Drugs, Guns, and Fast Cars — Part I
Educated Licensing — Turning our Weaknesses into Superpowers
Could it even be asked why humans have such a voracious appetite for danger? This is a hunger for adrenaline and dopamine that could only be paralleled by our recklessness—the cheeky glint in our eye destined for thrills and grave misuse. But love them or hate them, guns, drugs, and engines may just be the bastions of liberty—though at what cost?
We prohibit what we think we can’t control. We shy away from understanding, rather than conquering our weaknesses as the masters of civil society. We are a society deep in denial about our instincts and values, and so we raise adults as children, keeping ourselves in the stone age of collective maturity.
Cocaine, for example. The majority of citizens would consider this a hard drug, dangerous and unpredictable. They have no idea that it’s cocaine running their hospitals, politics, restaurant kitchens, nightclubs, commerce offices, and other suit-and-tie industries. Those at the frontier of computer technology are using psychedelics to develop cutting-edge algorithms, while psychotherapists are leading the way with these same chemical tools to treat anxiety and depression. Silicon Valley and artists worldwide use psychedelics, cannabis, and various other recreational substances for deep creative work. Steroids and nootropics are used by top-performing athletes; benzodiazepines circulate like floods through the law and finance industries; and we conveniently like to exclude cafffeine, alcohol, and nicotine from what we refer to as ‘drugs’ as some kind of cognitive dissonance—yet undeniably, these, too, are tools at the core of society—beloved, useful, integrated within culture.
Drugs are the backbone of society. And if the people insist on using these substances regardless of law—especially as a tool for efficient or prolonged work—does it really benefit society for it to be hidden in the shadows, forcing aquisition into the black market? Alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine included: humans use chemical tools. This is a fact—so what should we do with it?
The core question is: how could a society balance freedom with control? In what ways can we structure and streamline ourselves so that the risks and dangers of our behaviours are minimised while still upholding principles of freedom and autonomy? How can we not just reduce our problems, but evolve our methods and perspectives gain advantage from our vices?
We’re about to adventure into some potentially rough territory. The cultural educational licensing concept we’ve dubbed the Micro-Licence System lays some of the context for this next discussion—and could be worth a glance.
You can read about it here.
This time, we’re going deeper. This time, we’re going to explore some of society’s dark and dangerous side. If we’re going to have a world of booze, guns, drugs, and diesel, it’s smart for us to lasso these into a manageable kind of system where we can be smart, structured, yet still keep freedom and liberty as our guiding principles.
Hold on to your hat.
Pick Your Poison:
This piece turned into a veritable novella, so I decided to write a roadmap and split it down the middle for easy reading. Each section focuses on a particular issue, but also represents larger conversations. Here are the major themes and questions of focus behind each section.
1. Discussion (Part 1): In a chaotic world, can education be used to create a healthy, mature culture?
2. Drugs (Part 1): What has made society this way, and are we approaching solutions the right way?
3. Fast Cars (Part 2): How exactly is education and training shown to help? How should we qualify competence?
4. Alcohol (Part 2): How is culture impacting behaviour, and can education drive positive cultural change?
5. Guns (Part 2): When education cannot solve all our problems, what else should we be doing?
Discussion:
Society is full of opportunities for humans to do dumb things, to make a mess, to injure someone or ruin a life. Anything can be a weapon or a poison if used irresponsibly, and we have a veritable epidemic of people at the ready to cause catastrophe in some time, some place, some way. With a half-baked education system and laws that try to bubble-wrap us from hurting ourselves, exactly what kind of society have we cultivated in response to all the high-tech inventions of the modern era? What systems have we put in place to moderate this dopamine circus of evolved apes?
Under authority’s assumption or perhaps recognition that the general populace is inherently incompetent, immature, or irresponsible, we tend to approach anything risky with prohibition. If the government or fellow citizens see something as dangerous or problematic, we habitually gravitate to the big red tape to restrict it—dampening the impact by blunting the blade, rather than by training a quality swordsman. Yet so often we see that prohibition is not the answer, and in fact makes an even bigger mess sometimes while treating the everyday citizens of societies as a bunch of toddlers who don’t deserve the trust and accountability to take their own risks and learn their own lessons.
And perhaps they’re right. Small and large, young and old, male and female, at all different degrees of maturity, intelligence, wealth, health, and competence, perhaps the act of giving adults complete free reign over their own decision-making is just asking for trouble. Are we ready to make our own rules? Can we be charged with self-education in all these areas, or do we need to be babysat and micro-managed by a closely surveilling parental government?
