The world hates demons

[pirates_]

If my demons are my problem, than why do I enjoy their company so much? They make me smile, they make me laugh, and they definitely bring upon a feeling of well being. I see no downside to keeping them around other than the fact that once they leave my temple; the worlds true colors are washed away, and everything is gray and not so perfect once again.

 

[Ksa]

It's a bit of a duality that you forcefully describe in your statement. We may be brought to think, through the influence of postmodern pessimism that there is a boundry between drugs and medicine. That boundry is increasingly given, as a result of our social values, by the nature of the drug itself rather than one's behavior towards it.

Concepts of drug abuse that were once used as a reference, seem to fade away and cede place to, for specialists in chemistry a prima facie wrongful misconception, narcotics, substances, in their full pejorative meaning. Is it perhaps to withdraw the guilt from the abusers by demonising a whole class of chemicals? Or perhaps to try and remove the source of abuse rather than educating the abusers to stop taking the medicine when medicine is not needed?

Having demons of your own is acceptable because we all have our demons. Feeling pretty good about them is not wrongful either. It's perhaps what makes us human, the will to break our routine and do something a little different from the rest and whoever says different says entertaining. A more noble cause is to be able to control those demons and make them useful to us rather than a burden to our lives.

A great example is the use of DDT to disinfect African regions. In the 70s when post modern pessimistic farmers rightfully accused DDT of causing cancer, the FDA banned it. It was not the farmer's poor methods of using the pesticide that was to blame, it was DDT. As a result of the ban, malaria mortality in such African regions skyrocketed to an epidemic level in less than a year, killing millions of people. After a debate it was established that it would be wise to restore DDT usage in such regions of high risk. As soon as DDT was restored, the mortality dropped below 1% of the peak resulting from its removal. It can perhaps be learned from our past mistakes that trusting post modern pessimistic approaches to make such decisions can not only result in a decrease of the quality of life, but death can ensue from the ban of such substances we refer to as ''demons''.

Same post modern approaches tend to incriminate the following domains:

- Vaccination (Many claim it should be stopped because it causes Autism)
- Fast Food, food additives etc. (Many claim it causes obesity)

Fast food is a good example of post modern pessimism that demonises a system instead of a person. In other words, it is not your fault that you eat like a pig and have no control over yourself, it's the system, the system is bad, it is the reason why you are the way you are, thus, the idea of not having a choice because the system took it away from you the minute you ate a burger. This is often followed by the rise of psychologically developed orthorexia. People attack the foundation of the well being of our society because of small inconveniences caused by this system. Such naive approaches tend to ignore the vital benefits of a demonized system and reject it for it's more or less important down-sides, regardless of the tragic consequences.

In some states of the USA it is a felony to make public accusations against the food chain, punishable with imprisonment or fines. This is the future of the world, locking up post modern pessimists to avoid dangerous outcomes of their audacious claims, or even the collapse of our society.

 

[Ixchellian]

For modern society to act as it has towards drugs; laying stigma upon this practice or chemical but not another, which was laboratory made to to the same thing..... It's not through guilt, or greed. It's a result of our races' drive for control, over all things.
Think of it this way; man was originally afraid of the dark, so man sought to control the fear *and* the dark; man is afraid of death, so man tries to control it by learning the base mechanism of death. And since we couldn't, we started to pick apart our own mechanisms; to find out why, and head death off at the pass.
That lead to the first drugs, which if not to improve physical health, were discovered and used to control our minds. Yet we still had a natural respect and fear of the life, dark, and the unknown, which made us respect the things that gave us power to control them.
But in our search for ever more inventive ways and knowledge to prolong life, live easily, and kill each other; we have lost much awe, fear, respect, and acceptance of the unknown.
Drug law stems from the desire to control our surroundings, and that includes people. To control people, you have to control their minds. To control minds, what is needed? Drugs.
Because death is the one thing we absolutely cannot control yet, we still have the basic buried respect and wonder for it. That is why in my opinion, willful human self-termination is possible for us.
We can't control our lives sometimes, death becomes the only apparent control over life that is left.
But we often lose sight of what has control over life *and* death.... and that is Time. Because we are self-aware and determinate beings, time is the ultimate force. Our miracle is that we have free will, and with those three things, time is on our side for controlling life.

At least for a while.

 

[Tunnelfission]

"Integrating the shadow" is what a famous philosopher/psychologist Carl Jung calls it.

I find it integral to accepting oneself and that good and bad are really all gray