In his Guardian
column this week, the former Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook [RIP]
worries that Labour's fortunes might
be damaged by a dismal turnout at the
forthcoming election (The Abstention
party is the biggest threat, not the
Tories, Guardian
Friday March 18, 2005). He may be right,
but this is a matter that goes well beyond
the tactical concerns of any political
party.
According to the pollsters, most
of the elderly are expected to vote on Election
Day, but it seems hardly anyone else will—especially
not the young—a democratic crisis that
can’t simply be put down to negative
media coverage or so-called voter apathy; there
is systemic failure here too. In particular,
our electoral system has shortcomings that
become ever more glaring with each campaign:
not only is it pointless for many of us to
vote (a red ballot in Beaconsfield is as redundant
as a blue one in Bootle), but the government
is effectively decided by a handful of carefully courted
voters in places like Braintree and Orpington. Most
tragic of all, given that only Labour or Conservative
can realistically win parliamentary
majorities under our clunky first-past-the-post
system, there is no real impetus, or prospect,
for change.
But perhaps solutions are at
hand: we could vote Lib Dem; we could boycott
the election; we could even spoil our ballot
papers. If the next government were to be returned
on a paltry turnout, with many spoilt ballots,
and a few more Lib Dems in Parliament, the
result would be laughable and reform of the
electoral system unavoidable—after all,
neither parliament nor ministers could claim
much legitimacy unless enough of us vote for
them. In America President Bush's authority
rests on barely 25% of the public's support;
do we really want such a moribund
system in Britain too?
As for Labour warnings that a
vote for the Liberal Democrats might result
in a Tory government, have the spin-meisters
of Millbank not heard of Peter and the
Wolf? Our leaders deceived us in order
to go to war—a war driven by American
delusion and sold with Orwellian fantasy—and
accordingly many of us now regard their pronouncements
with contempt. If the Tories somehow manage
to squeak in, or if we end up with a hung parliament,
then I for one will be laughing. In eight years
there has been scant mention of electoral reform,
despite promises to the contrary, so it's a
bit late to start worrying about tactical voting
now. Labour look set to win another thumping
parliamentary majority with a minority of the
votes cast. What does it take to admit that
our voting system is rotten?
If we want more people to vote we must have
a fair and respectable electoral system—one in which
every vote counts the same. If enough of us vote Lib Dem,
spoil our ballot papers, or stay at home on May 5th, we might
just get that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought
the scientific
method involves: a) observing a phenomenon disinterestedly,
b) generating some falsifiable hypotheses to explain said
phenomenon, and then c) looking for evidence that would render
one or more of these hypotheses invalid. Taking a position
and then looking for evidence which "proves the theory" may be intuitively
appealing, not to mention financially sound (especially when
a government is paying the bills), but science it ain’t.
It's pseudoscience;
it’s what creationists
do; it’s a lazy attempt to cook the books, and it needs
to be exposed at every turn.
I mention this because the work of Dr Jean Cadet
at the US National
Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is in the news (Marijuana
makes blood rush to the head, New
Scientist, 07 February 2005). I wonder how many New
Scientist readers—no matter how opposed they may
be to recreational drugs—would describe this sort of
thing as “scientific”. To take but one detail
that should have put the editors on alert, apparently Dr Cadet
“monitored the flow of blood through the brains of 54
marijuana smokers, among whom the heaviest user smoked 50
joints every day.”
Excuse me? As anyone
who has worked at all closely with
drug-users will know, fifty joints
a day is an astonishing amount
of cannabis. The heaviest user
I ever met was a man I used to
work with who was permanently puffing
on a joint (in part to self-medicate
his mania),
yet his consumption seldom exceeded
twenty joints a day. A person smoking
fifty joints a day (that’s
three an hour!) wouldn’t
be able to do any work—walking
would be quite an achievement—so
if Dr Cadet’s subject really
did smoke that much, he must be
a man of independent means who
can afford to indulge his extraordinary
habit—which would run to
more than $100 a day. Even if this
example is bona fide,
it doesn't tell us much about average
cannabis use, which in Britain
typically runs to less than 50
joints a month. (Ref)
If an economist,
say, published a paper in which
he denied that carbon emissions
posed any threat to our future,
demonized the majority of climatologists
who argued otherwise, and then
supported his claim by citing the
meticulously measured carbon emissions
of some obscure jungle tribe, we
would quite rightly be somewhat
skeptical to say the least. If
it turned out that he was also
funded by an oil company, we would
give his story no credence whatsoever
(see here).
