A Few Short Excerpts

Accidentally, it might seem as if I have taken a hiatus from emptying my ever-clustered mind onto this blog.

But here I am, with a blog over a year old and nearing 10,000 total views (that still shocks me every time I see it!) and seeing as I simply haven't found anything to passionately write about recently, today's post will be a little different.

I have four little excerpts that have sat unpublished on my laptop for a multitude of reasons, each with a varying degree of intellectuality and superficiality, but all that were too short to warrant an individual piece themselves. I hope they are as thought-provoking to some of you as they were for me writing them.

The Misrepresentation on Drugs

Regularly, I come across comments and articles across many forms of media that vehemently chastise people for the use of recreational drugs - or even the concepts of drugs at all. I find this view rather absurd, and firmly believe that the origins of this emanate from the so-called 'war on drugs' in the latter part of the twentieth century. This was a war that didn't truly want to rid the suffering of those who take drug abuse too far, rather combat the impact this had on the economy to higher powers in the USA and crucially, targeted minorities in the country.

So despite an specialist independent report panel declaring the war on drugs as over, how can it be that those attitudes that vociferously condemn and categorise heavy users still exist?

We start in 1971, from a published message, shortly before President Richard Nixon first popularised the term, in which he had declared drugs 'public enemy number one'. Not communism, whilst the Cold War was still raging after a near world-ending showdown only just under a decade earlier. Not the racism that had been rampant in the country since its revolution two centuries ago. Drugs were the main threat.

I must point out that the drug war was a threat to the country at the time, but not in the way that Nixon put it. In true Narcos style, I'd only have to mention Pablo Escobar, Miguel Felix Gallardo,  Amado Carrillo Fuentes or El Chapo for someone to have a vague idea of the power of the South American drug cartels in the 1970's. Between them, they made billions through the production of cocaine and marijuana to the USA.

This however, reveals a major flaw in Nixon's assertion. Public enemy number one? More like government and business enemy number one. For the real issue here is not that the public one by one were affected, likely those addicted would have been helped with better rehabilitation programs than the government fighting their source of addiction and the rest of the public lost nothing. The money went to the drug kingpins in Central and South America, not back into the American economy. That was the only problem to the White House.

Further, the war on drugs led to a disproportionate increase in the arrests of African-Americans residing in the US at the time - many of which were unjustified. The war on drugs was a tool to hinder the growing civil rights movement and essentially marginalise blacks.

All this considered, the war was a sham. Yet this war is the same one that leads many to believe illegal drugs are any different to alcohol, a belief which is wildly misinformed. Yes, some are perhaps more addictive, but alcohol is a drug, it is a depressant, it is dangerous and leads to many harrowing bodily complications.

Which is why rehabilitation to those drug abusers is absolutely vital. You'd send a recovering alcoholic to an alcohol awareness group, not regard him as a lost cause and a stain on society, wouldn't you? Why should it be any different for drug abusers?

Portugal has shown in the 21st century that the loosening of drug laws can be beneficial. A country which had an insane heroin addiction now safely controls its drug addiction. All with the decriminalisation of drugs.

Decriminalisation is often confused with legalisation. For some deadly drugs, that is a step too far, but decriminalisation will reap benefits, and crucially, the safety of the younger generation.

The youth will always be rebellious, what could possibly make anyone think that prohibition will stop that?

The Shallow Nature of Society

It sometimes occurs to me how much the trivial, superficial aspects of life entertain us all so much. After all, without meaning to sound blunt, most of the things we are preoccupied about on the daily have no bearing when we look back on them five years down the line. 

I find that mindset decidedly interesting. For example, every day I worry myself about issues such as giving a presentation to people, meeting a good friend or even opening my mouth and questioning whether to say a particular sentence in a conversation. For the majority of the time, the presentation will be spot on, the friend will notice nothing different and that sentence will appear almost natural, yet this is even after I have perhaps ‘over-thought’ each particular issue. 

This might not sound exactly fascinating, as after all it is simply how we are as human beings. But I, perhaps personifying this exact point be over-thinking it, disagree. We often encourage each other to look at things in the long term picture but the crazy thing about our emotions is that there seems to be no simple rationale. 

And when you delve deeper, that is actually quite a scary thought. Emotions are what stop us from being robots and when they are currently inexplicable, that seems to present an uncertainty to our species on this planet. What if Donald Trump, possibly the scariest ‘most powerful man in the world’ ever, started nuclear war? What if five computer hackers from Woking single-handedly took down the Internet? What if Bill Gates decided to use his gargantuan wealth to form an army that would fight even the largest powers for control of the world? 

Two of these sound absolutely absurd, granted, but who’s to predict the future? The advancement of science and technology in the last century, or even throughout history, has been exponential, and this stems solely from human emotion. That seems obvious but I do believe it is a fact we take for granted every single day. 

The more we discover, be that the cure to cancer or a fossil from western Mongolia, the more powerful we are as a species. And with power, comes danger.   

Many like to describe our current society as the most stable ever. In some regards this is true, it cannot be denied that the imperialistic belief of amassing territories has vastly caused the deglorification and devaluation of war, but when you look at it from a broader perspective, the common theme is uncertainty. Effectively, the more we know, the more we risk the stability of our society. 

Look back 500 years, and there was not this preoccupation about the future and long-term goals. I was recently reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ and in it, he emphasised the point that an English peasant from the Middle Ages would not have understood the concept of time as we know it today. They lived life on a day-to-day basis, their instability was a very different sort to what we face today. 