It seems we ease ourselves into condescension because it feels safer for everyone. We set down universal rules because it’s supposedly fair, catering to the slowest, weakest, and least responsible to keep some semblance of order in society. But should we be limiting the many on behalf of the irresponsible few? And why does there seem to be such discrepancy in the first place between the higher and lower echelons of society?
Many would agree with the statement that our education system has failed us. We spend so much time and money schooling our children on complex mathematics and science, releasing these students out into the real world with a badge of adulthood, and yet these graduates seem perfectly unequipped for the hurdles and habits of everyday life. It seems a rarity nowadays for a member of society to be able to fix or build something, grow food, understand tax, or do anything that’s relevant for an adult or a living human being. And what happens afterward, once someone has claimed adulthood as their final stage of development? With a degree in hand, formal education comes to a grinding halt.
While education is a huge umbrella conversation that deserves a lot of careful thought, there is a channel of conversation not often explored that falls under this category. Adult education—on adult things.
In the setup of society, in how we’ve strung the ropes and structured our citizens’ behaviour, how are our rules and customs training our citizens? This facade of democracy we have has put citizens in the back seat, waiting for someone else to solve our problems for us. We’re trained by the whistle for school and work, a clockwork existence where we assume that any rule from authority must be a reasonable one.
What is proposed in this article—and for any of the Ten-Tier System societal evolutions—is the call for a more conscious world. To have any semblance of a true, functional democracy, the citizenry needs on some level to be capable and mature. The individual ought to be the primary investment of society, which is not the reality we currently live in.
We see on the surface a scattering of gun problems, drug problems, and road fatalities, and yet these all seem to be symptoms of a common root cause—a poorly equipped and often psychologically problematic citizenry. Correlational studies show education to be an incredibly effective tool for alleviating many of our global issues, which is not just to do with general education but teaching specifically about our problem areas. Prohibition for guns and drugs in many locations has been shown to increase problems, rather than fix them, and it should come as no surprise that driver training has a direct effect on reducing road fatalities. When we extrapolate these quite obvious and logical solutions of simply equipping the individual better for dangerous activities, we can use education as our superpower. Rather than trying to scare people with handcuffs and grim propaganda campaigns, we can teach people to traverse rough ground.
Learning just a little could mitigate risks by a lot, and it is a small ask of the individual to know even the basics when engaging in activity that could bring harm to themselves and others. More broadly, it could be fairly argued that the citizens of society ought to be more autonomous and more developed if we are to have a legal and operational framework that trusts its people. Being less dependent on a parental state with clumsy one-size-fits-all rules means we can begin to shed the limitations of our collective growth. Yet people like Sigmund Freud and Plato argued that people stay away from moral accountability and civic duty, preferring to be ruled instead so long as their creature comforts are left alone.
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility,” said Freud. Or as Aldous Huxley put it, “The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.”
Given we’re reaching for a functional democracy here, I feel it’s within the bounds of this conversation to suggest that the people would, on a deeper level, prefer personal freedom and empowerment if they did not have an inherent fear or reluctance when it comes to self-accountability. The problem is, they do have fear and reluctance. Genuine autonomy represents lessened codependence, which can feel isolating and exposing when you first step out into open space. In moments of insecurity, it’s a comfort to have a full list of instructions and directions to fall back to—ones that unite us safely as a herd of mammals. Being accountable to your own decisions opens one up to criticism that can quickly turn to ostracisation, which can jeopardise relationships and status. Yet it is only in risking a certain amount of freedom that true maturity and competence will develop. And while freedom is a problematic word, easily misrepresented or misused, it contains within it a fundamental essence of human spirit.
“A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy, educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.”
—Chinua Achebe
If we truly want the individual to be respected and valued in society—more so than our desires for a comfortable cage—then we should only need to show society that knowledge is not so scary, and self-governance is not so hard. Only good things can come from a more conscious, mature, educated populace, which—if done intelligently—will simultaneously mitigate risks and drawbacks while providing humanity with greater opportunities and freedoms. It’s a no-brainer to foster good thinking. But how can we design an educative framework that is practical, moral, accessible, and desirable?
Ideally, adult culture would be built around continuous learning. Some people do it for fun; some people do it as part of their job. Greater society, however, sees it as an unnecessary chore. It doesn’t benefit their life, and in that case it shouldn’t be forced, although to engage in activities or have any meaningful input into society, such as in leading, parenting, or voting, we can either perpetuate learning or non-learning as part of our culture, and there are obviously parts where both the individual and greater society will benefit from additional training and education. Part of this is to prevent bad things happening, such as driving fatalities, firearm mishaps, or drug overdoses, although we can dare to dream more profoundly about excelling at parenthood, community projects, and societal innovation.
