There's no problem in society that can't be fixed. But the problem is there's too much conclusion without proper understanding
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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what do you mean
Exactly
Indubitably
Assholes.
The idea that people in charge should be better, so their actions can't be questioned; rather than that they should be better, so their actions should be scrutinized. It's so backwards and it enables nearly all of the worst abuses of power. It might be harder to fix people being attracted to power or being straight up malicious, but if we could solve the authority problem, then those would have a safeguard in a lot of scenarios. It's so close to being solvable, too; people grow up experiencing misuses of authority that hurt them, they should understand the problem. But somehow it still seems so prevalent, that authority is treated as being above questioning or consequences. I hate it. But it is possible to change.
I understand the point in OPs post, but I disagree with it based upon evidence we have available to us. I think first and foremost it is important to mention (I dont have the studies linked but it shouldnt be hard to find) that teenage drug use overall is trending downward, with that including underage alcohol use/abuse. If younger generations use it less, the problems caused by alcoholism will be less prevalent as time goes on. Secondly, weve been putting up with drunk drivers for a while but (as our younger generations have been told for about 20 years now) the consequences for drunk or impaired operation of a motor vehicle have become more and more severe. I do believe alcoholism is something that can and will be phased out given enough time. The only thing that is still a mystery is what vice is going to replace it, and whether it is going to be better or worse.
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Alcohol abuse is a symptom of trauma. Trauma begets trauma. That's the thing never solved. Take away alcohol, it'll find another avenue.
Not to mention it occurs naturally in rotting fruit. It would be like attempting to ban photosynthesis.
Are we gonna outlaw yeast, too?
During prohibition in the US, there was inoculated fruit juice being sold with the warning like: "do not leave unattended for 2 weeks at room temperature, as it may ferment".
Stay away from my bread.
Weed is illegal in many parts of the world, as are psychedelic mushrooms.
And those are even harder to make consumable than fruit literally fermenting on a tree, or yeast getting into some sugary drink.
So unless weβre gonna get rid of leavened bread and cut down every Marula tree weβre not getting rid of alcohol.
Mushrooms just grow here in the grasslands. Only problem is harvesting season is mostly in the autumn. So you need te dry them.
But (magic) mushrooms growing in the wild are pretty common in north-west Europe. ( The species is found in a lot of places psilocybe semilanceata ) of course there are many more and you don't even have to wait to get fermented.
Still even I can just pick them they are still not allowed here (in the Netherlands)
True, but yeast spores are in the air, and if you leave an appropriately sweet and sterile liquid open it will just.. make alcohol. They use this technique in Belgium to harvest wild yeast for Lambic.
So until magic mushrooms start showing up inside my house I still don't consider it equivalent.
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Studies have shown that not all alochol abuse is trauma-related.
That's an interesting article. I appreciate that they mention that the studies may be flawed because they attained wildly different data, probably due to methodology. They also mention that people with personality disorders are often not caught by these surveys.
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Sometimes alcohol abuse is just addiction. Trauma soon follows, though.
Crime. There'll never be a world without it and at some point society will have to realize that there's an "acceptable level of crime", beyond which any further measures to reduce it would be unacceptably authoritarian.
As destructive technologies advance, any level of crime will become unacceptable, because eventually it will take only one person to create (for example) a bio-weapon to kill 10% of planet population. I predict we will have to design every new baby to fit into society, and ban humans with destructive impulses from being raised on Earth. Mandatory eugenics for the whole planet. Reserved free-range fuck-around planets for dangerous organic humans. Blowing up a Mars dome hurts only a few, because connecting tubes have air locks, and viruses can't survive outside. "Blast your prehistoric frustrations away in our all-out war park!" -God of War Inc., Mars.
Fix poverty and you fix crime. I mean there will always be people with severe mental disorders that make them violent or deadly, but this could also be potentially handled by making complete mental health check ups part of universal healthcare. People who are likely to become violent could be separated from the population and potentially cured.
I remember the case of a 6 year old girl who was adopted from a situation of severe abuse, violent, sexual, and neglect. She became a violence obsessed psychopath. She kept trying to stick needles in herself along with other self harm behaviors. She attacked her adoptive parents with a knife. After this they locked her in her room at night and put a lock on their bedroom door. She attempted to kill her brother, and tortured and killed animals.
There is a documentary about her called Child of Rage. Warning - this is extremely disturbing.
Eventually, as no progress was being made, she went to live with a therapist for intense behavior modification therapy. She was cured without the use of drugs. Now she is a successful RN and author.
I went way off track here but I wanted to reemphasize that poverty is the source of the vast majority of crime, and even the most broken psychopaths can be cured.
End poverty, end child abuse, end crime. End capitalism.
Ending poverty would certainly help, but I disagree that crime would be fixed. People commit crimes for many reason that aren't related to poverty. Envy, hatred, love, sexual desire, religious fanaticism, political extremism etc. Crimes like murder and rape often have motives completely unrelated to financial status. Not all perpetrators have severe mental disorders either.
In terms of "fixing" people who are violent, I agree in so far that the justice system should focus on rehabilitation and helping people. In many but not all cases, that can be achieved. But generally those people commit crimes first before they're identified. You propose mental health checkups to prevent that in the first place, but many people who are in a bad mental place would not voluntarily go to those. So would you make them mandatory for everyone? That would be quite dystopian, especially with the possibility of being locked up without even having committed a crime. That's exactly the kind of thing I mean by measures that are unacceptably authoritarian. And even then, people would definitely slip through the cracks.
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I have wondered this about certain harmful cultural values. Culture seems to be the "great enabler" when it comes to things we would wish would change about people (think of Japan's habit of overworking people or Greece's penchant of old inequality). And the fuel of the flame there is going to take a gamechanger to douse.
None. Society is constructed by us, including all of its "issues". We built it all.
βRandomβ events of βevilβ. Basically I think weβll never reach something like 0 murders, 0 rapes, 0 stealing for little greed and so on. Or even 0 addiction (edit: i'm not including addiction to the previous list of crimes, i wanted to add it as another class of issues for we will never reach a true 0)
We are very very far from the ideal situation tho, there is a looot of margin of improvement
Like your alcohol thing in the post: ban only makes it worse and still now you (as US, not you OP) have a very weird relationship with alcohol with the thing that minors cannot touch it and people have to drink from a paper bag lol. Letβs say that you are not really trying hard to improve the situation. Weβll never reach 0 alcoholists but society is not in a good shape and alcohol is cheap so ye
Addiction is often people trying to escape from pain using anything they have available. It's not evil.
yes, hence why i used a dot before it. i guess it's not clear and i should edit
tell me if it's better now :)
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