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Re: Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?
| quote: | Originally posted by AlphaStarred
A thought-provoking, piquant polemic against alcohol and narcotics from the venerable Leo Tolstoy: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_D...y_Themselves%3F
It merits a reading whether or not you smoke or drink, and especially if you do, for there's a good deal of food for thought here.
I've quoted some notable extracts, as well:
"When do lads begin to smoke? Usually when they lose their childish innocence. How is it that smokers can abandon smoking when they come among more moral conditions of life, and again start smoking as soon as they fall among a depraved set? Why do gamblers almost all smoke? Why among women do those who lead a regular life smoke least? Why do prostitutes and madmen all smoke?
Habit is habit, but evidently smoking stands in some definite connection with the craving to stifle conscience, and achieves the end required of it."
"Everyone of average education considers it inadmissible, ill-bred, and inhumane to infringe the peace, comfort, and still more the health of others for his own pleasure. No one would allow himself to wet a room in which people are sitting, or to make a noise, shout, let in cold, hot, or ill-smelling air, or commit acts that incommode or harm others. But out of a thousand smokers not one will shrink from producing unwholesome smoke in a room where the air is breathed by non-smoking women and children."
"But even if non-smoking adults did not object to tobacco smoke, it could not be pleasant or good for the children whose consent no one asks. Yet people who are honorable and humane in all other respects smoke in the presence of children at dinner in small rooms, vitiating the air with tobacco smoke, without feeling the slightest twinge of conscience."
"When a man works he is always conscious of two beings in himself: the one works, the other appraises the work. The stricter the appraisement the slower and the better is the work; and vice versa, when the appraiser is under the influence of something that stupefies him, more work gets done, but its quality is poorer."
"It seems to people that a slight stupefaction (like tobacco), a little darkening of the judgment, cannot have any important influence. But to think so is like supposing that it may harm a watch to be struck against a stone, but that a little dirt introduced into it cannot be harmful."
"We must, as far as it depends on us, try to put ourselves and others in conditions which will not disturb the clearness and delicacy of thought necessary for the correct working of conscience, and must not act in the contrary manner—trying to hinder and confuse the work of conscience by the use of stupefying substances.
For man is a spiritual as well as an animal being. He may be moved by things that influence his spiritual nature, or by things that influence his animal nature, as a clock may be moved by its hands or by its main wheel. And just as it is best to regulate the movement of a clock by means of its inner mechanism, so a man—oneself or another—is best regulated by means of his consciousness. And as with a clock one has to take special care of that part by means of which one can best move the inner mechanism, so with a man one must take special care of the cleanness and clearness of consciousness which is the thing that best moves the whole man."
"To doubt this is impossible; everyone knows it. But a need to deceive oneself arises. People are not as anxious that consciousness should work correctly as they are that it should seem to them that what they are doing is right, and they deliberately make use of substances that disturb the proper working of their consciousness."
"People drink and smoke, not casually, not from dullness, not to cheer themselves up, not because it is pleasant, but in order to drown the voice of conscience in themselves."
"Thanks to self-stupefaction...life does not accord with conscience, so conscience is made to bend to life."
"A man feels that to decide the questions confronting him needs labor—often painful labor—and he wishes to evade this. If he had no means of stupefying his faculties he could not expel from his consciousness the questions that confront him, and the necessity of solving them would be forced upon him.
But man finds that there exists a means to drive off these questions whenever they present themselves—and he uses it.
As soon as the questions awaiting solution begin to torment him, he has recourse to these means, and avoids the disquietude evoked by the troublesome questions. Consciousness ceases to demand their solution, and the unsolved questions remain unsolved till his next period of enlightenment."
"For dozens of years past, all the European peoples have been busy devising the very best ways of killing people, and teaching as many young men as possible, as soon as they reach manhood, how to murder. Everyone knows that there can be no invasion by barbarians, but that these preparations made by the different civilized and Christian nations are directed against one another; everyone knows that this is burdensome, painful, inconvenient, ruinous, immoral, impious, and irrational—but everyone continues to prepare for mutual murder.
Some devise political combinations to decide who is to kill whom and with what allies, others direct those who are being taught to murder, and others again yield—against their will, against their conscience, against their reason—to these preparations for murder.
Could sober people do these things? Only drunkards who never reach a state of sobriety could do them and live on in the horrible state of discord between life and conscience in which, not onIy in this but in all other respects, the people of our society are now living.
Never before, I suppose, have people lived with the demands of their conscience so evidently in contradiction to their actions." |
I didn't read it all, but I get the idea. I don't think this is anything other than opinion. I doubt you could get any real data supporting this. Sure there is some relationship between psychoactive drugs and attempting to escape reality, but drugs are not the only means of attaining this goal. You can delve into your work, into another person, into your ideals and escape reality equally. I for one don't agree with this article as a whole, but I do agree that current societies demands are related to some extent with the use of psychoactive drugs.
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| quote: | Orbax
At that point you kind of crossed the rubicon and you might as well lay siege to Rome |
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Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?
