What is addictive behaviour? According to bio-psychosocial therapy (see passage below) it's the hijacking of our natural reward mechanisms that the human brain uses to motivate itself to act and learn:

The excitement we get when we are keen to do something is produced by dopamine, a natural brain chemical, very like cocaine in its effect, that raises our emotional level so we want to take action.

And the warm feelings of satisfaction we get after doing something — eating, laughing, having sex, or achieving some new understanding or skill — are produced by endorphin, another natural substance (which is similar to heroin). Working together, these chemicals keep us interested in doing the biological functions that preserve the species and stretch each one of us to learn and achieve.

In a well-balanced life, a reasonable amount of natural reward is felt by the human every day. But in a life where essential emotional needs are not met and abilities are not stretched, the rewards do not come, and life feels flat and meaningless.

This kind of life is rich territory for addictions to target, as every addictive substance or behaviour either stimulates a reward mechanism or provides a chemical reward directly.

Dangerous activities stimulate production of dopamine, generating a feeling of exhilaration; injecting heroin gives a warm, cosy feeling like the natural feelings of satisfaction you might get after fulfilling any biologically necessary function.

While most of us will be familiar with recognised addictions - smoking, drinking, drugs etc - less will consider the role of addiction in keeping our society unable to take new actions in the face of multiple crises. While most of the solutions to climate catastrophe, social injustice and loss of well-being - in even the most privileged societies - are already available to us, our capacity for shifting from destructive actions and outcomes to a better way of life is small.

At one level, the logic for making simple shifts is missing. As described by Anthea Lawson's Entangled Activist, it's almost impossible to condemn the system we are actually dependent upon. We can't make a protest without using 'the master's tools' - the fuel, the transport, the media, the governance structures – in order to be heard.

At another, deeper level, our minds are constantly distracted by opportunities to satisfy our immediate needs, in ways that sabotage our greater cause. We literally do not make time in our diaries for the tasks of saving the human species. Some of this is obvious - and much discussed - such as hours spent being passively entertained. Or drawn into shopping sites that promise us an elevated status through the purchase of an item we don't need. As Tim Jackson said “People are persuaded to spend money we don't have, on things we don't need, to create impressions that won't last, on people we don't care about.”

But there are also more subtle seductions, tickling our hope for agency in a troubled world. For example, our need for connection - one of the Human Givens school’s nine essential emotional needs - might lead us to spend hours chasing up social media leads that cannot be harvested in any useful way. Our need for belonging can lead to days and weeks of time taking part in movements we only partially resonate with. Our need for attention can invite us into debates we want to win—but these give us no further purchase on our goals.

In each of those cases above, it is the initial promise of value that creates the dopamine rush: we sense a reward on offer. However, even when that reward does not materialise, we keep going back for more, hoping to repeat that initial attraction and believing at some point it will add up to something bigger than the momentary endorphins - the feel good of having followed the call.

Years can go by before we wake up to our transfixion by repetitive actions that offered no real progress. Even then, the difficulty of extracting ourselves from the comfort zone we created can feel insurmountable.

It's counter-intuitive to break habits that also saved us from the hard work of independent thinking. We are designed to become social for our survival. Yet there is very little infrastructure that might allow our social spaces to become much more than simple relief from the working week. We gather, we enjoy, we disperse.

While it’s tempting to just blame this pattern on our own intrinsic weakness, and imagine that self-discipline will be the answer, we should consider how our society has been shaped by the socio-economic-political dependency on growth. A healthy economy relies on our unthinking behaviour: our willingness to accept consumerism - of goods but also on-line experiences - as quick responses to needs.

How often has the need for achievement been satisfied by winning at gaming? How often has the need for attention been met by the ability to post a quick comment on WhatsApp or in Discord? Even our need for privacy has been co-opted by meditation apps or personal health trackers (which help you control your own programme while selling your data to the pharma and medical industries).