There are a number of ways we could begin to shift our cultures towards enthusiasm over upskilling and self-learning, such as gamifying society to encourage the development of a populace that is smarter, more engaged, more responsible, more mature, and better coordinated. For today, though, let’s talk fundamentals. The question is, how can we use education to mitigate reckless behaviour? Needless accidents, abuse, destruction, and violence plague society, and much of it is associated with everyday habits, activities, and items of interest. Let’s take a look.
Drugs
Now before I hit you with the big-thinking solutions, I’d like to take you down an alleyway and whisper a few sly secrets about this thing we call DRUGS.
Oh, horror. The depravity. Why should such a contestable, detestable subject, in all its taboo, work its way into conversations about building a future society?
Well, I’ll tell you why.
Not only is there grave injustice and waste in the literal trillions of dollars spent on damages, deaths, imprisonment, legal issues, health issues, and gang issues from all drugs—not just the illegal ones—but this subject is iconically representative of what boundaries we set on what is supposedly an autonomous, educated society. In that, it begs this question:
Are we really autonomous where it matters, and are we really educated where it matters?
Are we supported by our governors as a collection of free-thinking individuals who get to make their own adult decisions about their health and personal activities? Or are we just herded here and there so we don’t cause too much trouble? What aren’t we allowed to do, and why?
Wherever you sit in your approach to drug use, it should be an objective observation that we have made illegal what people are going to do regardless of law. With the exception of extreme countries where even marijuana is punishable by death, prohibition has crippled neither supply nor demand, only forcing it into the shadows where business is done out of sight, untaxed, and largely unregulated. And even in these countries that threaten execution, people will still do them—risking their lives to smoke a plant. While some people consider these laws to be founded on strong logical and moral principles, statistics will show that (country dependent) a significant proportion of people have at least smoked a bit of weed at one point in their life, which in most countries is still a criminal offence. And so for anyone curious enough to smoke a herb, we are making a criminal out of them.
Now, despite evidence to the contrary, it’s usually drilled into us during our youthful years of hairy bits and popping zits that all illegal drugs are bad. Simultaneously, we’re reassured that all legal doctor-prescribed drugs are perfectly okay and to be trusted unquestionably—even though the pharmaceutical industry, on paper, is one of the biggest organised criminal operations in all of history, while the biggest crime of most illegal substances is overenthusiastic dancing.
In the US alone, we see annually:
2.7 million prescription drug adverse events per year harming hospitalised patients1
350,000 adverse events from prescription drugs in rest homes
130,000 deaths from properly taken prescribed medications2
400,000 deaths from tobacco3
180,000 deaths from alcohol4
110,000 deaths from all illegal drug overdoses5
$35 billion spent on illegal drug control.
After deaths from cancer and heart disease—which could be largely attributed to corrupt pharmaceutical and food giants—prescription drugs and medical errors are the third biggest killer in the US. By most estimates, only 1–10% of adverse events from prescription drugs are reported.
On the underground scene, 84% of illegal drug overdoses involved illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF), and 25% involved counterfeit pills.6 This alone means people are dying from taking something other than their intended substance. Most drug users do not know they are taking the incredibly potent and dangerous substance fentanyl, with much of it coming from China to be added secretly to pills and powers to increase potency and profitability. For some people, as little as 250 micrograms (0.00025 gram) can be fatal.
So what is the real danger here? Where is the true harm coming from?
Deaths and injury from legal drugs—prescription drugs, alcohol, and tobacco—by far outweigh the damages from illegal substances, both medically and criminally. For illegal substances, the primary damage to the individual appears to be from lack of quality control. This is a fault of criminalisation more than it is a fault of the substances specifically sought for recreational use. No doubt some of these substances (e.g. amphetamines) contribute also to increased crime in some places, although other analyses will show this is a foul mix of economic and cultural circumstance that have also manifested from a corrupt, loveless system.
So while we have a lot to iron out in terms of corruption and medically used drugs, if we keep our focus for now on illegal substances, we can see that they are still a lesser killer than those provided legally and officially. What’s more, simply through enabling quality control, where people can get exactly what they’re looking for (i.e. preventing surreptitious additions of things like fentanyl), it’s possible we could see a reduction in deaths from these recreational substances by over 80%.
