🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <oZ%b2.2041$961....@server1.news.adelphia.net>,
  tabmok99....@damnspaz.com (]{0MBAT) wrote:

> > Isn't a person a "thing" aswell?
> No.

Hang on.  You went on to say some other things, but didn't justify your
answer.  Why is a person not a "thing"?

> > And what do you know, boxing is legal.
> What are you trying to say?  That making drugs legal wouldn't get more people
> to use them?  When below/before, you admit that drugs would become
> commonplace.

No, i'm saying that despite boxing being legal alot of people wouldn't want
to do it because of the risks.	It would be the same for drugs.  They would
become commonplace - boxing is commonplace too - but they wouldn't be
all-encompassing.  If that makes sense.  I mean, there would still be people
who didn't care for them.

> This isn't about placing blame.  Yeah, that would be your fault cuz you coulda
> just downloaded the MP3 or whatever :P  But drugs are addictive.  And if you
> try to say something like CDs or corn flakes are addictive too, well look at
> nicotine.  'Nuff said.

Seriously, i get REALLY depressed if i don't hear any new music every week or
two.  Now luckily there is a cheap alternative - i can go to parties instead
of buying CDs...  I can browse the web for other amateur musicians and listen
to MP3s or RAs.  I can listen to RAs on www.x-radio.com ...  I don't think
there's anything wrong with feeling the way i do - i just love music, and i
love to hear what's out there (even if it's shit).  I can totally understand
people who feel the same way about their drug of choice.

> And these "frivolous lawsuits" could have been prevented if cigarettes and
> stuff were never grown in the first place.
>

But that AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN.  There is NO WAY you will destroy all drugs. 
Okay, i will admit it, if every single illicit drug in the world disappeared
into a wormhole and never came back, and everyone who had knowledge of how to
manufacture/grow them disappeared forever...  If that happenned, there would
be alot less death and suffering in the world.	(There'd also be arguably
alot less fun, but that's debateable).	But IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.	There
is NO way we can do that.  Even if we gave the death penalty for having a
marijuana seed stuck to chewing gum on the bottom of your shoe there would
still be people who used it.  You cannot get rid of drugs, you can only deal
with them as best possible - and the best way to deal with them is to
legalize.

> Well think about the peole who have been smoking since they were pre-teens and
> are too far into it.

I was smoking for 6 years before now.  Yes, i started smoking pre-teen as
well (if you consider 12 to be pre-teen).  I quit.  People CAN quit.  It's
not easy, but it can be done.  The physical addiction is only part of it -
crack the psychological addictino and the rest follows.

> Maybe you didn't know this, but smoking was actually
> advertized as *healthy* in the mid-30's or so.  So by the time the Surgeon
> General's warning is stamped on, it's too late for them to quit.

Yes i know this.  But i don't agree that it was too late to quit.  And, this
is going to open a whole nother can of worms, people who are stupid enough to
get misled by advertizing probably deserve whatever they get - especially if
there are no government measures to prevent misleading advertizing like in
the 30s.

People need to wisen up a bit and not take everything they see/read as Truth,
coz it ain't.

> > That's why i said this line: "conservatism is necessary because humans need
> > time to adjust to the current level before continuing".
> OK, but even *with* the conservatives, if there are enough liberals around to
> change everything, *eventually* the world will go to chaos.

Eventually, yes.  And it will be a Good Chaos.  But that is many thousands of
years into the future.

> > > By the way, are you pro-life or pro-choice?
> > Pro-choice of course.
> OK, now tell me: Why is killing OK as long as the victim isn't born yet?

Because the whole idea behind a right to life is that it is a right.  The
right to life is fundamentally just a right to choose.	The right to choose
your own destiny.  Unborn babies (and indeed most babies till 3 months or so)
don't even have a sense of self, so they therefore cannot be capable of
choosing their own destiny.  If you kill someone who has no sense of self,
their right to choose hasn't been violated, because they didn't have one in
the first place.

> > Being gay is a sexual preference.  It's hard-wired, it's quite likely
> > genetic.
> Possibly it's genetic.

Well i can remember the details exactly, because it doesn't really interest
me, but i do know that scientists are pretty sure that they've isolated a
certain gene which always appears in homosexuals, but they haven't found out
what the precise identifier is on that gene which makes a person homosexual. 
The biological lingo in there is probably wrong, but that's the gist of it.

> More likely, it's caused by some incident that happens
> during childhood.

That's what the Christian church wants you to believe...

> > Being sad in general can be a mental disorder - hard-wired and quite likely
> > genetic.  Being sad about specific things is a choice.
> Feelings aren't choices.  That's like saying the starving Ethiopian kids are
> choosing to be hungry.

They feel hungry because their body is not getting enough glucose so it's
automatically sending a message to the brain to feel hungry.  You can't
change that - it's biological.	Sadness about death is not biological.	If it
were biological, as soon as someone died - even if you didn't know they had
died - the chemical reaction for sadness would take place in the brain.  But
in order to feel sad about someone's death you first have to know about it,
therefore it is not a biological/physical reaction - it's a psychological
one.

> But suicide, and drugs, and abortion, they all affect more than the person
> making the decision.

