to turn each of us into conduits for private profit so that in the end we become ourselves little more than commodities. Our addictions are simply a reflection of the dominant mode of production. In fact, addictions are merely the concrete manifestation of our alienated selves; alienated from our work, alienated from each other and ultimately alienated from ourselves.

To conclude, let us quote our author:

‘It only takes a visit to a major retail centre to realise that brands and businesses are learning more and more about our addictive vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. And can we really blame them? It’s called making a profit.’ P98

Ah yes, spoken like a true Telegraph journalist. It’s not so much a case of blaming capitalism, it is what it is. No, the trick is to imagine a world beyond capitalism, one where production is for need rather than profit. And having imagined it, the next obvious step is to demand it. And once started, the whole process can be quite addictive.