Karl

I did once, then I realised it was really skating on awfully thin ice and I have an aversion to cold water and drowning. :-) Remember that you are holding your own view as an absolute truth-don't lose sight of that-it's attached to something. You might need it.

I agree to a degree. I think I mentioned before that I wrote to Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods regarding the principle of non aggression and its relationship with aggressors. I wanted to know how they judged that aggressive defence was appropriate and at what point they applied it. I didn't get an answer and I know why. The entire libertarian philosophy is no better than any other including anarcho capitalism in its underpinnings it is irrevocably flawed. The problem is that we do need an authority, but only in respect of the protection of our inalienable rights and the prosecution of justice with respects to the trespass against those rights. We have to appoint someone to be judge and executioner and we can't get away without doing so. It's this authority that we choose to appoint to others and to thereby give up our own summary judgement to a court/jury. Once we give away that freedom to declare our own justice and provide for our own defence, then we end up with a country not of law, but of men. You could never be entirely sure of each mans idea of law and justice when trading or dealing.

This is where the well gets a bit cloudy. It about the law and justice. I'm trying really hard not to create strawmen but I can't deny that this substance is harmful, it does have impacts even if I have no way of measuring them. I can't agree to ban it, but then I'm not minded to formally legalise it either-other than for medicinal use. I can come up with a million what if's and I have a sense that using recreational drugs is just morally wrong and that we should not be seeking to make it seem acceptable, normal and safe. This does clash quite badly with my philosophy in that I don't require the state to do anything other than provide law and justice-the problem is that we are already in the hell hole of the state deciding morality and denying the need for personal moral responsibility and reason. You are right that people have to make the decision for themselves, but in our current situation I don't think many have that faculty, indeed the state and corporations very much rely on the fact that they don't. If the state regulated atom bombs, Anthrax and nerve agents, you just know there would be a market for them and someone to supply the loan to get them. Amused to death is what flashes through my mind. However, let them kill themselves, but don't let them take me or mine along with them.

Are you telling me you are voluntarily disappearing up your own backside :-) well, I suppose, whatever floats your boat. I shall stand here with both feet planted firmly on the deck, I always follow the old adage not to depart the vehicle whilst it is still in motion.

I don't wrestle with myself it seems a pointless waste of energy. I watched fight club and that pretty much nails it. Everybody fucks up, but not everyone learns from fucking up. You are old enough.......well you know the rest ;-)

That's just a constitutional cop out, it's not about authority but morality. Would you give it to your kids, would you be happy for your airline pilot to be 'just a little chilled ou' or the Doctor performing surgery on your wife to 'have a little weed to calm his nerves' ?

That's because you don't have a choice. Your free.

You and that bloody middle path :-) A hedonist is someone that chooses pleasure as the value, but as pleasure is the result of obtaining a value the hedonist has it all back to front. They are chasing a phantom. You cannot really eat with your eyes, but that's what the hedonist is trying to do. You aren't that. You aren't the robot or the tyrant either. Neither should you attempt to walk a line between these extremes, all you get is the position you are now in. Wrestling yourself into a big ball.

It wouldn't be self though would it ? If you have the realisation that there is no self because you cannot own that energy of self, then self is gone and so has any motivation along with it. You could no longer hold any opinion on self because there would be no self to hold any opinions.

I know, but I stopped you evading and brought you down to earth on the implications of that line of thought. That's what I meant in the other post. You can evade, but you cannot evade the consequences of doing so. In contrast to the tyrant is the omniscient, indestructable robot that requires nothing at all. This would be the alternative for being free from choice. This robot would have no need to do anything at all, it could not even kill itself, it would exist forever devoid of feelings, passions, or creativity.

Was it Woody Allan that stated that 'eternity was a very a long time except at the very end'

whos is it and why do you think it's liberating ?

That's the communistic version. The communist party make the choices for you, thus freeing you up from all those nasty, horrible, unpleasant choices. Utopia. Tyrants of all shapes and sizes do the same and of course slave owners that are really just doing the slaves a favour by freeing them from those oppressive choices. Orwell said it best 'freedom is slavery'. You seem to agree with Big Brother.

So your argument for legalising cannabis is that 'some drugs are worse' ? My niece lost her mind after taking cannabis. Now it may be true that cannabis on,y contributed to what was inevitable anyway, but now we won't know because she did take it and the results were both catastrophic and immediate. Many of the 'so called' terrorists have been long time cannabis users. Not all terrorists use cannabis, but some do, it can't be ruled out. It is addictive despite the myth it isn't. Weed users can be very lethargic and have poor short term memory. There is evidence that it can reduce IQ by a few points. It certainly could make it difficult for someone to find employment, or to perform adequately enough to hold down a job. Indeed on of our sales reps who had several car accidents and who's performance fell apart was dismissed and later admitted that this has been a result of taking weed. So, losing ones house, as losing ones job isn't out of the question, then let's look at the four accidents he had ! Another friend of mine, back in the 70s smoked a ton of weed, then got on his bike and was killed in an accident with a truck. The Police were very confused at the scene of the accident. A witness said that he had appeared to have slumped down across the bike seconds before impact, the Police discover his gauntlet on the road several hundred yards before he had crashed. They concluded that in his inebriated state, he had dropped the glove, reached down to pick it up and veered across the road. It isn't harmless guys.

Is what ?

Isn't vulnerability a weak point. A flaw which can fracture the whole ? Get them fixed pronto.

It's only an argument that the Bible is in error though. Same as dinosaurs aren't mentioned, but 'creatures' are. That's not to say you are wrong, but it's a very weak argument that a Scholarly Christian would wipe out in a second.

