One of my mother's favourite themes was the way that really stupid ideas tend to go straight the top to the bottom. The example she gave was cocaine in the 1970s. It was a glamour drug used by rock stars and other celebrities at first. From there it went straight to clerical workers.
It was an odd thing, she pointed out, because it wasn't much of a drug if your goal was to get high. As a medical professional, she didn't think getting high was a good idea but, she couldn't help but point out, the actual high from cocaine was weak and short lived. The soul-destroying capacity of the drug was nothing to sneeze at. Plus it was very, very expensive.
It's not just cocaine. If you want to have a miserably unhappy life, model yourself on what spoiled rich kids and celebrities do. Make a tape of yourself having sex, experiment with drugs, get lots of tattoos, marry, have children and divorce ... .
In that regard, it is interesting that atheism and alternative sexual identities have moved from the top of our society to the bottom. Walter Russell Mead has a good post on atheism here.
Related.
It was an odd thing, she pointed out, because it wasn't much of a drug if your goal was to get high. As a medical professional, she didn't think getting high was a good idea but, she couldn't help but point out, the actual high from cocaine was weak and short lived. The soul-destroying capacity of the drug was nothing to sneeze at. Plus it was very, very expensive.
It's not just cocaine. If you want to have a miserably unhappy life, model yourself on what spoiled rich kids and celebrities do. Make a tape of yourself having sex, experiment with drugs, get lots of tattoos, marry, have children and divorce ... .
In that regard, it is interesting that atheism and alternative sexual identities have moved from the top of our society to the bottom. Walter Russell Mead has a good post on atheism here.
Related.
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