Mark Barnes - Great Ambassador for the RS

[Ray]

Using addiction as a metaphor for riding a motorcycle seems a little tone-deaf in 2022.

The psychologists and touchy-feely folks love to think of behaviors they don't understand - like riding motorcycles - as an addiction. Mark Barnes loves to label motorcycling as "inherently dangerous," at least according to promotional releases for his book. Thus, his apparently unanswered question - "Why do we ride?"

They also like to label as addictive, behaviors over which they don't have the willpower to control. You've seen all the articles in the tabloids that point to our addiction to eating, salt, fat, sugar, sex, etc.

If after millions of years of evolution it feels good, and stimulates pleasure centers in our brain on functional MRI, then it is now labelled an addiction - for purposes of funding, legislation, or selling books.

Let's put the pleasure of pulling off a 1G turn with a little air under the front tire coming off the apex, right up there with most of that list..., but agreed, like everything else on the list, not something I can't go without - hardly an addiction.

(By clinical definition, an addiction is something we do, even though it causes harm. There's still time, but I haven't broken anything in the more than 50 years I've ridden motorcycles for fun and transportation and fun transportation.)