Why conservatives don't like marijuana

[tjs282]

Free Democratic Party, about whom I know nothing

Ostensibly free-market social-liberal, allegedly somewhere between the Social Democrat (centre left-ish) and the Christian Union (center right-ish) Parties — but are generally more comfortable aligning with the CDU/CSU than the SPD.

That said, the FDP is one of the minority-partners in the current "traffic-light" (red-green-yellow) coalition-government led by the SPD (the Greens have about twice as many seats as the FDP, but altogether the 3 parties only just tip the scales to >50% of the current Parliament).

 

[Narz]

Yeah, pretty much. My personal encounter with hyperemesis had a dependency dimension because the person who had it switched to that horrible synthetic cannabinoid stuff people call K2 or "spice" hoping it wouldn't cause the same symptoms.

Unfortunately, it did, and they also ended up actually hooked on that garbage. It left them oscillating between hyperemesis and dangerous withdrawals for a few months, which nearly killed them and badly injured their kidneys from dehydration.

But that stuff isn't cannabis and legalisation of cannabis should reduce usage of that other stuff anyway.

In general I'm against criminalization of drug use & distribution but people who adulterate drugs should get sentences similar to murderers.

 

[Narz]

I think the other costs could be the perceived 'laziness' associated with pot smoking. That will dampen someone's earning potential (even if not their potential productivity, since we make more for society than our wage suggests), AND if it becomes self-confirming, it really could damage someone's output

Possibly but not necessarily, some successful people credit weed as a creative aid.

And we don't know how much the culture of judgement towards pot-heads contribtes to their self image.

I'd imagine in a society free of judgement weed would be a net positive for most (and for those it's negative they'd self-select out & far fewer would do it for rebellion or social pressure) but education about contraindications would be helpful. When something is destigmtized you can more readily trust what authority says about it.

 

[Angst]

The artist sees beyond the status quo and pushes the boundaries of how reality is perceived. This plays an important role in the challenging conventional understanding and progress of society which rarely understand or fully appreciate great artists within their time. The error of the artist is to fall into delusions of grandeur or to perceive criticism even when valid as persecution or an inability to appreciate as a form of defense regarding their ego within the individual or an ideology within the collective.

A perversion by definition is abnormal and or a corruption of the intended function seen from both within and from without. The excessive self-medication of alcohol to ease anxiety culminated in the abuse of the alcoholic by down-regulating GABA thus inducing anxiety leading to dependency for example. Whether self-deception or schizoaffective disorder the broken framework of perception misaligned with reality is never healthy. I completely agree that many of the reasons for a sense of disgust are rooted in reasons for health like the germaphobia I raised previously and arise from an evolutionary survival mechanism run amock that is likely parallel to the same basis as rooted causes for the issue of disgust raised in the OP. Don't mistake that last sentence as alleging the same process of cause and effect but rather a comparison of observable behavior along a continuum to the psychological responses being discussed.

Speculating from what I've read on the topic the disgust reaction on the right is likely a response to orderliness. Taken as a figurative to that which is "unclean" in the form of germaphobia from the individual vs "foreign" to the collective both manifesting in a hyperactive desire for control in a form of authoritarianism over the body in the former or society in the latter.

If you want to take a deep dive into this I'd recommend the work of Dr. Jonathan Heidt on the relationship of disgust in relation to political leanings and Dr Thornhill on the parasitic stress response in evolutionary biology.

i'm already familiar with the literature, actually, even if it's been a while. haidt while having some issues is one of the people that look into how our immediate ways of sensing the world shape our politics. thornhill i probably don't know and couldn't find a way to google them.

mostly, i think i agree.

regardless, two minor notes -
- art and artistry is not really that. you're talking about a particular mode of artistry that's legitimate as the rest and indeed tries what you outline, but art is as much a practice of craftsmanship well within the status quo. eg cooking falls within it. and it holds the same for a lot of practices within what we would consider the higher arts.
- perversions... it's something in the specific wording of that which i'm unsure is the case. even in the case of ocd/schizoaffective people, for example, talking about them as perverse can be done... 'fairly', but more in a bataillian/"wild academic" framework than one of psychology. maybe i'm just splitting hairs, but coming from where you're coming here; i wouldn't use that word choice when discussing it in such a lens. it's a bit of a red flag, and i presume that's not your intention. i'd just write mental illnesses. being ill is not a moral judgment; being perverse is. even within bataille, a framework where it can be used responsibly, it's still a moral judgment, but he does it to explicitly discuss the nature of perversion as a moral judgment. it's why i similarly, in the post you quoted, spent a lot of time making the framework for what i meant as the grotesque.

