House of Eratosthenes

There certainly is a culture built up around the wacky weed. It’s kind of like belaboring the obvious to even mention it, and as a consequence anyone who takes himself seriously has reservations about so mentioning. Part of the culture is that all other classes of person may be stereotyped, but pot smokers cannot be. Another part of the culture is to displace reasoned exchange of observations and inferences with theatrical indignation, until theatrical indignation is all that is left in the discourse.

This is one of many reasons why I’ve become so jaded about liberalism over the last several years. It isn’t quite so much what the liberals want to do (although lately, that has become much more reprehensible now that they don’t feel they need to compete with anyone). It’s how they want to go about arguing these things should be done. Every reasoned critique is met with “ZOMG! I can’t believe you just said that!!” — and then that’s it. So far, in my experience, that is exactly what pot smokers, and other members of the pot culture, do.

Well I shouldn’t say that; one of our good blogger friends feels pretty strongly about this and he’s managed to offer some personal anecdotes about people he’s known. But that is decidedly an exception — not the rule.

This is, I maintain, a big part of the reason why pot is still illegal. It isn’t quite so much that it makes sense to keep it illegal…and it damn sure doesn’t make sense to put the federal government in charge of keeping it illegal. The knuckle-rapping method of arguing, for all its benefits, has one serious drawback. It requires vibration and movement to succeed. You say “This thing we do is just so WRONG!!!” and, let’s say, one-third of all those listening will agree with you. Whoever isn’t swayed by all your horror and anger and angst, is going to remain unswayed…no matter what. To make some inroads into those other two-thirds, you have to have some kind of an event take place. Without a meaningful event taking place, you’re still back at one-third agreeing with you and two-thirds disagreeing with you, and you lose.

Liberals run everything today because they used all that theatrical phony shock-and-rage…plus some gimmicks. John Kerry tried the “It’s so awful about Abu Ghraib” plus the I’m-so-much-smarter-than-that-guy thing, and because he’s prune-faced, white, and arrogant as all holy hell, he fell j-u-s-t short of the mark. Then they brought in Barack Obama, who’s just so charismatic or whatever, plus you can’t ever disagree with Him or else you’re a racist. That put it over the top. So you can win with the phony “That’s just so terrible, so so terrible” thing, but you need to have some gimmicks with it.

My preference? As long as we’re all pretending to be oh-so-well informed and such wonderful-independent-thinkers, I wish we as a society would stick to our knitting and deliver on what we’re promising. As individuals, most of us don’t even have the gonads to notice things anymore, or to put ink or voice to what we’ve been noticing so others may see it. And that’s pretty fucking cowardly, when you think about it. It’s lately gotten to the point where you can’t even admit that men and women are different…and how silly is that, really?

Nope, in 2009 most of our arguing falls into the category of the Oh-help-me-deplore-that-that-guy-over-there-said-that-thing. All of it, with negligible exceptions, I would say. You don’t have to be a pot-smoker to rely exclusively on that, to such an extent that it becomes intellectually unhealthy. But based on my observations, it certainly does appear to help.

You confused me.

What was your point? Pot smoking is bad (agreed) the pro-arguments are bad (some what agreed), liberals suck (totally agree), arguing for legalization of personal use is scattered and incoherent (somewhat agree), the decriminalization of personal use is right, (oh, yes and I don’t use), liberals suck (on board with that).

I read your piece three times and failed to grasp the meat, Morgan. It could be my state of inebriation, forgive me, but what are you trying to say here? In, say, twenty words or less, make it plain.
- Daphne | 06/10/2009 @ 22:49
I blame the girlfriend. Sometimes she leaves for work so early, I’ve had all of, maybe, fifteen minutes of human interaction for the day before I’m blogging and exposing my nerdy thoughts to the entire innerwebs. I start skipping over some of the vitals. When the sun hasn’t come up yet, and I’m enjoying my coffee, feeling the brain cells wake up, sometimes it’s little tough to pull my head out of my ass and write so people can understand me. Sorry. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.

It comes down to this: There are two ways to argue any given point. You can use cause and effect, “In a society where anything goes, everything ultimately does”; or an even better example, “If you want more of something, subsidize it, if you want less of something, you tax it.”

The other way is to do what feminist-blogs do. “Look at that thing over there. Help me hate it.” It’s like penciling in the outline of something, as opposed to painting it in. EVERYTHING is left undefined: What happens if we do things the other guy’s way, what happens if we do things your way, what’s left open as a possibility, what’s wrapped up as a certainty. The “Wow look at that help me hate it” method doesn’t fill in any of this. It just deplores, and that’s it.

Now among the pot sympathizers, our friend in New Mexico has *balls* and I respect him enormously for it, because he gets down to the crux of things: These are the people he’s known who smoked pot, and they’re different from the people I’ve known. That bottom-lines it in short order because I can figure out, although we disagree, why that is: Different life experiences.

Others who are on his side of the argument, for the most part don’t do that. They just act like feminists. Look what that guy over there said; WOW. And isn’t that the pothead stereotype? Everything is, just, like, wow.

