Evil? Now, perhaps. Later? Not so much.

[MSimon]

And by the way, this thread is NOT about drug use, it is about the evolution of social mores to eventually permit conduct currently considered reprehensible.

First there was alcohol, then there was no alcohol, and then there was.

Evidently over a long enough time period social mores are malleable. There don't seem to be many universal truths. Even murder was once widely practiced against the out group. Theft and robbery as well.

[Diogenes]

As an example of social complexity, inbreeding has consequences that do not become obvious until a great deal of time has passed, after which people recognize that it is a bad thing. They don't know WHY it is a bad thing, they just know that it is.

Except we know now why it's a bad thing.

But you don't know that legal drugs are a bad thing because you haven't lived long enough to discover it, and are unable to apply the lesson of what happened to China. That is my point exactly! The Consequences are too far away from the initiating event!

And if we could avoid the bad consequences, the reason to call it a bad thing would be gone entirely.

One would think so, but I think that is an oversimplification. There are a lot of people who argue that the invention of "the pill" opened the doors to the sexual revolution. The "pill" made it possible to have sex without consequences, and as a result boys and girls started having sex like crazy. Prior to that, sex outside of marriage was dangerous because of the likelihood of pregnancy, but the "pill" made it safe for people to have sex without commitment.

It became so popular, and people did it so often (developed the habit) that they forgot occasionally to use the pill, and accidentally got pregnant. Realizing how inconvenient that was, they decided it was unfair that they should have to suffer for their accidental mistake, so they concluded that the baby they were carrying wasn't really a living human being, but instead was some sort of gooey parasite that could be excised for their convenience. (Rationalization.)

Eventually the laws were changed by Activist Liberal judges in complete opposition to the will of the people, and now the lifestyle is common place. Marriage is no longer necessary for men to have sex with women, and males are no longer necessary for raising children. Children grow up just fine without a male role model. Women don't need husbands to love them when they are too old to be attractive for sex, they are happy being single and alone.

Yes, once we eliminated the "bad thing" (fertility)which was preventing us from having all the sex we want outside of commitment, there is no reason to call the behavior "bad" any longer.

And the world is a much better place for it.

I'm happy to oblige with some quoted context:

I have long thought that were it not for the fact that Science has progressed so much over the last 50 years, most homosexuals would have died of a horrible unknown disease, and the surviving heterosexual population would have a social reinforcement of why such behavior is bad. (it kills people who engage in it.)

Thanks to Modern Medicine and Modern communications, the pathogen was identified, and the word was spread world wide. In the absence of either of these two circumstances, I dare say AIDS would have got virtually all of them.

Even if that were true, which I highly doubt: if science gives us the tools to avoid bad consequences, or explains that it is a specific, identifiable behaviour (promiscuity, lack of awareness of STDs, re-using needles, etc.) which has bad consequences, there is no reason to condemn by association those which do not engage in such behaviour. "Homosexuality" does not spread AIDS.

Yes, and malaria is caused by a parasite, not by mosquitos.

One of my ongoing arguments with MSimon is the peculiar statistic that the 2% of the population that appears to be homosexuals make up far more than their fair share of the child molestation cases. I don't remember the numbers at the moment, but I think they were along the lines of 20% of all molestations are homosexual.

So what? The crime is still molestation, not "homosexual behaviour".

Yes, the crime is Terrorism, not Islamic extremism. We should not profile terrorists, but consider little girls and grannies just as dangerous as Jihadist Mullahs.


I seriously do not think I can reach you on this point. It is a common belief that just because someone believes in and practices one sort of aberrant sexual behavior does not mean that they will go beyond that particular flavor, and try to taste another flavor.

I would argue, that if you are of a mind to desire penile insertion of an adult male rectum, why should you object to that of a little boy? (And the numbers support this point) Is there really a clear boundary between the first behavior and the second?

You may argue "But Society Objects!" To which I respond, Society objected for thousands of years to the first conduct, but those who engaged in it anyways disdained society's objections in that case, so why should they respect society's objections in the second?

You may further argue "But it is illegal!" To which I respond, the first conduct was illegal too, but that didn't stop them. Unless they have a real fear of getting caught and punished, illegality is a non-concern to those who engage in such behavior.

Witness the stories coming out about all the boy molestation lately. Here is another recent one.

[KitemanSA]

I think you are like many people, you want to believe what you want to believe, and you don't like for people to poke holes in the protective bubble that surrounds your world. Sorry, but I tend to be a prick.

And yet you are losing the battle.

It is your inability to discriminate. You have difficulty telling the difference between bad and worse.

More to the point, he seems to have difficulty distinguishing between "bad" and "wrong".

[KitemanSA]

Diogenes, you're of the view that if we pretend these things don't exist they'll magically go away? Hollywood is pointing these atrocities out so that people will take action against them, not condone them. If you really think things will simply stop being if you ignore them, then I suggest you ignore threads like these about drug use....it'll just go away right?

