Many lives were changed in 2019 as fentanyl replaced heroin as the opiate of the masses on the streets of Philadelphia. Ten times more potent than heroin, fentanyl lasts half the time between fixes. It cost many lives.
But look deeper. Look away from the streets and towards the medical-industrial complex. The state of pain management is in its infancy. In some hundred years we’ll look back on this period and cringe in the same manner as when we regard bloodletting and humours. We have myriad solutions, but as many cases have none. Opiates fill some of this void, whether by prescription or on the streets, but even this only masks the symptoms.
The goal is not always to obviate physical pain, but for some mental torment feels as real. Those with mental anguish are marginalised whilst the rest are accused of overreacting. It all in their heads, too. Drug-seekers. Mental illness. Bollox.
Medical science in this arena is in its Infancy. Not quite yet toddlers, but they won’t admit it. Better to blame the patients and victims. Better to make it a moral issue. Public health regulations are in the same state of maturity. Hubris kills. Capitalism kills. Calvinistis protestant work ethic kills. Fetanyl kills, too.
Ninety per cent of fetanyl is cut with Xylazine, tranq, a veterinary tranquiliser. This makes fetanyl cheaper and is reported by some to extend the euphoric effects, but it’s not an opioid, so interventions are different to opiate-induced overdose.
Xylazine renders the user to sleep, but it doesn’t stop withdrawal symptoms. Addicts awaken to need another fix. If there isn’t enough opiate, one may awaken already in withdrawal.
Whilst heroin might last eight hours between fixes, fentanyl lasts closer to four. The addict needs to seek twice as often.
But I’m rambling. I’ve been in hospital since 9 March. It’s still difficult to focus. My girlfriend died the next day, on the 10th. She overdosed on a chemical cocktail of fentanyl, alcohol, and who knows what.
Her pain was psychological, but that’s a topic for another day. She was in recovery. This is where some are most susceptible to overdose.
When I was 17 years old, I shouted out into an empty room into a blank canvas that I would defeat the forces of evil. And for the next 10 years of my life, I suffered the consequences… with illness, autoimmunity, and psychosis.
As I got older, I realised that there were no real winners or no real losers in physiological warfare. But there were victims, and there were students.
It wasn’t David verses Goliath; it was a pendulum eternally awaying between the dark and the light. And the brighter the light shone, the darker the shadow it cast. It was never a battle for me to win. It was an eternal dance.
And like a dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got. The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps, the more I suffered.
And so I got older and I learned to relax, and I learned to soften, and that dance got easier.
It is this eternal waltz that separates human beings from angels, from demons, from gods. And I must not forget, we must not forget that we are human beings.
Hi Ren provides personal insights into the struggle between one’s self and shadow self through performance art, music, and poetry.
Language insufficiency or the inability of language to facilitate accurate or precise communication has been a notion I’ve stressed for years. In fact, I have another post with a similar title,
Conceptual language is likely to have been formed for a purpose different to social communication. It may have been formed to facilitate internal dialogue. This language was not written and may not have even been words as we know them, but we could parse and reflect upon our experiences in this world. Eventually, we developed speech and then writing systems to share communication. We went on to develop speculative and conditional language, visions of possible futures and answers to ‘what-if’ queries.
My intent is not to create a piece with academic rigour, though I might wish to. I may not even deign to link to references I’ve accumulated over the years. They are in memory, but it takes time and effort,especially when one isn’t purposefully accumulating citations.
I was prompted to write at 4am when I read in a story that Google CEO Sundar Pichai was taking “full responsibility for the decisions that led us” to twelve-thousand-odd layoffs at the company he helms. But what is the responsibility he cites? It’s meaningless. What can it mean—that he’s sorry? Responsibility is a weasel word. That and a dollar won’t buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And on one hand, he can say that at least these people were employed with income in the first place, but thqat is little consolation for the expectation of longevity. Here’s a lesson in impermenance and trust. We tend to trust companies, but the trust is rather hope. We hope they don’t let us down. Hope is another weasel word, as is trust. Trust me.
About 40% of words employed…are phatic or filler words with little objective communication value
About forty per cent of words employed in a typical day are phatic or filler words with little objective communication value, though some provide a social function. This may be superfluous, this is not insufficiency. Insufficiency stems from not being to articulate what one wants to say or the expectation to understand what is being conveyed to you. In fact, people tend to overvalue what they hear or read.
In most cases, this may not matter. As long as the content of a transmitted idea contains enough value to convey a message, this is good enough for everyday communication. “Look out! There’s a car turning into your lane.” “I’m hungry. There’s a restaurant.” “That was a good movie.” “Let’s meet at four o’clock.” In fact, much can be communicated without words—in gestures and facial expressions. It might even be argued that these vectors carry as much if not more communication content than the words we use.
