Societal lack of Empathy

[_honorentheos]

Tell us again why we need to prosecute the drug war?

Really? You just can't quite figure this one out?

Well, we do need to pay for the privatized prison system. So there's that.

[_subgenius]

Well, we do need to pay for the privatized prison system. So there's that.

Well, which is the problem with you? The crime? or the punishment?

Notwithstanding any argument over the cost of incarceration - there is a real influence of drug use on the healthcare system, productivity, and the environment. Mountains of data support and conclude that drug use has negative implications on physical and psychological health. But perhaps you are assuming that given the FDA's hard stance on additives it would frown upon levamisole.

Premature mortality, various illnesses, and injury are increased by drug use (poisoning, overdose, etc..).
Marijuana farming has a high demand for water and pesticide use.
Meth production results in 5 to 7 pounds of toxic waste for every pound of meth produced.

So there's also that

[_EAllusion]

Well, we do need to pay for the privatized prison system. So there's that.

Well, which is the problem with you? The crime? or the punishment?

Notwithstanding any argument over the cost of incarceration - there is a real influence of drug use on the healthcare system, productivity, and the environment. Mountains of data support and conclude that drug use has negative implications on physical and psychological health. But perhaps you are assuming that given the FDA's hard stance on additives it would frown upon levamisole.

Premature mortality, various illnesses, and injury are increased by drug use (poisoning, overdose, etc..).
Marijuana farming has a high demand for water and pesticide use.
Meth production results in 5 to 7 pounds of toxic waste for every pound of meth produced.

So there's also that

Heh, forgetting for a fact that the drug war costs $50 billion plus in direct costs a year and much more in indirect costs, let's look at these comparatively minor costs...

People might die sooner if they use drugs? I guess, in order to protect them, the logical approach is to throw them in prison for years. Much like in order to save the village it has become necessary to destroy it.

People might do things that make them less productive citizens? So we better imprison them if they do so. That'll scare up productivity. Except for those in prison. They probably aren't very productive. Now if we can only tackle all the other things known to effect economic productivity. Workers gotta work. Tell us again who is the Stalinist?

It's nice that you've gotten religion on the pollution generated by the pharmaceutical industry, though it's hard to see that as a particularly egregious industry to single out. Well, parts of it anyway. But what's humorous is that while modern conservatives typically oppose tight regulations of said pollution, you've gone in the complete opposite direction and now want to make entire agri-business and drug-manufacturing operations illegal with severe prison sentences for violators. Seems a touch inconsistent. I'm pretty sure that Merck could make meth in a more environmentally friendly way than a hillbilly in his backyard, but I'm curious why you aren't applying this logic to other manufacturing processes that cause pollution?

[_canpakes]

Notwithstanding any argument over the cost of incarceration - there is a real influence of drug use on the healthcare system, productivity, and the environment. Mountains of data support and conclude that drug use has negative implications on physical and psychological health. But perhaps you are assuming that given the FDA's hard stance on additives it would frown upon levamisole.

Premature mortality, various illnesses, and injury are increased by drug use (poisoning, overdose, etc..).
Marijuana farming has a high demand for water and pesticide use.
Meth production results in 5 to 7 pounds of toxic waste for every pound of meth produced.

So there's also that

Much of this argument can be made against alcohol use, but our approach to that is quite different.

[_The CCC]

Decriminalization works for me.

[_Some Schmo]

ajax is mindlessly anti-tax. He just wants to keep all his money; there's nothing nuanced about his view.

He's one of these pricks who completely ignores all the money spent on the infrastructure he relies on daily so he can rant about the vile gov't stealing his "hard earned" pay. If he were true to his word, he'd retire to the mountains and completely separate himself from his reliance on what society has given him.

Don't want to pay taxes? Then “F” off and leave civilization to the rest of us who want to be a part of it.

[_Jersey Girl]

Busy day for me, I'll check in later.

Busy day? More like 24 hours in hell. I'll spare you all the details.

So this thread didn't go the way I thought it might. But thanks for the replies and discussion!

[_honorentheos]

Well, we do need to pay for the privatized prison system. So there's that.

Well, which is the problem with you? The crime? or the punishment?

You speak as if the use of these drugs is criminal in some objective sense detached from how we treat it. Which is the problem to me? That folks like you think this way is one of the problems.

[_Some Schmo]

Jersey Girl, getting back to your OP, I enjoyed this bit from Bill Maher on "The Empathy Gap" and I think he makes some great points.

It does seem that there is a certain personality type that can only feel empathy if the thing happens to them first. Until then, “F” everyone else. Just get off your ass and do something about (whatever it is they can't feel empathy for because it hasn't happened to them yet).

[_Jersey Girl]

Jersey Girl, getting back to your OP, I enjoyed this bit from Bill Maher on "The Empathy Gap" and I think he makes some great points.

It does seem that there is a certain personality type that can only feel empathy if the thing happens to them first. Until then, f*** everyone else. Just get off your ass and do something about (whatever it is they can't feel empathy for because it hasn't happened to them yet).

I just watched the Maher piece. I love him because he cuts through the crap.

One thing of note, where he mentions Lady GaGa's song "Till it happens to you". A large part of the development (here she goes taking her thread back) of empathy in human beings had to do with perspective taking. It is, in fact, a critical piece of empathy.

This is a topic that I'm passionate about. The violence in the head lines, the bomb threats in our schools, student:student, student:teacher, violence and bullying, have at their very root a lack of empathy.

What I really wanted to talk about, and no one here or on the Facebook thread I participated on even "went there" and neither did the OP article, was at what stage of life do human beings develop empathy and how is this nation addressing that stage of life?

Because we aren't addressing it as a nation.

We're comfortable to sit on our collective asses noting a lack of empathy, shaking our heads when we find out a student killed their parents, or a teacher acted out on an unruly student....and basically no one really gives a crap about the lack of empathy in our youth.

And why? Because in order to address that as a society would take major league and widespread changes in the work place, in government, in our capitalist expectations of what constitutes the American Dream or living the good life.

We'd rather let our children go to hell than change what we do as adults.