Actually, in this particular case, the thread WOULD probably go away. Not the issue, but almost cetainly the thread. Maybe even many of the other similar threads.

Lack of opponent leads to lack of "fight thread".

[Diogenes]

And by the way, this thread is NOT about drug use, it is about the evolution of social mores to eventually permit conduct currently considered reprehensible.

First there was alcohol, then there was no alcohol, and then there was.

Evidently over a long enough time period social mores are malleable. There don't seem to be many universal truths. Even murder was once widely practiced against the out group. Theft and robbery as well.

There was this thing that happened called the "enlightenment." Seeing as how it was before our time, perhaps you had forgotten about it?

Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Burke, Newton, etc.

Yes, social mores are malleable, and people have managed to mold them for a long while till they had achieved what seems to be an optimal peak, after which others have started to push it down hill back towards barbarity.

Civilization is like a resonate Q peak. Nowadays, everyone is trying to de-tune it.

[Diogenes]

I think you are like many people, you want to believe what you want to believe, and you don't like for people to poke holes in the protective bubble that surrounds your world. Sorry, but I tend to be a prick.

And yet you are losing the battle.

It is your inability to discriminate. You have difficulty telling the difference between bad and worse.

More to the point, he seems to have difficulty distinguishing between "bad" and "wrong".

You cannot seem to fathom how the one relates to the other. Your scope of view is just too truncated to examine the big picture.

Even with the real world example of China, you can't see the eventual consequences of your ideas.

[KitemanSA]

But you don't know that legal drugs are a bad thing because you haven't lived long enough to discover it, and are unable to apply the lesson of what happened to China. That is my point exactly! The Consequences are too far away from the initiating event!

Obviously there never was the "lesson from China" since you refuse to learn it. You often mis-state it, but that basically proves there wasn't one.

[Diogenes]

Diogenes, you're of the view that if we pretend these things don't exist they'll magically go away? Hollywood is pointing these atrocities out so that people will take action against them, not condone them. If you really think things will simply stop being if you ignore them, then I suggest you ignore threads like these about drug use....it'll just go away right?

Actually, in this particular case, the thread WOULD probably go away. Not the issue, but almost cetainly the thread. Maybe even many of the other similar threads.

Lack of opponent leads to lack of "fight thread".

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but this current exchange is the result of my posting news stories to which people felt they had to respond. I would have been perfectly content to just post my articles without someone wanting to argue with me about them.

Propaganda works just fine without rebuttal.

[KitemanSA]

And yet you are losing the battle.

It is your inability to discriminate. You have difficulty telling the difference between bad and worse.

More to the point, he seems to have difficulty distinguishing between "bad" and "wrong".

You cannot seem to fathom how the one relates to the other.

Simple, you can't do good by doing wrong.

Your scope of view is just too truncated to examine the big picture.

Even with the real world example of China, you can't see the eventual consequences of your ideas.

Since you seem to have no idea what really happened in China, your supposed lesson is meaningless. China is a classic example of bad state control of drug use.

[Diogenes]

But you don't know that legal drugs are a bad thing because you haven't lived long enough to discover it, and are unable to apply the lesson of what happened to China. That is my point exactly! The Consequences are too far away from the initiating event!

Obviously there never was the "lesson from China" since you refuse to learn it. You often mis-state it, but that basically proves there wasn't one.

If you are unable to even see it, you certainly cannot learn it. The lesson is this. Allow people to have unfettered access to drugs, and in a hundred years, you will have a 50% addiction rate. The nation will be unable to defend itself from either external or internal forces, and the chaos will result in a dictatorship.

I no longer recall if it is you that asserts China's problems were caused by the British "pushing" the drug, but if so, in my opinion that is just stupid nonsense. The Drug needs no pushers. It shows an exponential growth curve regardless of what you do.

[KitemanSA]

Diogenes, you're of the view that if we pretend these things don't exist they'll magically go away? Hollywood is pointing these atrocities out so that people will take action against them, not condone them. If you really think things will simply stop being if you ignore them, then I suggest you ignore threads like these about drug use....it'll just go away right?

Actually, in this particular case, the thread WOULD probably go away. Not the issue, but almost cetainly the thread. Maybe even many of the other similar threads.

Lack of opponent leads to lack of "fight thread".

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but this current exchange is the result of my posting news stories to which people felt they had to respond. I would have been perfectly content to just post my articles without someone wanting to argue with me about them.

Propaganda works just fine without rebuttal.

So why do you insist on rebutting? You post, they comment, end of thread. But you WANT this thread. Any implication that you don't is disingenuous.

[Diogenes]

More to the point, he seems to have difficulty distinguishing between "bad" and "wrong".

You cannot seem to fathom how the one relates to the other.

Simple, you can't do good by doing wrong.

Spanking a child is wrong because it hurts the child? I think it does good in the long run.

Your scope of view is just too truncated to examine the big picture.

Even with the real world example of China, you can't see the eventual consequences of your ideas.