But change the area of "research"
to recreational drug use and suddenly
we drop our guard and uncritically
accept whatever "evidence"
is presented to us, wherever it
comes from, and despite the fact
that much of it is ideologically
driven. Studies such as these are
lacking in rigour, and are often
transparently self-serving (see
here).
Science it ain't.
Despite the ever tougher
penalties drug-users face, drugs remain astonishingly popular.
According to the UN's drug control program we spend about
a billion US dollars a day on banned substances worldwide
(Ref).
This is no surprise—drugs can make us feel wonderful.
But their abuse can also cause untold misery, so anything
that sheds light on how they work and affect us—and
how we can reduce the associated suffering—is to be
welcomed. We must, however, stop paying attention to ideologically motivated
pseudoscience, especially when it comes from supposedly august
institutions such as the NIDA. Science it ain't; it's Lysenkoism.
Disaster is in the air. Tsunamis, wars, famines,
epidemics and extinctions
shout from every headline it seems. Non-violent disasters
abound too. One in five Britons is functionally illiterate—a
pathetic statistic for a so-called civilized country (a situation
that is even worse in America);
60% of young people in Britain have no idea what the word
"Auschwitz"
means; and of course we spend so very, very much
more on killing each other than we do on helping
each other—billions per day (see here)—it
is almost comical; all of which promises more disaster.
But while such news is depressing, perhaps not
all is lost. I have been much impressed by the efforts of
Bob Geldof and Bono, to end what they call "stupid poverty"
in the developing world (i.e. the scandalous and completely
unnecessary squalor that millions of people still live in).
Their efforts have led to the Make
Poverty History campaign—something we should all
support. This is a simple, inexpensive and achievable idea
that will improve the lives of millions and benefit us all.
With thousands of children dying every day for want of the
simplest things, such as clean water and a few cents worth
of food, we can't let this campaign fail—history would
not look upon us kindly. Get involved.
September 04
Reply to the economist Will
Hutton - Ageing Populations and our Global Future
Dear Mr Hutton,
Although the population of Europe has been decimated by disease
and war many times in the last thousand years, it still seems
to be an article of economic faith that an aging or declining
population is Very Bad News Indeed. Even you (An
Italian lesson for Europe, Observer, Sept 26)
describe this phenomenon as nothing less than a “threat
to civilization”.
You cite the case of Italy, whose
population is forecast to shrink twenty percent
in the next forty years, and note that the
classical economic solution to this “calamity”—which
is set to afflict most of Europe—is to
financially incentivize people to have more
children by offering generous child care benefits
and cheap loans. As you point out, it’s
far from clear that the promise of more debt
and consumption will make the prospect of children
any more attractive, and in any case if the
problem of a dwindling population is so dire,
surely the obvious solution would be to replenish
our numbers by allowing immigration from parts
of the world where populations are booming.
After all, with more than six billion people
on the planet already—many of whom live
in desperately Hobbesian circumstances—it
makes no sense to increase our numbers any
further. The Malthusian
scythe is savage and indiscriminate, and
is always ready to fall, so worrying about
things like the ethnicity of our citizens—as
some do—is as ridiculous as it is odious.
But to return to your central point, are the
consequences of an ageing population really
as bad as we assume?
To be sure, as our
average age rises we will need
to confront difficult
issues such as pension and
healthcare provision, but this
may not be as problematic as it
seems today. Economic focus will
inevitably shift as our culture’s
obsession
with youth gives way to the
concerns of an increasingly older
demographic, and technology may
well make the future very different
from what we currently expect.
I don't see why ageing has
to be the grey calamity you predict.
You say that "the
wellsprings of creativity will
run dry”, and that our culture
will “stagnate” as
youngsters become rarer, but I think
you overstate the case, or else
reflect the ageism that still saturates
so much of our thinking. In most
respects “the elderly”
are as heterogeneous a group as
“the young”, and many
of the world’s greatest scholars,
artists and scientists are in their
emeritus years—as they have
always been. Moreover, in these
days of extended life and health,
traditional stereotypes are becoming
increasingly irrelevant: women's
fertility is no longer the rigid
constraint it was, and a growing
number of diseases are all but
banished. So instead of worrying
about how to perpetuate our avaricious,
wasteful, debt-ridden economy,
we might do better to rethink our
notions of what it means to be
young and old, working and retired,
producer and consumer.
It seems to me that
our almost religious adherence
to economic orthodoxy stems from
our equally barnacle-like attachment to
the myth of perpetual economic
growth—the ever-rising tide
that lifts all our boats higher,
year on year.
