From: Case (Case@iSpots.com)
Date: Sat Oct 22 2005 - 06:27:43 BST
>> > Platt:
>> > I agree. Why aren't booze, cigarettes and drugs all treated the same?
>> > Either ban them all, or legalize them all I say.
>>
>> Mike:
>> Well, we all know how counter-productive Prohibition was...
>[Platt]
> Right. So let's go with legalization.
[Case]
At last an issue that transends the right/left barrier. The parallels
between prohibition and "the war on drugs" are striking. Prior to
prohibition people drank mostly beer and wine. By the time prohibition ended
people had switched to hard liquor because it is pound for pound easier to
smuggle. Today coke, meth and whatever are serious problems because they are
most profitable pound for pound than pot. During prohibition people who got
hold of the wrong batch of gin developed permanant conditions resembling
parkinsons. Same happens today as a result of the work of poor chemists.
During prohibition the gangsters and organized crime gained power fueled by
barrels of money. Today whole countries are ruled by drug lords and violence
in our streets is rampant. The list goes on.
"... when will they ever learn? when will they ever learn?" - Pete Seeger
[Platt]
> Hmmm. I wonder why, if drugs are so useful, why Pirsig wrote: "Things like
> sex and booze and drugs and- tobacco have a high biological quality, that
> is, they feel good, but are harmful for social reasons. They take all your
> money. They break up your family. They threaten the stability of the
> community."
>
> As you and others have pointed out, drugs can be highly dangerous, like
> playing with fire. Nor am I convinced that taking drugs leads to any
> greater insights about reality than other "losing self" activities you
> mention. To be convinced that one has somehow broken through to a
> "higher" state of consciousness while on drugs seems dubious to me, just
> as dubious as those who believe they were abducted by aliens. Anyway, hard
> to prove one way or another that drug-induced reality is the "real"
> reality, nor that it's much different than the experience of "born again"
> which is usually obtained without the aid of drugs.
[Case]
I would love to explain how drugs, sex, booze and tobacco are primary
reinforcers like food, shelter and air. But last time I did you accussed me
of blathering psychological mumbo jumbo. Nevertheless primary reinforcement
is exacly what Pirsig is talking about when he refers to "biological
quality". In his account of his response to the Bozeman faculty Pirsig says
this:
"The easiest intellectual analogue of pure Quality that people in our
environment can understand is that `Quality is the response of an organism
to its environment' (he used this example because his chief questioners
seemed to see things in terms of stimulus-response behavior theory)."
Here and in much of the discussion surrounding this account he identifys
Quality with "reinforcement history". I find it ironic that Pirsig is as
concerned as he is with insanity and the treatment of insanity but he ignors
psychology almost entirely. There are many areas where psychology could play
an important role in the MoQ. Reinforcement theory is just one. The spit
brain studies of Sperry reveal a fundemental division in the structure of
the brain that sounds an aweful lot like DQ vs SQ. Not to mention brain
structures that mirror the four levels of SQ (which I still disagree with,
btw.)
Beyond this, drugs, especially psychadelics, produce the kind of wiping away
of all static patterns the Pirsig talks about in connection with mystical
states and insanity. He does talk disparagingly of their hedonistic use but
not of their sacremental use.
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