We could all get back to nature if it weren’t for these damned hippies, discouraging us with their weed!

Man, if I knew the path to money was to be a self-righteous, smug, pretentious ass with a command of language capable of putting rabid dogs to sleep…

So, let me get this straight, what its the subtle tip of the scale move in the whole war on drugs complex? Subtly putting somebody in jail for decades for having weed?

I promise to watch BBC nature documentaries next time I smoke a joint. So there.

I would also suggest that right wing apologetics for criminal and anti-social economic and political behaviour also nutures “a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be.”

The Devil Weed as a roadblock to the Nitzschean virtue of becoming who we are.

Brooks is awesome isn’t he?

I know someone from Topeka who claims that Fred Phelps is the world’s greatest performance artist, but if that is the case he really suffers for his art.

Brooks, is that strange creature who has no constituency. The actual Right loathes him, the Left abhors him, he is a perfect fool. Other than serving as a weird pet of the Times, a “thinking conservative,” he speaks for no one. Every now and then I see an article lamenting the passing of our WASP overlords from the scene, other than reminding us, I fail to see his utility.

Aren’t you missing the word “subtly” here? The easy way to encourage “higher” pleasures while discouraging “lesser” pleasures is through tax and subsidy. Tax drugs at a higher rate than other goods, subsidize (or have the state run directly) art and parks and libraries. This is, of course, something most governments actually do.

Is there any argument with any historical backing that defends higher pleasures on grounds of prudence and temperance? This is the kind of thing that makes me think he’s not serious. Not ever.

And I think Roy’s point that “the actual right loathes him” can’t be emphasized enough. All those R voters who think the government should subsidize more art museums and fewer NASCAR tracks. Right.

Is mocking David Brooks meant to be a serious cultural obligation, or merely a cheap thrill indulged in when we’re out of weed? Let us poll a representative sample of conservatives — it’s the only way to be sure.

I don’t know that the right loathes him, so much as mostly ignore him.
I regularly visit an college athletics site, that has a political message board among the athletic ones. In all the times I have visited there, I have never seen a reference to David Brooks. Will, Krauthammer, Steyn, etc. are well represented as well as WND and other conspiracy sites. I think that Brooks utility is as an irritant to the left.
As we are well aware, “pissing off liberals” is a universal good for conservatives,
along with the nuclear family, hierarchy, and submission to religious authority.

Ruth Marcus has put up similar center-right pablum on evils of pot over at The War Criminal Post.

Maybe she and Brooks got high and watched Reefer Madness together?
~

He and his friends should have gone to jail for 5 years? It’s nonetheless OK to smoke weed sometimes but it should still be against the law because reasons? “This one time, I got, like, wicked blazed in the HS parking lot in my friend’s mom’s Hornet because we were hotboxing, and then I like blew this major English presentashe, OMG LOL I seriously forgot who Mark Twain was. The funny thing is we were totally parked in my English teacher’s spot! Also this one friend of mine became, like, a total stoner and stuff? Seriously, he just started eating Hot Pockets and playing MMORPGs all the time with this party from Norway because they were up later and it was seriously sad and shit. He had to take a year off between HS and college, and in the end he had to take a job at Lazard Frères.” Couldn’t he even have lied and pretended he had a friend who went on to become a heroin addict? Seriously you guys, he is WASTED right now. I have a crystal ball and in it I see valium, xanax and vodka on the rocks. Paul Krugman has to step back into his role as the designated columnist so that Brooks can make it home safely. Yes, it would be charitable of us to chip in and FedEx him some White Widow to help him appreciate nature more. But David Brooks is shitfaced this actual second, for real.

“in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship.In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned. ”

Which is why we spend billions subsidizing pro football stadiums and turn our universities into minor-league football franchises. Because watching steroidal gladiators bash each other into early Alzheimer’s is one of the highest pleasures.

Maybe we should think of this another way: Brooks would have to be high to make such a crappy argument against legal weed; so your criticism of Brooks implies the very conclusion that weed ought to be illegal.

