The Objective Truth (or Lack Thereof) on Race, Crime, Drugs ….

I’m going to start with these two passages from what you wrote. Passage #1, which is in response to my citation of specific facts and statistics rebutting the myth that we have some sort of racist epidemic of mass incarceration, i.e., “The New Jim Crow,” is this:

With all the stats, its not obvious what they mean actually (I don’t mean generally, but how to actually interpret them), because I maintain that both sides can continue the empirical fight ad infinitum. Post-empiricism doesn’t mean relativism or anti-empiricism, it says the facts are flawed by framing. And it’s just as important that if I reply with dozens of counter facts, that both sets of facts are quite possibly true, so we need to abstract up to more general truth. You can list all these stats, which may very well add up to some truth that counters the black agenda, but its way to easy for me to rebut with “well what about [insert cultural artefact here]” (ex. Straight Outta Compton, the film). There is a basic reality that the crypto-empirical right has to own up to. What about the book “The New Jim Crow”? Again, I revert to my ‘why are we arguing against each other at all, rather than arguing on the same side (or without sides), to get to the truth. Metamodernism promotes a Both/And mentality, which I believe can help transcend a lot of these debates and issues.

Passage #2, which concerns the beginning of your response to my comments about the war on drugs, is this:

My point of objectivity on drugs and climate change is important here, because I’m claiming a sort of universal truth exists. We can still be fallible, but there is a scientific consensus on the changing ecology of the planet, period. There is legitimate disagreement (which is among humble scientists and is very small) and illegitimate disagreement (ie, flat-earthers, or global warming ‘skeptics’). Meaning, the latter has no case, and we can refer to a general yet fallible objectivity.

So, as best as I can understand it, you’re taking the approach, in response to my somewhat detailed statistical/empirical rebuttal of the notion that we live in an anti-black racist carceral state, that, well, you don’t want to get into the numbers because there’s truth on both sides, and perhaps they can be reconciled at some higher level of abstraction, but then you suddenly get very “objective” on me and start talking about how “universal truth exists,” and there is “no case” for the anti-drug position in response to my claim that the war on drugs has truth on both sides — as I see the personal liberty/self-determination argument in favor of permitting all drug use, but I also see the legitimate state interest in avoiding a drugged-out populace rife with health issues brought on by the abuse of drugs, etc., and I see no evidence that anti-drug policies are generally motivated by anti-black racism, as you’d claimed, since such anti-drug policies are common to the point of being almost universal throughout the world, including in nations that have no substantial black populace.

The tension between your views is particularly ironic, I think, because while the question of whether we have an unjustified epidemic of mass incarceration of blacks is at least amenable to empirical data, i.e., to answer the question of whether blacks are being incarcerated because of racism rather than because of higher participation in what we might agree is serious criminal activity, the question of whether the war on drugs is justified is more complex and less amenable to any sort of simple empirical proofs. To answer the question about drug prohibition, you’d have to pretty much go one drug at a time and think about questions such as (i) how is the drug primarily used now?; (ii) how would it likely be used if we permitted its use, and how certain are we about any such conclusion?; (iii) is any such projected use likely to make us, as a nation, “fitter, happier and more productive,” or dumber, more unmotivated, more unsatisfied and more afflicted with chronic health issues?; (iv) what are the expected financial costs we as a nation would incur in permitting the use of any such drug vs. prohibiting it?; and (v) notwithstanding the answers to any of these questions, is there some overriding philosophical principle of self-determination that compels us to permit drug use, regardless of the consequences? These are just some of the thorny questions that occur to me off the top of my head. Many involve projection and guesswork or, in the case of #5, inherently debatable philosophical argumentation. So I still completely fail to see how you can conclude that the war on drugs is “objectively” wrong in the same way that someone could conclude that man-made climate change either is or is not happening.

Now let me move on to your more specific rebuttal of my guess that “the way most people use drugs is harmful to their well-being, broadly conceived.”

This is simply empirically false for a few reasons. First and foremost, alcohol is a drug, that is normalized and is legal, and most people use it positively, although abuse is also common. Objectively, it is a mind-altering substance, period, different, but the same as others. Used throughout human history, along with others. The marketing of alcohol also has infinitely further reach than the education campaigns, but at least they exist. Wine Appreciation is even a college degree. It’s really no different with illegal drugs, because a lot of people ‘know’ things about usage and the culture that non-users have no idea about. The arbitrary determination of what is legal/illegal creates the criminal culture. And the stats prove that alcohol is incredibly lethal in its ultimate outcomes, whereas cannabis usage is virtually harmless (unless you go back to those crime stats based on prohibition). We’d be having a completely different conversation if cannabis remained legal 70 years ago. It is supremely ironic, because alcohol is an aggressive drug, and cannabis is actually a peaceful drug, generally speaking. I’m not saying your completely wrong, but the dominant culture does not shape people or ideas responsibly. It is the avant-garde of drug culture that shows the way.

Again, here you have no trouble abandoning the “both/and” mentality you’d espoused with regard to “mass incarceration”/“the carceral state,” and are telling me that my claim is “empirically false.” Let’s examine the reasoning.

Point #1 is that “alcohol is a drug, that is normalized and is legal, and most people use it positively, although abuse is also common.” I’d actually dispute that most people use it positively. I think most people do not use alcohol positively. First, let’s again bring some facts into this. According to this NIH report,

• “According to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 86.4 percent of people ages 18 or older reported that they drank alcohol at some point in their lifetime; 70.1 percent reported that they drank in the past year; 56.0 percent reported that they drank in the past month.”
• “In 2015, 26.9 percent of people ages 18 or older reported that they engaged in binge drinking in the past month.”
• “Globally, alcohol misuse was the fifth leading risk factor for premature death and disability in 2010. Among people between the ages of 15 and 49, it is the first. In the age group 20–39 years, approximately 25 percent of the total deaths are alcohol attributable.”