All the while, we are feeding the same power elites - technological, business, governmental - with our addictions to their products in a growth economy. Their continued investment in our addictions keeps us all unable to move towards a healthier future: the more we take part, the greater the market justifies itself as wanted and needed. It's not easy to either recognise how these addictions arise, nor how they take hold of our lives.

When we read about personalities going to rehab or having to re-start their lives after losing control of their spending, we feel lucky to have escaped their fate. Yet even a mildly consumerist life is hooked into the same cycle of dopamine and endorphins. Day in day out, this fuels a material throughput – in other words, a river of stuff and waste - that unintentionally colludes with the rapid demise of our planet. In some ways, if you hit a wall with your wrong relationship to their environment, you have a chance to reckon with yourself. Rehabilitation teaches self-awareness and develops the internal capacity for self-direction that's hard to find on our own.

This may seem like a random connection – but stay with it. In the many tributes to Tina Turner who died this week aged 83, it was surprising how many different lives she touched - from rock stars to Royalty. She engaged hundreds of millions not just with her music, but also with her story of surviving an abusive relationship with her partner and mentor, Ike Turner. Coming from a broken home and family, she began her music career deeply dependent on the man (himself a victim of childhood abuse) who not only shaped her voice and her performance, but also her personal identity: he changed her stage name from Anna to Tina without even asking her.

Ike set the terms on everything, including her relationships to her children and the other members of the band. He asserted and maintained his authority through repeated and often random acts of violence. Even yet, like so many in abusive relationships, she was able to continue performing at a high level. It's likely that she developed an internal rationale - a survival personality - that allowed her to keep believing in the success she was part of and the man who orchestrated it.

In the numerous documentaries and films made of her life, she described her long-term struggle to escape. Tina found it hard to see herself outside of the world she was entangled in. Even when she tried to escape from his increasingly dangerous behaviour, she couldn't find the physical or mental strength to succeed.

Tina Turner credits her Buddhist practice with her transformation

In her various memoirs, she tells of a very clear moment when she realised for the first time that life could be different, that she could be someone else in the world. The revelation came in the form of a spiritual awakening when a friend introduced her to Nichiren Buddhism - a Japanese tradition based on chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo - that relocated her source of strength inside herself.

Through chanting and studying, she gradually recovered herself as the driver of her own life: the source of relationships with those around her, as well as the planet.

Breaking up with her 'controller', she then broke her own mould, morphing from being an R&B performer on the “chitlin” circuit to an all-out rock star, opening for the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, then graduating to filling her own stadiums with her hi-energy, belting vocals as she strutted the stage. At the same time, she became known throughout the business for paying attention to every member of the crew, knowing their names and needs and generating an ethos of kindness on tour.

Tina Turner’s story is not one of surrender to a higher wisdom, or acceptance of what life had dealt her, but of the discovery of what she describes as her “life force”. Less the capacity for directing the crowds; more the practice of transforming herself and - through her relationships with others - her conditions. Less strategy for change, more revelation through being. In her last book, Happiness Becomes You written during the pandemic in her early 80s, Tina describes it as the 'human revolution' at the heart of a global revolution slowly unfolding across the planet. Relating her struggles directly to her flourishing, she offers her practice as a principle of resilience and regeneration.

Why are we giving Tina Turner so much space this week in the editorial? Partly to remind ourselves of the interdependence of human and environmental regeneration - we can't expect one to lead the other in any disconnected way. But also, we want to stress the importance of waking up to the abusive, extractive relationships we might be part of. Both in obvious, but also in subtle ways. Tina's journey was one of deliberate reclaiming of the self and establishing a new way to be in connection to the world around her.

In many ways, this thinking is core to the call for a parallel polis: a way for humans to step away - consciously - from the current culture of extraction and collusion. To re-establish themselves within a wider commitment to regenerative community. To have the opportunity to reclaim the self within a more autonomous shared vision. To commit to the human revolution as we experiment with new economies and technologies that might help us face - and transform - the future.

Tina strutted her stuff with what she had. So can we.

Alternative Editorial: Our Human Revolution