Marijuana, It's probably Fine..

[tp4tissue]

some sort of substance in their downtime

This tears at the fabric of society, because it removes a core level of interdependence

Mankind is a society and individuals have traditionally supported one another, either directly one-to-one, or collectively as a society.

The morbidly wealthy in the US have become willing to allow (if not actually encourage) the collapse of our union just as long as they don't have to contribute any of their money to support it.

You can look at it like that, as if they're evil,  but understand that they are as you say MORBIDLY wealthy,   that is its own form of sickness.  They are a broken people in the same vein as those who they oppress/exploit.

The Kings of Europe, Pharaohs of Egypt all had tremendous medical problems due to their WEALTH.  Lots of paintings of Kings and Rich guys with a swollen diabetic rotting foot (gout) perched on a little pillow.  Records show Pharaohs were sickly, obese, ontop of the problems of being imbred.

All of these problems follow the Distortion that hyperpalatables create in our lives.  Only now, it's pervasive to the middle and lower rungs of society.    We are ALL fat, sick, and dying.

Our abuse of the planet is nearing an end.

India/Pakistan, record temperatures,  wet bulb > 35 , delivery drivers fainting in the street from heat stroke. 1000s upon 1000s of cases now.

This year will be even worse with El NINO, and thus far, record ocean temps.

[Pretendo]

I genuinely don't know how someone living in the 2020's can go through each week without smoking, drinking, or some sort of substance in their downtime when the news scrolls and dark thoughts are at their loudest.
Are we living on the same planet here? How can you bare to go through this absolute ****show of a time stone cold sober? Something's ****ing wrong with you.

Drug use is heavily interconnected with the stress cycle.  When you are stressed, your brain calculates the Least-Costly action which will relieve stress.

The presence of recreational substances in the world is a Short-Circuit situation.

Instead of improving life, and relieving stress "the long way", life style changes, introspection, education, family connection,   SUBSTANCES makes those things "Temporarily" Obsolete.

You can feel better, absent all the hard work. This tears at the fabric of society, because it removes a core level of interdependence and MONITORING within the collective.

If we don't somehow curtail refined hedonism which encompasses (almost all capitalist products), the planet will end humanity and reboot.

Our opportunity window is only 5 - 15 years at this point, before climate change run-away effect become insurmountable

We are today, right now, currently at the TAIL END of the anthropocene extinction event.   50% of all wide vertebrates died between 1970 and 2014.

Approximately 80% total have already died.   Bees die, Ants die, WE DIE.

YES Tp4 is stressed, but doing best to not purchase any electronics, and work the long game.

I don't think that being straight laced has done much to keep your stress levels in check, based on the world view you're presenting here. If only there were some way for you to step back and unwind for a bit...

[tp4tissue]

I don't think that being straight laced has done much to keep your stress levels in check, based on the world view you're presenting here. If only there were some way for you to step back and unwind for a bit...

Agreed Pretendo, straight laced isn't effectively de-stressing Tp4 personally.

Stepping back and do the analysis, we "are" stressed. Stress isn't for the LACK of numbing-agents. Stress is because as a social collective,  Humanity has gone awry, bringing imminent destruction upon itself.

Instead of working on Ourselves, Our Collective, The Planet, we produce numbing agents to dull the pain.


Tp4 does not know for certain that taking the pain and working the problem is the solution. 

but,   Tp4 is certain that more often than not, the taking of numbing agents in any form (substance or behavioral) is counter-productive.

[chyros]

Isn't the whole reason why marijuana was/is so highly criminalised that Nixon or Reagan or some other Republican basically wanted to lock up the part of the public that voted Democrat? (you can't vote in prison) Don't think it had anything to do with actual ill effects of marijuana itself.

At times it feels like my own government is trying to keep the drug mafia here in business by keeping MDMA illegal which is 100% horse****.

[Pretendo]

Isn't the whole reason why marijuana was/is so highly criminalised that Nixon or Reagan or some other Republican basically wanted to lock up the part of the public that voted Democrat? (you can't vote in prison) Don't think it had anything to do with actual ill effects of marijuana itself.

At times it feels like my own government is trying to keep the drug mafia here in business by keeping MDMA illegal which is 100% horse****.

Pretty much, yes. See this quote by John Ehrlichman, a white house aide under Nixon and key figure in breaking the Watergate scandal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#:~:text=You%20understand%20what%20I'm,we%20could%20disrupt%20those%20communities.

