ADD as a disaster enabling process

Risk-enhancing Cognitive Implications of the Basic Mathematical Operations (Part #2)

This mathematical process offers reminders through the following

Acquisition: The form of this ADD process is evident in:

Products: The acquisition of products characteristic of consumerism, and both appreciated and criticized as such. It has been framed by the slogan "shop 'til you drop". The criticism has been framed as anti-consumerism and affluenza. For governments the acquisition of products is notably focused on military equipment.
Wealth: The acquisition of products can be seen as a symptom of, or surrogate for, the acquisition of wealth by which many are driven
Status: Potentially independent from the tangibles represented by products and wealth, is the drive for the acquisition of status -- if only in one's own eyes, then framed as self-esteem. It is otherwise apparent in the many approaches to "ranking", whether financial, educational, or otherwise
Followers: The internet has highlighted the process of acquiring followers through social networking, perhaps labelled as "friends". This extends the tendency to build up a list of contacts or a clientele. This is intimately related to the intense focus on the acquisition of supporters, whether political, religious or otherwise.
Partners: A primary drive in interpersonal relationships is the acquisition of friends ("elective affinities"), especially sexual partners -- exemplified in some cases by the process of "scoring"..
Family: Within a family context, considerable emphasis may be placed on adding to the family through engendering one or more children.

Espcially intriguing is the sense in which assessment of an additive opportunity is marked by a failure to balance the investment and the costs. In this sense there is a notable failure to "ADD up" factors which may indicate that the initiative is not viable. Thus purchases may be made without recognizing the risks of paying off credit. Children may be conceived without previously ADDing up the subsequent costs and the availability of resources. Such considerations would be considered characteristic of prudent family management, management of a farm, or of a small enterprise.

Growth: The acquisition framing overlaps and translates into a variety of preoccupations with growth.

Economic growth: This is the primary preoccupations of most countries and regions, and of many enterprises within them. The preoccupation has been widely criticized (Bob Lloyd, The Growth Delusion, Sustainability, 2009, 1, 3, pp. 516-536)
Status: As with the acquisition of intangibles, the growth in the intangibility of status is subtly related to that of economic growth, typically reinforced by growth in wealth and military power. It is questionably related to increasing the height of skyscrapers ("big is better") -- and its consequent avoidance of consideration other technical possibilities (From Lateral Thinking to Voluminous Thinking: unexplored options for subterranean habitats in dense urban areas, 2007).
Followers: Again following from the acquisition process, growth in numbers of "followers" is a primary preoccupation of political parties and religions.
Family: Value may well be attached to the growth in the size of a family as indicative of wealth and status -- a "small family" being a matter of regret.
Genitalia: Considerable attention is given to the "growth" of the size of a penis or breasts, as a key to sexual attraction and performance -- framed through the slogan "size makes a difference". Ensuring the growth of such organs, and their functionality, has long been a preoccupation of traditional aides and artifices -- notably enhanced by aphrodisiacs (with severe consequences for endangering many species). Responses to possible growth in size are increasingly addressed surgically by penis enlargement and breast enlargement (breast implant and augmentation mammoplasty). .

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD): Previous recognition of attention deficit disorder, and its abbreviation ADD, has now been reframed as the "predominantly inattentive" variant of three subtypes of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Whilst there is extensive commentary on its obvious symptoms, especially in the case of children, there is relatively little concern for its wider implications in psychosocial processes -- most notably the capacity for sustained attention to any challenging strategic issue. As widely noted, any media coverage of events -- especially those with challenging implications for the vulnerability of civilization -- is well-described as being a "nine day wonder". Any communication in that regard is readily forgotten -- meriting analysis in terms of collective memory ( (Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory: a critique of the Club of Rome Report: No Limits to Learning, 1980).

The situation is more obvious in advertising and marketing concerns for ensuring sustained attention to the contents of a message -- before passing to some alternative source of information or infotainment. This is clear in terms of channel surfing (zapping and zipping) to avoid certain message content. As noted by Alvin Toffler (The Third Wave, 1980):

On a personal level, we are all besieged and blitzed by fragments of imagery, contradictory or unrelated, that shake up our old ideas and come shooting at us in the form of broken or disembodied "blips". We live, in fact, in a "blip culture"... Instead of receiving long, related "strings" of ideas, organised or synthesised for us, we are increasingly exposed to short, modular blips of information -- ads, commands, theories, shreds of news, truncated bits and blobs that refuse to fit neatly into our pre-existing mental files. (6, pp. 181-182)

The emerging phenomenon of Twitter raises numerous issues regarding the interplay between the rapid addition of issues and the capacity for sustained discussion of any of them -- under the ever increasing pressure of the frenetic quest for ADDitional input and the potential distraction it offers, usefully understood as mass distraction (Destructive Weapons of Mass Distraction vs Distractive Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2003). It is in the appetite for new information that the mathematical operation of ADD becomes evident as "hyperactive consumption" of new experience. The implications of the online modality for enhancing stupidity have been explored by Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, 2011) and developed by Alex Soojung Kim Pang (Distraction Addiction, Little Brown, 2013).

This merits exploration in terms of a psychosocial need for what might be provocatively framed as minimizing the "time to orgasmic catharsis " in the pursuit of happiness -- understood in terms of humour, interest, astonishment or awe, variously meriting a form of cognitive "ejaculation" (Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? Harmonising the configuration of pattern-breaking interjections and expletives, 2010). Controversially, terrorism itself has been explored in such terms by Mark Jurgensmeyer (Terror in the Mind of God: the global rise of religious violence, 2001). Does tourism merit consideration from this perspective -- as the unconstrained urge to ADD impressions and capture them photographically?