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No. A local maximum is a peak. You seem to be arguing that people on Ozempic are stuck in a state that is better than the alternative (obesity), but not the absolute best possible state (some imagined ideal of pure willpower). If we're torturing a metaphor, that's a local minimum of negative outcomes. But why let basic logic or the meaning of words get in the way of your grand philosophical pronouncements?
And? Darwin died 140 years ago, but we don't treat his theories as gospel just because he's dead. Age doesn't make an argument correct, and name-dropping French philosophers doesn't make your position any less incoherent.
Ah, an appeal to an obscure academic to justify your terror of the modern world. I don't need to have read him to recognize the staggering hypocrisy of your position. You lament the "complex drug" that relies on global supply chains while typing your screed on a device whose complexity makes a vial of semaglutide look like a sharpened stick. This isn't a coherent critique of "technique"; it's just selective, convenient moralizing.
What would be reasonable is to apply your critique consistently, instead of drawing an arbitrary line at a medication that saves people from suffering. You enjoy the fruits of modernity that allow for your comfort and your intellectual hobbies, but you condemn the fruits that rescue others from a life of pain and metabolic disease. It's the pinnacle of entitled, ivory-tower thinking.
Spare me. I didn't cite the DSM-V; I cited the common, modern, functional understanding of a word as it is used by virtually everyone who isn't deliberately trying to be obtuse. You're clinging to an archaic definition from a historical dictionary as if it's a sacred text, precisely because it allows you to dilute the word "addiction" into meaninglessness. By your logic, a marathon runner is "addicted" to running and I am "addicted" to washing my hands between patients. It's a semantic game to avoid confronting the vacuity of your argument. Context matters. If we're talking about cars, I don't define "transmission" as "the act of sending a message" just because that's what it meant in 1400.
This isn't about Oxford vs. Wikipedia. This is about clarity vs. deliberate obfuscation. You are using language as a weapon to feel intellectually superior, not as a tool to understand the world.
And let's be clear about what you're really arguing for when you strip away the philosophical fluff. You say weaning off the drug should be the goal to avoid "slavery." For many, the alternative isn't freedom; it's a return to the biological slavery of a body screaming for food, a slavery that leads to diabetes, liver failure, and an early grave.
You can sit there and pontificate about "novel addictions" and the failings of modernity. I have to look my mother in the eye. I've seen the "natural" state you seem to prefer, and it's ugly and it's brutal. So frankly, you can keep your dusty dictionary and your non-sequitur arguments. They are useless. The pill works.
I think it's interesting that you think negative outcomes is the natural function to look at. I'd be willing to bet you have some attachment to "harm reduction" as a concept.
But isn't it more natural to view the opposite or some sense of self actualization as a more natural metric of well, health?
Sure, but it makes it mighty tricky for it to be "novel".
Ellul is one of the most influential philosophers of the 90s, I'm not sure what you're on about.
Is this really your argument? That technology is immune to criticism so long as its critics use any of it?
I give you my blessing to assume that I'm not just a computer user but also a semaglutide user and even the most egregious of hypocrites if that makes you happy.
Now can we actually talk about implications of altering one's senses on willpower and liberty or was semantics and grandstanding the whole of what you had to say?
The caveat seems to agree with my contention insofar as for the few, it is strictly better to be freed both from natural cravings and from taking a drug their whole lives.
Now of course the real question is which is best if you absolutely have to choose between battling your urges constantly or being addicted, sorry, tied, to a drug forever.
Your contention appears to be that that this is a straightforward choice and that reflection on this matter is the domain of ivory tower intellectuals.
I disagree. I believe that these two situations offer tradeoffs that will appeal differently to the individual and that different lifestyles or ethics will demand different choices on this matter.
For instance, I have a relative whose nationality and living arrangements make it tricky for her to obtain medical treatments regularly, and that has influenced her choices on such matters. Assuming supply chains and the money to buy drugs will be there for all you need for the rest of your life may be reasonable to assume for many, but not for everyone.
Moreover, and in line again with historical criticism of modernity, I am weary of how the availability of yet another therapeutic will affect the selection pressures of humanity in a way that may be pathological or detrimental to the freedom of the individual in the long term.
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