Bobo a few weeks ago:

Economizers. The bottom 85 percent is likely to be made up of people with less marketable workplace skills. Some of these people may struggle financially but not socially or intellectually. That is, they may not make much running a food truck, but they can lead rich lives, using the free bounty of the Internet.

So the proles can and should get lost in the Internet but can’t go up in smoke?

Isn’t subtly tipping the scale just Cass sunstein’s nudgery? I think the best definition of the politics of the Obama whitehouse is nudgery liberalism, and it is, perhaps, no surprise that Brooks is one of O.’s favorite columnists.

I am wondering what happened on Brooks’ holiday break to get him reminiscing about his pot-smoking HS days of yore.

I bet he loves his scotch or bourbon or vintage vino.

NYTimes must love Brooks – his columns get the chattering class all a twitter…

Is the only argument that Obama is really on the right that Brooks and people who think Brooks is serious appear to agree with him?

Well a weed based economy would largely be a throwback to an agrarian economy, afaict. Except not as much hard work. All that time outside tending to the plants. I guess if you regulated it right you could return to a country of small (weed) farmers.
What’s his problem?

Brooks is out of step with the Zeitgeist. As we move into the we-pretend-to-work, they-pretend-to-pay-us phase of economic and social decline, the powers that be will eventually decide that pot is an essential supplement to their low-employment, low-pay program for America. In an era when people had something to do, they complained that pot destroyed ambition; but if most people aren’t going to have many prospects, the bug becomes a feature. Of course, the current situation won’t last forever; but late capitalism might last a long, long time. If we’re all stoned, it will certainly seem a lot longer…

Jim most people who smoke weed don’t become rejects from the set of the movie Dazed and Confused. Most people I know who smoke weed treat it like more people treat alcohol; as a pleasant, relaxing enhancement to good good company, music and tv.

/Sheesh

David Brooks really does seem to be getting weirder. Or is it just me?

That’s what struck me. Sure, this piece an illogical, hypocritical expression of unacknowledged privilege, and in that sense is typical of Brooks.

But it’s also just strange especially coming after that Thought Leader piece. I wonder if he’s having some kind of breakdown.

Conservatives are the REAL hippies, you see. . .

Am I the only one who remembers John Stuart Mill defending a two-tiered utilitarianism? In the US this isn’t that radical: alcohol is sold only by state stores in several US states, and some of the rules exist to deter abuse. France raises book prices to encourage the existence of bookstores, and has massive cultural subsidies to films. Scotland bans the fermentation of corn.

Your strawman is a terrible argument: the costs of government bureaucrats approving innovation would slow the development of the leisure to enjoy the best things in life. One having argued for a 55-mile per hour speed limit to save lives need not feel compelled to extend the argument to 25 miles an hour.

“goofy liberal pundits” … not a conservative reader here, but let me suggest Nicholas Kristof among many and their thing about the lower pleasures of paid-for sex.

@roy #8: clearly Andrew F. #9 is a member of DB’s constituency. And hey, he probably buys newspapers. Not funny ones. Actually funny.

@8

“Brooks is awesome isn’t he?

I know someone from Topeka who claims that Fred Phelps is the world’s greatest performance artist, but if that is the case he really suffers for his art. ”

I believe FoxNews is performance art. It does seem that many of Brooks’s columns are directed at liberals and aimed at trolling liberals in a way. I could be wrong. As soon he was back from his book break he wrote about the logistical problems of healthcare.gov and how it showed that big government doesn’t work and can’t work.

@44 is right about JSM. But that’s Brooks for you: only in his world would the superiority of higher over lower pleasures justify overriding the harm principle.

Lesser pleasures:

Nose-picking
PEZ
Cat-taunting
The feel of what’s in the lint trap
Parking better than that person in front of you that can’t park worth a damn

“The idea of organizing society around the banning of lesser pleasures, for the sake of higher pleasures, is a highly radical one.”

In the US, not really. The US has an extraordinarily rich history of regulating people’s behavior for the sake of “higher values”.

Also, vitamin supplements

I think Brooks is right. Pot is a wimpy drug for wimpy people. We should all aspire to more worthy experiences. I suggest mushrooms of the psilocybin species. A much higher goal.