Of course, not all substances are equal, and even the term ‘drug’ is highly contested and elusive to define. It’s little known, for example, that dairy products like milk and cheese, as well as glutenous products like bread and pasta, act like opiates in the brain, creating the same addictive, blissed-out effects. So when we try to categorise, we might realise that ‘drug’ is debatably even broader than the term ‘food’, and the effects and uses range vastly.
Synthetic opioids, for example, kill more people than all other illegal substances combined, while psychedelics kill next to zero. Even LSD, a potent lab-synthesised psychedelic, has just one death attributed to overdose, although the person had taken roughly 320,000 times the standard recreational dose. Studies now show incredible therapeutic use for many psychedelic compounds, treating anxiety and depression, creating new neurons and networks in the brain, and doing exactly the opposite to what anyone would expect from a ‘drug’ that is thought to make someone stupid, aggressive, addicted, or numb.
Regardless of whether our laws for illegal substances are justified, there’s undeniably grave inconsistency in our societies in both culture and legislation. A reform—should we undertake one—should account for any corruption in the medical and political institutions, given this can expose any bias or ill-made reasoning for the contradictions that are keeping us from an evolution. Research on the histories of policy, lobbying, pharmaceutical emergence, and the demonisation of use of cannabis and psychedelics all point to a sick political agenda that seeks to maximise control and profit for its benefactors. It is a cultural design that was not born of goodwill, and will inevitably be undone—I believe—as our science and culture continue to mature.
According to a 2013 Harvard publication, the pharmaceutical cartel and governmental policy were found to be influenced heavily—if not primarily—by lobbying, political contribution, industry pressure from the (also corrupt) FDA, and is further enabled by commercialising the role of physicians. Big Pharma companies reserve a multibillion annual budget for research influence and suppression of competition, with companies such as Pfizer ($1.2 billion fine + $2.3 billion fraud settlement) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK: $3 billion) holding world records for the largest criminal charges in history. I have to resist the temptation to dive into a full corruption analysis of Big Pharma worldwide, although Robert Kennedy provides a fascinating and horrifying account of the decline in US health in his 2021 book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’.
This is far from a complete perspective of a complex, multivariate conversation. But if we could simplify with comedian Bill Hicks’ observation—that ‘good’, societally approved drugs, are coincidentally taxed drugs, and usually the ones that are more responsible for addiction and health issues. It’s supposedly A-okay by society’s green lights to drink your drug till death do you part. But Heaven forbid if you smoke some dried herb or take something to dance, or relax, or play in nature. The science on cigarettes and alcohol alone should be enough to raise questions about our hypocritical policies, but the statistics from the trillionaire pharmaceutical industry are frankly horrifying. Even the paracetamol and ibuprofen we gobble down at the slightest sign of a headache have effects on our health that are swept under the rug, with all snipers keeping their sights trained on the natural herbs and mushrooms that are supposedly the real dangers to our citizens.
There’s a whole fascinating history on the illegalisation of various recreational substances, which I recommend doing your own research on. To boil it down for you very quickly, though, it wasn’t primarily because they were dangerous—at least not for the citizenry. While there’s certainly no shortage of horror stories of people messing up their brains or committing heinous acts, the word ‘drug’ is an umbrella word that has no significant point of difference from anything we put in our bodies. Food and water can still change your physiology, which is the usual definition of a drug, although this term as a ‘street’ definition tends to adhere to the culture of becoming dumb, addicted, and poorly behaved. We use words like ‘dope’ to characterise a user’s numbed cortical activity, although what is really happening here?
Outside of pharmaceuticals, recreational substances can be vastly different in composition and effect. With a little research you will find that substances like magic mushrooms (psilocybin) has incredibly low toxicity, potent abilities to cure people from anxiety, depression, and dementia, and apart from being a little uncomfortable or scary as an experience for some people, has very little track record of long-term damage or death. The truth is, psychedelics like psilocybin have been demonised publicly by governments who discovered in the 60s that they were making people anti-war. A government that benefits greatly from war and needs its citizens’ support to do so, finds these mind-liberators a threat. Failed as a mind-control weapon for the US Government in project MK Ultra, substances like LSD became recognised for their affiliation with political dissidents, and so the illegalisation was used as a means to arrest and imprison war protestors. Psychedelics were even considered to play a critical role in waking people up to the corruption and warmongering of their own government, a catalyst for anti-war protests that did not bode well for maintaining a complicit and manipulable citizenry.
