The War on Drugs in Rio - The Temporary Solution

I saw this from Marginal Revolution (hat tip). 
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/rios_drug_war.html

I referenced it in my post on ONESTDV.

It's what I call a temporary solution.  I guess in Rio, they want to lock up all the gangsters before the Olympics so they moved into the favellas military style.  How long before the gangster that were removed are replaced by younger, more ruthless thugs?

In a place as notoriously corrupt as Rio, I wonder how many of those bricks of pot and cocaine are going to end up back on the street within a week.

Questions About The Moral Landscape

I’m currently reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. I am greatly impressed by his reasoning and I am glad that someone is finally tackling the question of ethics and morality from a scientific perspective. Ethics, says Harris, should be seen as an "underdeveloped branch of science."

I’ve long felt that something was wrong with the typical liberal moral relativistic stance that says we can’t judge any other culture’s way of thinking as right or wrong. Although I couldn’t join them in their supposed neutrality, I often called myself I a moral relativist simply because I thought the only other option was to be a fundamentalist. I believe that nobody has the right to decide what’s right for you, but of course nobody has the right to inflict harm on others unjustly. However, I don’t need to fall into moral relativism in order to see that there are many paths that are morally acceptable.

In his new book, Harris defines the right moral path as one that increases human well-being and the wrong one as one that decreases it. So, a society that performs female circumcision or brainwashes children to become killers is obviously not on the right moral path. Well-being can be scientifically tested and discussed using logical means

This Moral Realism is such an elegant way of thinking because it doesn’t over simplify any act to its singular consequence (i.e. killing is wrong) and it doesn’t absolve anyone of thinking hard about his choices. Answers must be sought using all available knowledge about oneself and one’s surroundings. Like moral relativity, there is a lot of room for different ways of living – different peaks on the moral landscape, as Harris would call them, but there is also room for pointing out how some ways could be changed to make them better.

I continue to enjoy this book and hopefully I’ll write more when I’m done. For now, I see a few difficulties, which I will explain.

A lot of people will be hesitant to give science the authority to rule their morals because they would lose control of their decisions and values that they feel are instinctual and arrived at by carefully looking into their hearts. Pure science is cold, calculated and has no room for feeling. People will be afraid that science could tell them to live in such a way that does not conform or goes directly against their current firmly held values and ask them to do things that they just cannot, morrally, perform. How would you respond to this?

Another difficulty arises because science is, in this political and economic world, a commodity. It is often used and abused by special interests, ideologists, business and even religion to further their goals. To discover scientific answers takes a lot of money, and individuals do not have the money to do their own research or the expertise to distinguish good science from propaganda, judge the validity of conclusions or interpret findings for themselves. A real fear that must be acknowledged is the possibility that science could be used for manipulating people or a weapon for twisting reality and perception even more than it is today. It is doubtful that a majority of any population can become sophisticated enough to avoid manipulation. Even more dangerous, I think that highly educated people are actually more susceptible to grand ideas that sound good in theory but can have disastrous affects if applied in practice.

Lastly, I also pose a test to the theory. Suppose that moral realism attains its deserved stature and succeeds in producing a thriving, society but the society thrives to the point of exhausting resources. What if that society then decides that in order to continue to thrive and maximize well-being for most people, it must abandon peace and do horrible harm to a portion of the people? Are we then thrust back to the in-group, out-group battle? How would you approach such a situation?

Ignore the Holy Texts Day

In protest to the ongoing insanity of all major religions, I am going to commemorate 9/11 by completely ignoring all religious texts for the entire 24 hour period. I will not burn, read, flush, sit on, stomp on, follow doctrines contained in any religious texts nor preach from them. I will also abstain from participating in or discussing other protests against any such actions. I know that this is completely offensive to any fundamentalists who, of course, believe that I should observe every tenant in their book by fasting, eating special food, wearing special clothes, wearing no clothes, limiting my number of steps, walking for pilgrimage, praying or doing a sacred dances to pay respect to the deity or deities who inspired their particular books. It will also be dificult to maintain silence when such stupidity is happening all over.

It may seem offensive for me to damn my soul to the firey depths of hell while zealots furvently strive to live their life according to their beliefs, so that their souls will take up the fight against the evil one and his sinister army. However, I believe it is time to send a strong message. I have stood by long enough while religious people have wrecked havok with the world; burning people, enslaving people, creating wars in the name of their religion, brainwashing young people and turning them into walking bombs.