An interesting take-down of Brooks:

http://samirchopra.com/2014/01/03/david-brooks-smoked-weed-so-you-didnt-have-to/

Somehow Brooks & Co. managed to outgrow of their marijuana use, but he doesn’t seem to think others should be allowed to do so.

Our government obviously never pushes what is best for society. It pushes what is best for its masters, the corporate and individual financial elite. If it did, it would have moved pretty much everything over to non-profit, truly public (fully democratic) ownership long ago. And with that it would have taught every American to fend for themselves to the degree possible. Fend for themselves via growing their own food and self-provisioning to the degree possible.

There is virtually no case wherein society overall gets a better deal from the private ownership of the means of production. First off, wages are lower and the gap between ownership and rank and file hundreds of times greater. Second, prices are higher. They must be to create surplus value for profits and obscene wages at the top. Third, there is no accountability for the quality of the good or service beyond that private ownership. Marketing came into being to hide that fact, to distract us from the useless garbage and waste produced ad nauseum.

As a particular example: If government actually tried to promote the well-being of society, pharmaceuticals would be publicly owned, as would the entire health care establishment. Profit does nothing but drive up costs for citizens, drive down quality, drive up the shifting of risk to so-called “third world” nations, where testing is done — or, in impoverished arenas here. Pharmaceuticals find their way into our food chain, because of private ownership, wherein they radically decrease their effectiveness and endanger all of us. Super-strains are created artificially through this process, etc.

The ACA? It is designed primarily to make corporations happy, with a few crumbs thrown our way. If making society healthier were the goal, we would have Single Payer and non-profit delivery systems as well. There is no earthly reason for paying fees for service plus profits when it comes to our health and safety — or anything else, for that matter. Profits add no benefits or additional value to the sick or to society overall. They subtract value and are completely unnecessary. They don’t increase quality of delivery or value of coverage. They just add costs and incentivize shortcuts and gouging.

What Brooks is talking about is government doing what is best for GM, in the sense that GM is a stand-in for corporate interests. Keeping citizens docile and subservient — the conservative dream of dreams — while making them think this means “freedom, liberty and security” is just so much lipstick on a pig. As always.

It’s one of the biggest cons in all of history.

Brook’s narrative seems pretty accurate about life. People try pot when they’re young. The people who seriously stick with it usually wind up being losers. There may not be anything that government can or should do about that, so I don’t take Brooks’ article very seriously as a policy prescription. But as an observation it seems pretty true-to-life.

One more thing about that: in my – completely anecdotal! – experience, a lot of stoners wind up being not just losers, but also very angry people (frustrated potential and all that). Which would explain quite a lot of the vituperation about Brooks’ article. There’s probably nothing quite so infuriating for a stoner as pointing out what they’ve let themselves become, because even if you think that nothing should be done to stop what they’ve done, the sense of loserdom will always be them and they know it.

Oh I didn’t mean to stick it right in the middle of the thing. Sorry if that’s an imposition on your electron clouds.

Oh it plays all of them! Is this Crooked Timber’s new commenting system? It did not do that before.

Well, for a new picture of the basics of capitalism (as well as every other type of directed organization whatsoever) hit the “series” link at the top left, and then watch #14, “Two Thinks at a Time”.

We are going to have to start from the premise that ANY step of organization unites two very different possible effects at the same time: (1) division of labor, followed by trade, and (2) reduction of transaction/ transformation costs by the context/ institution. These are the two different sources of efficiency.

Now I am glad I did not put A video link to Bill Hicks! A real artist, and his comedy bit on rock musicians and drugs is an ultimate answer to David Brooks. But definitely not safe for work or little ones!

No, you idiots!!!

mcmanus has the guillotines, you have the persuasive rhetoric.

Cigs are a worse analogy than either tho because they aren’t seriously mind state altering

Can you provide examples of liberal pundits who are as prominent as Brooks, who are as goofy as Brooks?

No, as she probably fails both tests, but Brooks does remind me of Polly Toynbee.

