From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Oct 27 2005 - 12:42:02 BST
Hi Rebecca,
> Rebecca:
> This is vaguley related to what you said above, but it's kind of a non
> sequiter... anyhow, I was sitting in the pavilion in the park the other day
> on my way home from school and having a smoke of one description or
> another... and i was thinking about drugs and alcohol and such. And I
> remember Pirsig writing something about drugs having 'high biological
> quality'... and low social quality... (damned if i can't find the text in
> Lila), and I was thinking that that relation is wrong. Drugs have very LOW
> biological quality and HIGH social quality. Cigarettes are pretty gross,
> physically - they make you sort of nauseous if you don't smoke all the
> time, they (apparently) give you cancer, and that's not high biological
> quality. We smoke cause it's cool -- mostly for social reasons. Same with
> alcohol.
As a smoker and drinker for many years I can assure that both felt good
biologically, acting as a poor man's substitute for tranquilizers.
> You don't really have high biological quality there either -
> alcohol is poison. It's the social quality you get from drinking (the
> social lubricant effect). Some of these things are becomming more or less
> 'officially' accepted, but let me tell you where I'm from smoking is
> definitely socially accepted and even encouraged (that whole Tobacco
> country thing). And the popularity of drinking hasn't gone down too much
> that I can see...
Compared to the U.S. smoking is rampant In Europe and I presume other
places around the world. Also I gather that drinking by college students
hasn't abated much. Guess it depends on where you are and who you hang out
with.
Platt
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