One definition of addiction is repetition of a behaviour despite adverse consequences. Twitter users will know all about it, especially those on the end of abusive or illegal threats. All communication systems are, of course, liable to such misuse, but presumably technology will fix this problem. Meanwhile, Epictetus (AD 35–135), a freed slave, would advise the abused to (wo)man up.
Aristotle defined a decision as ‘a deliberate desire to do something within the agent’s immediate range of alternatives’. Building on this definition, Epictetus argues that our range of alternatives is restricted to our rational faculty, what goes on in our heads: ‘our opinions, impulses, desires, aversions’ and the actions that result from them. These, and only these, are ‘up to us’. Epictetus makes Zeus put it like this: ‘If you will take care of this faculty and consider it your only possession, you will never be hindered, never meet with impediments.’
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