Oh my maybe DB is the Seneca of our times! Seneca was a nasty, crooked guy apparently (maybe DB isn’t that bad).

At 66: “People try pot when they’re young. The people who seriously stick with it usually wind up being losers.” References? Or are you making it up? I’ll tell you what, you give me one anecdote, and I’ll give you another. I bet you run out before I do. I’ll even throw in Keith Richards to start things off.

Even if I were stoned as hell, I would recognize an unsupported assertion.

Here’s another, more plausible one: “People try alcohol when they’re young. The people who seriously stick with it wind up in the hospital with dementia, cirrhosis, and other illnesses.” (VA hospitals are full of people who are there because they’ve abused alcohol. Marijuana? Not so much.)

I’ll bet you $25, to your favorite charity (NORML for me) the long term consequences of “serious” marijuana use are less severe than any legal intoxicant, including tobacco. Take your shot.

Meanwhile, let’s work on taking the racism out of the drug war. It’s not enough, but it would be a nice start.

weed enters the legal marketplace at an illegal price point, and stays there, which is nice for people in the business ($100billion annually, going somewhere) and no change at all for the consumer, except relief of, for some, paranoia.
real progress will be when you can grow your own in your own backyard, unlicensed, unregulated, like tomatoes.
plump, juicy, glowing that deep vibrant sun-filled red that’s scarlet and crimson, ruby and cerise, with little highlights of… uhm… alizarin, you know, that seem to be almost offering something, like something more than just vitamins and minerals, more than that rich tart satisfying mouthfeel, a beckoning, like the promise of another world, close, right alongside this one, waiting.

78: I don’t think that David Brooks is as bad as Seneca, but honestly, that’s an extraordinarily low bar to clear. Seneca was a conniving, evil, conspiring with Nero motherfucker.
79: No one should listen to Grand Funk Railroad, ever, except under certain limited circumstances, such as when they are driving on a long highway trip, and it is late at night, and they are listening to a “Classic Rock” format station, and “We’re an American Band” comes on. If you are hella stoned you may even sing along at that point. I am given to understand that they were a popular live act despite blowing goat balls, but I maintain you could have been going to see Led Zeppelin or something. You know, like how David Brooks was doing.

Yes, I win the thread, if I do say so myself.

temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship

It’s consistent if he meant `employee-ship’ instead of `citizenship’. Suburbs and sports and big mortgages and alcohol do an adequate job of making people do little except work. Jim Harrison’s prediction that pot will keep us placid while everything crumbles seems plausible… It’s the tomatoes that would bring us into the gardens together to build a new world. I guess I just became a slow foodie.

Anecdata: Since Washington changed its pot laws, I’ve discovered that successful friends from many walks of life — research, commerce, good works — have been smoking the weed for decades. They just didn’t used to mention it to me, because I’m very very square and it’s not polite to make squares complicit. (Funnier, more annoying side effect: people who need to be talked through the reasoning that `no smoking’ still means `no smoking’ even though there are now more things to not be smoking there.)

@clew and someone else earlier in the thread

Actually, I’ve worked with one or two people who I eventually suspected were enabled in being bigger a-holes than they might have been, by the fact that however unpleasant and intensely stressful work became, they were going to go home and toke up and forget it all, and thereby attain an advantage over their coworkers whom they were unduly stressing.

@bianca steele : And you think they’d have been less a-holish (or less employable?) if they went home and drank?

Perhaps being dreadful to your coworkers is a higher pleasure. Lower? So hard to tell.

Plume:

I can’t remember the dates, but for some stretch of the Industrial Revolution English workers gnawed on opium stick because it was cheaper than food but left them more employable than gin.

On the other hand… I have also spent enough time with wood and water and leather britches beans in mostly-off-grid houses, even starting with a sound roof a full larder warm clothes and good boots, that I really don’t think of the peasant life as being less work than the specialized one. I can hope that this is because of the `300 slaves’ fossil fuel provides me, though I know it’s also living human ones. But peasants put an orphan into the fields all night to clap crows.