If only it could
be so. Alas such theorizing conveniently
ignores the fact that in a world
of increasing demand for finite
natural resources, this kind of
growth cannot continue indefinitely—sooner
or later something must give. Indeed,
we might actually be accelerating
towards disaster. The potent combination
of smarter technology, mobile capital,
and cheap labour has resulted
in levels of productivity never
before seen in manufacturing, with
the result that retail prices in
the industrialized world remain
historically low in real terms.
This only encourages more consumption
and thus further (and faster) depletion
of natural resources. The supply-side
crunch, when it comes, could
bite very hard and very fast, leaving us
facing a much bleaker future than
we currently imagine.
All of which which
makes me wonder whether falling
birth rates in the West might be
a reflection of a deeper sense
of uncertainty about the future
more generally. And there's certainly
reason to worry, for unless we
take drastic action in the next
few years the world may well have
a very much smaller human population
before too long, the cause of which
will have nothing to do with falling
birth rates: climate
change—fuelled, ironically, by the
same rampant consumerism that is
supposed to protect and improve
our lifestyles—is a reality
that could result in a cull of
Biblical proportions.
But the irony runs deeper, and could
scarcely be more tragic: the same
brutal logic of free-market economics
that keeps us in jam while others
starve also ensures that in a
divisive, competitive world it pays to continue
the mining, deforesting and polluting that only
hastens the very real calamity
we now know is imminent. Even
if one or two countries were to
slow or even halt their carbon
emissions, this would merely put
them at an expensive disadvantage
while other nations continued to pollute
and profit. Climate change—like
population control—is a
global problem, and global
problems need global solutions.
Fretting about whether or not a
few rich countries should boost
their shrinking populations by
offering better paternity benefits
and cheaper mortgages is frankly
no more than an exercise in denial—truly
a case of fiddling while Rome burns.
The end of the world is
forever nigh it seems. Not content
with the grim business of waging
his wars on terror and drugs, President
Bush and his fundamentalist shock
troops are now trying to convince
us of their latest apocalyptic
vision—which apparently also
threatens civilized society as
we know it—gay marriage.
But behind the doom-laden strap lines
and earnest sound bites, the arguments
advanced for banning same-sex marriages are
laughable—or they would be if they weren't
so insulting to the "juggernaut"
of the gay community. Like the stem cell/cloning
mystery of how a few dozen undifferentiated
cells somehow add up to a human, Mr Bush's
thinking on this matter appears to owe more
to evangelical
zeal than evidence or reason, never mind
the "universal values" that he claims
unite us in the face of international terrorism.
The ethics of these matters may be obvious
to him, but to a Bright
like me it all looks very different. What harm
worthy of such a furore could result from a
few Jacks marrying a few Johns—or at
least for them to enjoy the same legal protections
in their relationships as the rest of us? And
for that matter, on what grounds do we accord
human blastocysts—the source of embryonic
stem cells—the same legal protections
we confer on newborns? I can't wait to see
how Mr Bush will decide the ethical status
of human parthenogenetic
blastocysts (i.e. when unfertilized eggs are
artificially coaxed into dividing for a few
days). If these cell bundles are to be accorded
human status then perhaps our toenail clippings
should be too.
The source of all this nonsense—indeed the inspiration for much White House
policy these days—can be found within the
brimstone pages of the Old Testament—the
traditional document of choice for those who
seek to justify the unjustifiable. Not that
this President's biblically-inspired prejudices
are anything new. Indeed, Mr Bush's homophobia
is in many ways no more than a re-run of various
other religiously endorsed political prejudices,
now officially abandoned, such as the 18th
Amendment, the disaster of slavery, and the
long-standing refusal to grant women the vote.
Even the language is familiar; I quote from
the May 1869 edition of Catholic World
magazine:
Extend now to women suffrage
and eligibility; give them the political right to vote and
to be voted for; render it feasible for them to enter the
arena of political strife, to become canvassers in elections
and candidates for office, and what remains of family union
will soon be dissolved. (Ref.)
Clearly, the same fears that
fuelled the 19th century discriminations against
women and people of colour are still alive
and well today, and are even being expressed
in similar "thin-end-of-the-wedge"
style arguments. We know the mantra: if "we"
(good, upright, church-going, white, male,
citizens) allow "them" (atheists,
gays, females, non-white people, etc) to do
what we do, then pretty soon everything will
go to hell in a hand basket. In an effort to
stop this slide into abomination, 21st century
American homophobes are now seeking a constitutional
amendment to ring-fence their nice, straight,
God-fearing Disneyland ideal. Article XXVIII:
Dulce Domum Americana.
