Why conservatives don't like marijuana

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

... Because what gives you pleasure is obviously not the same as that which does you good. Legalizing drugs is just a gateway to social escapism and ultimately collapse, kinda like saying there's no stigma at all to binge drinking and you can do it all the time just so you can die of liver failure when you're 24. It is ethically bad, it is immoral, and it is also bad for your health.

 

[Gorbles]

... Because what gives you pleasure is obviously not the same as that which does you good. Legalizing drugs is just a gateway to social escapism and ultimately collapse, kinda like saying there's no stigma at all to binge drinking and you can do it all the time just so you can die of liver failure when you're 24. It is ethically bad, it is immoral, and it is also bad for your health.

Interesting. So morality and ethics apply, when, exactly?

When we want them to? When you want them to? When I want them to? What if we have opposing ideals in these matters?

I ask mainly because "bad for your health" is a funny argument to make of cannabis (of all things), so I'm skipping that one.

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

Long ago I was kinda like marxist.

But today I'm just anti-liberal. Excessive concern for individual "freedoms" and social harmony are not necessarily compatible.

Liberalism is immoral because it presumes the individual is the alpha and omega and zero sum, whereas as Plato would say, it is the law that dictates the individual and not the opposite. Therefore, if we admit that objective morality exists, we know that a superficial search for bodily pleasure at all times is a recipe for disaster, and ensues in pain, because this is no substitute for true happiness, or the good, and by itself just increases the demand for superficial bodily pleasure until you cannot manage it. That's why all drug use ends in addiction, and addiction leads to death.

 

[lymond]

I'm sorry but I have no idea what I just read above.

Individual Freedoms - isn't that something that conservatives espouse?

Liberalism is immoral? What?!

Bodily pleasure at all times? Huh? Is this fantasy?

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

I'm sorry but I have no idea what I just read above.

Individual Freedoms - isn't that something that conservatives espouse?

Liberalism is immoral? What?!

No, I'm against liberalism, individualism and also anti-Western.

There are many good anti-liberals thru history. Read people like, you know, Ortega y Gasset, or Carl Schmitt, or Giovanni Gentile, or even shadier ones like Evola or A. Moeller van den Brueck. de Maistre is one of my favorites, too.

Also, you should perhaps read Plato and Aristotle. Plato is especially valuable: pleasure and pain are like intrinstic dualities for him, and in the end, if you seek excessive pleasure, you'll risk attaining excessive pain and so on. The solution to pain isn't pleasure, because "pleasure is the bait of sin", but rather the solution to pain is to "fade away the ephemeral and elusive pleasures of the body" - so then you'll be really free of pain.

 

[Arwon]

... Because what gives you pleasure is obviously not the same as that which does you good. Legalizing drugs is just a gateway to social escapism and ultimately collapse, kinda like saying there's no stigma at all to binge drinking and you can do it all the time just so you can die of liver failure when you're 24. It is ethically bad, it is immoral, and it is also bad for your health.

Incredibly unconvincing stuff here

 

[lymond]

I've read Plato, but don't model my life around what some dude wrote 2500 years ago.

I believe in all people getting along and against extremism of any kind. Basically my only two mantras.

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

Incredibly unconvincing stuff here

No, it's simply because, let me just say I'm a Platonist: in the ideal Politeia (or "republic" as mistranslated), the desires of the individual don't matter. Because the individuals know that superficial desires, like thoughts in the mind, are just animal stuff tied to the body, like digestion, whereas they're more than just that.

 

[lymond]

So are you some kind of ultra-conservative ascetist?

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

I've read Plato, but don't model my life around what some dude wrote 2500 years ago.

I believe in all people getting along and against extremism of any kind. Basically my only two mantras.

What liberals label as "extremism" is really a form of deep seated bias, anyway. And it doesn't make liberalism any service.

Liberalism is a failure, in moral, social, intellectual and ideological terms. The end game of liberalism is a zero sum state where nothing exists and everything is permitted, because what matters is what the individual believes is true, whereas reality is nothing like that. Liberalism is nihilism.

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

So are you some kind of ultra-conservative ascetist?

Plato and Aristotle saw education and virtue as a matter of askesis, so yes, following them, I would say I defend an askesis as a limited means towards an end.

 

[sophie]

Incredibly unconvincing stuff here

It doesn't even really answer the question??

Like:
A) Cannabis is harmful.
B) Ok, how does throwing them in prison (an at best equally harmful action) help them?
A) Cannabis is harmful

....

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

It doesn't even really answer the question??

Like:
A) Cannabis is harmful.
B) Ok, how does throwing them in prison (an at best equally harmful action) help them?
A) Cannabis is harmful

....

