Luke Bretherton delivers another strike on the ABC religion blog (http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/01/06/3921285.htm). I am totally sympathetic with the idea that drug use is inherently conservative, conformist, and congenial to the values of late modern, technocratic culture.
I wonder what he'd say about the use of typically ampliative drugs for therapeutic purposes where the high actually represents part of the therapy. It may be that, as he says, drugs manufacture and bureaucratize experience in a way that is not fully human; on the other hand, aren't some experiences too much to bear? Cancer patients report extreme alleviation of their own suffering by marijuana use. Couldn't it be, analogously, that late modern culture presents some people with an experiential load that is so dehumanizing that drug use is still better than the alternative? Sure, experience that is packaged and doled out chemically may be subhuman, but in some cases maybe it's better than the kafkesque realities of some whose experiene is "owned" and doled out to them by those who actively do them harm?
Even in prison, there are gradations of incarceration. The basketball court on the yard probably feels pretty free compared to the solitary block.
Ya'll read it and tell me whatcha think!
No comments:
Post a Comment