Drugs, Guns, and Fast Cars — Part II
Empowering humans with our most problematic technologies
Contents:
Intro
Fast Cars (Driving)
Alcohol
Dangers & Downsides
Guns
Final Thoughts
“A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.”
—George Santayana
It couldn’t be said how easily we kill ourselves. Our poisons are treasured historic inventions. Whether it’s a kid drinking themselves to death, or a mishap with a Glock, the human design is broiled in curiosity and adrenaline. It becomes a matter of practicality, then, to know how to handle our most dangerous toys.
When humanity shares an undeniable lust for danger, for adventure, for risk, and for playing with things that have the potential to thrill and kill... What on Earth should we do? How can we accommodate these in society? …Should we?
There’s a subtle terror that lies in speculation of what could go wrong. When a reckless citizen picks up a gun, ingests a drug, or gets behind the wheel of a speeding ton of metal, we ask ourselves—is there control?
In the hands of the everyday citizen, we place a degree of trust. To drive their car, to work their job, to put a sharp fork in their own mouths—there’s a risk of danger in every breath, and we can either hide from it, or we can embrace it and learn. Each woman, man, or child has a place in society that only they can fill, and they must be equipped, rather than bridled. Micromanagement and prohibition are poor tools when you’re teaching a man to fish. After all, our purpose shouldn’t be to survive, but to live. Yet through a legal matrix of someone else’s making, we’ve been fooled into thinking that government policy represents our own ethics. In truth, many of them have been attempts to shoehorn us out of independence and into a manageable order.
No matter your perspective on government, as children safeguarded by overprotective parents, children we will stay. It’s only in risking the rocks that we can swim to shore, and unfamiliarity with our dangers only makes us vulnerable. We are bound to a duty of competence the day we yearn our first breath, and self-navigation is the only course to independence—which is really what freedom means.
Yet the new millennium is minimalistic. It shows a kind of pithy robotic obedience to a shamelessly exploited society. The identity cards that prove our adulthood seem to be little more than badges of ownership. But where we see rules and regulations, could we instead envision badges of pride?
The rules from above are rarely commissioned through public agreement, and discernment of right and wrong is oft considered a matter of obedience rather than conscious process from a trained muscle. We are not self-disciplined; we are parented. But we’re supposed to be a democratic society. We’re meant to be making our own rules and decisions. Yet those fit to walk the streets are held by the neckties when it comes to personal consumption. We are proving ourselves as sheep and adolescents by failing to step into accountability.
How dare we be collared? How dare we let ourselves be contained by the arbitrary rules of the few? And how did we let ourselves slump into adequacy? Look at what we’ve built. We are the gods of steel and clay. We are the generational echoes of those who first built fire. The spice of self-mastery lies dormant in our DNA, and it’s only by an activation of spirit that we can actualise our full potentials.
I say the best way to take our power back is by making ourselves competent again. A world can’t be governed from the back seat, and the pioneering of a new age can only be architected by discerning hands. The two secret ingredients to a functional democracy are brains and accountability, and we have to hone both to be effective decision-makers. But decision-making isn’t just a skill reserved for politics; it’s a muscle that can be strengthened in our everyday life, in our self-control and discipline, and in our self-governance.
Freedom in any capacity is a freedom in all capacities, and education is the ultimate form of empowerment. I say let there be risk. Let there be danger. But let there be active development, too. Let’s reach the point of refinement in our evolution where, instead of fearing our vices, we respect them, and where trust can be expected between strangers. If we make our poisons our cures—turning our perceived dangers, pitfalls, and societal saboteurs into opportunities for learning—we could eradicate society of all its illnesses, our crimes unto ourselves most of all.
And what are the roots of these poisons? The philosopher’s way to frame it could be reduced to a lack of knowledge. Democracy erodes without distinct conscious thought processes, and we endanger ourselves through ignorance and immaturity. When people are faced with multivariate considerations for how to govern society, it requires a broadly educated perspective. Drugs, guns, and fast cars wouldn’t be problems if we had a society of conscientious, capable citizens.
Discernment is the king’s key to his governance, yet it is exactly what we are deprived of. The decisions are made for us, not by us. We have confused our definition of freedom and lost sight of healthy perspective. What remains of our self-determination lies impaired, cobwebbed without use. We’re all too happy to accept the morsels of decision-making from a government who takes the whole cake, and we need only do nothing to watch those morsels turn to crumbs.
Those who are educated on the true foundings of modern society should know that we have an oligarchy masquerading as a capitalist empire. For an all-controlling finance system that’s privatised under family names, it should be acknowledged in future policy-making that the politics of the past were not objective. We’ve become wedged into laws and systems based on fear and money, and the two are inseparable. In the eyes of either the fascist or the monopolist, independence is dangerous, and placidity is a convenient quality for the masses from a controller’s point of view. When perspective of ethics is formatted to a simple matter of legality, we become moulded into what is allowed, rather than living by holistic reasoning.
Simultaneously, we’ve also fallen prey to a mindset of complacence. We take for granted the fantastic technologies and availability of pleasures and privileges to such a degree that we consider them ‘rights’. A ‘right’ to drive a car or own a gun. A ‘right’ to exist in the modern world. This could be considered a prideful mindset that is poisonous for culture, and it may require some nuanced reframing of these potentially life-changing or life-ending technologies to foster the due appreciation and reverence. I call even alcohol and natural plants a technology here, even if they are a technology of nature; I will also refer to them as privileges, just as it is a privilege simply to be here on Earth as a human being. It is simply a matter of perspective.
