Broadening (and Diluting) the Meaning of Addiction

The other night...I mean LATE night, while I was at work, I tuned in to the Coast-to-Coast AM radio talk show hosted by George Noory.  He had as a guest the famous science fiction writer David Brin.  Brin was in the middle of discussing the nature of addiction, and was about to state what he believed to be America's greatest addiction...but Noory quickly interrupted and shrewdly broke to several advertisements while keeping the listening audience (the ones who were still awake, that is) waiting in anticipation.  When Brin finally got back to the topic, he laid it out bluntly: in his opinion, the greatest addiction in our country is "self-righteous indignation".  While agreeing with Mr. Brin that this is indeed a problem in the United States, I have a couple of beefs about his statement.  For one, self-righteous indignation is something affecting humanity as a whole, not just one particular country or culture.  Also, it is timeless: just look the Bible, which is full of people who get themselves in a self-righteous huff about others (and usually end up rebuked for it).  But beyond the common assertion I hear that Americans are collectively guilty of things about which other people in the world are virtuous, the very appellation of "addiction" that Brin uses is erroneous.  It would be better to term this phenomenon as a "thinking error", "attitude problem", or "character flaw" instead of the emotionally charged word "addiction".  On the other hand, David Brin may just be following a common trend, which involves broadening the meaning of a heretofore precisely defined word to the point that it essentially becomes meaningless.  Hence we get a television series titled My Strange Addiction that groups compulsive behaviors like sleeping with a blow dryer or eating toilet paper, along with eccentric choices like living around a bunch of hairless rats, all under the umbrella designation of "addiction".  But there's more...it's becoming more acceptable to describe any kind of attachment to anything or any activity that one has a special fondness toward as an addiction.  What ever became of the narrower concept of addiction as being deeply dependent on an ingested chemical substance like nicotine, alcohol, heroin, and the like?

That having been said, I appreciate David Brin for at least bringing up self-righteous indignation as a societal problem.  I think too many folks resort to it too quickly when dealing with opinions or behavior that they see in others and with which they differ instead of trying to put themselves in the other person's position.  And why not? Look at the professionals in the opinion media and how they go about with their pious posturing, regardless of their positions on the issues, conservative or liberal.  And don't get me started with Nancy Grace.  You know, those people make me so-o-o self-righteously indignant!