Given that the Times stands in the same relation to the U.S. ruling class as Pravda did to the Soviet ruling class back in the bad old days, I think it is probably a mistake to interpret a Brooks article, like the one considered here, generally in a straight or square manner. The Times is a vehicle for conveying signals from one layer of the ruling class to another, or to the lower (but comparatively high) layers of the lower orders who are the r.c.’s direct servants. Its purpose may be to convey not reasoned thought but a mood or manner, or may indicate some stirring in the invisible depths (or heights). In this case, for instance, the irrational foolishness of Brooks’s piece is not the point; the point is rather the sniffish disdain for opposition to the Drug War. The r.c. can be assumed to like the Drug War because it keeps the proles fighting one another over a peripheral issue, but its manifest roots in racism, sadism, and superstition are becoming more and more repellent to the lower-downs. The article can serve to slow down and counteract any movement toward its abolition, by showing that the Brooksian man disdains abolition in a civilized, almost elegant manner.

One needs to practice a kind of Kremlinology with the Times.

RIP Phil Everly.

@23: “He’s soporific; he saps the will; he’s good at what he does.”

In other words, Brooks is the THC of the masses.

“I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale”

Isn’t this the entire basis of “Nudge”? Bloomberg’s soda and fat taxes (did either of those ever actually get enacted?)? High taxes on booze and tobacco? Government subsidies for public goods?

“And grilled cheese sandwiches.”

Grilled cheese sandwiches! Doubleplusgood!

@103

15 cops show up to subdue a guy who doesn’t respond to tasering–and none of them shot him dead. That’s very unusual! I’d sort of like to congratulate them for their restraint, only it’s depressing to think that abstaining from murder is grounds for an official commendation. A whole lot of dead black people are now raising their hands to ask, “what did he do differently that they didn’t just shoot him in the head? ‘Cause if it’s the masturbating thing, then I could have tried that, I guess.”

Masturbation is entirely compatible with innocence–that’s precisely how I have preserved my own through all these decades.

I have a comment in moderation, probably for proportionally excessive linkage, and to make up for the triviality of even mentioning it, I’ll also note that the paragraph quoted in the OP appears to have been cribbed from Brave New World. (Does the irony never cease?)

A factor not yet mentioned, when it comes to pot.

I first tried it at age 15, at a Rock concert. I know. I was the first, evah, to do that.

It was very enjoyable. Smoked it here and there through high school — never religiously — and through college. Loved the way it enhanced music for me. For some reason, didn’t try it again until many years later, at yet another go round with college. And its potency had grown exponentially.

In the 70s, you could smoke a good bit in one session, and still be fairly lucid, functioning, while calmer and more relaxed, etc. “Buzzed” but not nearly catatonic. But into the 90s, it was too strong for that, for just a buzz. From my experience, there was no chance to pace yourself. No chance for incremental change in your mindset. It just stoned ya.

I am 110% in favor of legalization of MJ — and the decriminalization of the majority of drugs. We lead the world in highest incarceration rates, and more than half are in jail for minor, non-violent drug arrests. F that. That’s just unconscionable. But I am also in favor of regulating THC potency. One likelihood of full legalization is the usual profit-driven lust to claim bigger, better, stronger, more powerful, and that’s going to lead to problems, even with pot.

I guess that would be “methamphetamine psychosis.” Haven’t had the pleasure.

@Patrick,

It is definitely more potent today than it was when I was growing up. No question. It’s not an urban legend.

. . . .

And, yes, Eisenhower couldn’t win a Republican primary. Heck, he’s to the left of most Dems in the leadership right now. I can’t think of any Dem in Congress, except, perhaps, Ms. Warren, saying the following:

Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society.

Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Eisenhower also defended the top tax rate of his day, which was 91%.

Okay my link was @99 Paintings by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This is a good movie about the question whether it’s nobler to spend one’s life teaching philosophy (Martha Nussbaum was an advisor on the film) or developing new high-tech ways of growing super-strong pot. (It doesn’t pass the Bechdel test but does have a cameo by Rachel Menken as a rabbi, and Richard Dreyfuss as a criminal operator who gives his money to Israel so it’s all good.)