Doubtless Mr Bush sleeps soundly at night, untroubled
by his conscience, secure in the belief that he’s fighting
the good fight. But he might want to pause and reflect on
how history will regard his time in the Oval Office, because
it has to be said, unless he can pull off something spectacular
it doesn’t look great for him. His administration has
reneged on several international treaties, invaded two countries,
increased the nation's debt to record levels, and put a couple
of million Americans out of work—not exactly the greatest
record. And assuming the capture of Osama Bin Laden fails
to materialize between now (March 2004) and November, one
wonders what generous summations the pundits will be offering
the Bush Junior Presidency come Christmas—"a sincere
man who followed his conscience"? Perhaps, but as good
Dr King reminded us, "Nothing is more dangerous than
sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Indeed.
This month's excursion is the
result of a recent talk with a friend about
how we prefer to think of morality
in nice, clean, black and white terms—and
how problematic this can be when we step into
the murky waters of sexual infidelity.
Socrates: And what
is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good—
need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Plato, The
Phaedrus
(As translated by Robert Pirsig in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
We talk of ‘moral
character’, by which we mean
a kind of attitude, and
so it seems to follow that morality
is something that goes on inside
us—presumably in our brains.
But how much of a person's sense
of morality is inculcated habit
and how much innate, or chosen?
Some people seem to need
external rules; they simply do
not have the intuitive, felt sense
of right and wrong that most of
us are familiar with. Such people
are not necessarily "bad people",
they simply have an empathy deficit—a
kind of social, or moral, blind
spot. Aside from those who are
described by psychologists as suffering
from an "autism spectrum disorder,"
most of those with an empathy deficit
fall into the category of "narcissists",
or in extreme cases, "psychopaths"
(who not only have little or no
conscience, but actually take pleasure
from the suffering of others—they have what we might call a
'negative conscience'). I think
the psychologist Albert Stein has
it right—he calls such people
emotional
vampires. Most of us know one.
But apart from this
small percentage of the population,
what can we say about about the
rest of us?
To be sure, we regard
the words and deeds of individuals
as indicative of their character
and morality, but what we really
want to know is: are they being
sincere? Do they truly mean well?
Or are they making an effort to
obey social rules to avoid punishment?
When they try and cut a corner
and it doesn't work out, do they
feel shame or guilt, or merely
wish they hadn't been caught?
To complicate matters,
some philosophers claim that mental
states such as belief
and desire have an ethical
dimension: many religious traditions,
for instance, insist on purity
of thought and feeling.
I think there are
problems with the idea that non-conscious
neurologicalactivity
has an ethical valence. I agree
it can, but only when
certain conditions are met—in
particular when it is connected
to behaviour. As James
Russell Lowell put it in Rousseau
and the Sentimentalists, “Every
man feels instinctively that all
the beautiful sentiments in the
world weigh less than a single
lovely action.” Quite so.
It’s easy to be an imaginary
hero, much more difficult to be
the real thing.
Even if I believe—as
in William
Clifford's 1877 thought experiment—that
the ship I am about to send on
a voyage is sound when in fact
it is not (and I could easily have
ascertained as much), what really
matters is not so much my belief,
but that the vessel should
not depart unrepaired. From
the cognitive point of view, as
Clifford rightly says, the stifling
of doubt is the morally relevant
issue, but there is more to the
matter than this, and we can only
make a full moral judgment when
we know the totality of
what is intended, believed, said,
and done (or not done). The consequences
of particular actions, as well
as the patterns of neurological
activity that led to them, are
undoubtedly germane to such an
evaluation, but by themselves are
insufficient. We need to stand
back a bit and look at the wider
ecology—of an agent situated
in (and interacting with) a dynamic
environment.
It seems to me that ideas, thoughts, or feelings
can only have an ethical valence when some action
(speech, gesture, or other behaviour) is entailed (or not).
Some thoughts or feelings may be unhealthy, and others distasteful,
but I can't see how cognitive activity per se has
any moral value—especially given that we have
so little control over the thoughts, ideas, desires and dreams
that come into our minds. To contemplate the commission
of a deed is, I suggest, amoral (even if it
feels bad); actually doing the deed may well be another
matter (again, regardless of how it feels). If I believe that
the world is flat and rests on the back of a giant turtle,
it isn't obvious that any harm could result from my belief.
Most people would likely smile and "respect" my
quaint belief in the same way we look charitably on those
who believe that the world was made in six days. But if I
believe that it is necessary to sacrifice first born males,
or that women are less intelligent than men, or that black
people should be the slaves of white people, the matter is
very different. Quite rightly, no such courtesy will be extended
to me (except by any deluded souls who believe this sort of
nonsense). Belief in these cases has a direct effect on what
will or might happen in the world.
