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Freedom Sucks, Actually

Aug 6, 2023 //
2

Freedom sure sounds great, doesn’t it? It inspires whole convoys, after all. There is an entire American congressional caucus dedicated to it! We’re supposed to let it ring, and for that privilege, we are charged a buck-oh-five. There are statues dedicated to the very notion of liberty, and yet it remains vague and undetermined, generally on purpose by those advocating for it. Typically ‘Freedom’ in the political sphere means rich people not having to pay any taxes, but that’s never explicit, and so people often have this vague, fuzzy feeling about the term that’s generally positive. So what does freedom actually entail? Is it more than just feeling secure against the threat of terrorists and commies through lower corporate tax rates?

Freedom, when pressed, is obviously about the freedom to choose. We can’t choose anything if Sharia Law is enforced and we all have to convert to Islam, or the communists have us all wearing the same grey sweatsuit lining up for the same loaves of bread. Freedom means being able to choose between loaves of bread and the freedom to convert to Christianity!! Right? To an extent. Freedom in its most absolute sense would be all the choices from choosing between two loaves of bread to killing yourself. If we are truly free, there are an infinite number of choices available to us at any given moment.

Memes, you’re definitely growing on me as an educational resource

Does this sound terrifying? It should! The freest person in the world is the recovering drug addict. Their entire lives were previously dedicated to all aspects of doing drugs: grinding to get the drugs, doing the drugs, a short grace period to do some wallowing, and then grinding again. It’s a loop that’s hard to escape, but it does happen. When it does, that person has only known a very constrained lifestyle, and now, without any of it, they are free to do literally whatever they want. Maybe they might go back to school, or start working again, or reconnect with their sober friends. Or maybe they might travel, or go to a treatment centre, or move to a new home away from their drug den, or go for a walk or a movie or the library or the mall or a drop-in centre or a counseling session or a swim in the ocean or a music festival or back home to their parents or a cry in the shower or, as has been established, just end it all. These are choices that must be made every second of every day without any idea of when this flood of choice will end. People off themselves all the time in recovery, and part of the reason is the amount of freedom that they have. The experience of absolute freedom is a void of unknown and infinite possibility, an expanse of overwhelming nothingness ahead of you, and you are the only person responsible and capable for taking that desolate void, both outside and inside of yourself, and turning it into a worthwhile life. Alcoholics Anonymous tells recovering addicts to take things one day at a time simply to limit the number of choices people in this precarious and vulnerable position have to make. The existential anxiety of making a choice is so great that many people relapse simply because the miserable cycle of drug use is at least a known quantity and has a degree of comfort in taking those choices away. Anyone calling them a coward for this has never undergone the experience.

Limiting freedom is actually quite healthy for normies too! You ever hear of structure and routine? They’re great ways to stay healthy. People have a hard time making it to the gym when they have to choose to go to the gym, but when it becomes habit, and they are no longer actually choosing to go, they now have a routine. This is actually incredibly beneficial! If someone is feeling low and unable to do much, their bodies will automatically follow the routine they’ve habituated, and voila! They’ve still made it to the gym despite their blues, and you know what? They’re probably feeling a bit better because of it. Obviously the reverse is true with bad habits, but creating a good life is about creating good and healthy habits. Even something like making a list is helpful because it forces our decisions into a box that restricts our choices to the items listed – they get done because we don’t allow ourselves to choose outside of that box. The irony of freedom’s celebrity is that the goal of life is reduce the number of choices we actually have to make on a day-to-day basis; we just automatically make lunch for work the next day, or go to bed at a reasonable hour, or use the healthy groceries that we buy rather than leave them to rot in our refrigerators. Success comes when our lives are mostly automated, and an automated lifestyle is not a free one.

Pictured: successful humans

This seems somewhat intuitive. Has anyone faced a major life choice and thought: wow, this is a pleasurable experience! Or was there a lot of anxiety and catastrophizing about what the future might look like whether you choose this or that? Especially once you realize that not making a choice is also a choice, and allowing the status quo to perpetuate itself is one of those infinite choices you have to deal with. If a choice seems easy, it’s likely because you’ve been culturally primed to accept that choice as typical and normal – and how free is that of a choice, really? Jean-Paul Sartre, notorious philosopher of freedom, tells us we are “condemned to freedom.’ Choosing negates all other possible choices, and is a terrifying, inescapable, and necessary experience.