Does Christian Science approve of medical marijuana? A m.m. place recently opened up right next to the C.S. reading room near here.

Surely the contemporary evidence for Seneca’s life is a little scant to condemn him as an evil motherfucker who conspired with Nero (whose own reputation for evil is probably overblown in the first place)?

If nothing else, as hypocritical moralizing goes, he’s one hell of a lot more fun than Brooks to read. Compare “Pot is bad because I blew this one high school English presentation” to the Hostius Quadra bit in the NQ!

I like Graeber’s work. Too bad the seminar didn’t go so well. Maybe they could try it again. A welcomed new addition here, Cory Robin, seems on the same page as Mr. Graeber on a lot of things. Perhaps he could MC?

Also, George Scialabba has a new book out. The seminar you had on his earlier work is what drew me to this site initially . . . .

A propos of not much, but fwiw. One of the reasons I continue to read CT, apart from irrational habit, is reflected in this little story: I started to write a post about the Eisenhower admin’s foreign policy in response to a couple of the things that were said about Eisenhower upthread. In the course of doing a tiny bit of research to avoid sounding completely uninformed, I was reminded of a book that came out recently, namely S. Kinzer’s The Brothers, about John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. I just glanced at it via Amazon’s ‘look inside’, and it seems like something I might well want to read. (It has close to 100 reviews on Amazon, which I haven’t looked at.) If I hadn’t started to write the (unfinished) post, I wouldn’t have been reminded of the Kinzer book. Which I guess is a roundabout way of saying that one never knows what trains of thought or association might be prompted by a comment thread, even one attached to a post about D. Brooks and marijuana.

For clarity’s sake: Ike just commissioned the Goals – you can’t pin the views expressed in that quote on him. Indeed elsewhere in the book it’s clear that some of the panel members didn’t agree with certain statements others signed onto. This isn’t about political policies: While in many respects the Eisenhower Administration was left of center by today’s standards (and especially left of the Republicans), that splits a range of policy issues, not the traditional conservative morality spectrum. I think it’s pretty clear that many Republicans today – and especially libertarians – actually tack a bit left of traditional moralists from that era when it comes to moral feeling.

I think the passage I quoted from the Goals is off-message even for that era’s spectrum of Republican views (let alone not in step with the great liberal traditions of art), since I wouldn’t attribute that elitism towards Eisenhower or the majority of conservatives from that era. Rather it illustrates how a certain brand of elitist might be associated with right-wing thought. Of course this is not a logical, inescapable relationship – elitists can hold any political or moral views. That oddity is what makes the passage stand out to me.

Well, that’s clear as mud…I tried!

I think it’s funny that when Krugman is off he turns into David Brooks.

“But anyway, if you stay awake for like…I don’t know 5 or 6 days, I think, you just completely go actually insane.”

Well, Keith Richards says in Life that his record for staying awake was 9 days – then he went to change a tape, fell asleep, and broke his nose.

I am inclined to be skeptical about stories that run along the lines of “drug x turned this man into a fiend who could fight 15 cops at once!”

My father was a police officer for many years, working many different types of jobs in the police, including patrol and vice narcotics at different times. His stories of people wacked out on drugs fighting many cops (but never, I think, 15. I can’t say how many were involved, but I’d be surprised if it was ever more than 5, and it’s pretty hard to get 5 guys actually fighting at one time, too) involved people on angel dust. Do people still do that? Not so much, I think, though I don’t really know. My favorite story of his about a guy on angel dust, though, involved not fighting someone- seeing a guy walking down the street late at night in the winter, no shirt, no shoes, in the snow. My father thought, “hmm, this is odd. Let’s see what’s going on.” He pulled up by the guy, shined the light in his eyes, and saw the guy’s pupils bounding all around (a typical effect of angel dust) and said, “well, have a good night” and went on, thinking that he was not going to get in a fight with that guy that night. Given his other stories about fights w/ such people, that seemed like a good idea.

that was to JML

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure it was the 1st book I mentioned, I think. But Beethoven is the obvious example of classical composer who kept developing til (near) the end. Among the “standard” songwriters discussed in the book, Richard Rogers was the clearest example of this phenomenon, although, personally I’m really just a Rogers and Hart (not Hammerstein) fan myself.