To put it technically, this is the idea that
a moral valence only emerges when cognition is (or is going
to be) embodied and enacted—when a
promise is broken, a duty neglected, another’s
welfare ignored (or, positively, when we do something
that goes beyond mere obligation or expectation).
With respect to the
peculiar business of sexual morality,
I pray to all the gods in all the
heavens that thinking
about sex with someone other than
one’s partner is not immoral,
otherwise a lot of us are in deep
trouble!
But while fantasy and imagination, in my plan
at least, are exempt from moral evaluation, feeling sure
that one would take a sexual opportunity should it arise
is a different matter, particularly if one has promised that
one won't. Such a feeling is "cognition-ready-to-be-embodied"—an
event waiting for a trigger—and is ethically
significant because of the suffering that may result. It indicates
both the low esteem in which the other is held, as well as
the readiness to betray. But even if one hasn’t
made such a commitment and feels sure of yielding to
the right temptation, the moral question is essentially the
same: to what extent will my decisions and behaviour diminish
me or lead to the suffering of others?
I think there is
a Darwinian aspect to this too.
We have evolved, in part, by putting
an ever higher value on actions
in which we can discern truth and/or
love. In particular, we have evolved
to find these values pleasing—not
least because those who embody
these qualities make good friends
and neighbours, and with good friends
and neighbours you generally get
to live a longer, happier, and
more fecund life. In other words,
"honesty and friendliness
genes" become more common.
Why then, are we
not all perfectly honest, faithful
and considerate in the game of
life? Because, in typically amoral
fashion, natural selection ensures
that only the most gene-maximizing
lineages prosper, whether or not
they are nice, and that means being
self-serving, ruthless and deceitful
when circumstances demand. The
Machiavellian logic of Game Theory
finds its most potent expression
in genetics.
But as well as a
maelstrom of conflicting instincts
and interests, we also have to
consider the whopping layer of
cerebral cortex we possess—an
evolutionary
oddity that, as William James
noted, has left us with more
instincts than the animals, not
less, and in particular our prized
"moral instincts." This
seeming excess of grey matter may
have puzzled scientists for generations,
but it has also facilitated the
evolution of technological culture
as well as our ever increasing
capacity for analysis and self-reflection.
But while we may
be the only species to have unraveled
our genetic code and visited the
Moon, biologically and psychologically
we remain fitted to the stone-age
environment. This perhaps explains
why we are such confused and fickle
creatures; easily-frightened; easily-angered;
unsure of almost everything yet
ready to believe almost anything.
With our pliable consciences and
talent for imaginative sophistry
we seem to be able to justify any
amount of humbug and horror when
it suits us (especially in the
righteous pursuit of pleasure and
piety), so turning a blind eye
to the fact that a potential sexual
partner has existing commitments
is, for most of us, a cinch.
Behind the idea of
"moral choice" lies the
assumption that we really are able
to choose as freely as we like
to think—our old friend free
will—because without some
degree of conscious choice morality
looks like a very slim concept
indeed (e.g. we don't regard animals
with a moral eye). But however
sovereign we may claim to be, when
it comes to sex all the
evidence suggests that our choices
are seldom as free as they seem.
We do not choose our instincts,
nor the objects of our desires,
and in truth most of us only have
an uncertain veto when it comes
to who we shag. As I put it elsewhere:
perhaps when the rhythms of nature
and culture are consonant we can
skip to the beat of freedom, but
when they are in counterpoint,
make no mistake, we dance to the
deeper drum.
I don’t know. The foregoing
assumes the principle of individualism, which
actually looks increasingly ropey to me. We
grope and stumble through what seems like a
moral minefield, desperate for a clear, simple
map to guide us and there may not be one. Religious
teachings are of little use as they tend to
be simplistic, authoritarian and are often
fixated on seemingly arbitrary issues like
homosexuality or whether or not to cut the
genitals of children. Besides, one faith's
sacrament is another's heresy. Evolutionary
genetics doesn’t offer much help either,
as it can only tell us how we came to be as
we are, not how we should behave. What else
is there? Art? Art is concerned with arête
(Greek for ‘excellence’), and although
aesthetics and ethics overlap, art alone doesn't
seem to offer a reliable way to decide moral
questions.
If we're going to ask how we
should behave in the world, then philosophy
is surely the place to start: we have two thousand
years' worth of moral thinking to get on with
there.
Or maybe, in the end, we're on
our own with this; each of us answering to
our conscience—a task that as Hamlet
knew only too well, is much easier for some
than others.