While we ought to acknowledge that there are notable risks for taking too much, too often, or in some irresponsible manner—as there are with anything—extensive scientific studies shed light on the profound effects of these non-addictive, low-toxicity compounds for growing and healing the brain, observing remarkable physical and behavioural developments and more interconnected neural pathways. This kind of “drug” is now being shown to defy all negative connotations of addictiveness and brain toxicity. Rather than contributing to crime and the collapse of society, the primary downside of this “counter-culture” activity appeared to be the rejection of exploitative industrial practices. In this light, we might question how much we’ve been told about these scary “drugs” through sanctioned media and educational programmes.
It was a similar story for cannabis—this incredible, versatile plant that can be used inexpensively for medicine, textiles, paper, clothes, and a great number of other uses—made illegal for a political victory against the Black population. Cannabis used to be the cornerstone of natural medicine, used medicinally for thousands of years, including for gout, malaria, rheumatism. In fact, most of these ‘illegal drugs’ started out being used for legitimate medical or cultural purposes.
Cocaine, from the coca plant in South America, was synthesised for opthamology and surgical anaesthetic. Its natural form was a backbone in Incan civilisation, used for such things as community social bonding, curing altitude sickness, and various rituals of which many were medicinal. Famously, it was the original ingredient of Coca Cola before being replaced by caffeine.
LSD was discovered while trying to find an ergot-based compound to induce labour in pregnant women, later being used to treat alcoholism, depression, and schizophrenia. The US Government tried to use it for military purposes and mind-control experiments, finding to their dismay that the opposite happened, the deadly soldiers turning into playful children.
Opium, used for over 5000 years for pain relief, was later synthesised into morphine and heroin in the mid-late 1800s, treating a range of respiratory conditions like pneumonia and tuberculosis.
Ketamine, used as a safe anaesthetic alternative due to its preservation of respiratory function, was later found to be a powerful and rapid antidepression treatment.
MDMA was used in the 70s for psychotherapy and couples therapy for facilitating emotional openness, now being used for healing past trauma. Other amphetamines were used in the Second World War as stimulants, though also used for depression treatment.
Psilocybin-containing fungi, aka ‘magic mushrooms’, have played a notable historic role in ceremonial culture worldwide. Now used therapeutically to treat depression and addiction, they are considered by some—due to their ability to literally grow and develop the brain—to have played a part in our own evolution as the most advanced apes on the planet.
Of course, these substances are famous because of their powerful, often perspective-changing properties, and ought at all times to be respected. Though there are sometimes concerns of addiction, dependence, or misuse, it seems to be so easily forgotten how they have each contributed in meaningful, positive ways, some going as far back as the dawn of Mankind. Yet here they are in the 21st century, locked up at gunpoint with no questions or exceptions permitted. Culture and history be damned, you’re due prison time should you stray from vodka and cigarettes. What does this say about our modern society?
The reason all this is important—outside of one more reason why government represents corruption and tyranny unto mankind—is because we need to redefine our morals and approaches to all things traditionally considered dangerous or harmful. Our relationship with illegal drugs is just as unhealthy as our relationship with legal ones, and the list of deadly pharmaceuticals still in circulation is much longer than the forbidden fruits disqualified from the menu.
In an ideal world, we would not have to have such restrictions imposed on anyone for any reason. People would be able to self-govern entirely, fully aware of the perks and consequences and able to perform a cost-benefit analysis relevant to their own personal situation. One man’s bane is another man’s mane, and a healthier perspective on substances that quite obviously have some use in society (and are not so readily given up by unanimous vote) is that these could be considered tools. Even substances like alcohol are used as tools—in this case, for increased sociability, decreased inhibitions, and authenticity of emotional expression. That’s not an objective assessment in favour of alcohol, but how some people use it for a perceived advantage in certain situations, just as one example.
It’s understandable that people have a lot of fear and reluctance when it comes to anything under the loose banner of “drugs”, which by the common tongue is used to refer to something illegal with connotations of societal degradation. Despite the actual word being so difficult to define without simply making food and water exceptions (“ingested chemicals that change human physiology”), we tend to group everything illegal under this umbrella term and call it “bad”. But how much of this is truth and how much is propaganda? How ill-informed are we in knowing how to categorise this broad spectrum of substances? Should amphetamines, opiates, psychedelics, dissociatives and depressants all fall under the same banner?