We must posture ourselves for the future through structured education. Learning how to look after ourselves and others is the silver strand that holds the individual to morality. After all, how can you hold a valid opinion on something if you’ve never tried it and never learned about it? There are reasons why the government puts fences between us and our freedoms—because there is justified desire that ought be acknowledged. There is reason why we are pulled towards these behaviours and tools. More than just acknowledged, the yearnings for these technologies ought to be acted upon, and used to society’s advantage. The benefits of liberation can surely outweigh the costs
As attributed to Francis Bacon, knowledge is power, and we could be doing so much more to empower the individual.
Ipsa scientia potestas est.
Latin for “knowledge itself is power”.
So is there a way to prepare people to handle these problematic technologies? Something better than prohibition?
As continuation from Part I, we will call upon our approaches to driving, alcohol, and guns. If you haven’t already read the basics of the Micro-Licence concept, feel free to go brush up. But the essence is this:
If society’s got some dangerous loves it’s not quite ready to give up—such as drugs, weapons, or everyday activities that carry risk, such as driving—we ought to find a way forward into the future that balances freedom with safety. Outright prohibition is a fear-based approach that has been shown to not only fail disastrously by some measures, but it channels normal, otherwise law-abiding citizens into illegal activity, making criminals of people who stand in justified disagreement with unfair or nonsensical laws. When people consider our laws to be unfair, insensible, arbitrary, or even existing for more nefarious reasons, the rules of society are no longer aligned with the values and judgements of the citizenry.
But outside of our ethical quandaries, we can observe an even greater failure of society—preparing people for responsible navigation of daily life. The maturity and conscious considerations we would desire and even require from our citizenry to participate in a functional democracy are—on the broad scale—lacking. Cultural education runs thin, especially on the most problematic activities within society. We simply have rules and regulations that relegate us to a narrow scope of behaviour, which in many instances deprives us of accountability and critical thinking.
But instead of conceding that these are all unsolvable problems, we have an opportunity to aikido this around and turn our weaknesses into strengths. Where there is currently a vacuum of information and training, we might use this identification of major problems as our catalyst to empower ourselves. Where we are currently uninformed and poorly equipped, we can channel our desires for these behaviours into productive learning. Here’s a quick recap of the key ideas:
Education-Based Licensing: A system where individuals must complete short educational courses or pass tests before gaining access to potentially hazardous activities (e.g. alcohol, cigarettes, recreational substances).
Accessible Entry Level: A small, agreeable barrier to entry helps to ensure a base level of comprehension, while not being overly complex or time-heavy.
Safe Legalisation: Making the black market effectively redundant, we can have a higher percentage of law-abiding, law-respecting citizens. Safety and quality can be assured, and information openly provided to encourage responsibility.
Democratic Control Frameworks: Channelling behaviour rather than prohibition helps to regulate access both fairly and safely. With regulations created and fine-tuned by the citizenry through a digital democratic platform, we can ensure greater agreeance and fairness behind agreed levels of restriction.
Staged Licensing: Rather than Boolean ‘yes or no’ legalisation, we can create a system where legal access is proportional to one’s understanding, competence, and responsibility.
Cultural Maturation: Making education our superpower, we can encourage continuous adult learning by making it enjoyable and rewarding. A more conscious, capable society has a vast number of profound and far-reaching benefits, including an expected improvement of general esteem, accountability, and motivation.
Using this intelligent educational licensing system and integrating it culturally, it could play a significant role in shaping a future society that is both enjoyable and highly functional. We can reduce risks and damages, yes, but we also reap the unknowable benefits of a generally more conscientious, less self-destructive populace. As a culturally evolved species, who knows where this new era of living could take us?
Fast Cars
When we’re talking about large hunks of metal moving around the streets at more than bicycle speed, all cars are fast. Of course, we get the boy racers and the grannies both bringing their own kinds of danger, but this conversation stands not just to point at something we love that’s perceived as potentially dangerous. As a staple in the conversation ahead, it’s a good example of a structured system where society has observed the place where function meets risk, and the result is channelled education, or licensing.
A private vehicle to many represents autonomy. It’s a little bubble of personal space, and the means to moving freely around on your own time. On these loves alone, private transport is not something we can so easily replace in many parts of the world. There will likely always be risks and costs, although with developing technologies and cultures we can make these increasingly more manageable. And while public transport has its place, a trip around Southeast Asia will show you that it’s simply not a valid alternative for all different hives of activity that make society function. But logistics and pollution aside, we still get a lot of heartbreak from private vehicles. Even with lights, lines, rules and regs, quality roads, brakes, and tyres, we still see a sadly high rate of fatal accidents. While technology and infrastructure do some of the work in keeping us safe, there is still one part of the equation we could develop a little better. The driver.
While in some Southeastern Asian countries the children are basically born on motorised scooters, developed countries tend to be a bit stricter with their licensing systems, making sure a person can operate a vehicle that could easily kill in a moment of distraction or error. Licensed drivers are supposed to be formally equipped to handle any combination of weather, road, and vehicle of choice. While nobody is guaranteed to be perfect, we can still recognise an area that could be improved. More importantly, we can see here in this licensing programme an educational approach to mitigating destruction that can be refined and used more broadly in society.
According to recent research from the AA Research Foundation, drivers aged 18–24 in New Zealand are three times more likely to die on the roads than young Australians. This is an astronomical difference between countries of such comparable culture. So why is it? It could be because, in each country’s three-stage licensing system—Learners, Restricted, and Full Driver Licence—Australia’s minimum 1-year Learner period is double New Zealand’s 6 months. Australians are also subject to less leeway and harsher penalties when it comes to drink-driving and traffic offences, basing the legal limits on experience instead of NZ’s focus on age as the primary factor.