"You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

— Dan Baum, Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs, Harper's Magazine (April 2016)

[fohat.digs]

Isn't the whole reason why marijuana was/is so highly criminalised that Nixon or Reagan or some other Republican basically wanted to lock up the part of the public that voted Democrat? (you can't vote in prison) Don't think it had anything to do with actual ill effects of marijuana itself.

That is partially true, but the number of potential voters behind bars is trivial. The real impetus was to fabricate and stoke a "moral panic"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic  and frame "liberals" as the ones who wanted to promote hedonistic "lifestyles" while Republicans were the "Guardians of the Nation" ....

At times it feels like my own government is trying to keep the drug mafia here in business by keeping MDMA illegal which is 100% horse****.

Personally, I am generally willing to accept most behaviors  - as long as -  you do not endanger others, but in the US, with our tremendous "sprawl", driving a car is almost a necessity. And in the wrong hands a moving vehicle is certainly a dangerous weapon.

Intoxicants for recreational use should be available to adults, but driving a car while impared is simply unacceptable.

[Pretendo]

Isn't the whole reason why marijuana was/is so highly criminalised that Nixon or Reagan or some other Republican basically wanted to lock up the part of the public that voted Democrat? (you can't vote in prison) Don't think it had anything to do with actual ill effects of marijuana itself.

That is partially true, but the number of potential voters behind bars is trivial. The real impetus was to fabricate and stoke a "moral panic"   and frame "liberals" as the ones who wanted to promote hedonistic "lifestyles" while Republicans were the "Guardians of the Nation" ....

At times it feels like my own government is trying to keep the drug mafia here in business by keeping MDMA illegal which is 100% horse****.

Personally, I am generally willing to accept most behaviors  - as long as -  you do not endanger others, but in the US, with our tremendous "sprawl", driving a car is almost a necessity. And in the wrong hands a moving vehicle is certainly a dangerous weapon.

Intoxicants for recreational use should be available to adults, but driving a car while impared is simply unacceptable.

I agree with this sentiment. Let people live their lives however they want to, as long as they aren't putting other people in danger.

America's car dependence is another matter. IMO way more impactful on things like climate change, stress levels, and tax rates than recreational marijuana use.

[tp4tissue]

Personally, I am generally willing to accept most behaviors  - as long as -  you do not endanger others, but in the US, with our tremendous "sprawl", driving a car is almost a necessity. And in the wrong hands a moving vehicle is certainly a dangerous weapon.

Intoxicants for recreational use should be available to adults, but driving a car while impaired is simply unacceptable.

There's a debate on this, because At What Point is the action endangering, Others.

There are 4 pillars holding up a bridge.  They can be operating at 50% capacity each and the bridge would not fall. EXCEPT on the day by chance there were too many trucks.

The extra capacity of each pillar is a Necessary Buffer against unforeseen outcomes, which by rules of limited consciousness will always occur, and is always catastrophic.

Every unenlightened/uncontrolled/unplanned diversion weakens the collective.

This isn't to say rules can never be bent or modified, but the collective capacity is always in play.


One extra person worth of man power or Brain-Power might be the difference between a power plant exploding.

In the case of most Recreational Substances, it is similar to leaving Performance on the table or Squandering it.



There should be a way of medicating <recreation-ally> that produces minimal harm. but such a system would require quite alot of engineering, and it's empirically true that for the majority of humans, Self-Monitoring/Control is inadequate.  Proof- Kensington Philadelphia

[Pretendo]

Personally, I am generally willing to accept most behaviors  - as long as -  you do not endanger others, but in the US, with our tremendous "sprawl", driving a car is almost a necessity. And in the wrong hands a moving vehicle is certainly a dangerous weapon.

Intoxicants for recreational use should be available to adults, but driving a car while impaired is simply unacceptable.

There's a debate on this, because At What Point is the action endangering, Others.

There are 4 pillars holding up a bridge.  They can be operating at 50% capacity each and the bridge would not fall. EXCEPT on the day by chance there were too many trucks.

The extra capacity of each pillar is a Necessary Buffer against unforeseen outcomes, which by rules of limited consciousness will always occur, and is always catastrophic.

Every unenlightened/uncontrolled/unplanned diversion weakens the collective.

This isn't to say rules can never be bent or modified, but the collective capacity is always in play.