After some reflection, I’ve decided to cut, “[c]ome to think about it.”

Mao

Sort of like they did in the Soviet Union (with opera, not cigars)?

“with opera, not cigars”

Well, I believe they did sell decent Partagas and Montecristo no-filter cigarettes. No Bordeaux, though, just Tokaji. Too damned sweet.

P.s.
I’d be a mite surprised if Mill, for one, “constantly got on the peasants for being lazy,” but I’ll yield on this point to those better acquainted w his work on pol economy.

Tocqueville, on the other hand, might possibly be a somewhat different matter: see his Memoir on Pauperism (available in English w an intro by G. Himmelfarb) or his correspondence w Nassau Senior.

1) I referred to J.S. Mill

2) in terms of industrial and craft based activities it took longer, with independently minded workers suffering in the early 19th century. E.P. Thompson really opens your eyes to the destruction of that culture.
yes, point taken.

yes it could have been. agreed.

Yes. Perelman cites James Mill, not John Stuart.

I grew up admiring many of the Enlightenment philosophers, choosing to read such works on my own that were not taught in school as well. But from the 90s on, I read a lot about them from a more critical position, and my admiration began to flag. Today, I see them as deeply flawed — as are all humans, of course — with a majority being rather ignorant of and indifferent toward “the lower classes.” Sometimes to a sickening degree. They were not so “enlightened” when it came to the plight of the poor and seemed to lack empathy, etc. etc.

There are counterweights to certain aspects of this view, like the excellent Moral Clarity, by Susan Neiman. That said, the process of overturning myths is essential, even the ones about the folks who were supposed to be doing that. Same thing happened to me when studying “the founders” after what was taught in school. Far too much hagiography there, and it hurts the ability of Americans to think critically.

Because economics is so incredibly and disproportionately important in our lives, perhaps the most important myths to knock down (right now) are the ones about Adam Smith and his progeny — and the system they fought so hard to impose and extend. Perelman does us all a great service in just that kind of battle against myths.

@PJW

I’m hesitant to accept that mental hurdles on a par with those faced by Von Neumann or Newton (or Homer, Keats or whoever) are required to explain the average middle-aged rocker’s inability to write a decent song. Pure expression of the profoundest emotional experiences at that point in a rockstar’s creative development would result in something like:

There’s a terrible hole
Deep in my soul
My jet is no use to me
Without a jacuzzi.

And I can’t get laid
In San Tropez
When a 30-metre yacht
Is all I got.

The punters experience appalling strain in relating to that kind of thing. Exhibit A is here.

Plume, it doesn’t matter how potent it gets. Just smoke less. Have you seen the “one-hitters” they make now? The chamber is the size of a pea. And you don’t even have to fill it up.

https://www.google.com/search?q=marijuana+one-hitter

There are also people vaporizing highly purified marijuana products, which are close enough to be considered pure THC. Again, it’s a simple matter of dosing. Adding inactive combustible material to marijuana is not like adding water to alcohol. It doesn’t actually compensate for the effects of THC at a given THC dose — it just puts more dangerous crap in your lungs.

They (one-hitters) were certainly around in the mid-to-late 90s, and they didn’t seem like a brand-new thing when I first encountered them around then.

(This is an awesome thread, by the way. How often do you see Google search results for one-hitters in CT threads!?)

It might also be that people just lose brain power (and creativity) as they age — though we don’t want to accept that. Our bodies loose their oomph. There have been some exceptions. Wallace Stevens still wrote great poetry into his 70s, as did Yeats, for instance. But there aren’t that many cases wherein musicians/composers had great second and third acts. Most seemed to do their best work when young. And when you play hard, if you don’t die young, you probably have damaged mind and body to an even greater degree, one that goes beyond the normal aging process, etc. etc.

