Seems like the first step should be understanding that you CAN have control over it, even if you don't currently; and that you have the agency and strength to do that without appeal to some higher power.
The admitting you have no control sounds fatalistic to me and robs you of agency/responsibility. Then you're reliant on some externality or higher power instead of finding it within yourself.
Even those who go for the higher power are ultimately doing it themselves, they've just kidded themselves something else is involved, and if that helps you find that you can have some control over it, then great, I guess?
With how my brain works, I find it insulting to be told to pray the weakness away figure of speech..
That all being said, our brains, as wonderfully capable and complex as they are, are also pretty stupid and simple in other ways. Willpower and inner strength are a trained skills and mental states combined with chemical states. If the goal is to free yourself from addiction, the means of getting there don't really matter as long as they work and don't cause direct harm to yourself or others. The placebo effect is real, so if one gets strength from believing that there's a "god" or "higher power" giving them a high 5 and believes in them, then go for it. Whether I believe thats a delusion or not is much less important than the person breaking their addiction. Its a whole other fight of its own. I do think there should be as much available support for people that isn't based on feeding you religion if thats not your thing, regardless of the fact that one can attend AA+12step and not be religious and get value out of it too.
I feel like having faith in a higher power is almost like a part of your brain never grew up, in the sense that you're allowing yourself to believe in magic, like a kid. When you were a kid, that made you excited, dreamy, which puts you in a certain state. If you believe and that allows you to put yourself in a mental state where you think the end result will work out positively, whether thats because you felt empowered, you found strength to persevere, or whether you think god's got his quantum digits up your ** and is going to partially puppet you, thus relieving you of some of the pressure, strain, and allows you to get to the same end point, then good for you...
If this was a discussion about whether religions and faith in higher powers should be the guiding philosophies for humans going forward, my answer would be capital F no.. But if we're talking about current crisis response/management and addiction support, you can't rewire everyone's brains before you can start helping them out..
1) the average American is heavily dependent on equities in their 401k for retirement,
2) so the stock market has to go up,
3) but the stock market is already at record valuations and it's difficult to see how forecasted growth levels justify the current valuation let alone an increased valuation,
4) without revenue growth, the only way for companies to sustain EPS growth is massive reduction in costs,
5) labor is the primary cost for most companies,
6) in come the AI folks telling CEOs that "AI can replace most of their workforce",
7) and so as the article states, everyone goes all in and "America is one big bet on AI"
That leaves us with only 2 possibilities - AI either replaces a significant part of the workforce or it does not. If it does not, the bubble bursts and the economy crashes. If it does, the economy still crashes because consumer spending is 70% of GDP and if the majority of the population becomes unemployed then spending collapses.
I don't think people have realized the latter (or at least they're deliberately choosing to ignore it). That said, I believe the former is more likely (AI not replacing the majority of the workforce in the near future). Either way, buckle up.
We're already seeing governments shaming and gaslighting their citizens as they try to find ways to pay for programs to support as many as possible, saying they don't want to work anymore, they're lazy and have to be given everything, pre-chewed.... When you make it nearly impossible for humans to find worth and purpose by exchanging labor for pay, you devalue any contributions they could have and are racing to a future where most of what humans have to give, outside of original creative thought, and art, which AI can do too so it depend on others willing to find value in it, then you're not left with a whole lot. Most of the population aren't self starting entrepreneurs with an infinite drive for wealth and who want to sacrifice everything for a job. Many just seek stability and want to find something they can be at least ok at and can repeat and provide for themselves and their family. By making jobs that much harder to get, you're adding barriers for most to find work. Many countries have been spoiled by stability for so long, their populations don't view survival as a "fight", maybe a struggle, but not a fight for life. Soon it'll be a fight, if not all out war, and almost no one will be ready for that. IF the economy and government (under whatever system and name you want to call it) was setup to provide for all, knowing all the wealth was centralized and they had a mandate to redistribute resources so all could be comfortable, it would be a different story, and even then, but its not the case. A time is coming soon where companies will start losing customers because customer's spending power will disappear. Companies will have optimized themselves out of a path for future growth by destroying their customer base.
Younger generations are already looking at a future vastly different from the one we saw or thought we'd see. Most things older generations took for granted are literally out of reach. Some older people literally expect younger people to just toughen up and just work hard and make it happen, since they did. Easy to say when their education cost them a couple summers worth of income + maybe a side job. The next generation paid their student loans over years, then decades, some pretty much for life. Now its not just education, owning a home is now out of reach of a lot of people. So now if you have the guts to take on an education, you're dealing with potentially decades of student loans, average homes in the US have gone from around $140,000 to $500,000 over the past 20 years, while incomes adjusted for inflation has grown roughly 12.7% between 2003 and 2023, or roughly 0.6% a year. Add on to that the extra cost of other new necessities the picture is looking very different. Life is more and more equating to financial slavery. Used to be any job enabled you to provide necessities for a family, now unless you live in the middle of nowhere, its harder and harder to even get started. AI is already causing cuts to entry level lobs, thinning out the pipeline for future senior employees..
Its going to be fun they said... Its going to be glorious they said...
One thing for sure, its the people who will pay the price during the adjustment period.