And I do think it’s necessary! Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against freedom! We must choose. Having someone else making these major choices for us is an unforgiveable oppression. Just, as with everything, in healthy moderation. Even those Freedom Truckers wore their seatbelts on their drive to Ottawa, and had nothing to say about seatbelt mandates, or traffic light mandates, or pants mandates. No one was out there protesting their freedom to not wear pants, only masks, even though the arguments against pants are way more grounded in science than the arguments against masks!

Don’t you just hate them?

So why is freedom, something that actually kinda sucks, celebrated like it’s the fundamental aspect of Western civilization? I mean, I think it’s reasonable to yadda, yadda, yadda over the escape from the tyranny of the British monarchy since the freedom I’m describing goes well beyond the fight for democracy, but I think the Freedom of today has far evolved beyond that democratic rebellion oh so many centuries ago. Given the link between the fascistic elements of Western society and claims of Freedom, I think that much is clear! So what is it? My personal thoughts are that Freedom has come to represent the dream of a meritocracy. We obviously aren’t living in a meritocracy, but if we are Free, then we must be! I earned my life through the choices I’ve made, and if there are outside social factors subtly influencing my position in life, then the value of my merit is lessened. If I am Free, I am not determined. Whether my life is good or bad, it is my own. I have carved out my place in this world, and the only way that that’s going to change is if the commies and terrorists are allowed to come take our Freedoms away. When people talk about Freedom, they aren’t actually talking about freedom at all since, as discussed, freedom is an incredible burden foisted upon us by an uncaring universe. They’re talking about dignity. I matter because I am Free. Their vitriolic shouts of Freedom and spittle aren’t a call for action, but a plea to have the meaning of their actions recognized.

Freedom is a good thing in the same way that democracy and socialism are good things; we ought to have a choice in our governments and our workplaces. We ought to have choices in our own lives even as we aspire to limit them. Those choices can be painful, and an overwhelming amount of freedom is such a sublime threat that I pray none of you ever have to face that kind of dread. Freedom is… fine, I guess. We’ve become kinda weird about it, but that’s because society has become kinda weird. We’ve become so disconnected from the world around us that we actually insist on it now; if the world is connected to me in any way, then what I do doesn’t matter! How broken of a culture is that? Freedom with a capital F has seemingly become the last bastion of being okay with ourselves while all other forms of meaning are being erased by those who profit off our existential despair. This is why Freedom and fascism can exist in tandem. The thing is though, we can create our own meaning without having to believe that we are alone in creating it. Being alone sucks, but being free around other people means respecting their freedom which often means limiting our own. Given we’ve established that limiting our freedom can be a good thing generally, this shouldn’t be seen as a threat, but as a way to lead a happier, healthier, and more cohesive lifestyle.

I am choosing to add this image to this blog, not because it is relevant in any way, but because I want to. Or am I only doing it to adhere to the goal I set for myself in my previous blog? How free of a choice was this really?

Freedom is like eating our vegetables. We don’t want to do it, but we have to, and if we can find a way to make them more appealing by dousing them in the ranch dressing of moderation, that’s probably for the best. What we don’t want is for Freedom to distract us from the reality of freedom. Freedom more often than not needs to be limited, whether that’s to avoid existential dread, to have a healthy routine, or simply to get along well with others. This doesn’t eliminate meaning, but enhances it. Freedom with a capital F is a lie. Freedom with a lower case f is all we have, all we are condemned to endure. Best to make the most of it!

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Categories Philosophy, Social Criticism

Virtuous Sacrifice: The Sacrifice for Virtue

Mar 20, 2022 //
6

Virtue ethics has been a thing for a long time. It’s about embodying certain characteristics that make someone a good person. Aristotle, who coined the whole system, advocated admiring the virtuous sage and copying their behaviour; the sage being someone who embodies characteristics that ought to be copied. It’s a bit of a circular process that certainly deserves some criticism, but it’s hard to shake the notion that there are certain characteristics that make a person more virtuous. Aristotle gave out a list, but I’m not going to focus on every single one because some of them are dumb.

I mean, you can have a look… try to figure out the dumb ones!

The thing about virtues is that they require personal sacrifice. Courage is the best example, because courage without risk to the self is incoherent. It no longer functions as a concept. Honesty, for instance, is certainly not incoherent when there isn’t any risk, but lying about something benign would usually typify some kind of pathology. Honesty is only a virtue when the sage has something to lose by being honest (we’ll call “something to gain” the loss of an opportunity to gain to keep our sacrificial theme simple). Patience is only a virtue when it would feel real good to lose our shit on someone. Temperance is literally the sacrifice of indulgence, which, if you’ve ever indulged, is a lot of fun. While loyalty is not on Aristotle’s list, it is a common sense virtue that only has value during instances of temptation; its value coming from the sacrifice associated with it. Aristotle liked to think of virtues as the perfect balance of moral homeostasis, but it is very easy to frame them instead as the subjugation of the self for the sake of a higher purpose.

