Progress Arriving on Marriage, Marijuana, and Control Over Our own Dying Process.
This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok. Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited. I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life. Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.
Progress Arriving on Marriage, Marijuana, and Control Over Our own Dying Process.
Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)
Author Notes about this Blog
Progress Arriving on Marriage, Marijuana, and Control Over Our own Dying Process.
15 years ago I railed/whined/ranted against several issues which now appear to be falling in place as resolved. Marijuana, gay marriage and control over our own dying process are all issues currently well under way to resolution.
Most surprising has been the advancement of gay marriage. Progress here is simply astounding. It may be a simple enough proposition that if we want the right to choose who to marry, then others then need the same right. It may have seemed rational enough to claim who someone else marries has no bearing on our own marriage. And it may have seemed fair enough that our own religious beliefs should not be made the law of the land. But sex and love, being sex and love, are hard issues about which to be rational. Emotions tend to rule in this area. As James Baldwin once said, "Everybody's journey is individual. You don't know with whom you're going to fall in love…..if you fall in love with the wrong color, wrong religion, wrong sex---you fall in love."
The most irrational of the three policies on the issues listed above have been the policies on marijuana. As a physiologist with adequate physiological knowledge of how recreational drugs act on our body systems, placing marijuana as more toxic to the body than alcohol or nicotine has always been a major absurdity. We all know many people who die from medical conditions related to the use of nicotine or alcohol. Who do we know that dies from conditions related to marijuana use? Most everyone knows moderate use of alcohol can be relatively harmless. Medical scientists know that some people have a gene which can induce a person toward becoming an alcoholic, and these people should not drink at all. And we all know that no level of nicotine use is safe---period. And history has shown that making a popular recreational drug illegal does not work, but just fosters a huge underground criminal industry to market the illegal drug. And history has clearly shown the impact on our inner cities by making a popular recreational drug illegal. And what ethical, social, or economic sense does it make to take teenagers who sell marijuana on a street corner, put them in jail (at a cost of @$30,000/yr) with mandatory sentences of up to ten years? And on what scientific basis would football claim marijuana to be a drug which enhances athletic performance and therefore make it a basis for discipline? Assault---tolerable up a pt., robbery---tolerable up to a point, binge drinking---tolerable, etc and so on. But smoke pot to mellow out from stress? Suspension is on the way.
It seems safe to predict now that marijuana is finally going to put in the same category as nicotine and alcohol. Mostly, it seems, because states and the federal government need the money from taxing it, and our prisons are not only bulging at the seams, but costing a huge fortune. So it seems it will become legal, albeit for the worst of reasons. Recreational drugs are always used to affect our mind-set and often to lessen the pain of reality. Recreational drug abuse, and in fact, all addictions of most any sort are medical problems and the money spent treating them as criminal behavior and requiring police attention is better spent on providing addiction rehabilitation centers all over the country.
Finally, movement is underway to give all of us control over our own dying process. This has always been the most puzzling hurdle. Why would anyone want to lose control over their own dying process? Why would anyone want the government, someone else's religion, or any other source be allowed to tell any of us how to die or when to die? There is no need to fear death because it is inevitable, and when you are dead what the hell is there to fear? We have all been dead 99.9% of the time life has existed on our earth---and does this haunt us? Do we lose sleep over the fact we were not present during these millions of years? Of course we don't, and why should we lose sleep over the fact we will not be around for millions of years in the future? I doubt I am the only one who doesn't fear death, but does fear having no control over my own dying process.
At any rate, progress on all of my pet issues for many years are beginning finally to break in the direction of science, logic, and fairness. Unfortunately, if we cannot enforce responsible reproduction and the human population of the earth doubles, as it has in my lifetime, nothing else much matters, since humans are no doubt subject to the same dire consequences of over population as any other species. Yes, humans, too, are subject to God's laws which govern the evolutionary process.