Just when I thought
a bit of sanity might be coming
to the drugs debate, it seems the
Drug Mullahs are on the warpath
again. Borrowing the "45 minute"
ruse that proved so effective in
getting the green light to invade
Iraq, they are now trying to convince
us of a new threat—a threat
that is set to ruin the mental
health of our youth: shrubs of
mass destruction, subversively
growing on windowsills across the
nation.
I refer to the drug
warriors' latest myth—which
is straight from the Reefer
Madness school of drug
education—that cannabis (yes,
cannabis) is sending young
people bonkers in their droves.
You see, apparently cannabis isn't
really cannabis anymore; oh no, it's
turned into something much more
dangerous...
This nonsense all began in earnest
last February (2003), when professor Hamid
Ghodse, career member and six-time President
of the International
Narcotics Control Board (INCB), claimed
that the UK’s reclassification of cannabis
would have disastrous consequences for the
nation’s mental health, and might even
have "worldwide repercussions". In
particular he warned that within the next decade
or so our psychiatric hospitals might be "filled
with people who have problems with cannabis."
(UN attacks Blunkett's new cannabis law, Guardian,
Feb
26 2003)
This sort of mendacious scaremongering
is reminiscent of the infamous warnings given
to children of previous generations about the
hazards of masturbation—another unstoppable
activity that was the target of prohibitionist
forces for generations. Anyone familiar with
cannabis (or masturbation) will recognize how
absurd these claims are, and Dr Ghodse’s
remarks, far from helping to clarify the issues
and offer authoritative advice, only serve
to cast more doubt on the already dubious credibility
of the INCB.
To the embarrassment
of those who advocate prohibition,
the surveys show that where cannabis
is freely available, consumption
is no greater than in places where
it is prohibited [Ref
and Ref].
But even under prohibition, anyone
in Britain wanting to smoke cannabis
can do so, with ease, and by all
accounts huge numbers do so every
day. Indeed, millions of us have
been smoking the stuff for years
without any mental heath problems
being reported or predicted [Ref].
Moreover, despite a complete lack
of legal regulation or quality
control, there has never been a
single reported death caused directly
by cannabis—a substance whose
toxicity
is considerably less than that
of aspirin or alcohol. In other
words, the government’s modest
step of reclassifying cannabis
from class “B” to “C”
is extremely unlikely to turn any
of us into psychotic drug-fiends.
Having said that, some people are
psychologically fragile, and should
take great care when consuming
any psychotropic substances, legal
or otherwise. But even if a few
are specifically harmed by cannabis,
this is surely insufficient to legislate
against the vast majority who are
not, much less reinforce the bankrupt
policy of prohibition. What is
called for is proper regulation.
As for the other,
causative part of this myth—that
cannabis isn’t really cannabis
anymore—this is the specious
claim that the grass we smoke today
is much stronger (and therefore
more dangerous) than the gentle,
back-of-the-bikesheds stuff harmlessly
smoked in the sixties and seventies.
An EU-wide
study into exactly this question found no evidence
that cannabis is any stronger today than
it was in the nineteenth century, never mind the sixties. Nevertheless, the Guardian, which really ought to know better,
appears to buy this cheap myth saying: "Some
of the very strong cannabis on
the streets today bears little
relation to the mild mood-altering
stuff used by yesterday's students"
(Police urge return to tough line
on cannabis, 27
June 2004; see also: End the
confusion over cannabis, 18
Jan 2004). This pernicious myth
has been around for quite a while
(since at least 1988 - see here),
but only in the last few years
has it started to harden into a
"fact" upon which policy can be based. This demonization
looks suspiciously like a ploy
designed to transform the world's
favourite weed into something more
worthy of the moniker "dangerous
drug." I wouldn't be surprised
to see a "dodgy dossier"
produced in due course.
There is, of course,
scant evidence that cannabis is
any stronger than it ever has been,
and to my knowledge no reputable
independent study has ever been
cited in support of this claim.
Clever horticulture has no doubt
succeeded in making certain strains
of cannabis more consistent
in their THC yield (THC being the
active ingredient so to speak),
but as far as I know growers have
yet to make the stuff any more
potent (e.g. see United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
report here,
and peer reviewed research here).
But even if they had—even
if this part of the myth were true—would
this necessarily be a cause for
alarm? It would seem that the worst
thing about cannabis is that one
has to smoke it, so it may be that
stronger cannabis would be a good
thing. Perhaps users could smoke
less for the same effect. But perhaps
not—we simply don't know
because there isn't enough credible,
disinterested research being done.