So, what we’re seeing here is that 56.0% of people surveyed drank in the past month, and 26.9% of people reported binge drinking in the past month. We don’t need to be math geniuses to calculate, from this, that of the people who reported drinking at all in the past month, a whopping 48% engaged in binge drinking. According to this report of a study, “[t]hirty percent of U.S. adults have experienced alcohol abuse or alcoholism.” According to this report, “37.9% of college students in the age range of 18–22 reported binge drinking.”

So if we could agree that “binge drinking” is not using alcohol “positively,” and if it’s the case that roughly 48% of all adults have engaged in binge-drinking in just the past month when people were surveyed, I think it’s probably safe to conclude that over 50% engaged in binge drinking over the past year. I’d argue, further, that even of the people who don’t binge-drink, many uses of alcohol aren’t what I’d term “positive.” In my experience, most people, when they drink, even short of getting drunk, become somewhat more dopey, unfocused, belligerent and/or tired, and tend to start behaving injudiciously and distastefully. And there are some who don’t. A person who has a single glass of wine with dinner probably doesn’t fall into any of these pathologies. But I’d guess that the majority of people have more than a single glass of wine with dinner. Instead of imagining your bourgeois professional sipping a glass of Merlot with his steak au poivre, imagine a typical bar scene, or beer being guzzled at a frathouse party, sporting event or backyard barbecue. Is this “positive”? I guess that’s a judgment call, ultimately (one more reason this isn’t objective), but I’d say generally, no. (Some of this stuff is also very culturally driven, as regions such as Great Britain, Scandinavia, Russia or the U.S. tend to see more alcohol abuse than places such as France, Spain or Italy, and this difference may follow from the type of alcohol that’s typically consumed in such places, i.e., beer/spirits vs. wine.)

What’s my conclusion based on this? That alcohol should be banned? No, not necessarily (remember, I’m against prohibition of drugs as well, so my view is consistent). But it would certainly suggest that a nation has a very significant interest in regulating alcohol heavily, taxing it at a high rate, preventing businesses from selling alcohol to the young and generally otherwise doing everything it can to discourage reckless abuse of the sort that leads to fights, criminal activity, drunk driving, alcoholism, cirrhosis and all sorts of dysfunction. Someone (a pure libertarian) might argue that a nation has no business meddling in this stuff at all, but don’t you see that the argument of someone who thinks otherwise is, at the very least, reasonable?

But then you go on to make the point that “the stats prove that alcohol is incredibly lethal in its ultimate outcomes, whereas cannabis usage is virtually harmless (unless you go back to those crime stats based on prohibition). We’d be having a completely different conversation if cannabis remained legal 70 years ago.”

As you might’ve seen, someone else (Rowland Meek) has already disputed your claim about how cannabis usage is “virtually harmless.” I’ll quote this paragraph from what he wrote:

Old farts like me usually outlive the cumulative negative effect of cannabis BUT, the earlier and younger the user is, definitive cognitive impairments are the order of the day although it is well compensated for by the long time user (please don’t ask for references — medical journals are full of them).

Personally, my experience of people who smoke marijuana is that, like those who drink alcohol, they tend to be unpleasant to deal with. They tend to be unmotivated, unfocused, uninteresting and lazy. If you look at the people in our society who smoke regularly, they tend to be … well, let’s just say they tend not to be the best and brightest. (Perhaps this would change if it were legalized, but I have my doubts.) I grant that marijuana has certain medical uses in pain relief, seizure relief and for other such beneficial purposes, and I also don’t believe I’ve seen any research indicating anyone is seriously harmed from smoking on occasion, but long-term regular use is a problem.

But, of course, we’re still not focusing on the elephant in the room, which is that marijuana is widely acknowledge as the least of our worries … even to the point where some states are legalizing it now, of course. But take crack. Take heroin. Take meth. Take opioids. Are you going to tell me that these are “virtually harmless”? Are you going to suggest to me that in some counterfactual universe in which these were legal, they’d be used responsibly? Is it possible that this might be the case? Sure. But on what basis am I supposed to recognize such a speculative claim as objectively true?

So, I still don’t see how you can claim that our ban on various drugs is objectively wrong.

Two smaller points I want to say something about:

maybe you should experiment [with drugs] at some point, but fear will also engender an adverse reaction. One has to know how to have fun.

I’m actually a very happy person the vast majority of the time. I have lots of “fun” in my life. But many of the things I consider “fun” are things many others probably wouldn’t consider fun. I find some conventional things fun, but I also find reading, learning, writing, discussing interesting topics, etc. lots of fun. We live in a completely overstimulated culture, where people’s idea of “fun” is having their mind zapped into a near-catatonic state by dumbed-down t.v., including t.v. news, mass culture, social networks, the infotainment industry and chemical substances (like drugs and alcohol), and when they get used to that level of overstimulation, they can’t deal with activities that require more input from you to get your kicks (such as reading). So, I’ll say thanks, but no thanks.

I appreciate your readership on my other posts and seeing where it takes us. I will try to keep up with yours too.

Thanks, and I feel the same way. I actually read your Jordan Peterson article this morning and, although I couldn’t fully agree with it, I definitely found it engaging and interesting. Have your article about meta-modernism in my queue next ….