Ask yourself: is this a better depiction of virtue than a soldier throwing themselves on a grenade to save their peers?

To be virtuous then, is to act for the benefit beyond oneself. What this means is that individualism is inherently an unethical philosophy, and systems built on individualism are by definition immoral. By focusing entirely on ourselves, we limit the risks we are willing to absorb for others. We may want to think of the tenets proselytized by individualism such as efficiency and productivity as virtues, but we would be sacrificing the core of virtue ethics. Personal sacrifice for the boss’s profit may seem virtuous to admirer’s of “good work ethic“, but where is the reciprocity necessary in an ethical system? Do bosses exist outside of that system? Probably wouldn’t be great if they did! What’s good for General Motors is not good for the group; I mean, unless General Motors became a collective… *cough*.

Hm. This collective may be a bit problematic.

Again, there are problems with virtue ethics. For one, they’re very tribal. Loyalty to the group may detract from perfectly good or better alternatives, for instance. Friendliness literally points to a circle of friends, and no one can tell me that the same level of friendliness extends outside of that group. For those wondering about which of Aristotle’s virtues are dumb, they’re the ones only attainable by rich people like liberality, magnificence, and magnanimity (listed as great-souledness in that weird list I found on Google). Dude made a living selling philosophy lectures to those with the means to pay for fucking philosophy lectures; he had to play to his audience. However, this illustrates very well the problems of virtue ethics as a system. Virtues develop within the tribe for the benefit of that tribe, giving them a degree of subjectivity as well as a parochialism that I certainly reject.

Our virtuous ethics; their dishonourable sinfulness

I may not be a virtue ethicist, but despite my reservations, I can’t argue with the fundamental principle that ethics require a vision beyond oneself. If we recognize this truth, then we become much more resilient to socially destructive propaganda trying to pass itself off as virtues: independence, self-interest, etc. If a character trait seems designed to prevent unionization, it probably is!

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Categories Philosophy

Euphoria: The Profane Pleasure

Dec 5, 2021 //
3

There is an episode on the podcast Crackdown that posits that, despite less effective results, doctors will still push Suboxone over Methadone when prescribing opiate replacement therapy. In theory, Suboxone is supposed to be safer because it has Naloxone chemically baked into the compound which prevents additional opiates from connecting to their neurological receptors. In short, it prevents you from getting high. Methadone, just being another opiate, allows additional opiates to be used on top of it if the prescription isn’t strong enough to prevent withdrawal. The podcast describes the social rewards of appeasing the medical professionals and being one of the “good” recovering addicts, despite the additional challenges that recovering on Suboxone has over Methadone, and the bitter disappointment of the failure that can come along with that. Ultimately, the podcast concludes that Suboxone is preferred by healthcare workers because it discourages the euphoria that is associated with opiate use on a molecular level.

This was literally the first image on my Google search for, “Doctor Knows Best.” I thought, why not, let’s sex-up this blog a bit.

To be upfront, I struggled with this on a personal level. I have worked with drug users for years, and I always went along with what the doctors and nurses suggested when it comes to opiate replacement therapy because they allegedly know “what’s best” when it comes to prescribing medication. I was told Suboxone is better because it prevents overdose, and who cares what the drug users themselves think, because if they want recovery and no longer want to get high, then why do they want to get high? I didn’t know better, and I didn’t have anyone offering any counterpoints, so it just became an assumed truth: Suboxone is better than Methadone.

Of course, when Mary Poppins says that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, we just blindly accept that firing the dopamine receptors in the brain is an easy way to make adhering to a pharmaceutical regimen more palatable. Heaven forbid you need a pharmaceutical regimen to overcome addiction, however. Then it’s no sugar for you!

The deepfake you didn’t know you needed

Why do we care if those seeking a less life-threatening way of living their lives happen to have a bit of pleasure within it? While I certainly can’t speak for everyone, I bet that it likely has something to do with the emotional reaction to drug use as a fundamentally hedonic lifestyle. We see the panhandler begging for change, decrepit and not having showered in months, and we think, that’s just the consequences of a lifetime of seeking pleasure right there, and so sad that they still haven’t learned that this is where euphoria leads you. Its cure must therefore involve the complete annihilation of any synthetic joy because only real, pure happiness is socially acceptable.