One extra person worth of man power or Brain-Power might be the difference between a power plant exploding.

In the case of most Recreational Substances, it is similar to leaving Performance on the table or Squandering it.



There should be a way of medicating <recreation-ally> that produces minimal harm. but such a system would require quite alot of engineering, and it's empirically true that for the majority of humans, Self-Monitoring/Control is inadequate.  Proof- Kensington Philadelphia

The alternative is to waste tax dollars and public resources enforcing laws against every personal habit that doesn't "help the collective", which is, IMO, way more harmful than just allowing people to govern their own personal habits.

For me the line gets drawn at physical harm. If you're holding back your family's personal finances due to a drug habit, that's a personal problem. We should offer programs for assistance if you're seeking help getting out of that situation, but the consequences should purely be societal. That is, if you refuse to help yourself and address the issue, you'll suffer natural consequences.

If you get behind the wheel of a car drunk/high and start drive erratically, then you're an immediate threat to people's safety. You don't get to have a license anymore until you've proven that the behavior is corrected. If you do it again anyway, over and over, you're a threat to public safety and may need to be institutionalized until the behavior is corrected.

My view on America's prison system goes way beyond the scope of this thread.

[chyros]

At times it feels like my own government is trying to keep the drug mafia here in business by keeping MDMA illegal which is 100% horse****.

Personally, I am generally willing to accept most behaviors  - as long as -  you do not endanger others, but in the US, with our tremendous "sprawl", driving a car is almost a necessity. And in the wrong hands a moving vehicle is certainly a dangerous weapon.

Intoxicants for recreational use should be available to adults, but driving a car while impared is simply unacceptable.

I think the US could've worked with public transport as well which is considerably less polluting but that's another matter. In any case, I want to stress that if you haven't done MDMA yet, you may think it different from what it actually does. Definitely don't drive with it on by any means, but it doesn't make you feel "drunk" or anything, in fact you're extremely lucid.

That said, I think it should be a cultural faux pas to drive under the influence of anything really. So if you want to do drugs, make sure you don't have to drive back.

[Pretendo]

At times it feels like my own government is trying to keep the drug mafia here in business by keeping MDMA illegal which is 100% horse****.

Personally, I am generally willing to accept most behaviors  - as long as -  you do not endanger others, but in the US, with our tremendous "sprawl", driving a car is almost a necessity. And in the wrong hands a moving vehicle is certainly a dangerous weapon.

Intoxicants for recreational use should be available to adults, but driving a car while impared is simply unacceptable.

I think the US could've worked with public transport as well which is considerably less polluting but that's another matter. In any case, I want to stress that if you haven't done MDMA yet, you may think it different from what it actually does. Definitely don't drive with it on by any means, but it doesn't make you feel "drunk" or anything, in fact you're extremely lucid.

That said, I think it should be a cultural faux pas to drive under the influence of anything really. So if you want to do drugs, make sure you don't have to drive back.

It could've worked better, and it did work better until the "urban renewal" projects of the 1940s-60s. My conspiracy theory is that these were a purposeful move to gut urban cores and spread out the population due to the Cold War paranoia about nuclear bombs. Government incentives couldn't have done a better job at ruining dense urban areas in the US if they tried, and they even had the knock on effect of disproportionately impacting minorities...

...but that's a whole different sore spot topic.

[fohat.digs]

gut urban cores and spread out the population

"Urban renewal" was not a cause but a reaction. After WW2 an average car cost half an average employee's annual wages and an average house cost twice a year's pay.
Gasoline cost about $0.25 per gallon and cars allowed easy and cheap commutes to work, so why buy a small house on a quarter acre lot in the city when you could have a house and yard twice as large (or more) for the same price - in exchange for a 10 mile commute to work? The majority of people who could gladly opted for the green grass and fresh air.

Remember that the interstate system was Eisenhower's dream project and as the new highways passed through cities they were obviously going to be routed through the poorest areas closest to the center of town.

[Darthbaggins]

That 10 mile commute is my limit to where I work - I tend to find jobs w/in a 10 mile radius from my home mainly because I want to be able to respond to anything that might come up for my family.  I have worked where I had a 80 mile round trip commute and if something happened I would be at a disadvantage to getting home or that side of town in a timely manner, but at that time that was where the work was.  Now I am looking more into how I could work from home or even closer to home to cut on more expenses etc.