>You don't really believe that, do you?
awile back, you told us about a Yale alum survey that made you feel like a loser -- or something along those lines. You didn't really believe that, did you? And, even if you did, that's what rankings like that are for: it's one of the many mechanims by which this society creates economic and status scarcity. And that can only work if it's underpinned by an ideological infrastructure that legitimizes it, turning our attention to our individual "loserhood" as the problem, not the scarcity itself.
> You're not a low-down scumbag, and you're not perceived that way in any
> set of eyes that I know of.
http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0004/4323.html
I was mostly pointing out that the discussion reminded me of what I sometimes forget: that the wider society _does_ pass judgements. I could have turned it around into the much more common sentiment, "Geez, John, you must live in the upper reaches of the stratosphere to think that Dillard's is for the middling classes" (a form of resentiment, I'd think.)
I'm not interested in embarassing people on this list, people who often mean well, so I'm not going to recite examples. Whatever thoughts people might harbor or not, it's irrelevant. IT's a fact of life, just as racism and sexism is. Surely you'd agree that people on this list harbor sexist and racist thoughts, even about people on this list. IT's not likely people on this list have shed status bigotry.
You wrote a piece for _White Trash_. What can it possibly mean when men in that study you were fond of said that they wouldn't marry someone with big cassabas because they consider those women trashy? If guys can think big tits are trashy, something a woman has little control over, then surely they are quite capable of thinking clothing is trashy. What is trashy other than a type of "low down" "scumbag"? You can dismiss it as small, no big deal. I think doing so ignores how oppression operates.
Someone, about a year ago, had a hissy fit b/c people wore sandals and didn't get pedicures. Apparently, there are people out there that find that repulsive. They might not use the words "low down" and "scumbag" and they may even say they like individuals who don't have pedicures. But, IMV, it's like telling someone, "Hey, some of my friends are black."
That pedicure comment was made WRT an article (in The Nation?) written by some guy claiming that dressing like a dandy was a way of exhibiting care about your fellows. The implication was that people who dressed sloppily didn't care about their fellows. A few people were rightly annoyed with that because they can't afford to dress like a dandy.
They are not wrong to believe that plenty of people--and I'm sure they exist on this list--would think that a pilled sweater is 'sloppy'. As one poster rightly pointed out, that's what he can afford and to suggest that he didn't care about other people was a little silly.
At 04:16 PM 4/22/2005, Michael Dawson wrote:
>the junkies on this board want to say that opium has no
>inherent problems. It does, if you are somebody who holds a
>humanist/democratic view of individuals.
I see, so anyone who disagrees with you is a junkie or they don't hold humanist/democratic views?
Are you trying to have an argument with people you respect, in spite of disagreements, or were you hoping to get the Assclown Award for the first quarter of 2005?
>But there is a biological basis for addiction! It's well-documented
>physiological science. Read around outside sociology.
I read the article when it came out last spring. My response to it then and now is: Duh? We also know that the brain changes in response to social stimuli -- big article about it back in 1992 or '3. Can't recall exactly, but it was in graduate school and I happened to be taking care of my MIL who had multi-infarct dementia -- what people often label Alzheimer's.
What you missed is that I DID NOT disagree with what it said. What it said didn't undermine anything I wrote. AKA: a red herring.
You claim there's rock solid evidence for a biological predisposition to addiction. Please be so kind as to back up the claim. And why is it that you can't be bothered to offer it to begin with? I'd say something nasty about slacking during grad school.... :)
Even if you cough up some evidence for this rock solid basis, it doesn't really undermine what sociologists have said. When David Rudy wrote _Becoming Alcholic_, for instance, the disease model used by AA was one that likened the disease to an allergy. AA uses screening questions--like the one about blackouts--that have no basis in the literature for identifying an alcholic. And, of course, he never said that there's no biology involved in the process by which an individuals becomes addicted to alchol. He was addressing the most influential disease model at the time, Jellinek's Phase Model.
Rudy showed that Jellinek's model (prealcholic, prodromal, crucial and chronic phases) was so dominant that people were reluctant to "challenge or modify some of his basic contributions, even in the face of contrary evidence" -- a claim made in 1973 and yet Jellinke's model was still dominant a decade later.
As for def. of a drug, no Goode wasn't saying drugs don't exist or whatever hairball you pulled out of your butt. At the time Goode was writing, the def of a drug was "any substance that alters the way the body or mind functions." Well, that could be a bullet, he points out. Because of discussions like that, they've changed the official def, to say that it's "any substance, other than food, which _is taken to_ change the way the body or the mind functions." The point was an entree into a broader discussion of the moralizing judgements that go on in scientific analysis.
For instance, in the article you forwarded, they say this: "In addition to addiction's obvious physical and psychological damage, the condition is a leading cause of medical illness.
Question: is the author saying that there's damage and then there's disease? Sounds like it to me. Maybe you could volunteer to write a note to Sciam and ask?
They go on: "Alcoholics are prone to cirrhosis of the liver, smokers are susceptible to lung cancer, and heroin addicts spread HIV when they share needles."
Acoholics and cirrhosis, check.
Smokers and lung cancer. Nicotine doesn't cause cancer. And they know this. But they do no one a favor by not making it clear that the cancer is the result of other substances in tobacco products. Like lead. This misinformation isn't benign: It means that people think that using a nicotine patch might incrase their risk of cancer.
Heroin addicts spread HIV.... Well, heroin sure as shit doesn't cause HIV. So, why place it in the same category as alcohol and cirrhosis.
And yes, I think we should legalize. And so do a lot of other people here. I'd venture a guess that 50% of us do. Snit poll time! [1]
>The NRA wants to talk about guns as if they are a neutral
>technology. Handguns are people killers, and their availability immensely
>increases the murder rate in any society over what it would be otherwise.
>In direct analogy, the junkies on this board want to say that opium has no
>inherent problems.
First of all, this isn't what they saying. Second of all, and once again, that their argument may sound like the NRA's means nothing so you should simply leave out any ref to the NRA. It doesn't improve your argument. It is an attempt to smear people with whom you are having an argument.
>It does, if you are somebody who holds a
>humanist/democratic view of individuals.
I was thinking of having an AssNuggest Award ceremony for the second quarter of 2005.
Kelley
[1] (which would have to be a complicated poll b/c, while I agree with legalization in principle, my objection is that most legalization schemes don't account for the fact that legalization will seriously disrupt the underground economy and may well lead to the kind of problem that occured when prohibition was repealed and when they made gambling legal in the cities. We could deal humanely with those changes, I just don't expect that legalization schemes will bother to do so. (Not that they have a hope in hell of passing anyway.)