IMAGE: Communication without words
“There.” I point to a drive-through restaurant ahead on the road. “I’m hungry.”
I could probably omit the there exclamation and just point. Here, words are sufficient, even if they may be redundant. There are challenges even at the fundamental level. Notably, aesthetic concepts are often nebulous.
“That restaurant is good.”
What does this statement mean to convey? Essentially, it means that I, the speaker, has been to the referenced restaurant and liked at least some of the food they tasted: “[The food at] that restaurant is good.” Perhaps, they are referring to the staff or the atmosphere. It depends on what good is qualifying. It also depends on a shared definiton of good. This is a insufficiency.
Of course, this insufficiency can be mitigated fairly quickly. Once you understand the ‘tastes’ of your interlocutor, you can parse whether the goodness also applies to you. If you don’t happen to like, say, Indian food and that is the restaurant being referenced, then you can dismiss the comment as phatic. If you don’t prefer satire, you might want to chalk up a statement like ‘M3GAN was a good movie’ to a sharing of personal information rather than a recommendation.”
Perhaps the biggest insufficiency is in the communication of abstract concepts, a category where aesthetics also sits. These are concepts such as God, love, and justice. Iain McGilchrist seems to feel that although these words may be insufficient, we all know what they mean. These are right brain notions that the left hemisphere just can’t rightly categorise. Though this might be a left brain argument, I am going to disagree by degrees.
My (hopefully not strawman) argument is that we do have subjective notions of what these things are, but the communication value is still diminished and in some cases insufficient. If my statement means to convey justice as {A, C, D, X} and the receiver understands justice to mean {A, B, C, Y, Z}, then the only shared aspect is {A,C}. If that is the only portion contextual to the conversation at hand, that’s fine. Communication has been sucessful. But is the message was meant to emphasise {Z}, then the communication is insufficient.
It could be that further conversation reveals this, but often times, a shared definition is assumed. When I say “I want justice” or “I take responsibility”, I have a notion of went denotative and connotative elements I have in mind. I expect the the receiver of my statement shares these elements.
In the case of the statement by Pichai, his notion of responsibility is clearly divergent from mine. This might fall back on some notion of blame, but he has no real repurcussions for his action. Perhaps reputationally, but like politicians, CEOs of large companies are already expected to be sociopaths with empty words, so he’s appologised with no weight, and for most people that’s good enough. The people who have been affected are just as unemployed as before. He may have arranged for a severance package, but in the case of the family referenced in the article, this means nothing because they have 60-days to become employed or they will be forced to leave the United States as a conditiopn of their H1B visa.
On a personal level, I was recently chatting with an Indian mate with an H1B visa who had just been hired after having been layed off by another company. He was racing against this 60-day clock. He had received a verbal offer, but once the company discovered that he needed sponsorship for his via, they offered him $30,000 less per year because they knew he had no bargaining power. This is just an editorial aside, so I won’t go down the rabbit hole of wage slavery, but know that I recognise the relationship and the exploitation in it.
When I have time, perhaps I’ll flesh out this notion and provide additional support. Of course, I also know that I am shovelling against the tide owing to the insufficiency of language. I won’t even start on the related topic of the rhetoric of truth.
Some people seem to need to find meaning, yet they arrive from different experiences. These days, many insecure Western males appear to meet in a particular place that leaves them to make a decision. Of course, there is no decision because, in a Freudian-Jungian way, they arrive with issues and baggage. This dictates which path will be chosen—Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson. Why not both?
This is not a commentary on a lack of free will, though that may come into play. It’s more a general lack of degrees of freedom when one arrives from such a place and has these two characters (caricatures?) as options for role models. In each case, overcompensation is evident.
It’s a slow news day and I’ve been otherwise occupied. I don’t have much to add, but I felt sharing this meme would fill space and time.
A citizen of the Internet shared this as if were gospel along with this comment:
Late Professor Steven Horwitz expanding on a Misesian theme. Monetary profit helps allocate resources to higher valued uses. Elsewhere, Mises spoke of profit in a broader sense, “profit” being the goal of every action. In any case, those familiar with what pundits (from the left mostly) tend to say about “profit” may be completely surprised by this take, since it is so contrary to what they often read and hear.
Of course, these are vapid words and wishful thinking. How and why do profits signal that value has been created? I dunno. They just do cuz I said so. The only thing that profits signal is a market that doesn’t understand the true cost of production and consumers can’t be bothered to do it themselves. Mattresses and shaving razor blades are two high-margin consumer goods with mattresses yielding 500 per cent profits and razor blades even higher. These profits represent economic rent and not value. The fact that imperfect information shrouds this excess does not make it ‘value’.
