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It's entirely reasonable to discuss the extent to which drugs themselves contribute to social problems, but by this point, I think it's reliably evident that dr
by Gormo 13y ago
It's entirely reasonable to discuss the extent to which drugs themselves contribute to social problems, but by this point, I think it's reliably evident that drug prohibition doesn't effectively address any social problems that might be attributed to drug use. Indeed, it's become clear that the social problems caused by prohibition are themselves more pervasive and more destructive than those caused by drugs themselves.
But it's still wrong to assume that drug use is inherently a social problem: there are plenty of people who can and do use drugs moderately, while still remaining peaceful and productive members of society, and these people are victims only of prohibition, not of the drugs themselves.
We should be careful about what we recognize as contributing factors to social problems at the macro level, especially where those influences affect the macro-level society only by way of willful human behavior. Everything might be rightly construed as a potential influence on human behavior, and anything taken to excess might inspire dangerous or irresponsible behavior; but it's very dangerous to treat human beings as fungible stimulus-response machines, and locate the nexus of responsibility for outcomes in the complex of external behavioral influences rather than in human agency itself. People should be held accountable for the actual, quantifiable harm they do to others, with consideration of what external influences contributed to their actions having only a role to play in deciding how to respond to people who actually are harming others.
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoWow. How long did it take for you to articulate the gem of a sentence "Everything might.. itself" and what have you majored in, really?
- Gormo 13y agoNot sure if you're being sarcastic here - I do have a tendency to sometimes overcomplicate the way I express ideas, but I'm not certain that particular sentence is exceptionally overwrought.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoI think that sentence is fine, although, if you look at my comment history, you might see that I'm prone to long ones myself. ;)
- Pitarou 13y agoOr, to put it another way: Leave off, man. It wasn't THAT bad! Sorry for piling on, but it's my prerogative as an English teacher, and Marcus Brutus has a point. Phrases like: it's very dangerous to treat human beings as fungible stimulus-response machines, and locate the nexus of responsibility for outcomes in the complex of external behavioral influences rather than in human agency itself are great for showing your college professor you've mastered the jargon, but they don't get you many Likes on Facebook. Why not just say: while there can be mitigating circumstances, I believe in personal responsibility
- DanBC 13y ago> and Marcus Brutus MarcusBrutus is mostly a troll.
- Gormo 13y agoI'm sure that one might find a more concise and elegant way of expressing the thoughts I attempted to convey in that sentence. But I hope you'll agree that reducing > Everything might be rightly construed as a potential influence on human behavior, and anything taken to excess might inspire dangerous or irresponsible behavior; but it's very dangerous to treat human beings as fungible stimulus-response machines, and locate the nexus of responsibility for outcomes in the complex of external behavioral influences rather than in human agency itself. to > while there can be mitigating circumstances, I believe in personal responsibility is at best an example of extremely lossy compression. That rewording gives at most a vague impression of what my position would be were the question reduced to a mere binary "are you for or against prohibition?" contest. I agree that concision is important, and I know that my earlier comment didn't quite achieve it, but I'd still regard concision as efficiency in the use of words: saying as much in fewer words, not using fewer words for its own sake, even if it means actually saying less.
- MarcusBrutus 13y agoActually I was not sarcastic at all. I really loved that sentence as I too have a penchant for long-winding sentences that are hard to parse but in closer inspection have no noise and every word in them is essential. Comes from my days of reading Aristotle where it is not uncommon to have a page of only two sentences. Or look at the Declaration of Independence or the Treaty of Paris for more recent examples of page-sized sentences. I think it shows how far downhill we've gone in terms of literacy or perhaps even mental capacity. Yours, while not in the same league, was a sentence I really liked and it never occurred to me that people might construe my comment as sarcastic.
- Gormo 13y agoApologies; my own writing style is influenced by reading a lot of eighteenth-century text, which tends to be very wordy, but which also seems to express a much higher precision of thought than the more terse modern fashions of writing. I've noticed that Pitarou's advice on rephrasing my original reply would reduce it to something much vaguer than I'd intended, and would simply convey the conclusion of my thought process as a simple yes-or-no response, leaving my actual rationale entirely hidden. I'm not entirely convinced that we've necessarily gone downhill in terms of literacy or mental capacity, but I agree that the outward expressiveness of language certainly has declined in comparison to the past, and this may be in part an explanation for the coarseness and contentiousness of much modern discourse.