Is There Such Thing As Societal Addiction?

Interesting question that was raised in my mind by this article: Terrorism Addict by Shmuel Neumann, Ph.D. in Arutz Sheva today.

As I first started to read the column, my initial impression was that it was from a far right wing Israeli and that it struck me as a bit, extreme. But I vowed to keep an open mind as I read through the article and tried very hard not to be too judgmental before finishing.

And as I was reading it, I mentally wandered back to my brokerage days and remember one of our key mantras on volatile days: the market has a personality all of it's own. It is consists of so many people acting in theoretically rational ways that it becomes irrational and unpredictable in its predictable rationality. In other words, the market has a mind of its own.

And the stock market is, in essence, a society. It functions just like a society. It has rules and laws, like a society. And its mores are a reflection of the millions of individual ethical codes that function within that society. The only real difference between the stock market and what we normally consider a society is the lack of a central leader. To help make the analogy, the stock market lacks a Yassar Arafat or Abu Mazen. But that is the only real, functional difference.

And the stock market does go through periods of addiction. For a while we had the day trading addiction with people making hundreds of trades per day. We had an addiction to tech stocks. We still have an addiction to airline stocks (the most irrational market addiction I've ever seen - and for a while, I was part of it). We've been addicted to the bull and now we're addicted to the bear. Options, bonds, futures: the list goes on and on and on. The society of the stock market lurches from addiction to addiction with no rhyme or reason other than "it's the hot thing." Do you know how many people lost fortunes because they had to have Enron or MCI when they were "the hot thing" and then they couldn't give them up - even when they were trading for literally 1% of the purchase price? One of the hallmarks of addiction is an irrational need to do something or to have something, even when you know that doing so can destroy your life.

So if the market is an addict lurching from one high to another, can the Palestinian society be an addicted society? Sure.

I think that they're addicted to the idea that they might actually be able to drive Israel to the sea. I think that that is their addiction. If that idea is their cocaine, then suicide bombing is their crack and the other anti-Semitic violence is their powder. They satisfy their need either way, but each hit is a little less satisfying. Each hit requires a little bigger dose to get them quite as high. And they never, ever get any closer to having a functional life until they give it up completely.

I still think that the column is extreme. But I really can't disagree too terribly much with its conclusions. There is a societal addiction in the territories and until it is overcome, peace will continue to be just out of reach.