Since you seem to have no idea what really happened in China, your supposed lesson is meaningless. China is a classic example of bad state control of drug use.

Exponential drug usage happened in China. I argue that it is an inherent aspect of drug usage. What do you argue?

[Diogenes]

Actually, in this particular case, the thread WOULD probably go away. Not the issue, but almost cetainly the thread. Maybe even many of the other similar threads.

Lack of opponent leads to lack of "fight thread".

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but this current exchange is the result of my posting news stories to which people felt they had to respond. I would have been perfectly content to just post my articles without someone wanting to argue with me about them.

Propaganda works just fine without rebuttal.

So why do you insist on rebutting? You post, they comment, end of thread. But you WANT this thread. Any implication that you don't is disingenuous.

The clash of ideas requires confrontation. Apparently humanity still likes to use the "trial by combat" standard of determining the truth. Those who do not fight, lose.

[KitemanSA]

[ Since you seem to have no idea what really happened in China, your supposed lesson is meaningless. China is a classic example of bad state control of drug use.

Exponential drug usage happened in China. I argue that it is an inherent aspect of drug usage. What do you argue?[/quote] Exponential drug use happened when China effectively made it an English monoploy to provide drugs after making, by stupid government tricks, recouperating their trade deficit impossible by any other means.

England had a BIG impetus to push drugs on the chinese and they did, big time.

The fact that conditions were hell for the chinese general population probably had a lot to do with it too.

Said conditions don't really apply to the US at this time, though the war on drugs and US interferance over seas may push us to that point before TOO long.

[Diogenes]

Since you seem to have no idea what really happened in China, your supposed lesson is meaningless. China is a classic example of bad state control of drug use.

Exponential drug usage happened in China. I argue that it is an inherent aspect of drug usage. What do you argue?

Exponential drug use happened when China effectively made it an English monoploy to provide drugs after making, by stupid government tricks, recouperating their trade deficit impossible by any other means.

You do not recall that China set up thousands of opium farms in an effort to produce home grown product so as to undercut the British/Indian import product? China set out to capture as large of a share of the market that it could, in an effort to drive the price down and make it uneconomical for the British to continue.

Fighting Fire With Fire
China reluctantly decided to destroy the Western opium trade by flooding the market with domestic opium. It was a painful decision, for Chinese rulers held that production of opium, for any reason, would “provoke the judgment of Heaven and the condemnation of men.”
It certainly provoked Britain’s condemnation, which resented China’s infringement upon her private opium monopoly. By 1876, China was earning over 1.5 million annually from opium, but Sir R. Alcock told the House of Commons that China would gladly abandon the trade if Britain stopped her own trafficking.

China’s Death Rattle
The ranks of addicts now swelled with women and children. In 1889, Mr. Samuel Smith declared before the House of Commons, “one thing is certain: unless the vice is combated, China will commit something like national suicide and her population will succumb to pauperism, famine and death.” He asked Britain to make a sacrifice by ending the trade, for “nothing ennobles a nation more than to make sacrifices for a great cause.”


Britain’s ennobling response was the Royal Opium Commission’s 2,556 page report, which concluded that opium was no worse than alcohol and, furthermore, “there is no evidence from China of any popular desire that the import of Indian opium should be stopped.”
China’s Viceroy, Chang Chih-Tung, begged to differ. In 1896, he wrote in “China’s Only Hope”:
Cast out the poison! The foreign drug is debasing the homes and sweeping away the lives of our people.
“It is not foreign intercourse that is ruining China, but this dreadful poison. Oh, the grief and desolation it has wrought to our people! Opium has spread with frightful rapidity and heartrending results through the provinces. Millions upon millions have been struck down by the plague…The ruin of the mind is the most woeful of its many deleterious effects. The poison enfeebles the will, saps the strength of the body, renders the consumer incapable of performing his regular duties, and unfit for travel from one place to another. It consumes his substance and reduces the miserable wretch to poverty, barrenness, and senility…Many thoughtful Chinese are apprehensive that opium will finally extirpate the race…”

In 1901, French writer and Naval officer Pierre Loti wrote, “China is dying of this poison.” In 1906, a memorial to the Emperor claimed,
“China can never become strong and stand shoulder to shoulder with the powers of the world, unless she can get rid of the habit of opium smoking by her subjects, about one-quarter of whom have been reduced to skeletons and look half dead.” (China Times, Jan. 16, 1906)

England had a BIG impetus to push drugs on the chinese and they did, big time.

The fact that conditions were hell for the chinese general population probably had a lot to do with it too.

Said conditions don't really apply to the US at this time, though the war on drugs and US interferance over seas may push us to that point before TOO long.

Pushing does not cause addiction. It is the availability of the addictive substance which causes addiction. You can try pushing carrots on people, but as they are not addictive, pushing will have no effect.

Here is a good summary of the History of China/Britain and Opium. You really ought to read it if you are going to discuss this issue.


http://www.amoymagic.com/OpiumWar.htm