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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   28172 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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As you noted, a marijuana addiction is far less insidious than many other choices. A town of potheads faces far less severe problems than a town of heroin addicts. Your friend has a job, and while he may only use that job as a means of acquiring more weed and food, he is still a productive member of society - and his weight will cause pressing issues for both himself and society far sooner than the weed will.

Sure, The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come could have probably swayed your friend 10 years ago with visions of his present self, but he's ultimately not really hurting anyone other than himself right now. And "hurting himself" in a kind of nebulous, philosophical way.

I think liberals underrate the importance of the collective, but I really can't get over my innate libertarian streak here. I would wager that your friend has about as much capacity for free will with regards to weed intake as any other addict does (very little). But does it really warrant more heavy-handed intervention? Weed is a plant and mild narcotic, a weed addict is positively harmless in the grand scheme of things. For me, any government or societal measure against something has to overcome my inherent aversion to such a thing. Who the fuck are you, Mr. Legislator/Pressure Group, to tell me what I can and can't do? I didn't vote for you, it is not my neighbor's business what I'm doing in my home if it doesn't harm them, so on and so forth, you get the picture.

So heroin? Sure. My neighbor being a heroin addict is probably going to concern me at some point. As with any drug that hijacks its users minds and causes them to steal and harm to feed their habit. Weed's not that kind of drug though, so I really can't bring myself to support action against it, even if it can hollow someone out. And this is from someone who had a close friend go down that very same path your friend did.

With all that said, I think there's an important facet to this particular topic that's missing. Your friend is doing wax and dabs and talks about potency. The hits your friend regularly takes would probably knock a hippie from the 70s on their ass. Still (probably) ultimately harmless, but I think the common ideas and thought processes about weed and its use hasn't really caught up with the sheer strength of the stuff today.

  • and his weight will cause pressing issues for both himself and society far sooner than the weed will.

No, not really. Unless someone eates themselves into super-morbid obesity BMI- of 60-80, the reckoning will most likely come after age 55 or so. Dead by 65 if he doesn't turn it around then.

Weed may cause people to go schizo, there are rumors of coming out of California of extremely potent new strains of weed causing something like schizophrenia in heavy users.

Weed may cause people to go schizo, there are rumors of coming out of California of extremely potent new strains of weed causing something like schizophrenia in heavy users.

This is kind of what I was getting at with the last paragraph. Sentiments like this from the OP;

But it is [harmless]. It doesn't cause significant bodily harm, and it doesn't compel, doesn't build anything like the crude physiological dependency loop of opiates. It only makes one a bit different, for a few hours.

I think are largely cultivated from the days of significantly more mild marijuana that was smoked in joint form. It is now a brave new world of concentrates and high potency stuff, and the cultural conceptions of weed haven't really caught up from what I can tell. Perhaps it is the case that this entire conversation needs to be reframed.

but he's ultimately not really hurting anyone other than himself right now. And "hurting himself" in a kind of nebulous, philosophical way.

What's nebulous and philosophical about it? I could call it common sensical and immediately intuitive: you're becoming absorbed in cheap pleasures at the cost of living up to your potential.

What's nebulous and philosophical about it?

It comes down to your own personal value judgements. I agree with your position, but there are others who think this kind of life is perfectly fine and legitimate. I've met a handful of people who would see no problem at all with this lifestyle.

It comes down to your own personal value judgements.

I can think of more down to earth reasons. Bad habits aren't entirely self-regarding acts. If you're not a hermit than you're going to find yourself in positions where people you care for are in need of your help, and you can either succeed or fail at that. Sometimes failure is out of your control, but as often it's something straightforward where you can track the failure to a particular bad habit or the absence of a good one. There's a reason why communitarian ethics place such an emphasis on things like this.

I agree with your position, but there are others who think this kind of life is perfectly fine and legitimate. I've met a handful of people who would see no problem at all with this lifestyle.

I've met some people who have thought about it long and hard and have decided to take it easy, but I think it's rare that people are being honest with themselves, and the excuse making is often a more harmful habit than the behaviour. I've found it to be a useful mental trick to frame it in terms of affirming the trade-off and say something like "I love gaming so much I'm going to stay up all night doing it instead of studying tomorrow, and I'll do the same the day after too". I either end up finding my actions ridiculous (which gives inherent motivation to stop doing them) or I find that I'm happy with the trade-off.

Right. One could consider it a fuck you to Marie Kondo striver culture, a "laying flat" as the Chinese under-zeitgeist has it.

Of course. But the same can be said about many things. In fact very few people live up to their potential. Do we need to enforce “living up to your potential?”

he's ultimately not really hurting anyone other than himself right now

That's still bad for him though. Interesting and complex life -> productive slob slurper. Imagine Omega converted themotte.org into https://old.reddit.com/r/trees/ . Is something lost?

But does it really warrant more heavy-handed intervention

In the sense of 'the state sends guys with guns to shut down his weed dealer', or the sense of 'his friends try to convince him to stop being worthless'? Certainly the latter.

In the sense of 'the state sends guys with guns to shut down his weed dealer', or the sense of 'his friends try to convince him to stop being worthless'? Certainly the latter.

I meant the former, although perhaps less extreme. His friends have already tried to convince him, and it didn't work. Personally, the answer to "is it okay to let people degenerate, so long as every step is taken out of their own will?" in this case is...maybe? Depending on how you're defining "let" and what you've already done. If intervention from friends doesn't work, what's left?

what's left?

Assuming we mean using criminal law to discourage this? Armed government squads kicking in doors and dragging people like him off to the rape cages.

Or we could make it merely a civil infraction and then there'd be a small chance he'd have to pay a fine every now and then. Not exactly effective coercion or paternal guidance from the state. The state's tools are too crude.

Being in a community that could guide (or coerce) him could work. In a different, non-atomized world, this guy's church elders could have a man-to-man talk with him. But as a refugee in a foreign country he's left any possibility of that behind. Accepting the facts of modern anomie, traditional conservative community based solutions are irrelevant.

Or just fight 'the war on drugs' more aggressively. Like "it's impossible to fight an insurgency" - force any sophisticated modern state has could almost entirely stamp out drug-dealing, they just don't want to do it, for complicated reasons.

You don't need a 'non-atomized world' for smoking weed to be very shameful, or become less common. I have a few friends who smoke weed very regularly, and many more who do occasionally, yet none who smoke cigarettes. 80 years ago, it'd be reversed.

You don't need a 'non-atomized world' for smoking weed to be very shameful

Back in 1994 the CDC's Director of the Center for Injury Prevention said something about this:

"We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol -- cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly -- and banned."

Yeah, so maybe decades of propaganda and control over the schools could let them make smoking or owning guns dirty and low status. But then they already tried that for weed and it didn't work. And gun owners really don't like some bureaucrat trying to make them low status and ban their favorite stuff.

We could have a society where smoking weed is shameful and completely unacceptable for any upstanding person. But we don't and the government's attempts to push us that way didn't work.

Is Russia, let along Kyrgyzstan, a modern state with the capacity to stamp out things it really wants to, the way the US is? It doesn’t seem like it is.

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