 

[El_Machinae]

Possibly but not necessarily, some successful people credit weed as a creative aid.

And we don't know how much the culture of judgement towards pot-heads contribtes to their self image.

I'd imagine in a society free of judgement weed would be a net positive for most (and for those it's negative they'd self-select out & far fewer would do it for rebellion or social pressure) but education about contraindications would be helpful. When something is destigmtized you can more readily trust what authority says about it.

I know many productive people that use it, so don't get me wrong. And the hypocrisy of 'successful' people using it illegally, while it was criminalized, was over-whelming. I used to be in favor of regulation because I have to deal with the people I'm begging people to help, but after my 13 old daughter was able to get it at school, I realized that criminalization was preventing no one from getting it.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I know many productive people that use it, so don't get me wrong. And the hypocrisy of 'successful' people using it illegally, while it was criminalized, was over-whelming. I used to be in favor of regulation because I have to deal with the people I'm begging people to help, but after my 13 old daughter was able to get it at school, I realized that criminalization was preventing no one from getting it.

I think criminalization often makes something like drugs and alcohol easier to get, not harder. When I was in high school, it was much easier to get marijuana than, say, beer. And I don't know how much is true and how much is legend, but Prohibition in the U.S caused alcohol use to explode. Supposedly, there were more "speakeasies" in NYC in the '20s than there are bars today. Of course an unlicensed speakeasy could have been as small as a single table inside someone's apartment. I believe it's also true that when a legal version of something is available, people prefer it to the illegal version. I think the (billion-dollar) industry in illegal liquor vanished almost overnight when Prohibition was repealed.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Someone having a disability is an accident of birth or happenstance. How we as a society treat that person; how the consequences of our culture, economics, and social structure restrict the opportunities available to that person in contrast to another who doesn’t have that disability, is a choice we make, and consequently is not an accident of nature, but a restriction on that person’s freedom.

 

[Lexicus]

Someone having a disability is an accident of birth or happenstance.

Mostly yes, but let's also not forget about people who have disabilities because a capitalist didn't want to pay for preventive measures. Whether a workplace injury, or being poisoned before you were born because it was cheaper to dump the poison into the local stream than to clean it up properly, or whatever.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

No, not even close. This is obvious to anyone who considers the matter for even a moment.

Which individuals in our society are not free to make their own choices?

Every conservative for the last 6,000 years has claimed that their destructive system of prejudice and social inequality is in fact ordained by nature and not created by humans. This is really a good demonstration of that.

#not all. One might ask if nature itself is a destructive system of prejudice and social inequality. Then one might ask what system created by the left was not a destructive system of prejudice and social inequality.
Conservatism is no different from anything else in the world, an imperfect system because it was created and practiced by imperfect people. Conservatism is the worst political idealogy except for all the others its vice is an unequal sharing of blessings in its inherent virtue while liberal progressivism is an equal sharing of miseries.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Why some people maintain such gleeful indifference to the suffering of billions I will never understand

What’s that Marx line about making no excuses for the rivers of blood that will flow when it’s our turn?

Or we could go with Twain. He makes a very similar observation in Connecticut Yankee if my memory serves me correctly.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Someone having a disability is an accident of birth or happenstance. How we as a society treat that person; how the consequences of our culture, economics, and social structure restrict the opportunities available to that person in contrast to another who doesn’t have that disability, is a choice we make, and consequently is not an accident of nature, but a restriction on that person’s freedom.

Which is worse the restriction of freedom by nature or by men?

Alright so let us take your conclusion that nature is at fault, let us examine the proposition of the solution proposed by the decisions of society. What if society were to do nothing? Would the individual be worse off than how nature had left them? Alternatively, let us ask how society would do anything? Answering this we must ask what is society? Individuals make up society. If an individual freely decides to help the disabled so much the better for the both of them and their freedom. Yet what if an individual decides not to help the disabled? Should they be forced to help the disabled by other individuals or by the disabled? Is that their choice? Is that not a restriction of their freedom? Furthermore, was this restriction upon the individual forced to assist the disabled a restriction of freedom created by nature or by the decisions of men?

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Why some people maintain such gleeful indifference to the suffering of billions I will never understand

Yes, I agree which is why I am a conservative but I cannot escape all blame as for many years I was a liberal democrat.

