>When you’re at a wedding reception, alcohol serves as a social lubricant. People are more gregarious. They talk, they interact. The same is true with cocaine at parties, heroin among friends, or opium among friends, NDMA among lovers. It enhances empathy, openness, and forgiveness, all of these pro-social attributes.
Please, don't take this horrible advice. Drugs are harmful and can do fatal damage to you and those around you. I mean, is this guy advocating drug use? It sounds like he wants to justify his dependency.
We need a more nuanced discussion of “drugs”. The word drug is about as useful as “chemical”. The biggest evidence that we’ve been lied to and manipulated by the media and the government is that “drug use” is even a term.
Addiction, as the article says is more complicated than any drug and is factor of a person’s life situation in general. Look at the work of Gabor Mate for a better understanding of addiction.
While slinging a cat has always been a disturbing analogy to me, in this case I think it’s appropriate; you can’t sling a cat without it hitting a popular rockstar that did heroin or similar at small or varying doses, was convinced they had it under control, and their careers slowly and then quickly tanked. I also have friends and acquaintances whose lives were ruined by it or they died early because of it.
I’m glad this made it front page news given that the northwest coast of US now gets hard drugs, so maybe one of them will think twice about being a full-on grade A dumbass.
Also remember: with legality especially in a rich entrepreneurial country comes business which lobbies, funds studies, etc. Pot strived for many years for legitimacy, and once they got it, it exploded all over the US.
Since you called it out specifically I figure you might be interested to know the idiom is actually "swing a cat. Definitely a disturbing mental image, I agree.
How is that you can totally talk about social media/sugar/porn/whatever addiction but when there are drugs there is always someone screaming "OH MY GOD LOOK THIS GUY IS TALKING BAD THINGS CALL THE COPS!"?
It doesn't look like an advice but a simple, neutral observation of the pluses. Of course there are also minuses but this quote doesn't seem it rejects those.
Coffee, chocolate, and sugar are drugs. If a drug is a substance that affects how your mind functions, then water is a drug too. There is no definition of "drug" that cleanly separates the (currently) illegal substances from those that are legal.
The world is full of chemicals that affect us, some more than others. People self-medicate all the time (alcohol, coffee, chocolate, sugar); I see no problem with (after learning and carefully experimenting) broadening one's set of "self-medication" tools.
Do you drink alcohol? If so you're a drug user... We've just decided for myriad, commercial, political and historical reasons to legitimise some and make others illegal. Note I never used the word "scientific" in that sentence.
I don't drink alcohol. The best advocates of drug use are drug users. They're quite passionate about it. Where I come from, they make fun of you if you don't drink and sing a song about how you're "too weak to drink." Every occasion calls for a drink: childbirth, Friday, getting married, getting divorced. It is so common that you're the weird one for not drinking.
I agree. I consider the ability caring for children to be integral to life. I consider things that interfere with that (getting drunk, high, unresponsive for periods of time) bad.
If you don't have or want kids, you're missing what made you and was given to you.
Sure, and that's a legitimate subject for debate as to where legality and morality should intersect. I think it's also reasonable to say that one group imposing their opinions on others without sufficient justification is immoral. So then we go to the merits of the justification.
Moral arguments are in the west almost always made from a puritanical standpoint, of which this post is a good example. To anyone who isn't puritanical, it's not very interesting to say that because they've already decided they don't think like that. To someone who is, you're posting something they essentially already agree with.
Both of those sides won't really produce interesting discourse, unless you're very invested in making people more (or less) puritanical.
I understand what you feel, there are 2 sides with strong views preachings to the choir so to speak.
But ;)
There are people without a militant views and people seeking to form views and people with weakly held options on the topic. I don’t know if we should shutdown conversations where there are 2 existing opposing camps with strong views
Not to turn this into that conversation elections are an example yet the winning party changes (except for Germany ;))
Something of a facile distinction, given that the construction "objectify women" has a strong negative valence, and implies you're doing something wrong. I won't say "immoral," since the modern moral majority doesn't use that term. It marginalizes the voices of those with woman-aligned identities, I guess.
You can say the point of Hustler is to objectify women, or you can say the point of Hustler is to let people get their rocks off. These are both true, as far as they go, but there are assumptions in each statement that you need to unpack a little. "Getting your rocks off" acknowledges and tacitly approves of a certain framing of the magazine. "Objectifying women" acknowledges a different framing and includes a tacit disapproval. To say that a criticism of the magazine as objectifying women is reasonable because it is true is weak, because you're not acknowledging the framing. The rocks-off framing is equally true, and in the same way, but you might still disagree with it because of the framing.
Hustler is a magazine that pays women for provocative pictures, and it packages and publishes them for the sexual gratification of men. I think it's fair to say that it objectifies women, in the sense that the men looking at the pictures are treating them as objects of sexual gratification. To say, sans other context or sentiment, that the magazine objectifies women, does, however, suggest a puritanical goal or objective. Out of a large bag of potential framings, or combination of framings—libertarian, sex-positive, live-and-let-live, religious, enlightenmentarian, humorous remove, indifference—you're selecting the framing that suggests you want this thing to be attached to a strong negative valence. It's also done in the epistemically cowardly way in which many social criticisms are now made. If you said it was immoral, that would at least tip your hand a bit, and show a little conviction.
Seems to be far fetched statement. Women (and men and everybody else) were objectified since the beginning of the history. But during 20th century this objectification took different forms because of general improvement of women rights and freedoms (basically, woman can be now “objectified” without high risks of being thrown to the streets by the family: women are much more independent now).
Agreed, and we all have different values. I've always found morals, like religion and politics to be a slippery slope. I try to not judge others on theirs as long as they are not effecting me too much.
Had he not existed would women have been less objectified in that era? Do you know what their circulation/sales were compared to say Playboy at that time? Or other mass media that was running objectifying ads? What he added, was a rain drop in a lake, IMHO. Gotta pick your battles.
I’m a full-stack software engineer with 13 years of experience who can build apps from the ground up. I've been working in startups, so I'm used to wearing many hats. I'm product focussed, collaborative, and communicative developer who prioritizes user experience, code quality, and security.