Ask any insurance company: it’s a global phenomenon that younger drivers have a higher representation in crash statistics. The NZ Ministry of Transport reported that nearly one-third of road fatalities involved a driver under 25 years old. Being young and cocky is sure to mix poorly with inexperience on the road, although no doubt this conversation converges on a multivariate equation.
A study from University of Adelaide’s Centre Automotive Safety Research comments on a more nuanced legal structure: “In New Zealand, all licence holders accumulate the same number of demerit points before losing their licence. But in Australia, novice drivers have a lower threshold, and any offences stay on their record for a longer period of time.”
We’re no doubt seeing a statistical benefit to society when we take an intelligent staging approach to licensing, going beyond just age in the process of qualifying competence and access. For example, a Swedish study showed that beginner drivers with 120 hours of supervised driving experience had 35% fewer crashes compared with those who had 40 to 50 hours. And when lives are on the line, 35% is a lot.
Having grown up in New Zealand, my friends and I could sit our theory-only Learner licence tests at the young age of fifteen. I personally don’t consider fifteen too young to be learning driving as a skill, although a number of my friends had hardly put their Learner licence to use before applying for their hands-on Restricted where they could drive without supervision. Some of these people had very few hours under their belt, and had only driven short distance in a limited array of driver-friendly conditions, in only one type of car, around quiet neighbourhoods (i.e. no motorways or highways), and knew next to nothing about how their car worked or how to maintain it. Some people hadn’t driven at all.
This unconditional six-month period gave technical allowance for a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old to drive around their personal speeding tonne of metal, alone, with zero experience and only theoretical know-how. It shouldn’t be such a surprise that youthfulness has been a high-correlation factor for car crashes.
Having served a brief stint in the Fire Service, being witness to a number of fatal and near-fatal road accidents certainly slowed down my own driving. It was something of a wake-up call seeing young drivers only make one quick, simple mistake, terminating their short lives and laying heart-wrenching tragedy on their families. I could relate similar stories with kids at my high school drinking themselves to an early grave because they had underestimated what a bottle of vodka could do.
Logged, supervised training hours, then, may be one approach to problematic activities like driving, firearm use, and even substance use. For example, drinking alcohol in a quantity-moderated establishment rather than at an unregulated teenage-only house party. Experience, understanding, and competence should precede age as the most important factors for licensing restricted activity—and we can afford to be stricter when a licence represents risk-carrying privilege.
A systematic shedding of restriction makes sense here—using a variety of metrics to assess ability and risk, motivating people to upskill if they seek greater access and privilege. Call it ‘preparation’ if you like, where people’s full autonomy simply asks for the use of training wheels before crowning someone as perfectly self-governable.
For the individual, this can take time, and an active learning or training process that may require dedication and sometimes sacrifice. Of course, patience is a virtue, and we ought not to pander to hasty, gung-ho youths when society’s safety is concerned. At the same time, restrictions deemed immensely unfair and uncompromising will almost certainly instil a wilful rebellion in those who see the bar as being set too high. If accessing things illegally is easier and provides a better experience than the official avenues, we’re inviting trouble and creating a logical reason for people to defy the laws and systems. Therefore, we need to create a reasonable channel that invites and celebrates participation. And so, if we are raising the bar for full, unadulterated access, we can simultaneously lower the bar for taking a dip in the shallow end (even if water-wings have to be mandated for beginners).
This takes pressure off this binary, yes-or-no, black-or-white approach to prohibition, which may lessen feelings of discrepancy and discrimination when the barrier to entry does not refuse you so stubbornly. We should even see some resulting pride in the payoff from dedicated learning and practice—satisfaction from a well-earned privilege. This is the mindset we should foster, encouraging growth and autonomy through a gradual liberation and maturation of our citizens.
Alcohol
As far as drugs go, alcohol fits the archetype perfectly. It dumbs you, numbs you, creates dependence and addiction, it costs us in healthcare and damages. It leads to violence, car crashes, homocides, rapes, suicide, and self-destruction. It ruins your liver, it ruins your brain, hurts your heart, and if you’re anything like me, your dignity tends to get compromised too.
Booze is the druggiest of drugs, yet it’s legal in infinite quantities. As long as you’ve served your childhood, you can drink your bank account empty. Apart from driving vehicles, there seem to be no added rules or information around its effects. It serves an interesting example of a ‘technology’ in society that is heavily abused due to poor moderation, cultural integration, and inadequate education.
Because of their nicely grouped rhyming, we can use these as our three pillars, the three major factors to consider in managing any one of these privileges:
Moderation
Integration
Education
Let’s cover these quickly…
1) Moderation
If we cannot or should not prohibit something, and yet we can’t let it be completely unrestricted, we need some kind of system that determines how much access an individual can get to this technology, behaviour, or substance.
Instead of the binary legal versus illegal status when it comes to an individual’s access to something—be it driving, drinking, or firearm possession—would it not make sense to have different degrees of access?
But how could this be done? By what metrics should people be restricted or supplied? And how could this moderation work in practice?
2) Integration
Legal allowance of a behaviour creates the possibility that it can become normalised in society. Trends and traditions appeal to humanity’s sentiment, and can both fly in the face of logic. It’s likely important, therefore, to acknowledge that there is something deeper here than just ‘practical use’ of drugs or weapons or technologies. Some of these have strong bonds of personal association, identity, history, and genuine love and appreciation. This means we’re not just talking about general liberties here; we’re talking about affiliations and assimilations on a personal level. This of course complicates things slightly and can make new legislation undesirable for some people, although it stands as one more reason why a mature and educated populace will be helpful in transforming unhealthy relationships with these privileges into healthy ones.