Keith Richards looked like an old man when he was a young man. Can’t really expect Richards and the Stones to keep churning out fresh, original stuff into their actual golden years.

That said, now that I think about it, Sir Paul seems to be having a bit of a renaissance in his 70s. There’s one exception.

Just in case this thread is lumbering back to life.

Was young David such a dullard that he never noticed how much marijuana can intensify precisely the higher pleasures he praises? I can’t be the only one here who ever read Rilke, Shakespeare, Hoban, Faulkner, Pychon, or Calvino stoned, can I? Or seen Caligari, Persona, Strangelove, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Koyaanisqatsi, Meshes of the Afternoon, Sherlock Jr.? And nature? Didn’t Davey ever wander out of the car and walk on the beach stoned ? Or into the woods? Davey wasn’t wasted on pot. Pot was wasted on Davey.

Tina Brown at least touches the truth – amid a lot of nonsense – when she worries about competing with China. That’s Obama’s reluctance. Pot is not conducive to optimally handling an office environment, nor to a lot of the kinds of work people are expected to do in it, nor to the motivation that success in it often requires. A major increase in pot usage might have some deleterious effects on American productivity.

But perhaps it need not. And this gets to what Fu Ko said. I think the fixation on THC is misguided. I’m out of the game now, so I haven’t tried the new superpot, but pot that is close to pure THC doesn’t sound promising to me. My understanding is that THC levels have been increased, but not the other cannabinoids much, and, since doses are lower, ingestion of the other cannabinoids is reduced. I mean, it’s not just THC. There are at least 85 cannabinoids in pot, many, I don’t think we are even sure how many, are psychoactive, and many of the ones that are not directly psychoactive modulate the effects of the ones that are. I think this is one of the reasons marijuana is such a complex drug – it is not just one drug. I mean it has both stimulant and sedative effects; it is neuroprotective, but long-term use can reduce short-term memory; it can make you shy or garrulous; it’s complicated.

The economics of carrying around an illegal substance tend to maximizing potency, hence value, per unit gram, so upping THC is the way to go, but I would hope a legal market will investigate the understudied minor cannabinoids and see what they bring to the table. There is already evidence that CRD counters some of the less-desirable effects of THC. And the other cannabinoids are not necessarily weaker per mg than THC either; they are just less plentiful in the plant. It may be possible to create marijuana derivatives that provide the stimulation of marijuana without the confusion or passivity.

Fer chrissake, this business of music as the specific domain of the young was a marketing strategy invented in the 50s that has taken on a life of its own. People at 35 feel that have reached some sort of musical decrepitude, that their judgments can no longer be sound, and they either keep listening to whatever they happened to listen to as teenagers or don’t listen to anything much at all. Turning musical culture over to adolescents has not been entirely bad, it has generated a lot of stylistic innovation because of youth’s appetite for novelty and for expression that is generation-specific, but the alienation of adults I find enormously sad.

Look at the major songwriters before rock and roll. George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Kurt Weill all were producing hits till they were dead or pretty infirm. The only one who stopped in his 30s was Gershwin, and what stopped him was death. Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, and Jule Styne all had long retirements, but those followed multi-decade careers, and all produced good work late in those careers. Mostly, they had outlived the commercial viability of their style, though Styne charted as late as 68 (“People”, an early Streisand vehicle), and Berlin was 74 at retirement, though he lived another quarter century. Duke Ellington was writing great stuff right until his death in 74. Uninterested in hits, which were probably not possible for him anyway in the rock era, and often leaving behind pop and blues song structures, he was doing extended pieces and concept works.

But music that is intended to appeal primarily to the viewpoints of adolescence will be harder to produce for most people as they get further from adolescence. But just because we (including me) grew up in the rock or post-rock era doesn’t mean we should mistake the highly contingent youth orientation of that era for an eternal verity about music, much less art in general. It doesn’t seem to have been true before the 60s (the 50s were transitional. Rock was around, but Tin Pan Alley was still going strong too). And from what I can tell, it is only true of other cultures to the extent that they have been influenced by Western (basically American and British) popular music. Which, these days, is a great extent. The youth virus has spread and metastasized.