[dead_battery]

if you want to talk about free will, then i say that the society that exercises its free will and sells the drug to the addict is responsible.


they have the free will to handle the drug without being compelled to consume it to excess. the alcoholic doesn't, and they know this, and they profit big time off him because of it. then they blame him and tell him to sit alone at home and just think about having free will harder. meanwhile the off licence is open. the pub is open. the alcohol is always there. he will always be sold it.

[dead_battery]

we are selling each other memetic constructs that describe a supernatural sense of will but omit the physical status of the brain, genome and body.

we are profiting off addiction and also profiting off the sobriety industry. the determination to quit industry.

it's a trap and it's evil and it's causing misery and suffering.

[dead_battery]

when i last had a job an alcoholic came in with a shitty phone he wanted to sell to us. we didn't buy it. my co worker knew him and knew that he had found the phone on the street. he told me that this alcoholic HAS NO ELECTRICITY in his home. he just sits and drinks in the dark or wanders the street looking for money or ways to get free booze.

i felt disgust at this guy, and my co worker expressed something similar in his tone of voice. and it's natural for us to behave like this because we're animals primed for social status. but at the same time, this poor fucking bastard is one of us. a human being! think of what other things he could be doing with his time!

imagine if we could STOP selling alcohol to people like this. imagine if we had the ability to collectively deny them their drug of choice.

thats the thing about addiction, unless its booze or skag or whatever, the withdrawal is usually easy. the fact is if the drug is not there, you just dont do it. eventually you're fine.

it's just not acceptable to me that its IMPOSSIBLE for us organize a way to stop addiction from destroying people

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

the fact is - we HAVE to recognize this as a collective ethical catastrophe and not an individual personal problem to be overcome by adjustment to life in a way that makes us hedonic and compliant.

of course you're right, but this is no cure for your immediate problem.

it's like having a house fire and complaining that the town lacks a properly funded fire department. all well and good! but first you have to make it to the city council alive to make that point.

and don't forget that the grassroots can also defeat top-down approaches. anti-smoking "fascism" (as it's called by its opponents, including me at one time) in america is growing by leaps and bounds thanks to a social movement that started with a few individuals and is now an established force.

consider then that when you quit smoking you remove a profit center from your enemies. when you teach that to someone else you remove two. then they teach that to someone else, and things can grow exponentially. yes, the struggles are infinite and endless but they have to be fought regardless, no?

[dead_battery]

yes. but as long as we decide it begins and ends with individuals not partaking, and structures that encourage and develop new addictions remain in place, we are fighting the same battle over and over again and never really getting anywhere.

[dead_battery]

lets say i quit - and lets say i dont die of an illness caused by all the damage i've already done. well good for me.

it just means the system that targeted me is now targeting another victim.

i was the kid who said i'd never smoke. i was the good kid who understood the rational arguments, understood that it was a fucking idiotic idea. i was very well educated.

and look what happened!

and of course everyone says "well that was your choice!".

post christian morality, we're all confronted with heaven and hell every moment and where we end up is entirely our responsibility.

something tells me that secular versions of this fantasy DO NOT WORK and DO NOT ACTUALLY STOP the fucking problem of addiction from occurring no matter how appealing and sensible they might sound.

[dead_battery]

you can't dangle something as appealing as a prohibited and intensely enjoyable way to die in front of a fucking human and expect them not to bite, then condemn them when they do! that's fucking sick!

then lecture them over and over again about how its all their free will and their choice! we're fucking dying animals! all we do is die! give us a way to do it that feels good and you can bet your fucking ass we'll take it! how could we resist?

[dead_battery]

btw im not trying to rant at symbol or anyone else specifically here

[!@#$%!]

im not saying that you should quit your social struggles. actually i find reading your comments refreshing but not just at the entertainment level, but rather-- in a way gets my brain unstuck from programming, i.e., excessive focus on the individual. and this influences my everyday choices and actions.

BUT there is an individual front regardless. you either fight it or abandon it. the fight doesn't end in that particular front, but who would you rather have occupying that biopower station? The merchants of death?

[!@#$%!]

yes i know.

[dead_battery]

fine. then lets not even talk about the individual perspective anymore.

you don't HAVE to bring it back to me in post after post.

-

seriously though - if saying "you have free will and its your own choice" sounds and perhaps even is quite sensible, but it in fact does not actually do anything to make the plague of addiction cease, then there is an ethical failure in not going further than that.

[!@#$%!]

the individual perspective is the one your house fire needs though. you can't wait until the city sees common sense and forms a fire brigade. aren't you desperate to quit? you quitting does not disqualify defeating the drug peddlers. there is more than one way to destroy them.

[!@#$%!]

ps- unless you wanna martyr yourself. but i don't think people will notice.

