People can build a tolerance for drugs, punishment and reward

Lies about parenting

About 2 years ago, I came across a website called Lies About Parenting. Therein, I happened by chance to learn very practical advice for parents. How to talk with your kids about anything, discipline, education, politics, etc. As a parent in training, I was looking for solutions that I could use to be be the best father I could be.

In my search for parent training materials, I also learned about work by Dr. Ross W. Greene on his website, Lives In The Balance. There, I learned a very simple concept: kids would do better, if they could. That is to say, if they had the skills to behave better, they would. Punishment and reward doesn't work because no matter what the reward or the punishment, if the kids don't have the skills to meet your requirements, they're never going to get the reward until they acquire the skills. Motivation is not the issue, it's the skills.

I watched his videos, I found his books and read them, and I began to change the way I think about my kids and people in general. I began to see people with compassion that I did not have before. I came to realize that everyone is doing the best they can with the skills they have.

When someone seeks to offend me, I see it as a lack of capacity to treat me with respect. So I don't take it personally. I consider the source. I take the high road by not returning the favor, by not escalating into full scale conflict. I seek to take the wind out of the sails of the aggressor with neutral language, tone and body language, if we're in the same room. I de-escalate. De-escalation is a skill.

People would do better if they had the skills to do better

I say all of this because I believe that background is necessary to understand the point of this article: when people lack the skills to make their lives better, they tend to rely upon something outside of themselves to relieve their pain. In other words, a person seems to have two choices in life: they can make up their minds to be satisfied with the way things are now, or they can choose to change their lives by changing the people and things in their lives. The problems come when one begins to realize that he has little to zero control over everything out there.

Submerged in a culture that heaps praise upon accomplishment, wealth and success, we grow up believing that we need to chase that reward to be happy. That we need to avoid that punishment to be happy. But somewhere, between punishment and reward (or maybe somewhere else), there is peace that we never find because we don't see it until long after we're exhausted from the tag team of punishment and reward.

The game of tolerance to reward and punishment

I remember going to class in high school and watching the anti-drug movies. They'd teach us about alcohol, heroin, cocaine and pot and tell us how bad they are.

What was interesting about pot to me was they always made a point of talking about how people can develop a tolerance for pot, and that tolerance made it a "gateway" drug for other, harder substances. Drugs, in this context, provide the reward, the high, the escape. We were told to avoid the drugs because they were bad, that they would lead to a life of punishment, probation and detention. There was no mention about the natural consequences of using drugs. Drugs were just forbidden.

As a middle aged adult, I've learned that people can develop a tolerance to punishment and reward. On the reward side, there's Tiger Woods. Now there's a man who was swimming in rewards. I can recall how at one time, he was estimated to be worth a at least $1 billion. Golf winnings were a small part of his fortune in comparison to his endorsements, appearance fees, and products with his name on them.

He had everything a golfer could ever want. Respect on the green, an enviable record, and a huge fan base. He could buy anything he could ever want and still there would be plenty of money left.

But that was not enough. Somehow, despite being married to a beautiful wife with kids, living in the neighborhood of his choice, he still found a need for other women. More than 100 other women. Yes, he was addicted, and yes he had some serious character flaws, but this article isn't about his character. That's already been done.

What I see here is that despite having all the trappings of success, Tiger Woods, like many before him and after him, developed a tolerance for success. Why else would he want more? When does he know he's had enough? Well, if you've ever developed a tolerance to pain, or pain relievers, you know what I'm talking about. If you've ever seen an alcoholic who can drink nearly everyone else under the table, that's tolerance. That tolerance requires a lot more booze to get that high. There isn't enough money in the world overcome tolerance to the high of acquiring immense wealth.

Going in the other direction, towards despair, depression and destitution, people can develop a tolerance to that, too. That level of pain is so high that with enough determination, one begins to find a way to just internalize all of the pain and misfortune as the normal way of life. We develop a tolerance for adversity.

In the wake of the Great Recession, we saw that tolerance emerge for millions who lost their homes, their retirement, their savings. They moved back with their parents. They gave up looking for work. They found solace in their TV or in suffering.

Some turned to violence and went to prison. Some turned to the street and became long term homeless. Some even picked up some work in retail at places like Walmart and K-mart. Gone were the salad days, in was the determination that suffering and long term poverty as the new normal.

For good behavior, just sprinkle pain and reward, liberally

Remember Hitler? As a boy he was beaten by his father on a daily basis. As he grew older, he developed a tolerance for the beatings by his father. He even confided to his sister that he could just count the whacks he got from his father without crying. All of this is well documented in the book, For Your Own Good, by Alice Miller (free pdf).

So when I see billionaire hedge fund managers seeking ways to manipulate the markets through insider trading for yet more profit, I see someone who has developed a tolerance for money. When I see someone accepting a bribe for a political favor, I see someone who has developed a tolerance for the pain of selling his dignity for money.

I see the same thing on the other end of the spectrum. From the panhandler to the unemployment line, I see the same self-perpetuating them of punishment and reward.

Even in popular culture I see it. Every movie, every book, every news story perpetuates the myth that if we just dangle enough reward, or apply enough punishment, we will get the desired behavior. But none of that matters unless we teach the skills people need to get along. And if we never teach the skills, then we must develop a tolerance to the stimulus, regardless of whether it is positive or negative stimulus.

Until we recognize that people develop a tolerance, a sort of thick skin for punishment, or become jaded to ever increasing rewards, we will never have enough of whatever it is we think we want. True happiness comes from learning and applying repeatable, durable solutions to the problems that we encounter in life, and sharing them with other people. In that respect, I think it's fortunate that people do not build a tolerance for joy.