It answers this in a deeply convicing fashion, but subtle fashion:

if you think doing drugs is moral because it gives you pleasure and you do whatever the heck you want, you should know that to seek extreme pleasure often risks and entails into deep pain. And if you know that you're going to get addicted to something that harms your health, like morphine, you should know the consequences: "hey, I'm just gonna increase my dose until I get more pleasure, but hey, look, don't ever say I don't risk getting oded in morphine/heroine/cocaine" whatever.

By the same reason, if we apply the liberal mentality, we could just make all medications free for everybody. No need for medics too. Let's just throw away everything so people will do whatever they want, risks be damned. The end result is death.

 

[Gorbles]

That's why all drug use ends in addiction, and addiction leads to death.

I mean, this is demonstrably untrue dawg.

Regardless, you still haven't answered the prison thing. Say it explicitly. You don't strike me as the coy type, so c'mon.

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

I mean, this is demonstrably untrue dawg.

Regardless, you still haven't answered the prison thing. Say it explicitly. You don't strike me as the coy type, so c'mon.

OK, so a person who's addicted even to something as "harmless" as marijuana (when marijuana shows empirically to kill your neurons like fire) needs a rehab.

The same thing for alcoholics. Alcohol in excess kills. So does marijuana, btw, it's way too risky and should perhaps be left for medicinal controlled use, but apart from that I dunno if prison is the best rehab, but hey, it reminds me why China started the opium war. Because there was a boatload of Chinese back then who were getting useless, and dying earlier, and forgetting to live a life, because they were too much addicted to opium; if you visit some latin american shanty towns where crack addicts, people who had lives and families and work and who were later reduced to despair because they can only smoke crack, you'll know that prison sometimes isn't the worst fate.

The worst thing in the world is to become an addict and have no check whatsoever upon that. You'll die soon, or end in some slum, trading your last meal and your last pair of socks for crack.

 

[sophie]

It answers this in a deeply convicing fashion, but subtle fashion:

if you think doing drugs is moral because it gives you pleasure and you do whatever the heck you want, you should know that to seek extreme pleasure often risks and entails into deep pain. And if you know that you're going to get addicted to something that harms your health, like morphine, you should know the consequences: "hey, I'm just gonna increase my dose until I get more pleasure, but hey, look, don't ever say I don't risk getting oded in morphine/heroine/cocaine" whatever.

By the same reason, if we apply the liberal mentality, we could just make all medications free for everybody. No need for medics too. Let's just throw away everything so people will do whatever they want, risks be damned. The end result is death.

Ok, but we know from data that "fear of future consequences," is not generally an effective deterrent for bad behavior, particularly when the matter is chemically addictive drugs that the brain involuntarily compels the body to seek out at all costs. And adding on to the addiction, a) putting the individual in an environment with rampant drug use in the presence of other potential addicts who may facilitate access to drugs, b) exposing them to the violence and trauma of other inmates, guards, and solitary confinement, and c) releasing them into a world with minimal social offboarding mechanisms, and with heavy economic and social consequences for being labeled an ex-convict, which may put them into a mental state where they are more likely to relapse, don't strike me as especially helping matters.

If the concern, as Joe Biggs specifies, is protecting, alleviating or averting the damaging potential consequences of drug use. Then how does imposing conditions that can lead to even greater potential consequences help in the matter of alleviating or averting the initial consequences?

 

[Broken_Erika]

So it all boils down to

Spoiler :

 

[Gorbles]

you'll know that prison sometimes isn't the worst fate.

Nobody was claiming prison was "the worst fate". The point was "does prison help", and your position is that it apparently works like a form of rehabilitation.

My opinion is that's a weird take when you could just support . . . actual rehab. In the scenarios where it's even applicable in the first place (which you claim is all the time, every time, for all drugs, despite the impossibility of proving such).

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

I never said prison was the best fate. I never said that. I said hey prison sometimes works, so what. But it ain't the best.

Perhaps rehab. But I'm not an expert. But hey for all my life, and it matters to me, I know the danger of getting addicted even to something as readily available as alcohol is dangerous. I know that. So I always made myself the favour of avoiding it most of the time, I just drink perhaps once or twice a week.

If people can't learn self-control, they should have some sort of check. And perhaps the fear of getting caught and going to jail is an useful deterrent, even if not the ideal or fairest solution. Nuff said.

 

[Arwon]

No, it's simply because, let me just say I'm a Platonist: in the ideal Politeia (or "republic" as mistranslated), the desires of the individual don't matter. Because the individuals know that superficial desires, like thoughts in the mind, are just animal stuff tied to the body, like digestion, whereas they're more than just that.

Is this a bit