But as we move deeper into the Digital Age, we should require a digital kind of integration. For streamlining of protocol or nuanced licensing systems, it’s only a matter of time until digitalisation governs almost all purchasing and legal access. While I’ve made a point of acknowledging people’s fears with this next step, let’s leave ideas of corruptible systems at the door and consider what can be achieved in the future with the help of reliable technology.
3) Education
This is of course the crux of the essay, the major theme of solution. But as we’ll find out, it’s far from everything. We are manipulable by all things we don’t know, susceptible to problems caused by our own ignorance. Much of this is easily cured by shedding even small amounts of light on many of the known pitfalls, and cultural, systemic guidance could well be the solution.
If we consider alcohol in this example, moderation, integration, and education could all be part of the same process and system. Culture should undergo a process of self-revision as a natural product of education, where gained perspective is part of a transformative process on the individual level. We do not have to force anyone away from what we deem to be destructive behaviours, but we can give them the tools to govern their own decisions responsibly.
Using New Zealand in another example, we might compare the drinking culture with that of France.
In New Zealand, binge drinking is something of a national sport, and the culture tends to look down on those who significantly self-moderate, considering a non-drinker a mutinous bore for not wholeheartedly participating in a session of “getting drunk”. It’s an active process, drinking, with alcohol consumption being the central activity in social events and celebration of milestones.
In New Zealand, it’s technically allowable for a parent to give a minor alcohol in a private setting, although it is not particularly customary for a youth to be “drinking” with their parents at dinner time. While most teens will have their first ‘drunk’ experience at 16 or younger, there is a hard legal bar set at 18, where anywhere below is strictly forbidden in public and at establishments.
Under this cultural system, teenagers are chomping at the bit before they reach this golden age of adulthood, which is typically celebrated—no surprise—by getting horrendously drunk. On the 18th birthday, the gate opens entirely in one moment, going from almost complete restriction to full, unbridled access overnight. Between 17 and 18, little moderation has been learned, and the national culture has not done a particularly good job of discouraging self-destructive levels of drunkenness. In fact, it’s considered cheerable humour and good character to be “fully involved” in obliterative consumption.
In comparison, France—what could be considered the epicentre of wine culture—a glass with a meal is no big deal, quite normal to complement their food as part of the enjoyment of cuisine. This puts quality over quantity—the inverse to NZ—and does not put so much dependence and priority on the drinking element.
By the time one reaches 18, they have learned self-moderation more gradually and more gently, having normalised a refined act of tasting—rather than gulping—from their parents and elders. There is no sudden excitement of being released from this prohibitive legal cage, nothing that has injected them with the desire to prove their adulthood by punishing their liver. It’s just wine—nothing new here. And while the silly effects of rosy cheeks and belly-laughter are still well-loved, France has a much healthier and more respectful relationship with their poison.
I found a similar culture during my time in Argentina. After much time alone during my travels, there was a part of me that craved social outlet, paired with a bit of alcohol-induced silliness to grease the wheels and break some ice. One night, I was invited to a social gathering, and I felt almost embarrassed when I recognised myself grabbing eagerly for the next drink when the others did not share the same impulse. The focus was on the food. Instead of quick-drinking being a “manly” characteristic, the idea confronted me that actually it was a point of weakness, an enslavement to habitual dependence on this social lubricant. Instead of drawing contentment from millilitres swallowed and a building outrageousness of character, the situation called for a change in mindset. There were only two types of alcohol present, wine and fernet, and they were both consumed with love. A single large cup of fernet would be passed gradually around the table, each person taking a brief turn to satiate themselves, for which they had to wait patiently. Dopamine came from a slow, savoured taste, rather than an empty bottle. Enjoyment came from quality time, not from chemically crucified inhibition.
It seems our behaviours and habits are merely a product of our culture, and small, respectable changes can have profound effects. But the very demand and “need” for excessive and destructive behaviour can also come from something deeper and darker. New Zealand also has a sadly high suicide rate, which could be reflective of the need for personal intimacy that we feel we need to drink ourselves into. Abuse of any substance is likely to correspond with emotional isolation, as was demonstrated in the famous Rat Park experiment. As mentioned in Part I, this experiment with rats proved that heroin use—and resulting addiction—was only attractive when wholesome social bonding wasn’t an option.
While rationality can’t always triumph over an emotion-based decision, we can help to smoothen the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Instead of a one-step legalisation process based purely on age, we can create a fairer, more respected and moderated approach. If teenagers are going to find a way to drink, let’s create a model so that they do it safely, in moderation, and through educational principles.
Now while it was tempting to throw alcohol under the general banner of drugs, I thought it deserved its own section because of its cultural prevalence. Alcohol isn’t just a substance; it exists in society in the form of bars, clubs, events, games, breweries, celebrations, school balls, university culture, and more. The integration I spoke of earlier applies to our physical infrastructure as well as our legal and digital infrastructure. Just like Sweden’s solution for heroin, we could go as far as creating regulated and monitored establishments like youth clubs so that teenagers can partake in social alcohol consumption without it being either the primary focus or a high-risk debaucherous activity. It might sound counter-intuitive at first, but think Rat Park. Have games, music, creative exercises, and opportunities to fraternise with the opposite sex (innocently). They might find that they have more fun without the alcohol. Yet with the addition of a proposed educational process, alcohol allowances can be gradually increased relative to their age and technical understanding. In this way, we’re not condescending to these teens and directly refusing them, but appealing to their underlying desires for freedom and connection while meeting them halfway.
