skeptik
Member
- Feb 7, 2003
- 24,413
- 71
- 48
Are you really looking to turn this into some divisive flamewar bullshit? Because I'm not prepared to do that right now. Maybe you should learn to respect my views more (or understand them better) and stop accusing me of asinine shit like being closed- and narrow-minded and describing me as "sad".
I'm pretty sure we're talking about drugs here, not everything in the world that is potentially harmful. Also, there is an important distinction between smoking marijuana and breathing in exhaust fumes. One is an entirely willful action and the other is a nearly inescapable byproduct of the way of life that we hardly of a choice in. The way people talk about marijuana sometimes almost makes it sound like it's unhealthy not to smoke it. No, willfully filling your lungs with smoke is harmful and irresponsible. Marijuana use damages your lungs. Maybe not as much as cigarettes, but to say that you oppose smoking cigarettes on the grounds that it's bad for your lungs but are fine with smoking marijuana is hypocritical, because they both damage the lungs.
What exactly is "bullshit" about what I said? I think the separation between naturally occurring 'alterations' triggered by neural reactive impulses such as adrenaline and the artificial creation of an altered state of mind through the consumption of drugs is pretty obvious. Honestly, I'm bothered by the fact that you would even bring that up as though it's somehow a cogent defense of the responsibility of willfully distorting the senses. The fact of the matter is that consuming drugs impairs your senses, as well as your judgment, and can easily lead to causing harm to oneself or to others. To suggest that the state of the mind under the influence of marijuana is somehow 'normal' or related to 'normal' alterations of regular brain function is being really disingenuous. Obviously drugs affect everybody differently and with varying degrees of severity, but knowing that smoking marijuana can leave you in an extremely vulnerable and cognitively compromised state and yet doing it anyway in the name of pleasure and hedonism is most definitely an act of irresponsibility. And please don't retort with something like "so does sleep", because the reasons why that argument would be absurd are numerous, not the least of which being that sleep is a necessary function of the human body to regenerate.
Because it's impossible to responsibly be irresponsible. You're still harming yourself no matter how many precautions to take to limit the possibility of something retarded happening.
If my wording insinuated that I believe all drug use is done purely out of dependency and addiction then I apologize. I would also restate that line a lot less authoritatively, but whatever. In general, there's a pretty reasonable chance that doing drugs will lead to addiction and dependency, and addiction is a weakness, whereas dependency is a crutch. Obviously that is not the case for everybody in every instance. But your tangent about human nature is irrelevant here. It is well-documented that the more common recreational drugs come with the risk of psychological dependency, with the more extreme cases also being associated with physical dependency. Some people do suffer withdrawal from marijuana use, after all. The root cause of addiction and dependency is moot insofar as it relates to responsibly dealing with something. Coke can be addictive as well, but it's not going to impair your judgment and dull your senses, so engaging in a soda addiction, I feel, it would be reasonable to say is being less irresponsible than a drug addiction. And when we talk about addiction and dependency, we are obviously talking about weakness and crutches. Again, to be clear, right now I'm talking only about cases in which addiction and dependency come into play, not every instance of drug use.
I don't believe it's accurate, or frankly useful, to accuse somebody of fear in this instance. One doesn't need to find out for oneself to realize that deliberately impairing your ability to function rationally and react appropriately is irresponsible, which is essentially what being high or inebriated amounts to. Nor does one need to smoke and develop a chronic, severe cough to discover that smoking cigarettes is irresponsible. You think I don't understand the other side as though I don't believe people actually gain any pleasure from drug use, but of course I do. It's just easier to claim that I don't understand the argument from the other side. Anybody who listens to music would be naive to attempt to claim that it's impossible for anything good to be in any way related to the usage of drugs. But that really has nothing to do with my point. That good can come from something does not have any bearing on whether or not that something is responsible behavior. The decision to engage in drug use is a balance between pleasure, relief, and responsibility.
I feel pretty strongly that your claim here is absurd. Of course one does not have to be perfect in order to have a judgment about something external to himself. Such a claim would have to disallow for the possibility of looking down on oneself. If one were perfect, then one would have nothing to look down on. Yet people do so all the time. Now simply transfer that externally. The fact that we are imperfect can only mean for your argument, at best, that our judgments are imperfect, not that it's impossible to have judgments.
To further elaborate, I never claimed that perfection was a possibility, nor even said anything about perfection. Nor did I ever say that my view on the act of people engaging in drug use was particularly relevant outside of the way that I live my own life. And finally, I never, at any point, said that drug use makes one inferior to me. I feel this is important to stress because it sounds like this is the crux of your issue with my statement. I seriously never said, nor implied, that not using drugs makes one a better person than drug users. In fact, I stated outright that what I meant by 'looking down on' or 'thinking less of' (which I perhaps problematically used interchangeably) people using drugs was:
If you re-read this quote, I think it's pretty obvious that I never claimed that the fact that I don't drink, for example, makes me better than you, or anybody who drinks or does drugs. After all, an individual is constituted of a lot more than simply whether or not they do drugs, and it would be absurd to judge a person entirely on that issue alone. I hope this false supposition was your problem with my statement and that I've made it more clear what I actually meant, because if not we may just have to agree to disagree, unless you want to yell at me and get mad more.
Edit: Actually I should add that just because something is irresponsible does not mean that I don't believe anybody should ever be allowed to behave irresponsibly or that irresponsibility is 'evil' and 'wrong'. That seems to be another misconception that people tend to have whenever I discuss this topic. *cough*Grant*cough* I don't believe in the banning or illegalization common illicit substances and I think a drinking age of 21 is absurd, especially when taking into account that 18 is good enough to defend your country with force. If you can wield a gun for your land, it's probably reasonable to think you're old enough to handle alcohol.