Without diving too deeply into case studies, we can call upon Switzerland and Portugal as promising examples of how highly problematic drug cultures brought about a different response. Before intervention, both countries were being devastated by rampant heroin addiction and resulting HIV. But instead of continuing with a ‘war on drugs’ that sought to persecute or imprison recreational users, the most destructive parts of the culture (primarily their heroin problems) were reframed as a health and dependence issue. In changing their legislation and providing rehabilitation facilities, treating problematic users as patients rather than criminals, these countries instigated powerful reforms that reduced criminality, improved public health, and surprisingly in some cases even lessened the desire to partake in these substances.
These approaches and programmes that were novel at the time have been continued due to their immense success and popularity, and we’re now seeing worldwide emergence of partial drug reforms where a number of illegal substances are being woven into medical and therapeutic practices because of their remarkable benefits.
So not only does it seem that we have poorly judged the properties and effects of many of these substances, but surely we have fairly well established that there have been significant errors in what has been a very clumsy and simplified (and almost certainly corrupt) approach to addiction.
The famed Rat Park experiment in the late 70s showed addiction to be not simply a product of deliciously hedonistic chemicals, but rather as facilitators of escapism. When the little mice tested on were given the choice between heroin and water, alone in their cages they would sip on the heroin sometimes until death. But when the creatures were given playmates, toys, tunnels and romantic prospects, they would almost always leave the antisocial heroin alone and prefer the water. Given this logic seems entirely transferable to human culture, we might begin to regard many drug-related issues as having roots in the pitfalls of society itself, people feeling isolated and depressed. Ironically, some of these illegal substances are powerful anti-depressants that are known to bring profound shifts in perspective as well as pro-social behaviour.
While it is difficult to rid the world of scepticism in the face of the unfamiliar, there’s even more that we can do to foster a healthy relationship between society and that which has potential for harm. The facilities and support for substance abusers is a great start and marks a huge revelation in our attitudes, although there are other ways we can nip this in the bud:
Education — If people know the risks involved and what they’re doing to themselves through ingestion, they may be less likely to fall into addiction or abuse.
Quality — Access to pharmaceutical-grade substances and paraphernalia rather than unregulated street product could mitigate poisoning, disease, and overdosing.
Social acceptance — Curiosity for new experiences should not be met with reprehension and suppression of information, but rather with accessible information and proper guidance.
Safety — For purposes of testing, teaching, or rehabilitation, secure environments can offer a controlled steppingstone in or out of substance recreation.
Legislation — Providing a fair legal framework that neither encourages nor prohibits substance use can be a helpful element in regulation and facilitating the other components of a healthy and agreeable reform.
If people’s recreational behaviours are decriminalised, they will be more likely to use sanctioned methods and abide by recommended protocol. This doesn’t just apply to the acquisition and use, but also with support networks, educational programmes, and open discussions that can pave the way to a more integrated cultural perspective.
It seems purposeless and even counterproductive to have laws that we know are going to be ignored and defied. They’re just not in line with cultural behaviours and values. We live life with the expectation that some of these rules are sometimes going to be stepped over when they’re considered unreasonable or unnecessary. So why do these laws exist if we know a significant percentage of people are going to ignore them? Isn’t it setting a bad precedent that people should break laws? How is a young person to know what is truly right and wrong, what is truly safe and dangerous, if our rules are whimsical and inconsistent?
There is surely some good in being able to recognise that a law can be wrong or unnecessary, though the ideal is surely when the citizenry doesn’t even feel obliged to break laws in the first place. Some alignment is in order. But how do you make laws suitable for a population?
Through the Ten-Tier System’s proffered democratic framework, we can work to understand what the people want, even identifying areas where education and understanding are lacking. In many of the conversations, we can surely find homeostasis of agreement between the people of society when looking for a framework that is safe but expansive, structured and yet accommodating. If the public agrees on levels and limits—and sets them by its own authority—they are not rules imposed from the outside, but the unified agreement of the masses that has cultural and scientific backing.
Therefore, the laws and limits, restrictions and privileges, will align with what people see as reasonable and agreeable. We can also collectively, rationally decide what punishments are befitting of those who break the laws we set. In this way we almost surely will have fewer people breaking laws, we will have more respected and agreeable laws, have fewer criminals, and almost certainly fewer tragedies.
End of Part I. Read the next part here — Drugs, Guns, and Fast Cars — Part II.
Next, we’ll hit Cars, Alcohol, and Guns. See you there.
https://www.riscassi-davis.com/blog/2022/april/death-from-prescription-drugs/
https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2016-09-27/the-danger-in-taking-prescribed-medications
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9549603/
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-related-emergencies-and-deaths-united-states
https://drugabusestatistics.org/
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7150a2.htm