So, starting as soon as I post this blog, there will be completely no acquiescence to any religious text. I promise not to touch a cover or single page of any book that was supposed to be inspired by prophets or apostles or gods or other religious figures. I will answer any question on the subject with firm shake of my head and a statement to the affect that drawing attention to such matters only makes them worse.

I know you'll say, that this is how I live just about every single day of my life. Well, this might be true as far as the ignoring of the books and their doctrines. Aside from weddings, funerals and similar ceremonies for family and friends, I don't go within the walls of a church. However, 9/11 is special and so I think I must triple or even quadruple the ignoring that I'd normally do and make a point of it by saying so in this blog. On the other hand, I will usually talk religion with almost anyone at anytime, but, not today.

Living amongst people without such as strongly apathetic convictions towards Religion means that discussions might come up from time to time. While other people in certain South Eastern U.S. states express their hatred and place their chosen pages of evil on bonfires in the hopes of igniting more hatred against themselves, I will most certainly be tempted to share thoughts on the entire thing. This will be especially since today, I will be going home to visit family who are all relgious Protestants and they will certainly want to talk about it. This is my first act of abstinence for as long as I can remember and it will not be easy.

Music Post

In the 90’s, “talent” was never mentioned when describing an artist but they had to be “real” supposedly (meaning genuine). Now, everyone is described as being so “talented” but everything about them is fake - even their voices.

The biggest whiner "animal rights goofball" (AKA Morrisey) from the 80's music scene has really put his view of the world into perspective. I'm not sure what "think on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare" he's talking about but it sounds much worse than Tianenmen. OK so this is it, you can run over a protestor with a tank but you have to stop selling live chickens in markets so people can cut their heads off, pluck them and cook them with their feet sill attached and eating dogs? Animals are People Too! That sounds reasonable....

Rick Rubin's Associated Acts (from Wikipedia): AC/DC, Beastie Boys, Danzig, Dixie Chicks, Gogol Bordello, Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Melanie C, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Shakira, The Cult, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Run–D.M.C., Slayer, Slipknot, System Of A Down, The Avett Brothers, The Mars Volta, U2, Weezer, ZZ Top
(It hurts me to see The Mars Volta in the same list as Limp Bizkit.)

Robinson isn’t saying that Taylor Swift shouldn’t sing. He’s saying, and I agree, that her music is safe and bland because it’s targeted toward children (age 8 to 13) and so the fact that adults are actually listening to it and saying “wow”, just shows the level of sophistication in the public is just sad. You might as well listen to The Wiggles. They have way more “talent”. Have you ever considered the deep philosophical meaning of Row Row Your Boat?

The only reason Taylor Swift and Justin Beiber are so popular is because everyone is tired of the bad girl/boy image now that so many have ended up in therapy.

Chris Robinson vs Taylor Swift or Blues Rock vs Country Pop

In reaction to this from One-STDV, regarding this from Chris Robinson

The Black Crowes were 90’s rockers. At that time, the sought-after quality in music was originality. The music and musicians had to be genuine. The true test of a song or artist was the “Unplugged” performance. The worst thing a band could do was to “sell-out”. Artists had to stand for something and it lead to a whole lot of proselytizing and revolutionary talk a la Rage Against the Machine. It culminated with Cobain blowing his head off in a move that even he would admit was an obvious cliché far beneath his level of talent.
The movement was, in part, a reaction and antithesis to the glitz and glam of the Pop genre that the music industry was pushing in the like The New Kids on the Block, Bon Jovi and Janet Jackson. Pop music continues the same as always because there is an endless supply of young, immature people out there to lap up these re-packaged clichés because to them, it is new. What’s really new are adults actually going as crazy as their kids for these, well, kids. Even I, though, have to admit that Justin Beiber has quite a lot of charisma and seems very talented.
So 90’s grunge began to wind down almost as soon as it started for several reasons. First, the politics began to ring hollow, especially as the economy began to turn around and things just looked better making all the whining sound trite. Also, there just weren’t enough decent musicians who could come up with something new, meaningful and catchy. Finally, it became obvious, that the lifestyle was unsustainable (See: Shannon Hoon).