Most people start their journey with alcohol early, and so in some way it makes sense to think of it as a teenage issue more than an adult issue. If we can construct a healthy teenage drinking culture, it is likely to carry through to adulthood. A hard ‘no’ will likely lead a crafty, persistent teen to go around the system rather than through it, and so we may consider a ‘yes, but’ approach. I.e. Yes, you can drink, but only a certain amount and in a certain place. It ought to be seen as fair, and invite these eager teens to prove their adulthood not by defying their parents and getting wasted out of sight, but by proving their knowledge—for example—of how alcohol can denature the dendrites of your brain cells, and cause liver cirrhosis, and prevent neurogenesis, and dehydrate your cells.
When I was first drinking as a teen, my knowledge of alcohol extended as far as knowing it was a liquid that made you act silly and make people laugh. People get the vague gist that it’s ‘bad for you’, but if nothing worse than a hangover results, which comes and goes in a day, we remain ignorant of the invisible, chronic damages and become complacent with the risks. The 99% have little idea of the mitochondrial damage, the inflammation, the accelerated ageing, and specific impacts on the brain. Specific insight is what will allow that true reverence and conscious decision-making to prevail.
Alcohol gives us a lot of good times, social cohesion, and a delicious refreshment we deserve to treat ourselves with. We don’t want to take that away from people. But we do want people to be smarter about their drinking. It should be universal to desire less heartbreak, less dependence, fewer medical emergencies and less chronic illness. We don’t want to completely suck the fun out of the mindless pleasure of cracking open a cold beer or or clinking a glass of wine, and call me a dreamer, but I think an educational element even has the potential to bring even greater appreciation to this activity. It could be fun and fascinating to know more about our everyday activities, and in some cases even an intellectual triumph, a mark of in-group cohesion when you and your fellow drinkers have in some way earned your right to participate. Facts on beer bottles, licensing parties, giving your buddy some stick for his lesser weekly allowance… Who said learning can’t be fun?
Dangers & Drawbacks
A casual cultural licensing system could be approached in a number of ways, and this is just an idea to play with and refine. Heck, it could be applied just as effectively to supplements, fast food, and other consumables with noticeable health impacts. It need not be intimidating or overly formal, or even that heavily policed; it ought to be thought more of as a guidance system that makes upskilling and learning attractive.
But while staging access is an intelligent solution to overdrinking and unconscious self-destruction, it does not entirely address the heart of the problem. It may seem an overly formal and convoluted approach for some people to take a test to be able to go to a bar to order a beer, and someone seeking self-destructive practices will find a way regardless of whether or not they can get their hands on alcohol. While alcohol is often a catalyst in exacerbating negative cycles, in someone’s desperation to numb the pain, there is even potential for someone to resort to something more extreme than drowning their sorrows—although it’s hard to see all ends and outcomes with a theoretical restructure.
Note that this is only one piece of the puzzle when redesigning society, and it is expected that general life quality and satisfaction would improve across the board under the Ten-Tier System. Theoretically, financial desperation and a lot of pressures and complexities of everyday life would be resolved or alleviated for the individual under the TTS. A parallel implementation would see enhanced universal support for mental health and other life conundrums. Still, there can always be failures and outliers, and it’s important to consider how smart new ideas could have the potential to backfire.
But how would we actually set up this micro-licence system? Who would determine what is 'educational' and what allows each person to rise to the next level of privilege per education level? Would it be using AI? Who would program the AI, and how would we ensure that information is continuously updated—if necessary—and objectively truthful when truth is so obfuscated and sometimes difficult to agree on?
Much of the construction would be initially designed by individuals but refined through a democratic process. It’s possible and that AI would be used to some degree to help collate and update information, although my personal imagining of this system would not be a far cry from the current tests undertaken to obtain a driving licence. Physical infrastructure would provide locations to sit the tests, to help insure against cheating, although it’s possible a more automatic, less formal process could be invented to gauge a person’s knowledge and abilities on a particular subject, for which AI could be useful. A great wealth of up-to-date science could be collated from across the globe, although again we are not necessarily requiring PhD-level understanding of ethanol to permit a sip of beer. For what type and depth of knowledge permits what kind of privilege, such things would be determined democratically, and could vary between nations and even communities.
For more information on how the citizenry could engage with this democratic process, you’re invited to read about the Digital Democratic Platform (DDP) and the deeper article about the Digital Democracy.
Guns
Guns, guns, guns. The word itself is loaded with meaning. To one person it is a symbol of protection, an assurance of freedom; to another it instils fear, a symbol of violence and death.
By now you should already understand the theme of this piece—compromise through education. However, guns are unlike anything else being abused in society. Their damage comes from intentional use rather than accidental mishaps that can simply be educated away. Of course, if you look at the countries plagued most by gun violence, it is never just gun violence. People are violent with or without technology; guns are simply facilitators.
So is this really a gun problem we’re dealing with, or are we touching on a symptom of a much more serious issue? Is it a problem of the streets, attributable to gang culture, poverty, and poor mental health? And without guns readily available, what keeps dark forces at bay that would see defencelessness as a predatory opportunity?
Behind crime of any type we find a tangle of cultural and economic problems. Poor, uneducated people tend to find themselves desperate or drawn into gang culture, finding a piece—often through the black market—that will eventually work its way into a homicide case. The United States naturally gets a special mention as our spotlighted case study, where automatic weapons are gunning down whole crowds at a time in episodes of psychotic rampage. The horror of these sorts of events seems to be the founding reason for complete bans of this machinery, asking the good citizens of society to hand over their home defence as a preventative for mentally ill teens shooting up their schools.
