Hm. My conception of HR seems completely orthogonal to yours. It
*enables* liberty and autonomy. But the way you're describing it,
"do-gooder", "interfere", "spirals", "homeostasis", etc., it sounds
like an attempt to *manipulate* the users.
Precisely, that was my point, it often manifests that way. I'm not
denying your conception, only noting that my introduction to it was
complementary to your ideation.
It's nothing like that. By taking my street drug to someone who knows
how to test it, I'm ensuring that my *intention* is satisfied. "I
don't want to take a bunch of strychnine. I want to take a bunch of
LSD." HR is assisting the drug user in their use of drugs, not
attempting to stop the drug user from using drugs. It's similar with
other drugs like heroin. "I don't want to overdose. I want to get
high." HR helps ensure your dosage is appropriate to your *intent*.
I can get behind that. One of the people I mentioned as being low-grade
addicts was actually a very high-grade addict in the sense that she was
always and forever seeking novel "altered states" and had a very
sophisticated way of managing and expanding that without acute harm to
herself or others. I had to leave her orbit because in fact, I did
find her to ultimately be a harm to me, but not acutely, or at least not
through her myriad pursuits of novel altered states.
Yes, of course the teatotalers and prohibitionists need to be
persuaded to do something other than the stupidity of the drug war.
So, to appeal to those do-gooder types, we can explain that a *side
effect* of HR is that those who don't actually intend to get high,
they're just trapped in some bad attractor, they will be helped out of
that attractor. But don't confuse the side effect with the purpose.
I accept that YOUR purpose for developing an HR strategy/system might be
to enhance the opportunities for "novel altered states", and I believe
that Oliver Sacks work in neuropharmacology was precisely aligned with
that ideation, but I don't think the folks/systems who coined the term
Harm Reduction were doing anything *but* trying to help people
survive/recover-from their worse instincts, even if *some* of them might
be very sympathetic (and practiced at) drug use themselves.
I would think that you would find the ultimate collaboration in your
ideas with major Drug Cartels... why *wouldn't* they want a burgeoning
drug-trade built on top of high-functioning drug-culture? I can
*imagine* that there are some good (bad) reasons for the illegal drug
business to cultivate bad side-effects for their wares... (the current
stuff about lacing everything with Fentanyl?) for short-term gains
and/or keeping control of the business by keeping it black-market (maybe
don't want to have to compete with the Sacklers, et al?). Maybe a good
hedge would be to work both ends of that one? I think that is a common
theme in cyberpunk.
For a day-after-tomorrow view of a deliberate high-functioning society
of drug use, I offer up Walter Jon Williams' (ABQ) 1986 cyberpunk novel
Hard Wired <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/304761.Hardwired> where
his protaganist wears a pharmaceutical grade drug-delivery pump not
unlike an insulin pump which has only three drugs: red, white, and
blue... following the convention of downers, uppers, and hallucinagens
with an AI interface that monitors his vitals and convolves them with
his aspirations for the moment. It is coincidental, but interesting (to
me anyway) that this was set in what WJW referred too as the
ABQ-Flagstaff Strip, a Strip City in the near future not unlike the
Ft-Collins-Pueblo Urban Strip that was already emerging in 1986.
On 1/7/22 09:10, Steve Smith wrote:
On 1/7/22 7:01 AM, glen wrote:
...<Harm Reduction>... And perhaps it's a manifestation of whatever
core physiology it is that binds the [ma|pa]ternal-individual
perspectives into a triangle. HR seems to cut a comfortable,
practical slice through the mess, much like what I imagine a
steely-yet-kind affect would look like.
I do have an affinity for the Harm Reduction conception to a degree,
and see how it can break the "downward spiral" that I think is
implied here (I feel bad; I take risks/drugs to feel better; I get
caught/judged; I feel bad;....etc). Someone once told me "you are
always either spiraling up or spiraling down in this world, it is the
choices you make at any given instant which you are doing". Even
homeostasis ideation leaves room for a mix of up/down spiraling
within some limits. I don't have a lot of experience with drug (or
other harsh) recovery up close, but I have known a lot of mild
addicts... people whose drug/alcohol/sex/spending/exercise addictions
*seem* to interfere with their quality of life and have tried (only
mildly) to bump them onto new trajectories. I would say all of them
were in some kind of dynamic homeostasis that had worked for them for
years if not decades, and who was I to interfere with their patterns
which were by some measure, actually working.