Those peasants faced the challenge of cultivating enough food to feed both themselves and their families every day, and many in lower income countries still have to do so today. But in the more developed world, there is little chance that you will die because of one bad day at work. 

In that sense it could be argued we are more stable. But as a global force, we are so much less so than we think.  

The Money Paradox

It fascinates, and somewhat saddens, me how obsessed humans have become with money and monetary possessions. Some seem to get a buzz out of finding a bargain, or paying little, others are more concerned with feeling and pleasure. Largely due to my social upbringing, I definitely fall into the latter category and consequently, I struggle to see the obsession with it.

Granted, if one does not have many possessions of value, they will become more protective and competitive in seeking the best they can get for themselves. I would be hard pressed to deny this, and it could be that I share a different view in alternate living circumstances. But money is artificial, should we therefore be concerned with it that much? The whole concept is simply something we just accept, but I believe it is only a tool that I want to tolerate, at most.I value emotions over money. It might be a simplistic example, but say you had the choice of walking five minutes to get a coffee for half the price of one right next to you. The accepted thing would be that you’d choose the cheaper one, the inconvenience it causes is worth the walk, right?

If money gave you an emotional buzz, then I would agree, and if for some it does, then I cannot argue against that. But, put simply, money is a man-made tool that should be beneficial for our lives. But in the current social climate, it seems as if the benefits it gives us are overshadowed by the animalistic desire we have for it. 

Contrast that with the importance of emotions. They are what characterise us. They are inherently us. You’d have to put forward an incredibly persuasive argument to suggest to me that what matters more in life is what is outside us, and often out of our control, than what is inside us – that we have complete control over. 

Now as I’ve said, this depends on your perspective and I’m not suggesting I do, but many of us don’t have the luxury to do this. Even so, to characterise money as the be-all and end-all of life is wrong to me. It is there to supplement our lives, to be used to have things we desire. The same desires that satisfy our emotions, which are the root of us. 

Attitudes to Animals

If I first said the word "animals" to you, political debates aren't the first thing that likely come to mind. But, as I am sure you know of through social media, the welfare of animals presents a major debate in every corner of the globe. 

You might think of this as a boring topic, and as if I'm going to construct the generic "we need to stop animal cruelty" article, and so promptly stop reading. Or if you have read any of my previous political blogs, you would be correct in thinking that I come from a cynical standpoint where I try to question the basic ideas and thoughts that found our society - and recognise that as a result I'm going to argue almost the opposite. 

I can't advocate animal cruelty, that would be a step too far. Yet I do have some pressing concerns about the importance we place on animals, in particular the reaction to their deaths.

It is understandable why it upsets so many people in our society to see videos of animals being shot by trophy hunters, of which there are now too many examples for me to mention though Cecil the lion sticks in my mind. Nor do I scoff at how deaths of animals in enclosures that have harmed humans (Harambe the elephant an example of this), seem distressing. 

Perhaps it isn't this exact attitude that irritates me so much, for we have domesticated animals and expect that, on the whole, they are treated humanely. Rather the lack of humanity that people have for humans in comparison to animals. 

I regularly see pictures and videos of trophy hunters on social media platforms and upon reading comments to this media, I often feel a pang of dismay at the hypocrisy of people. It is not uncommon to see people advocating for the torturous death of a human on the basis that they have killed an animal. 

Moreover, it appears that some celebrate the deaths of humans at the expense of animals. In the past year or so, a Spanish bullfighter was killed by a bull in the ring. And it seems mad to me that people brush that off but take the death of a singular animal to heart. How can this be right?

You might argue that animals have no choice in what they are doing, but neither does the bullfighter. Most likely it is their job, something they have to do to earn money and especially in an age when unemployment is rife, there is little scope to 'do what job you want'. 

Furthermore, there is a "dominion turned domination" of other mammals that we have now and it is so inherent in our society - that it has essentially formed most of it today. Ever since the Agricultural Revolution, when farmers first used cows for their own needs, we have relied on meat to help keep us alive. We wouldn't have to keep animals in captivity like zoos if we didn't just accept that it was 'right', yet it seems just an accepted concept that is incontestable. We have effectively forced this state of nature ourselves, so to lambaste a single victim of that said system seems incomprehensible to me. 

And the main point really is that yes, trophy hunting might be unnecessary - but simply so is eating meat. The majority of us eat meat at the time of writing, and despite what we like to convince ourselves, the animals we kill are not killed humanely. So why so much uproar when a trophy hunter kills someone? We can survive on other proteins after all.. 

I think part of it stems from the fact that we can't really conceptualise the deaths of animals on a daily basis as we don't see it happening for the most part. Meat in supermarkets doesn't exactly feel like a dead animal does it? We would instantly think it is food, hence why it is in a supermarket or a butchers. Whereas with humans we are, if not directly, indirectly exposed to death every day. We hear stories on the news of 1000 people dying in a tragedy, or even a singular person being shot. 

I have said it before, but our society is founded upon the assumption that everyone is intrinsically equal. Yet we don't seem to follow that. One human dying doesn't carry 1000x less significance than 1000 dying - even if you have never met any of the 1001; likewise Cecil, Harambe or a hunted elephant seem more important than the thousands of cows that are plastered around Britain in the form of mincemeat. 

The less that are killed, the more it generally impacts us. The logic of human emotion for you, eh?