The typical counterargument is to balance this out by making sure the good guys have just as much access to guns as the bad guys. The best-case scenario of this solution is that fewer people die because of vigilante intervention. But if we extend the conversation beyond guns, we see brutal knife attacks, explosives, hit-and-runs, and fatal beatings. Handguns account for the vast majority of gun crime, although while having a small advantage of distance over melee weapons, they are still somewhat limited in how much damage they can do to a crowd, which is not really that much more than a knife (which has no ammo restrictions).
If we’re talking rifles—including the notorious AR-15 as well as non-automatic ones—these firearms account for only 3% of all murders in the US. For perspective, hammers and clubs kill 1.5x the number of rifles, and hands and feet 2x. Knives kill 5x more people than rifles, and preventable medical error kills over 300x, so unless we’re planning on exchanging our kitchen knives for blunt plastic sometime soon, it’s likely a better strategy to consider focusing on a broader strategy to reduce the murder rate.
Technology is improving to the point where people are 3D printing weaponry at home, and our governments are using security as the justification for invasive spyware in every aspect of our lives. Despite there being a strong argument for cases where mass shootings are being used to overturn the US Second Amendment (“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”), I want to avoid the discussion of needing to defend ourselves against a corrupt government—although it is a point that should never be forgotten so long as state and citizenry are separate.
Japan is a fantastic example of a country with functionally strict gun laws. Contrary to the Wild West gunslinging culture of the US, Japan has a rigorous access process that includes mental health evaluation, background checks, a written exam, and extensive training. Unsurprisingly, Japan usually has fewer than ten gun deaths per year countrywide, and the few that happen are mostly attributed to organised crime. In Japan, accidental deaths and mass shootings are virtually nonexistent.
In true Japanese style, police are trained to use their martial arts training and non-lethal restraint methods before ever reaching for a firearm, although we could concede that they have much less need to with such a difference between US and Japanese culture. But for anyone who’s played Cluedo before (‘Clue’ in North America), you might remember that there’s more than just the murder weapon to a crime.
An important consideration is that Japan has much less wealth disparity than the US, with strong social safety nets reducing economic desperation. Japan is considered by some assessments to be the most educated country in the world, and 3rd in attainment of tertiary education. However, Japan still has high suicide rates, which is considered a reflection of the expectation of unwavering discipline and competitive performance. In essence, we could say they have their own comparable set of mental health problems, which at least tells us that mass shootings are not simply a product of depression.
The highest crime rates of gun violence in the world are from notoriously gang-run countries where the people are poor and uneducated. El Salvador caught some headlines not long ago, going from the most dangerous country to one of the safest, taking swift and uncompromising measures to shut down gangs. But just as we could reflect on substance abuse—and also with violence and sex crimes—does the deeper issue behind all these problems reside in the fact that society is a loveless economic machine that turns its back on desperate people, manufacturing criminals instead of fostering health of body and mind? The intelligent and orderly Japanese at the very least are not gunning people down in the street, although it appears that even the most advanced and civilised countries are susceptible to crippling levels of isolation and stoicism.
It appears again that we chalk an equation that factors a multitude of variables. While violent crime and homicides require a slow fix of cultural and economic improvement, guns still represent more than statistics of crime. While just as unpredictable as any other murder weapons, guns are still purpose-built killing machines that have a much greater tendency to lead to accidental or large-scale deaths, and maintain an edginess to society when this technology exists as an everyday street object accessible to anyone at any time. The capacity for disaster is always looming, instilling public spaces with an undercurrent of distrust and social tension. Nobody can be trusted. And therein we find the crux of the problem.
We can’t ignore the fair reasoning of the 2nd Amendment, though unrestricted access is also highly problematic. If it’s unagreeable and even unwise to push guns into the black market by prohibiting them, there ought to be respected channels by which people can access them. We can follow Japan’s example here (which exists in other countries too), by ensuring access requires stability of mind and security of possession. Like with driving and recreational substances, it makes sense to provide rigorous training and education to prevent accidents. But while this is an admirable effort to reduce unintended consequences, guns are slightly different, because their primary use is to shoot a target. Instead of simply insuring against mishandling faults, we want to have a degree of confidence that a person is not going to have an intent to rob or murder. In truth, we can’t ensure such a thing, and in this case higher skill and knowledge do not necessarily correlate with lesser intent to do harm. Even a rigorous training process and background checks for an individual do not prevent guns being given to someone unqualified, stolen, or misused. It could even be argued that gun-access protocol being too restrictive defeats the purpose of the 2nd Amendment, which is arguably a much more important insurance policy than protecting against street crime.
If only a select few people can access guns in a country like the US where the government is openly corrupt and dangerous, any significant form of restriction will (and should) be resisted with utmost ferocity. Until it can be assured that an opportunistic government will not take take permanent advantage of a defenceless citizenry, it is the duty of the People to be formidable enough against this power to dismantle it if need be.
We’ve seen what has happened when governments have endeavoured for ultimate control and radical change. China, the USSR, Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam, Germany, and a number of other countries have seen the blood of innocent millions washed across the pages of history.
However, a less radical intervention may still be possible to reduce accidents, thefts (including by the children of gun owners), and begin to make a cultural shift through changing reputation. An educated licensing system cannot and should not seek to strip current owners of their weapons, but aim to train owners on safety protocol so that—first and foremost—children and young adults under 25 are not accessing them easily. In a country like the US, there is no perfect or complete solution immediately available that can completely secure against malintent.