I haven't. But I'd *like* to buy some street drugs and take it to,
say, a rave and have the HR team test it just to get a feel for that
process from the user's perspective. I think I can project how it
might feel to be on the HR team. But I really don't have any idea
how the users feel about it. One of my neighbors back in Oregon, I'm
speculating, would have thought the HR team was part of the "deep
state" ... or spies for the DEA. But I've known many drug users who
are more rational than she was.
The major proponents of HR that I know of tend to be do-gooders who
believe they are "saving people". That is not to say that they
don't have some successes, and that the spirit is a good one, but to
the extent I have had people (try to) interfere in my life, it is
generally unwelcome (until I am ready, whatever that means). I
think the fact (not the aspiration) of HR can mean that many
individuals who might have spiraled right out the bottom have the
opportunity to reverse their spirals and spin back upwards... ideally
through a different mechanism (finding something besides the
addiction that is hurting them to climb back up with?). I think HR
is more important to the non-subject of the HR in that it removes us
(somewhat) from the judgement that whomever is being *harmed*
*deserves* to suffer, and I think for the most part, that makes us
better citizens... to relieve our own judgements at least in one or
two contexts.
I had heard the phrase "there, but by the grace of God, go I" many
times, and dismissed it as religious gobbledeygook until a very
non-religious friend said that about a homeless person on the street
in a time and circumstance when I was able to recognize the "grace"
in what he was saying.
- Steve
On 1/6/22 09:41, Steve Smith wrote:
Your use of Gaze worked for me, but I also understand Marcus'
reaction to it. I'm sure others would as well... Gaze as you
intended it and the rest of us received it is naturally a
multi-spectral phenomenon... some of us have notches in our Gaze,
as you suggested Q-shaman and Rittenhouse in their own Reflective
Gaze perhaps. I had not heard the reference to the
nanny/daddy/libertarian triangle before but it fits how I do think
about the tensions, up to and including my own internal
apprehensions and intentions which sometimes have my mind/soul
running a little bit like a Wankel engine... each combustion
chamber taking it's turn (positive or negative pressure) on each of
the three extrema you describe. It seems like there is a
meta-pattern in there, a first derivative of those quantities that
can get a resonance set up, driving us forward (or backward). In
reflection on my ambitious youth, I think I was driven by that
triad... 1) Wanting the freedom to explore/experience with abandon;
2) Wishing someone would clear my path, pick up my broken toys and
cut the crusts from my avocado toast; 3) Wishing someone would
bitch-slap the people who were getting in my way or not cooperating
and maybe give me a hearty slap on the back anytime I did something
bold.
I also like your invocation of the Steely Affect Judge in these
cases. I have my own distrust/judgement of the "<Adversarial>
Criminal Justice System", mostly from having worked as a PI for a
few years (in my ambitious youth) but the few members of those
professions (judges, lawyers, LEOs) that I developed a lot of
respect for were those that seemed to have a truly humanist center
AND the Steely Affect you suggest. Unfortunately those were as
Unicorn as the apocryphal Benevolent Dictator and the
GoodGuyWithGun... I left the biz because (partly) I didn't see a
righteous niche for me (or anyone?) in that game.
<aside> As an antidote to those judgements/kneejerks of mine, I
*was* very pleased to see how hard the judge, prosecutor, and
ultimately Governor of Colorado worked with the recent Manslaughter
Case where the sentences for the trucker were required by law to be
consecutive, leading to a 100+ year sentence for something that I
think ended up being reduced to order 10 years. I wanted to see
more of that kind of unity (vs adversarality) in cases like Floyd,
Rittenhouse, Aubery, etc...
I have only begun to follow politics closely in the past 6 years or
so but was not surprised to find how few *statesmen* we had among
our elected officials. Among those who seem to have truly
dedicated their life to trying to make this nation (or any given
state or locale) a better place for all who live in the
jurisdiction, many have a very different idea from me of what
"better place" would look like, but at least they seem to engagable
on the topic.
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