But actually, I don't want to get into a big debate right now over the difference between Wotjek's "materialism" and my "pragmatism" (which leaves plenty of room, by the way for "habit" and unconscious behavior). Materialism of the scientistic sort (the sociologist who believes he is a physicist mapping the caroming of social billiard balls from a safe institutional-analytic distance) never seemed very convincing to me.
It really isn't directly germane to the otherwise interesting discussion that you people are having about forced drug treatment.
One problem with forced treatment is that it often doesn't even work without the drug user's desire for a change, and that requires interventions of a different sort than incarceration (except maybe in Wotjek's disciplinary mind) or "forced treatment."
I don't have an answer today for everyone's nuanced questions of the matter.
By the way, the Japanese school slasher was supposedly on some sort of psychotropic medication as an outpatient "maintenance" case (actually, he probably wasn't an "out"-anything, since I think he was simply given the drugs and told to take them). "Drug treatment" alone apparently didn't help him deal with whatever problems he had.
Peter Kosenko
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 18:53:10 -0800
>The car has the "right of way" unless one is in a crosswalk in most
>states.
>Marta
>
>Peter Kosenko wrote:
>>
>> Wotjek:
>>
>> Am I getting this right? Because the car is a socially constructed object, it has the right to run one down?
>>
>> Anyone care to comment about the "philosophy" of that?
>>
>> Peter Kosenko
>>
>> ---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
>> From: Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org>
>> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>> Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 17:06:08 -0800
>>
>> >Well Wojtek walk in front of a car coming at you in traffic and see if
>> >you don't have the "right" to get out of the way. Why you will move
>> >out of the path of an oncoming car is because you know you will be
>> >harmed if you stay put. Similarly, a person can determine if a drug
>> >is harming them or not and stop taking it as long as society is not
>> >forcing them to take it by means of its institutions, one of them
>> >being the medical institution.
>> >Marta
>> >
>> >
>> >Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Individuals (in the psychological sense, as individual egos) do not exist
>> >> independently of the society that created them, let alone have any "right"
>> >> to act other than that granted them by the society that created them. There
>> >> are no individual rights - only privileges granted to individuals by
>> >> society (various abuses notwithstanding).
>> >>
>> >> wojtek
>> >>
>