Despite the media mayhem showing close-ups of the tragedies attributed to ease of gun access, there are a lot of strong cases presented in favour of gun access. Conservative Bill Whittle delivered a speech in front of Congress that included the mention of 800,000 to 2 million violent crimes being prevented by guns every year, which outweigh gun murders by more than one-hundred-fold.
An especially important criticism in his speech highlighted the government's intention to amend the Constitution to disarm the citizenry. This, he points out, represents a critique of the people by the government. Perhaps ironically, it mirrors the criticism and distrust that the people have against the government.
“There are two kinds of animals in this world,” he says, “predators and prey. No one watches a leopard chase down a gazelle and denies that the gazelle has a right to use its hooves and horns to protect itself from the predator. But there are people . . . who would deny that same right to self-defence to other human beings. Such people seem to think that the way to stop the leopard is to cut the horns off of the gazelle.”
We could argue that this logic applies to people defending themselves not just against opportunistic street criminals, but opportunistic governments as well. The very existence of the Constitution is an admission that a government separate from its people is inherently problematic, especially when heavily influenced by Big Industry and all its lobbying billionaires. A fight for cultural correction can be massively advanced by education, but a system without checks and balances has the ability to influence what kind of education and what levels of restriction that control behaviours and access, landing us back in the same mess we had to begin with.
In this way, it is an absolute must that democracy plays a core part of this transition. The democracy proposed in the Ten-Tier System helps not just to rekindle but ensure a trust between the citizenry and the structures put in place. If such a system with its strong anti-corruption features is brought to the likes of the United States, the 2nd Amendment would effectively be redundant. There would be no need to protect against governmental powers, because the people would be the government.
The ultimate solution for any kind of moderation is self-moderation, from the inside rather than imposed rules. It would benefit the entire world being filled with people who are mature, educated, emotionally regulated, more mentally secure, less economically desperate, with an inclination and ability to help each other in times of need. No doubt—outside of crime related to gangs, drugs, and poverty—we are seeing a culture of gun violence from extremely sad and aggravated young people who have seen examples from the media as gun violence being a quick path to fame. Guns seem to be the last resort for someone grasping for control and any thread of dominance, sick of being the bottom of society’s great heap.
To fight drug abuse, rape, and any kind of violence, primarily we need to be looking after our people so that no one is so desperate as to think that horrendous crime is a solution. As the saying goes, it’s hurt people that hurt people, and it’s hardly surprising that a society of lonely, isolated, malnourished, overdopaminised, technology-dependent human beings are being driven to breaking point. People are not born as criminals; they are sensitive beings who have been warped and broken by a cruel and unfair situation. It will be in remedying society that we redeem our mental health and make the best use of our educations and technologies.
I believe this is an epidemic of respectlessness. People do not feel valued, wanted, needed. They are crushed into a tiny box where they are defined by what they do for money or what they buy with their money; and when that money is but a trickling-down from great trillionaire conglomerates and their lives are spent watching the rich and famous, the mindset of the common folk becomes based in worthlessness, which is how they are treated. Most typically it is men—often young men—who are the perpetrators of these crimes. Many fearful and angry women will want to blame men, but it is usually men who are left in the cold by society without supports and safety nets, forced to prove themselves through meaningful contribution to get any shred of respect and love.
I was listening to Shia LaBeouf ask the question: what does it mean to be a man? I will preface this by saying this question, in my opinion, applies just as much to womanhood, but I will use ‘man’ here simply to refer to the differentiation between ‘man’ and ‘adult male’. Because it appears that you can be an adult male without being much of a man. And this is not meant to engage people with chest-beating rhetoric, nor is it part of some irrelevant philosophical quiz. Shia’s simple definition was that “you become a man (or a woman, out of girlhood) when you become responsible for other people, and part of that is taking accountability”. I found this definition striking, strangely relevant to these questions of what was wrong with society. And in this society, we have all become strangers, individualists, lonely in a crowded room. We do not and cannot lean on each other like we would do naturally as part of true human nature. Instead, we look after ourselves. The common critique of government is that it doesn’t look after its people very well, but I would actually argue that in some ways it looks after us too much, not giving us the authority to look after each other. In a convenience-driven world, it is quality social connection that we are increasingly starved of, and much of that is dependent on preserving a need for one another, as unusual as that might sound. It is this dependence that fosters depth and robustness of connection, and puts the necessary strain on our roles and duties to one another that gives us the value we should each be carrying. But we are burdenless where it matters, yet overwhelmed by expectation to fulfil trivial activities that only mean something to documentation—our work hours, our social attendance, our vote. But who truly relies on you? Who truly needs you? If you can’t answer that question, you are floating in space without purpose and without your primary value as a human being.
Society is ill, and it will take more than some clever policy to fix it. We are most desperately void of trust more than anything, and while competence and self-accountability aren’t bad places to start, it appears we have to heal our relationships with the toys and tools we abuse so torridly if we’re to have a proper chance at a cohesive future. Our dark loves are all entangled, but we might find, with a muse of reflection, that they’re all knots of the same twine.
Final Thoughts
The art of restructure shows its magic when we turn our biggest problems into our biggest solutions, our weaknesses into strengths. Among these, our collective pitfalls include failures of education across the board, drug epidemics, and really a host of reasons why we feel it necessary to impose restrictive laws instead of channelling behaviour productively. While a portion of the citizenry have access to recreational drugs, firearms, and things that otherwise have a problematic reputation, we might concede that, in most civil societies, their use goes largely without major issue. There is a huge drug culture globally, with alcohol, caffeine and pharmaceuticals not exempt. But in terms of deaths and damages, the statistics show that illegal use, even in its rampancy, has little contribution to health issues compared with legal substances. This alone should warrant investigation into the possibilities of what kind of society could result from an intelligent system of moderation and education.