 

[El_Machinae]

Access to and treatment by the Justice System is very much correlated with wealth, which has a very strong heritable component. So, insofar as the justice system maintains freedoms and access, the ability for the poor to tap it (for their benefit) is not equal. The freedoms aren't free.

A very good example: suppose an employer docks your wages (illegally) by $100 and so you take $100 from the till. The ability for the employer to harm you with the Justice System just completely overwhelms your ability to redress your concerns. Like, both are theft. But the ability to steal are not equal.

Conservativism won't be 'the best system'. Its job is to predict the dangers from making changes. Liberalism's job is to notice what needs to be changed and then come up with a variety of solutions. There's a reason why there's a genetic component to these proclivities, but neither has been stomped out in a population.

 

[schlaufuchs]

I never said nature is at fault. Nature is nature. We make choices collectively what to do about nature. A disabled person does not suffer because they are disabled. They suffer because we have constructed a society which consigns them to suffer for the convenience of others.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

- art and artistry is not really that. you're talking about a particular mode of artistry that's legitimate as the rest and indeed tries what you outline, but art is as much a practice of craftsmanship well within the status quo. eg cooking falls within it. and it holds the same for a lot of practices within what we would consider the higher arts.

This is exactly how I intended my communication of the artist. Did I need to clarify something here?

perversions... it's something in the specific wording of that which i'm unsure is the case. even in the case of ocd/schizoaffective people, for example, talking about them as perverse can be done... 'fairly', but more in a bataillian/"wild academic" framework than one of psychology.

I point you to Freud and Ernest Becker on the psychology of perversion. This is their use of the word not mine.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Someone having a disability is an accident of birth or happenstance.

I never said nature is at fault.

Then what are you saying? Did nature cause the disability or not?

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Access to and treatment by the Justice System is very much correlated with wealth, which has a very strong heritable component.

This is why we have public defenders, percentage payouts, pro bono, and charitable law organizations like the ACLU and Organization for Justice.

A very good example: suppose an employer docks your wages (illegally) by $100 and so you take $100 from the till. The ability for the employer to harm you with the Justice System just completely overwhelms your ability to redress your concerns. Like, both are theft. But the ability to steal are not equal.

Judges can award legal fees as part of a settlement in such cases.

Both of these are excellent examples of a problem and legitimate questions to pose in the conversation so I appreciate that I could address them and I thank you for providing them but they stop short of thinking past the problem to the remedy already provided.

 

[Lexicus]

Which individuals in our society are not free to make their own choices?

Virtually everyone who isn't a 14-year-old with rich parents?

Conservatism is the worst political idealogy except for all the others its vice is an unequal sharing of blessings in its inherent virtue while liberal progressivism is an equal sharing of miseries.

@Cutlass I need you to rebut this philosophizing

 

[El_Machinae]

This is why we have public defenders, percentage payouts, pro bono, and charitable law organizations like the ACLU and Organization for Justice.

Judges can award legal fees as part of a settlement in such cases.

Both of these are excellent examples of a problem and legitimate questions to pose in the conversation so I appreciate that I could address them and I thank you for providing them but they stop short of thinking past the problem to the remedy already provided.

Did you just imply that the remedy was sufficient? It's not (wage theft is ginormous, despite these remedies being available)). To suggest that it is would really just end the conversation The point is that people are not equally free. There's a component to the freedom that correlates with wealth, which has a large heritable trait, and this was just one example.

The only option is to recognize that it's not sufficiently acceptable and to improve things. After that, it's a conversation about process.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Did you just imply that the remedy was sufficient? It's not (wage theft is ginormous, despite these remedies being available)). To suggest that it is would really just end the conversation The point is that people are not equally free. There's a component to the freedom that correlates with wealth, which has a large heritable trait, and this was just one example.

The only option is to recognize that it's not sufficiently acceptable and to improve things. After that, it's a conversation about process.

How is this remedy not sufficient? I’ve been involved with “wage theft” cases involving minimum wage employees who didn’t pay a dime to be compensated for their wages, time, legal fees, and damages. Really not sure what more you could ask for here?

There are freedoms associated with everything related to birth that are inheritable, health, height, intelligence, attractiveness, and many many other factors.

Being as many do accept it as socially acceptable we can safely conclude it is not the only option to believe it is not socially acceptable. Let us not beg the question by embedding our value judgements as assumption of certainty within the presented conclusions that clearly not everyone agrees on.

I’m not ending the conversation I’m inviting you to consider the response and I appreciate your input.