I'm pretty sure we're talking about drugs here, not everything in the world that is potentially harmful. Also, there is an important distinction between smoking marijuana and breathing in exhaust fumes. One is an entirely willful action and the other is a nearly inescapable byproduct of the way of life that we hardly of a choice in. The way people talk about marijuana sometimes almost makes it sound like it's unhealthy not to smoke it. No, willfully filling your lungs with smoke is harmful and irresponsible. Marijuana use damages your lungs. Maybe not as much as cigarettes, but to say that you oppose smoking cigarettes on the grounds that it's bad for your lungs but are fine with smoking marijuana is hypocritical, because they both damage the lungs.
What exactly is "bullshit" about what I said? I think the separation between naturally occurring 'alterations' triggered by neural reactive impulses such as adrenaline and the artificial creation of an altered state of mind through the consumption of drugs is pretty obvious. Honestly, I'm bothered by the fact that you would even bring that up as though it's somehow a cogent defense of the responsibility of willfully distorting the senses. The fact of the matter is that consuming drugs impairs your senses, as well as your judgment, and can easily lead to causing harm to oneself or to others. To suggest that the state of the mind under the influence of marijuana is somehow 'normal' or related to 'normal' alterations of regular brain function is being really disingenuous. Obviously drugs affect everybody differently and with varying degrees of severity, but knowing that smoking marijuana can leave you in an extremely vulnerable and cognitively compromised state and yet doing it anyway in the name of pleasure and hedonism is most definitely an act of irresponsibility. And please don't retort with something like "so does sleep", because the reasons why that argument would be absurd are numerous, not the least of which being that sleep is a necessary function of the human body to regenerate.
Because it's impossible to responsibly be irresponsible. You're still harming yourself no matter how many precautions to take to limit the possibility of something retarded happening.
If my wording insinuated that I believe all drug use is done purely out of dependency and addiction then I apologize. I would also restate that line a lot less authoritatively, but whatever. In general, there's a pretty reasonable chance that doing drugs will lead to addiction and dependency, and addiction is a weakness, whereas dependency is a crutch. Obviously that is not the case for everybody in every instance. But your tangent about human nature is irrelevant here. It is well-documented that the more common recreational drugs come with the risk of psychological dependency, with the more extreme cases also being associated with physical dependency. Some people do suffer withdrawal from marijuana use, after all. The root cause of addiction and dependency is moot insofar as it relates to responsibly dealing with something. Coke can be addictive as well, but it's not going to impair your judgment and dull your senses, so engaging in a soda addiction, I feel, it would be reasonable to say is being less irresponsible than a drug addiction. And when we talk about addiction and dependency, we are obviously talking about weakness and crutches. Again, to be clear, right now I'm talking only about cases in which addiction and dependency come into play, not every instance of drug use.
I don't believe it's accurate, or frankly useful, to accuse somebody of fear in this instance. One doesn't need to find out for oneself to realize that deliberately impairing your ability to function rationally and react appropriately is irresponsible, which is essentially what being high or inebriated amounts to. Nor does one need to smoke and develop a chronic, severe cough to discover that smoking cigarettes is irresponsible. You think I don't understand the other side as though I don't believe people actually gain any pleasure from drug use, but of course I do. It's just easier to claim that I don't understand the argument from the other side. Anybody who listens to music would be naive to attempt to claim that it's impossible for anything good to be in any way related to the usage of drugs. But that really has nothing to do with my point. That good can come from something does not have any bearing on whether or not that something is responsible behavior. The decision to engage in drug use is a balance between pleasure, relief, and responsibility.
I feel pretty strongly that your claim here is absurd. Of course one does not have to be perfect in order to have a judgment about something external to himself. Such a claim would have to disallow for the possibility of looking down on oneself. If one were perfect, then one would have nothing to look down on. Yet people do so all the time. Now simply transfer that externally. The fact that we are imperfect can only mean for your argument, at best, that our judgments are imperfect, not that it's impossible to have judgments.
To further elaborate, I never claimed that perfection was a possibility, nor even said anything about perfection. Nor did I ever say that my view on the act of people engaging in drug use was particularly relevant outside of the way that I live my own life. And finally, I never, at any point, said that drug use makes one inferior to me. I feel this is important to stress because it sounds like this is the crux of your issue with my statement. I seriously never said, nor implied, that not using drugs makes one a better person than drug users. In fact, I stated outright that what I meant by 'looking down on' or 'thinking less of' (which I perhaps problematically used interchangeably) people using drugs was:
If you re-read this quote, I think it's pretty obvious that I never claimed that the fact that I don't drink, for example, makes me better than you, or anybody who drinks or does drugs. After all, an individual is constituted of a lot more than simply whether or not they do drugs, and it would be absurd to judge a person entirely on that issue alone. I hope this false supposition was your problem with my statement and that I've made it more clear what I actually meant, because if not we may just have to agree to disagree, unless you want to yell at me and get mad more.
Edit: Actually I should add that just because something is irresponsible does not mean that I don't believe anybody should ever be allowed to behave irresponsibly or that irresponsibility is 'evil' and 'wrong'. That seems to be another misconception that people tend to have whenever I discuss this topic. *cough*Grant*cough* I don't believe in the banning or illegalization common illicit substances and I think a drinking age of 21 is absurd, especially when taking into account that 18 is good enough to defend your country with force. If you can wield a gun for your land, it's probably reasonable to think you're old enough to handle alcohol.