No they don't.	Suicide only affects the person who dies, unless of course
they have debts to others.  Drugs only affect the user unless they do
something stupid like attack someone else while they're high - but that's the
person's fault, not the drugs'.  Abortion affects only one person - the
mother.

> And I thought you said you cared about the human species as a whole.  The
> science lab thing is just a tad far fetched.

I care about the human species as a whole.  If they all choose to kill
themselves, then sobeit.  They were obviously a fuck of a lot more stupid
than i took them to be.  But really, it'd never happen.  What is important is
that the human species survives and grows to its maximum potential.  If
4,999,999,999 people are liable to kill themselves, they obviously aren't
humankind's maximum potential.

The science lab thing is not far-fetched at all.  There are thousands of IVF
labs around the world which have human eggs and sperm stored in freezers.
They're designed for scientific research, but they could theoretically be used
to repopulate the world if necessary.

> > From an ethical point of view it is better not to eat meat because we
> > shouldn't have the right to just kill animals the way we do.  There are in
> > fact no positive arguments for eating meat other than "i like it".  Eating
> > meat is even less defensible than taking drugs.
> But you were just defending guns with hunting animals as a prime example.

I didn't say hunting was okay, i said some people do it as recreation.	Ie
their purpose is recreation, not killing.  That killing is a side-effect is
irrelevant in the context in which i mentioned it.  But if you want to look
at it in the greater picture, then yes, hunting is bad.  And people really
should only be using guns as recreation by shooting targets and clay pigeons.

> > Says who?  Maybe when Adam ate the first apple he got really high, but then
> > it became such a staple food that humankind have built up a resistance to
> > it.
> Human kind didn't all come from Adam and Eve.  That was just a myth that was
> used to explain things to epople in the olden days.

You know what i mean.

> Yes, there are sugar highs.  Have you ever seen these six year old kids stock
> up on Pez or Skittles, then go and act like the Power Rangers for ten minutes?
> At least there's no permanent brain damage involved there.

What's all this about brain damage anyway?  I must admit i'm not one of those
users who is totally up on all the medical data, but i've heard bits of it
because some friends of mine are totally up on it, and i don't recall
anything about significant brain damage.  I know E can deplete serotonin
levels, but they will be replaced if you leave it long enough between uses...
 Pot damages braincells the same way smoking and drinking does - ie you need
to do ridiculous amounts before you notice even the slightest physical
damage.  Heroin doesn't affect your brain at all...  Where are you getting
the idea that it's terribly damaging?

> > 150 years ago someone said "man, flying?  can't happen" too.  Anything is
> > possible.  Even if we don't sprout wings and fly, we can do the next best
> > thing - get in a plane and fly.  Even if we don't eliminate all
> > murderers/rapists/thieves etc in the future we can try do the next best
thing
> > and get rid of MOST of them.
> While we're at it, why don't we get rid of the drug users too?  It's just
> another crime.

Because drug users aren't committing a crime toward others.  They're only
hurting themselves, so (according to your logic) they'll all kill themselves
off eventually anyway.

> > Nah, then they could've gone to a prostitute.  They wanted that sexual power
> > over the person.
> Or maybe they want sex with a specific person.

You make it sound like most rape victims are particularly attractive... 
They're not - they're often just normal people.

> > Remember we talked about this on agmk a few months ago.  But the feeling of
> > having sexual power over someone would be greatly reduced if everyone walked
> > round naked and sex was simply a matter of saying "you feel like some?  yup?
> > *thrust thrust*  thanks, i'll seeya".
> Maybe, but we're not animals, we're people.

We are animals.  Humankind is an animal species, as opposed to a plant
species.

> Similarly, people at a funeral are mad at drugs rather than the user who got
> killed from them.

The government not giving someone money is quite different to a drug which
can't give or not give anything.  The government is an entity which has
chosen not to provide sufficient support for the poor.	Drugs are inanimate
objects - they can't DO anything; whatever a person does when they're high on
them is the responsibility of the person.

> > Yes we could.  And we SHOULD.  It's important to look at things which are
> > considered crimes regularly, because it's important to know whether or not
> > they are still valid in our society.
> Maybe you should think about why they are crimes in the first place.

Well that's exactly what i was saying?!

> > If we didn't look at the law regularly to assess its worth, we would still
> > be living in a country where homosexual sex was punishable by a jail
> > sentence,
> In the bible, it says they deserve the death penalty.  Giving them a jail
> sentence is actually pretty lenient.

Lenient in comparison to tightass Christian ideals, but bloody conservative in
comparison to liberal ideals.

> > where non-Christians would be burnt at the stake,
> Don't know which country you're talking about.

Howsabout the whole of Europe during the Dark Ages?  What about the Crusades
during the Middle Ages where thousands of Arabs were killed because they
didn't believe in the Christian God?  What about witch hunting (which was
just an excuse to kill anyone who wasn't Christian)?

> > Yeah, and those people who take the whole bucket are called "greedy
> > bastards". "Inconsiderate bastards".  "Selfish bastards".  They're not Nice
> > People.
> And there are a lot of these people, so drugs should stay illegal until these
> people just go away.

That's the thing though.  I think if drugs were legalized, we'd be a step
closer to getting those people to go away...  I think it's the control and
the policing which is causing a great deal of the problems.  It might just be
wishful thinking, but that's what i believe.

Alex

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