It doesn’t matter that addiction is the learned coping mechanism developed in response to trauma. No one cares about that. As much as people talk about the opioid crisis being a health crisis, no one seems to do anything about it which would be strange if, as a culture, we accepted addiction as what it actually is. Opiates have killed well over a thousand more people in British Columbia than have died from Covid-19 since Covid-19 became a thing, and the response to Covid-19 has been to shut down the world. We don’t care: drug deaths are the tragic but earned result of insatiably seeking an impure pleasure.

Even if we did offer solutions, drug users would still choose to slowly kill themselves, so what’s the point? I understand addiction.

Moral foundations theory is the belief that our morals are determined by the core emotional responses we have to certain situations. We respond with compassion to instances of harm, with indignation to cheating, with disgust to degradation, and so on, and thus are born the moral guidelines of care, fairness, sanctity, etc. Looking at the lives of a drug user, we might be moved to compassion, sure, but the judgier among us are likely to react with disgust. This creates the blueprint for moral blame toward those who indulge in profane pleasure, and thus it becomes that much easier to avoid caring about how many people who use drugs are dying.

If there is a profane pleasure, then surely there must be sacred pleasure, right? What would that be? It certainly isn’t sex, and the social categorization of sex workers would likely fall well within the scope of my thesis here. In Christianity, heaven is described as hanging out with God – being close to God is the sacred pleasure. Within Islam, heaven is a nice garden. Epicurus, the philosopher of socially appropriate hedonism, recommends just having some nice cheese as a sacred pleasure one might indulge in. The thing is though, these all seem kind of… incredibly lame and boring. Don’t get me wrong: cheese is fine, spiritual contemplation can be relaxing, and gardens are quite pretty, but is this really what we want for our sacred pleasure? It seems like the sacred euphoria is to not really have all that much pleasure in your life at all. And that’s the point: all pleasure is inherently profane. The sacred life is about restraining yourself from pleasure because pleasure is dirty.

I wonder what the perfect symbol for the maxim, “The less pleasure you have in your life, the more sacred you become,” would be? It’s on the tip of my tongue…

We’re all susceptible to this. The thing about moral foundation theory is that we all have emotions, and while some emotions may hit us individually harder than others, we can’t escape them. I myself am guilty of this, as I was describing my own thought process above. But remember, addiction is miserable. It’s an endless cycle of desperately trying to escape overwhelming pain. It is patently false to describe addiction as hedonic excess because the euphoria from any drug, let alone the banality of methadone, pales in comparison to the suffering of addiction itself. If the maxim about suffering being the road to sanctity were true, there would be none more sacred than the drug addict.

As bizarre as the moral condemnation of all pleasure is, it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. It’s a trap constructed by the likes of Nancy Reagan, anti-drug campaigns, and ultimately, the racist origins of the drug laws themselves. They used to give opiates to children to calm them down, and even gave it the kind of kitschy name you’d expect for such a product, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. Not that this was particularly healthy for the kids, but it gives you an idea as to the benign perception of narcotics prior to their criminality. Unfortunately, racism needed a way to control immigrant communities, drug use was thus linked to those communities, and drug laws were born to prevent Asian men from boning white women. The disgust associated with drugs was created and perpetuated outside their capacity to induce pleasure (excluding the ecstasy of interracial sexy-times), and so it makes sense that the lived experiences of drug users are irrelevant to our moral condemnation today.

Oh yeah, this is definitely a lifestyle that has far too many happy outcomes in it

I am writing this piece as a means of organizing my thoughts. I did not have a conclusion in mind when I started, and so it’s actually been a longer process than it normally would be for me to write one of these things. I have to come to grips with my own biases and take the time to reflect on what they are and where they come from. The debate about the comparable benefits between Methadone versus Suboxone is pretty niche, but I knew going into this that the exploration of this topic was going to touch on more than just that. The social attitude toward drugs and the moral condemnation toward their users is ubiquitous, and no one is exempt. Even drug users will hold themselves to a higher moral standard than other drug users citing the arbitrary standard of, “Well, I would never do such and such!” as a means of separating themselves from the impure. Sometimes they end up getting to the point where they do that thing, and this is often brought up in 12-step meetings as the time they knew they had lost control. Sometimes, a new bar will be set, “I may have done such and such, but I would never do such and such!”, and the desire to maintain moral purity remains.

In all honesty, Suboxone does work for some people. It’s good to have as an option for those who might genuinely want it. The point is that we shouldn’t use moral condemnation borne out of historical racism to coerce people into a recovery that doesn’t work for them. Addiction is hard enough as it is.

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Categories Philosophy, Social Criticism
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