The original paradox I highlighted, which Gerard excerpted, was that the typical pothead mindset is sympathetic to nihilism, secular-humanism…liberalism. The paradox is — nobody put us here, so we’re not glorious, but nevertheless we have all these “rights.” Like you have to earn $8.25 an hour if you have a job at all. That mindset makes sense only to those with limited attention spans, who can concentrate on only one point at a time and therefore cannot detect these contradictions. And, to those who argue through the “OMG help me hate that thing over there” and never paint in the idea, never put some quality thinking into human behavior and cause-and-effect, only think in penciled outlines instead.

I have the same complaint about the younger generation, whether they’ve puffed or not. I’m not demanding much here — anytime you build something, or fix something, you gotta think this way anyway. But it’s fast becoming an alien way of thinking, in a world where everyone’s just pointing fingers and declaring aliens/enemies out of strangers. This is the depth of thinking in which one can engage, only to destroy things…or simply sit on one’s ass. It isn’t adequate for building something. It isn’t even adequate for simply preserving things. And yet we all share in this hope that our “economy” can be salvaged. How is that to happen, if our citizenry only knows how to destroy things now, and has completely forgotten how to create or to preserve things?
- mkfreeberg | 06/10/2009 @ 23:13
That was way more wordy than twenty five strokes, Morgan. You are one talky man. I wish you lived next door.

You over think an issue or position, on whole.

If you think the government has no business dictating personal choices on altering your conscientiousness in private, you have no problem with the means. If you think government has a right to interfere and legislate that buzz when it may affect others, socially or criminally, is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. I would argue the state has increasingly abused restrictive legislation to criminalize the people’s buzz even when it causes no harm to another’s body or property, whatever the substance.

I like getting drunk, I don’t drive or shoot the deer in my front yard while under the influence. I mind my own business financially, am no burden on another – hell, I actually support other’s to the tune of $50,000 tax dollars a year. If I chose pot or heroin for my buzz and maintained the same mellow and lifestyle, would you complain about my choice of anesthetic?

Doesn’t it all come back to personal responsibility? Not drug of choice? It’s all about how a man handles himself and his intoxicants. Some men are always failures, his drug of choice is just an easy blame for his fundamental lack of responsibility.
- Daphne | 06/11/2009 @ 00:05
There are two conversations going on here. One is, does pot damage your ability to think rationally? The other is, presuming the answer to #1 is yes, does government have any business criminalizing anything?

There’s something a little disingenuous in the way this stuff is argued. Those who call for an end to the War on Drugs, seem to be one inseparable unit. But they’re not. There are those who say that yes, pot *does* make you stupid…but you have an inalienable right to do stupid things. Perhaps ironically, I find their argument to be the most persuasive. But it’s a little strange so many of them have made this the hill they wanna die on…make the world safe for us to puff away on something that makes us dumb. Did I say a little strange? I meant really, really weird.

There are those who say pot makes you smarter. “Enhances your ability to concentrate.” They are activists in making pot legal. But not, from what I can see, in getting more people to smoke it. Which is what they’d be trying to make happen, if they meant it.

And the folks who say pot doesn’t do anything to your ability to think, either diminishing it or strengthening it. They think of pot the way I think of beer. But their behavior is a little inexplicable too. I life in California; if Georgia wants to outlaw beer on Sunday, or on all seven days, I couldn’t possible care less. What’s up with people who hold pot to be harmless, wanting to force everyone to make it legal?

My point is, these are three distinctly different factions within the pro-pot brigade. Their views are irreconcilable with one another, but we don’t see them that way. I just don’t think that’s reasonable.
- mkfreeberg | 06/11/2009 @ 00:15
I don’t get nihilism, secular humanism, or liberalism. Seriously, they don’t make sense to me on any level. They can’t even be part of this “how you get high” debate because they make no sense to me on any rationally cogent argumentative level, period.
- Daphne | 06/11/2009 @ 00:15
Just to register, I think pot is harmful, especially to young people. It stunts their emotional growth and warps their intellectual capacities. I think smoking pot is bad, but I have a hard time advocating for criminalization for adults wanting to burn a bowl at home Saturday (Wednesday) night rather than hit the Jack’s distillery on their back porch.

I’m not sure I like the government gate keeping our high and filling our prisons with people who’ve never harmed another soul.
- Daphne | 06/11/2009 @ 00:27
Since I’ve had my go around here before on this subject, (legalize it), I just need to say a couple of things and expand on Daphne’s points; isn’t keeping government out of our lives a Conservative principle?

Also, the legality issue should be put to rest considering abortion is legal. I mean, abortion is wrong, say I and most Conservatives, but yet it’s legal. We can’t have it both ways.

Being legal or illegal isn’t the point, legislating what people do in their own homes, harming no one doesn’t seem to me to be something Conservatives should be on the side of.

Lastly, anyone who drinks should shut their piehole about anyone smoking a jay. Alcohol destroys more lives every year than any illegal drug, yet I don’t hear people yelling to bring back Prohibition.

Now, everyone have a laugh –

http://tammybruce.com/2009/06/we_made_brownies.php#comments
- tim | 06/11/2009 @ 09:26

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Proving My PointWednesday, June 10th, 2009

Proving My Point
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009