What is, is.

You equivocated on the word 'free'. That's because you arent defining it. You are using it in an arbitrary and fluid way to mean different things. You are not free from nature because you are part of nature. If you see yourself as you are then it's clear. I've said previously that you have refused to integrate two opposing philosophies and where they interface you find yourself in a quandry. You have chosen that ;-)

It is flawed logic to offer 'conditioning' of the mind as a refutation of freedom. This speaks to Plato's forms once again. Freedom being an intangible something otherworldly than man has but a pale representation of, an illusion. Freedom is freedom from coercion. Reason can only be applied when there is no coercive force being used on a human being. it comes down to this 'don't hurt people or steal their stuff'. Freedom, in this sense is purely a political concept. A mans rights are to his life, his property and his freedom to pursue happiness. As this pertains to every man equally the ramifications are that one man may not steal, enslave, threaten, incarcerate or otherwise prevent another man exercising their own equal rights. Freedom is freedom for a man to use his mind, it has nothing at all to do with what the man thinks, only that he is free to think. Freedom is therefore purely about the external. Yet man is not free from gravity, the need to eat, to breathe. He is no free of the potential to fail in an endeavour, to flounder, to get disease, or grow old and die. These things man cannot choose and is not free to choose, so freedom, where there is choice, is purely freedom from the coercion of other men and of himself on other men. I will be neither my brothers keeper, nor he mine.

I don't profess to be. I'm just a concerned bystander in this. I wasn't a professional when I held the opinion that it should be legalised either. I used to use it myself, but not any more, I prefer to dispense with those kind of mood altering/consciousness altering substances unless they have some benefit, but I see none.

@ralis. I agree that it has qualities which can benefit those with certain illnesses. I'm not anti-drug, only anti a lax attitude that it's harmless when it isn't. It's one of the grey areas for me in a moral sense-as is the law on guns. It's one of those things which requires a law/laws/rules because the population has been turned into mindless sheep who are told that morals are whatever the state says they are, so, if you put cannabis and flame throwers on the supermarket shelf, people will buy them and some will use them indiscriminately . Yet, it's also true, that no matter what the law is, people will get hold of things anyway. I don't find this to be an easy thing to answer. In a world where the state wasn't involved in every aspect of a persons life, where adults became adults instead of being 'forever children' then I'd say open the flood gates, engage the law for those who harm others and that would be that. However, just look at today's young adults and their parents. How many are on drugs like Ritalin and fed it on a routine basis because the state pronounces it safe. Young adults seem incredibly informed in respect of my own experience of youth, but completely devoid of sense in other ways.

Ive been on both sides of this argument. There are statistics used on both sides to support their arguments. All I will say is, that it isn't a harmless drug. It caries a risk with its use regardless of the level of that risk. It's also a lovely product for the tobacco companies to get hold of now their 'harmless tobacco' has lost popularity. It is also a great product to apply taxation to fill shortfalls in Government treasuries. There are as many people wanting it legalised as don't. It isn't a clear case of Governments creating laws against the people-in the UK it's virtually legal anyway. Governments are just going with the popularity of criminalisation of certain behaviours. It's just as bad when the state legalised something such as tobacco and then we have massive lobbies and paid politicians arranging all manner of 'proof' to support the agenda. No one is in any doubt these days as to the dangers of smoking, but there was a time when there was more than a little doubt as to the states intentions-particularly after prohibition. I'm trying to be objective, it would be easier if drugs only featured in sad stories of personal/family bust ups, but they feature in many more high profile crimes. That doesn't mean that they specifically are correlated, but neither does it say that there isn't some effect, even if that is a small reduction in IQ for a long term user, that sees his life prospects reduced to the point of experiencing depression. I don't have an answer, nor have I yet found convincing research that shows conclusively one way or another, but let's not kid ourselves that it's just a natural plant that we can take without any long term affects what so ever. Let's treat it like any other drug be it alcohol, coffee or Asprins and neither glorify, or demonise it until we really do know the implications of setting it loose on supermarket shelves as if it was nothing more than a a sprig of parsley, or some tofu.

Because we have conceptual cognition we must first choose to live, but we don't often have the choice to die unless our lives are no longer of sufficient value to continue, which means that circumstances have become overwhelmingly bad-which is a position we would rather not consider. Pain or death is what it comes down to-either physical or, mental pain and anguish. Oblivion isn't easy for a human, sure we want 'out' of a painful, unsustainable place, but annihalation of our consciousness seems unreasonably drastic. Yet, every night we fall into bed and many of us do precisely that, without a moments concern. If we have an operation we want to be anaesthetised so we feel nothing at all, a full anaesthetic is fairly close to the state of death, yet we accept it and we accept the anaesthetist who sends us to oblivion with full surety that we will wake at the end, but the final thought, that perhaps we won't wake up, but that we won't know anything about it anyway. It's a funny relationship we have with death. I don't fear death at all, but I fear the circumstances leading up to death. I've had some nasty pains-a kidney stone was sufficient to have me begging for oblivion after two hours of rolling around in a small tent during a camping trip to the wilds. Probably why I don't care much for camping these days. I fear all kinds of disease and disability, yet I go out and ride my motorcycle until the tyres a worn to the edges knowing that the risk is high that I can have an accident-but in a sense this is an antidote to the potential of a grindingly slow illness. Anyway, thought I would share :-) I don't believe in a life after death in any sense or form and anyway it would be like a band doing one encore too many of a song no one much cared for, I feel I may be forced to boo.

De ja vu ......the TB matrix changed something.