The Past and Future of Addiction
위험사회에서 중독사회로 — 인지혁명부터 AGI까지, 문명사로 읽는 중독. (AI로 정리·검토한 자료)
Introduction — Where We Stand Today
Addiction is not an individual moral failing but a structural risk signal of society as a whole. What risks a society faces is revealed by what its people become addicted to. Today is an age of polycrisis. Demographic change and urbanization, technological transition, economic inequality, the climate crisis, a new cold war and multipolarity — these crises occur not separately but simultaneously and intertwined. Thus resilience, the capacity to withstand and recover from crisis, has become the watchword of the age. Yet when systems reach their limits and individuals must bear the burden alone, societies tilt toward addiction. This essay follows the history of civilization through which humanity has evolved by responding to risk — the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Information and Knowledge revolutions, and the age of AGI — reading each era in three layers: what its core 'change' was, what new 'risk' that change produced, and what 'addiction' looked like within that risk. Each time the character of risk has shifted, the face of addiction has shifted with it.
1. The Cognitive Revolution
■ Change — Roughly 70,000 years ago, the most important turning point in human history occurred. With the emergence of complex, flexible language, humans could speak of what they had not seen, what did not exist, and abstract concepts. More decisive was the capacity to create 'imagined orders': myth, religion, nation, law, and money do not exist physically, yet become powerful social forces when a group believes in them together. Thus thousands and tens of thousands of unrelated people could cooperate on a large scale by believing a shared story, and culture, art, religion, and trade developed explosively. Through a cultural and cognitive revolution rather than a biological one, humans became 'creators of culture.' ■ Risk — The Cognitive Revolution fundamentally changed how humanity perceives and responds to risk. Earlier risks were immediate and physical — predators, hunger, and natural disasters threatened life 'here and now,' clear because they could be seen, heard, and touched. After the Cognitive Revolution, humans came to imagine 'unseen risks' and 'risks that have not yet occurred.' 'Food will run short when winter comes,' 'that tribe may attack,' 'disaster will come if the gods are angered' — all products of imagination. Humans began to prepare on the basis of hypothetical scenarios beyond the limits of time and space, and imagination became central to survival strategy. Yet the same capacity exacted a price. Humans became the first beings to feel anxiety by worrying about 'what has not yet happened'; abstract risk made planning and prevention possible while also producing chronic anxiety. Risk began to move from external events to inner psychological states, and exclusion from the community — tantamount to death — established itself as a social risk. ■ Addiction — Within humanity's attempt to manage imagination and anxiety, atop a brain that seeks reward and avoids pain, change, risk, and addiction set out together. The deepest root of addiction lies here, in the moment humans began to imagine the future while carrying anxiety.
2. The Agricultural Revolution
■ Change — About 10,000 years ago, humanity began farming and settling. As surplus production became possible, populations grew and power arose to control and distribute that surplus. The egalitarian small-group society of 30–50 people gave way to stratified agrarian states, and structures of ruler and ruled took hold. States and armies emerged, monopolizing violence and institutionalizing taxation. The economy became land-centered, and classes differentiated. ■ Risk — The character of risk changed fundamentally. If the risk of the cognitive era was 'diverse but avoidable natural risk,' the risk of the agricultural era became 'structural and unavoidable social risk.' Settlement and animal husbandry created ecologies of epidemic disease. A life bound to the land bred famine, inequality, and overwork, and conflict over surplus institutionalized war. Under the promise that 'working harder will make things better,' people were bound to longer labor and to the insecurity of debt and status. Risk was no longer something an individual could avoid but something determined by the social structure one belonged to. Time became a scarce resource to be controlled and managed. ■ Addiction — An obsession with possession and accumulation, endless comparison, and chronic stress became embedded in the structure of society. The desire to have more and the anxiety of losing it — within this new landscape of the mind created by the Agricultural Revolution, the social soil of dependency and addiction was prepared.
3. The First Industrial Revolution
■ Change — In the 18th–19th centuries, the combination of the steam engine, cotton textiles, and iron launched mechanical power and mass production. People left the land and crowded into cities, and factory labor and an urban working class formed. At first, the trial and error of practical inventors led industry. The economy became a capital- and labor-centered factory economy, and nation-states formed. ■ Risk — Risk took on a 'systemic and diffuse' character — industrial accidents, urban poverty, environmental pollution. Labor became subordinate to the rhythm of the machine, and humans were alienated from what they made, from the labor process, and from one another. In the anonymity of the city, the safety net of traditional community was severed. The state's monopoly on violence was globalized into imperialism and colonial violence. Risk was no longer the problem of a single village but something vast, produced by the structures of industry and state. ■ Addiction — Industrial society created a new dependence on labor and material goods. Amid grueling work, severed relationships, and urban loneliness, addiction as an escape — such as alcohol — became widespread among the working class. Addiction was now not an individual deviation but a shadow that industrial society produced structurally.