[dead_battery]

telling a knife wielding maniac not to stab someone is not enough. you can't just go "well gee officer, i told him not to stab all those people, what more do you want from me?"

if you are there and you can see he's gonna do it you have to tackle the fucker!

hey, you might not have a direct scan of the interior of his brain that would allow you to observe the cogitations and data that indicate "extreme psychosis, cortisol levels rising, imminent intent to stab random strangers". but you see him salivating and staring at people and hear him ranting about his mother and god planting bugs under his skin or whatever.

so you do the right thing and try and stop him.

i mean, when you see a man whose an alcoholic, you already know his kids are highly likely to have the same genes. we could screen them! we could stop alcohol from being sold to these people, or at least make it incredibly difficult. we could show them their genomes, we could explain to them. we could scan their brains and detect addiction before it starts. we could do all this ethically, and only resort to coercion if they break laws and do serious damage to others. we are smart enough to pull this off without becoming nazis.

but of course, we're post modern liberals with a christian heritage and an ideological dedication to "FREEDUMB!" and capitalism and if you fucking dare say anything that's like, uncool, you will be shouted down by the crowd with their fucking holy mantra "ENJOYMENT!". like its their fucking sieg heil.

you know how much EASIER it would be for me to quit if the shops wouldnt sell me the cigarettes? fucking hell!

and the argument that it wouldnt be impossible for me to get them is only half the truth. making it that difficult would make my battle so much easier. it would massively increase the statistical odds for success.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

what are the most money making products? the addictive ones. Gambling, porn, cigarrettes, food/sugar, ALCOHOL worst of all. Cash rules everything around the USA.

Yup. Sugar is probably the worst drug in America. Porn has become so damned insidious that its seemingly evolving human sexuality into wild directions (not perversion wise, I could careless what gets people off so long as its not children or corpses, I'm talking about clinical addictions that cost people jobs, houses, families, yikes!). Alcohol is probably involved one way or another with at least HALF of ALL deaths in the US. Half of all homicides. Half of all fatal car crashes. Half of all disease related deaths. Whoa...

The example we try to teach our children so it sticks with them in the rest of their lives is that life is about making wise choices. dead_battery is wrong. Life does have meaning, purpose, and value. It has nothing to do with religion, metaphysics, politics, economics, ideologies, philosophies, none of it.. What is the meaning of life? Learning to make valuable choices and understanding that actions inherently have consequences. Shit, this is is Newton's Third Law. Every action has an equal and/or opposite reaction.

How to make life meaningful? Make good choices. How to make hell out of this life? Make bad decisions.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

it means shit to me. i will stake my lonely little patch of bitter fucking dirt and scream over and over again about all this, .

Have you read Patrick Suskind's Parfum? Its not only my ALL-TIME favorite novel, EVER, but I think its PERFECT FOR YOU. I think you will readily relate to the main character and the insights of the narrator. Read it. In fact, you should read all of Suskind's books, they all have that same sense of what I describe as being "optimistically negative (e.g. negative without being cynical or pessimistic).. Its a unique perspective which I've never quite read or seen in any other people, aside from possible the Russian Orthodox Nihilist Seraphim Rose.

 

And don't even remotely glance at the movie without having first read the book, the movie is good but doesn't have the same negative magic.

[dead_battery]

good choices to me are a fucking vain pretension.

maybe they work as a kind of retrospective description of the way you lived. you chose a route to death that involved maximum peaceful co existence. you helped others, you worked and kept civilization going. you made things or fixed things or something. a good life.

this is what i want. but talking about choices and free will is folk psychological superstition, or just plain showing off.

talking about free will and choice as if they exist independently from reality, that thing which determines what options there are for a person, is just ethically irresponsible.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

How to make life meaningful? Make good choices. How to make hell out of this life? Make bad decisions.

TRUTH

[dead_battery]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Have you read Patrick Suskind's Parfum? Its not only my ALL-TIME favorite novel, EVER, but I think its PERFECT FOR YOU. I think you will readily relate to the main character and the insights of the narrator. Read it. In fact, you should read all of Suskind's books, they all have that same sense of what I describe as being "optimistically negative (e.g. negative without being cynical or pessimistic).. Its a unique perspective which I've never quite read or seen in any other people, aside from possible the Russian Orthodox Nihilist Seraphim Rose.

 

And don't even remotely glance at the movie without having first read the book, the movie is good but doesn't have the same negative magic.

never read it, although do know the film and the song very well.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

yeah yeah i hear this everywhere over and over again.

beauty - enjoyment. over and over again.

it means shit to me. i will stake my lonely little patch of bitter fucking dirt and scream over and over again about all this, and refuse to play the game of pretending to find an alternative but struggling and screaming about this shit until i annoy people so much they want to murder me.

if i die of lung cancer id like to have some tobacco exec kidnapped and someone to force my decomposing cancerous lungs down his fucking throat. that would be "enjoyable".

it makes me feel sick to even talk like i enjoy anything. and im pretty sure beauty and death are exactly the same thing for mammals like us.

It is not about beauty or enjoyment. making art is HARD WORK and not necessarily pleasurable. The joy comes from actively CREATING something.