What is needed is for the whole
matter to be scrutinized without
ideological prejudice or political
interference. A Royal Commission
(in Britain) would be a good start.
Mental illness can
be a tragedy of the most distressing
kind, and to the extent that drugs—whether
legal or not—are involved
in causing it there should be clear
regulation and education. But to
speculate on the role of cannabis
as a putative cause of mental illness
in vulnerable young people, while
other, known causes such as poor
diet, abuse, social pressures,
poverty, and pollution go unmentioned
and unaddressed, is both absurd
and dishonest.
Actually, now that
I think of it, there are some psychiatric
problems connected with cannabis,
and they do cause untold misery.
But it isn't users who are going
mad; the poor souls in need of
treatment are those who find the
recreational use of cannabis so
objectionable they feel compelled
to terrorize the rest of us into
abstinence.
Note
- Dec 2004: Some respectable
studies are now showing that
heavy cannabis use (indeed
the excessive use of many psychotropic
substances) can increase the
risk of psychosis in young
people already at risk
- a small percentage of teenage
boys especially it seems. See
here
and here
Banning, censoring, and other
authoritarian measures get my goat at the
best of times, but as I have managed—somehow—not
to inhale any tobacco smoke for 85 days,
I feel moved to say something.
To start with,
I find The
Lancet'scall for the
prohibition of tobacco about
as offensive as tobacco smoke
itself. The writers sound at
best pompous and naïve,
and at worst reactionary and
authoritarian.
No one doubts that smoking is a dangerous,
addictive, smelly, costly and anti-social habit, or that
smokers who want to stop should be given every assistance.
And I certainly agree that those of us who don’t smoke
should be spared the offence of tobacco smoke in public
places. What I object to is the supercilious assertion that
tobacco-related health problems are best solved by the ugly
and brutal measure of prohibition.
Has that disastrous
American lesson the "War
on Drugs", along with its
wretched predecessor the 18th
Amendment, taught us nothing?
Prohibition not only creates
the perfect conditions for organized
crime, but because drugs become
more valuable the more they are
banned, it also creates powerful
incentives for producers and
smugglers. It also completely
ignores the question of demand.
The UN
estimates that something like
a billion dollars a day are spent
on banned substances (every
day) despite the extreme
risks and penalties involved—an
astounding figure that reveals
just how futile prohibition is
as a system of control. There's
no doubt about it, we love our
drugs [Ref
and Ref].
Granted, if tobacco
was banned in Britain smoking
might become less socially acceptable,
and many more people would probably
quit. But tobacco would still
be in demand, and therefore just
as easy to obtain as other banned
substances are today. Moreover,
as the stuff would be smuggled
and traded by the same people
who deal in other, more profitable
drugs, prohibition would also
make tobacco a much worse “gateway”
drug than it already is. Of course,
exactly what people would be
smoking is anyone's guess: black
market goods aren't subject to
any kind of official scrutiny
and don't come with a manufacturer's
guarantee.
Quite how the financial
cost of prohibition would be
met is another issue The
Lancet’s editors fail
to address—although they
do admit that tobacco prohibition
would slash treasury receipts
by a whopping £9.3 billion—per
year! Perhaps such details
are beyond the remit of “medical
advice,” but the costs
don't stop there: a fortune in
new, tobacco-related spending
would also be required to cover
the inevitable "crime wave"
that tobacco-prohibition would
unleash. Ten billion quid (or
more, per year) is a lot of money
to find, but then we’re
talking about a lot of people
too—which makes one wonder:
how big does a minority have
to be before it is entitled to
democratic protection? Do the
good doctors at The Lancet
really want to criminalize millions
of people who only risk harm
to themselves?
No doubt prohibitionists will
find such practical arguments as these insufficient,
or even irrelevant, in which case I can only
hope that the last redoubt of philosophy
and principle will persuade them to think
again. The Lancet's proposed ban
violates a central principle of any society
that claims to be civilized and free—a
principle famously articulated by the Utilitarian
philosopher John Stuart Mill in his 1859
essay On
Liberty, in which he proclaimed:
[T]he only purpose for which power can be
rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own
good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
. . . Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual
is sovereign.
In other words, so long as no one else is
put at risk or adversely affected, informed adults should
be able to do whatever silly things they want—even
if the great and the good at The Lancet find it
disagreeable. That's what freedom is.
Nov 2003
A
Response to "ET
and God" by Paul Davies in The Atlantic Monthly
(Sept 2003, and correspondence). A rant on two of my favourite
themes: extra-terrestrial intelligence and the relationship
between science and religion. (See also here)
What men really want
is not knowledge but certainty.
