What is wrong with seemingly low-grade vices? Drugs, for instance.
In the past, if you engaged in them in, it was usually a wink-wink-nod-nod and people went on with their lives. The libertine crowd out there almost encourages the behavior, clinging to the "I own my own body" chestnut.
"I can do all the drugs I want. I'm not hurting anyone but myself." Short-sighted analysis, but has been taken at face value for a generation or more.
On episode 15 of the Natural Order Podcast, we tried figuring out some answers to what look like intractable problems like this.
Why does this matter? Well, yesterday I came across a tweet from Steve Sailer. He finally articulated what I've been thinking for a long time.
"One problem with legalization of vices like sports gambling and marijuana is that it shifts the quality of people whose job it is to market the vice from organized crime-adjacent disreputables to M.B.A.'s."
It's no longer about youthful rebellion or whatever justification we may have had to play cards or drink too much whiskey, either.
You knew to keep away from a certain crowd. You made your choices, regardless.
These things are now becoming serious business and the worst part of society wants to get its hands in your pockets for even more of what you got. And they're better than ever at doing it, particularly without you being in on it.
The Puritans so-called were and are amongst the worst people in Western Civilization, so I'm not saying become one of them. However, when the game is knowingly rigged against you, why start in on this stuff? If you tinker around the edges, why continue?
After all, it's been said that if God wanted Irish folks to rule the world, he wouldn't have invented whiskey. Families are often shredded thanks to "The Problem." Dysfunction becomes generational.
And it's really not the whiskey that's the problem in this case. It's the reaction of people directly affected by — or adjacent to — the symptoms caused by the drinking. Reactions we have control over.
Not many people want to deal with the pain. Most folks I've run across, however, are typically quite content dealing with, and even languishing in, the suffering that may develop because all of this.
But pain is part of life. We can't control it.
On the other hand, suffering is a choice. It is optional.
I realize that a lot of people will claim that I don't know what I'm talking about. Fine. But they are also the selfsame people content in their own misery — and misery is something we choose.
There will be pain in your life. How you deal with it is entirely your call.
As always,
Brian
P.S. — We wrote about Good Will Hunting last week. Another scene from that movie regarding choices…
My father was an alcoholic. Mean f***in' drunk. He'd come home hammered, looking to whale on somebody. So I'd provoke him, so he wouldn't go after my mother and little brother. Interesting nights were when he wore his rings.
He used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the table. Just say, "Choose."
Well I gotta go with the belt there.
I used to go with the wrench.
Cause f**k him, that's why.