4. The Second Industrial Revolution
■ Change — From the late 19th to the early 20th century, an age opened in which science led technology. Atop accumulated electromagnetism, thermodynamics, and chemistry, electricity, chemicals, the internal combustion engine, steel, and communications leaped forward. Electricity reconfigured the production, transmission, and control of power, and a society of mass production and mass consumption formed. The center of the world economy shifted from a single British pole to multipolar competition among Britain, Germany, the US, and Japan. ■ Risk — As the scale of production and consumption grew, so did the scale of risk. The infrastructure of total war — mobilizing all of science, technology, and organization — was laid, and its outcome was horrific. High-speed machine guns, long-range artillery, tanks, submarines, and aircraft turned the battlefield into a mechanized killing system, and chemical warfare revealed a new hell made by science and technology. The First World War escalated into a total war mobilizing 'all citizens and all industry,' producing immense loss of life and the collapse of empires. Under new imperialism, colonial violence was also maximized. Humanity witnessed for the first time that the union of science and industry could become the basis of mass slaughter. ■ Addiction — With the expansion of a mass-consumption society, addiction to consumption and material goods seeped into everyday life. In a society where producing and consuming more became a virtue, an unfillable craving for consumption took hold as a new form of dependency.
5. From the Information Revolution to the Knowledge Revolution
■ Change — Since the 1980s, as semiconductors, networks, and software became the general-purpose technology underpinning everything, production, finance, consumption, and politics became subordinate to real-time data. It is a transition in which knowledge and data become the center of value. But the heart of this transition lies elsewhere: risk that states and corporations once absorbed collectively now flowed down to the individual. ■ Risk — Risk became 'individualized.' Floating exchange rates, trade openness, automation, and offshoring weakened long-term employment and the link between wages and productivity; information technology raised the high-skill premium while displacing low-skill work, spreading skill polarization and nonstandard employment. Financial deregulation widened access to consumer, student, mortgage, and credit borrowing, and shifts in interest rates and asset prices strike the individual's balance sheet directly. In downturns, debt deflation recurs as a 'micro-panic' at the individual level. The data ecosystem (platforms, telecoms, finance, the state) tracks location, consumption, relationships, and opinions, and privacy, surveillance, and identity become new risks. Risk is now a complex, hyper-connected risk that propagates instantly along interconnected finance and supply chains. ■ Addiction — As norms of achievement and self-responsibility intensify and precarious labor raises stress and depression, information platforms optimize the 'attention economy' and amplify behavioral addictions such as gambling, gaming, and social media. Likes, notifications, infinite scrolling, and hyper-personalized recommendation are not accidents but externalities engineered by algorithms. An age in which addiction is engineered by design — this is the new face of addiction created by the Information and Knowledge revolutions.
6. Where We Are Heading — The Age of AGI
■ Change — Humanity is moving from the conquest of nature to the 'conquest of humanity itself.' As artificial general intelligence (AGI) transforms society, the very ecology of addiction is reconfigured. ■ Risk — The most fundamental risks emerge. (1) The paradox of control: the possibility that AI reaches or surpasses human-level intelligence means not merely a powerful tool but the appearance of 'a being smarter than humans.' The 'alignment problem' (matching AI goals to human values) is extremely hard, and if a self-improving AGI triggers an 'intelligence explosion,' it could become something humans can neither understand nor control. (2) An AI arms race: the contest for supremacy prioritizes speed over safety, autonomous weapons can decide to kill without human judgment, and easily proliferated AI is accessible even to non-state actors, while international regulation cannot keep pace. (3) Mass unemployment and a crisis of meaning: as even knowledge work is displaced, the fear of 'uselessness' spreads in a society where work is identity. (4) Knowledge inequality: the risk that the capacity to use AI divides — and is inherited as — a new class. (5) Biotechnology and genetic inequality: the risk that technology to 'design' humans entrenches biological inequality. ■ Addiction — The addiction of this age is 'the comfort offered by AI': a virtual friend who fits you perfectly, endlessly optimized tailored pleasure, and a seamless escape from painful reality. When virtual reality and AI companions replace real relationships, addiction approaches with a face that soothes loneliness. The most dangerous addiction will look the most tender.
Conclusion — Is a Society Without Addiction Possible?
Following the history of civilization, one thing becomes clear: addiction has grown alongside each society's risk in every age, changing its face each time the character of risk changed. So is a society without addiction possible? Addiction is a disease, but recovery can be chosen. The key is not individual willpower but the design of society. First, a society that fosters connection — if loneliness and disconnection are the soil of addiction, restoring relationship and community is the fundamental prescription. Second, mechanisms that absorb individual risk socially — if the Information and Knowledge revolutions pushed risk onto the individual, society must again share that risk through income insurance, transition education, debt adjustment, and access to addiction treatment. Third, the alternative of healing communities — places to learn and grow together and to reconnect what has been severed. When, in the age of AGI, the most dangerous addiction approaches with the most tender face, what we need is not more sophisticated control but deeper connection. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety but connection. A life that chooses connection rather than addiction — that is the final question, and answer, this long history of civilization offers us.
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