But we also see that, culturally, much of the crime and tragedy is a direct result of prohibition. Studies show that regulated drug markets can reduce illegal trafficking and associated crime. By finding fair and legal thoroughfare, we disempower these criminal structures, reducing gang violence and organised crime that are fuelled by illegal profits. Every time we try to stanch the flow of humanity’s natural intentions, it backfires. It’s time to make room for our fun-loving, curious natures in a way that’s sensible, giving people back their respect and self-authority. But it must be intelligent.
When formal institution is completely absent, we can observe the presence of self-moderation by those who engage with these substances and behaviours. Legalisation and access do not mean that people will fall immediately into abuse without any form of self-control and awareness of consequence. We might even recognise some inherent problems in the idea that our mentality approaching these things has become a matter of trust in something safe because it is legal, while that which is illegal is—through sanctioned, trusted processes—considered unsafe because of its legal status. Yet there’s significant literature that shows us that this is not at all a good measure of something’s safety or effect on health. Some of these illegal substances have profoundly beneficial effects on the brain and mental health, attitudes within society, and without either addictive qualities or significant toxicity. Meanwhile, there is an extensive list of harmful and sometimes deadly side-effects with legal prescription, which are hardly ever communicated to the patient who simply trusts that their doctor and medical institution know best. We might extend this trust to the politicians who have moral backbones like wet tissue. Who are our policy-makers really? And what incentive do they have to support our self-governance?
Now if there were a reasonable and compromising legal framework that, through its very existence, supported education and quality assurance for a safer, more responsible consumer culture, we would be likely to see a transformative approach to use within society. The taboo that holds up this boundary to “drugs” is wreathed in misunderstanding. We can say the same about anything that holds potential for damage and misuse—cars, guns, fireworks, pet snakes… Usually it is not the ‘what’ but the ‘how’ that gives rise to problems of significance, and when it is either difficult or unwanted to ‘fix’ these problems through abolition, we still have the option to channel use productively. This, arguably, is always the better option when the jury is not in unanimous agreement. If you can’t stop someone from doing something, you can still make fair and agreeable conditions that mitigate the downsides.
This is an opportunity to fix a broken mentality and system for many things, including alcohol. A digital licensing system provides many angles of approach; in a rudimentary system, logic and nuance are lost to convenience.
In its simplicity, without a populace that can be trusted to self-moderate and self-educate, we tend to opt for a basic stop-go signal—either you are allowed to or you are not. Outside of the singular measurement of age, there is no current system to gauge whether an individual is sufficiently mature, conscious, or capable. For driving and firearm use we have licences, where an individual has to prove at least some fundamental knowledge for how to ‘stay between the lines’ and avoid catastrophe. But even with this, there is little assessment of skill, depth of understanding, or character. With any of these activities, whether guns, cars, alcohol or whatever, usually it is not the 95% but people who are acting thoughtlessly or recklessly.
I’m of the belief that many of society’s problems will fix themselves with the improvement of health, happiness, education, and generalised quality of living. However, we could see significant improvements with just a basic provision of activity-specific education when currently there is zero. I ask: what are the official institutions educating the public on alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs? If these things are causing so much damage, why are people not being taught how to use them? Should people not be given the tools for decision-making and self-moderation? Should there not be some basic awareness of risks and damages instead of simply assuming that an 18-year-old has automatically become a responsible user by virtue of finishing puberty?
The theory rests on the premise of this simple question: would someone be less likely to drink so much alcohol when they are acutely aware of what it is doing to them? Most sleep scientists avoid coffee like the plague, which goes to show that acute understanding of what this drug does is enough to change behaviour. Now even though health specialists aren’t the best representation for greater society, the goal here isn’t perfect behaviour or an intention to create wilful abstinence or avoidance of anything that carries potential risks or downsides.
But immediate physical harm to the individual may not be the only outcome from lack of education; dangers can also present themselves more systemically and chronically. In this, it may make sense to engage in basic screening, qualifying and education for those wanting to engage in voting, leadership, parenting, or politics. Just like we would expect teachers and influential experts to be conscious of how they are influencing other people, for those who have influence on society and its training, we can aim to provide information and guidance without seeking to direct the outcome, opinion, or methodology.
To recap, the licensing system has three main purposes:
Preventative for damages: Education acts as a preventative measure against reckless or complacent behaviour that inherently carries risk or has historically been problematic.
Motivate the individual: Society is weak in its resolve, and lazy in its reach for betterness. When there is no direct desire for accountability, we can naturally stimulate self-governance through linking conscientiousness with systemic freedoms.
Maturing democracy: Educational empowerment can be achieved through gamification, fostering better skillsets and knowledge to navigate everyday life. As an extension of personal autonomy, intelligent accountability equips us for democratic management of society at large.
We’re due for a cultural overhaul. While we might easily believe that culture is organic and circumstantial, a bare-boned analysis will find that society has been engineered to strip us of responsibility and mental acuity. Locked in the backseat, we cannot hope to drive a healthy progression, and it’s only in hands-on engagement that will equip us for life on Earth. Relegated to being bossed around by governments and corporations is the death of mind and soul. Health within society is, more than anything, a mindset—where the very desire to do harm is absent, and the need even more so. It’s time to step into our full potential by first taking back our personal sovereignty.