Bertrand Russell
How many things we held
yesterday as articles of faith
which today we tell as fables.
Michel de Montaigne
Professor
Davies nicely demonstrates just how incendiary
the question of Extra-Terrestrial
Intelligence (ETI) can be—especially
in religious communities like the
United States.
Why do we get so
touchy when aliens and Gods are
mentioned in the same breath? And what
is it about this issue that exposes
our metaphysical sensitivities
so acutely?
I think what bothers us most is
what the discovery of ETI might
mean for our traditional religious
beliefs, and thus the meanings we attach to
existence. This is a threat that goes
to the heart of religious claims,
because to ponder the existence
of alien intelligence is tantamount
to asking: are ours the only souls
in the universe, and if not, in what sense can
we claim to be special—"the"
chosen ones? As Arthur C Clarke
famously observed: either we're
alone or we aren't, and "in
either case the prospect is staggering!"
Indeed it is. This is one of those
issues that raises the possibility
that "reality" might
in fact turn out to be quite different
from what we have come to believe—a
possibility many of us rush to
deny. Not that this should come
as a big surprise. Our alien angst
is not a new phenomenon—we've been
here before.
A century and a half ago the intellectual
community was in a similar tumult.
A rampant Victorian science was
presenting religious intellectuals
with philosophical difficulties
that hadn't been talked about since
the days of Galileo and the Inquisition.
Darwin's theory of evolution in
particular was a new and controversial
account of natural history that
sharply conflicted with traditional
teachings about nature and what
it meant to be human. Many were
left facing painful metaphysical
choices, and in a letter to a friend
Darwin himself famously confessed
that in formulating his theory
he felt as if he had "committed
a murder."
Another poignant example of just
how agonizing these dilemmas could
be is provided by Gary Hentzi,
in his essay "Darwin
and Darwinism in Victorian Literature",
in which he describes the "intellectual
discord" of the nineteenth-century
naturalist and hard-line creationist Christian
Philip Henry Gosse, as he struggled
to resolve the "crushing doubts"
he and many of his contemporaries
were feeling:
A prominent
zoologist as well as member of a sect known
as the Plymouth Brethren, Gosse was deeply troubled by his
conflicting beliefs and hoped to reconcile scientific evidence
with biblical precedent by arguing, in a book entitled Omphalos:
An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (1857), that
God had created the world exactly as described in Genesis
but with the fossils already embedded in the rocks. Just as
Adam would have had a navel though he was born to no mother,
Gosse suggested, the earth displays misleading marks of a
nonexistent pre-history. This desperate manoeuvre was accurately
described by his son as a "system of intellectual therapeutics,"
its function as psychological medicine embarrassingly evident
from the very beginning. Nevertheless, while Gosse's solution
won little assent, his plight is emblematic of the situation
of many religious intellectuals in [the] mid nineteenth-century.
Gosse could find no escape from
his dilemma, and he was by no means
alone. Many intellectuals of his
day (including the co-discoverer
of Natural Selection Alfred
Wallace, and the captain of
the BeagleRobert
Fitzroy) were similarly skewered
by the cognitive dissonance Darwin's
theory provoked. For some (like
Wallace and Fitzroy), fundamentalism
or mysticism were the answer, while
for others the Darwinian apologist
Thomas
Huxley offered an alternative
solution. He coined the term "agnosticism"
(literally: no knowledge) which
soon became a popular theological
position for many Victorian intellectuals.
Today, shy of clinging to positions
that may later prove embarrassing,
Huxley's agnosticism is arguably
the default position most of us
take—especially on matters of ontology.
Contemporary theologians may claim—sincerely—that
the discovery of ETI won't spell
the end of their faiths (just as
some of their Victorian ancestors
claimed—with equal sincerity—to
embrace Natural Selection), but
after several centuries of ecclesiastical
retreat in the face of advancing
science, such protestations sound
ominously like wishful thinking—the
Gosse-like tactic religious believers
traditionally resort to when reason
has them cornered.
Granted, some sort of God may survive
the discovery of ETI—we seem to need
deities too much to let the idea go—but
it is difficult to see how the main text-based
faiths could withstand such a blow.
For science, on the other hand, the discovery
of ETI would be the greatest vindication
imaginable—perhaps the greatest possible—it
would strongly suggest that both the scientific method and the "laws
of nature", far from being locally
or culturally (or arbitrarily)
construed, instead hold true across the
vastness of space and time. We could
at last claim that while we don't know
the whole truth of nature, we at least
have a part of it. And for once we could
be sure of something that for thousands
of years we've prayed for—to know
that we aren't alone.