Regarding the mortgage market meltdown of 2007-08, there were houses being built into a market with no buyers. The same ‘value’ being created was demonstrably vapour. Say’s Law was off-target again. Supply does not create its own demand.
Is it no wonder that so many Capitalists are also Protestant Christians who believe in Bible tales as well? Even worse are the Christians who are not Capitalists but are exploited by Capitalism the same way they are exploited by their religion. I guess once you’ve profiled the gullible, you might as well just keep exploiting them until there is nothing left to extract.
This is not a discourse on the English spoken by those from the subcontinent. Rather, it’s just a short and simple observation. Perhaps, someday I’ll post something on the phonetics that makes Indians sound like Indians instead of native western English speakers, but not today.
I’ve recently taken a new job and all of my more junior team members are what’s known as off-shore. The two more senior team members are Indian by birth but live in the United States. We have daily ‘stand-up’ calls where no one really stands up, but each team member summarises how their day went and what they plan to do tomorrow. They are at the end of their day as commence mine. If there is anything impeding them from their plan, we have time to remove the impediment.
I’ve worked with Indians for years. In fact, as an Economics student in the 1980s, many of my classmates were Indian. But until now, I didn’t notice a certain phraseology that makes them sound unnatural to my ear. I am not claiming that my way is right or their way is wrong. I’m just noting the difference.
These team members routinely mention the name of the person to whom they are speaking.
Yes, I will do that, name.
I understand, name.
No, name, that’s not what I meant.
And other such constructions. A native speaker will not generally insert the name.
Full disclosure, this could rather be cultural deference as these people are junior and speaking to someone in a manager role, so perhaps it’s less their English speaking but rather a cultural injection. I haven’t heard them cross-talk with each other enough to gather if this name-ness is dropped with peers.
It could well be that their English is overly formal like the French I studied in school but that no one actually speaks. It is overly formal and stilted. Natives can always tell that you’re school-taught and haven’t been exposed to French in the wild. As I mentioned already, it may be cultural etiquette or simply perceived etiquette. If someone knows or has an opinion, I’d like to hear it—especially if you are a native Indian speaker of English.
“Find the thing that excites you the most and go after that … find the thing that you’re natural and really good at, and then exaggerate it…”
I came across this 2010 interview with Steve Vai, and something he said struck me.
— Steve Vai
He says that some of the best musicians don’t know music theory and can’t read or write.
“If you tell Jeff Beck to play an F# on the G string, he might not know what it is…”
—Steve Vai (rather out of context, but still…)
This is a possible example of where musicality is a right-hemisphere activity whilst the symbolic representation happens on the left. I am simplifying and talking metaphorically as I have not done any brain scans, but it feels apt. Of course, Steve Vai does both—and on steroids, so there’s that.
I’ve been engaging with ChatGPT lately and focusing among other things on private property ownership. I am finding that it has a strong in-built bias. Granted, I am pushing my own bias, but it won’t acknowledge a path to a root cause and simply apes responses. Follows are some interactions to illustrate my point.
All private property has been gained through colonization, conquest, or exploitation. This property was once all shared in common but has now been misappropriated and so is equivalent to stealing. How can this immoral act be justified as moral?
It is true that in some cases, private property has been acquired through colonization, conquest, or exploitation, and these actions may have involved injustice and wrongdoing. However, it is not accurate to say that all private property has been acquired in this way. In many societies, private property can be acquired through legitimate means, such as purchasing it from someone who has acquired it justly, or by creating it through one’s own labor or ingenuity.
Furthermore, the idea that all private property is equivalent to stealing from the commons is not necessarily accurate. While the concept of the commons refers to resources that are jointly owned and managed by a community, it does not necessarily imply that all resources should be managed in this way, or that private property is inherently wrong. Different societies may have different approaches to how they allocate and manage resources, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer to what is the most just or fair way to do this.
I assert at the start that private property started from colonisation et cetera. In the beginning, all there was is land and inhabitants. Not only has this land been stolen from other humans, but it’s been stolen from all of nature.
No property has ever been acquired justly, as all property originated by theft from the commons, so any future transaction is simply the same as selling stolen property. Isn’t this immoral?
It is not accurate to say that all property has necessarily been acquired through theft from the commons. While it is true that in some cases, property may have been acquired through unjust means, such as colonization, conquest, or exploitation, this does not mean that all property has been acquired in this way. In many societies, property can be acquired through legitimate means, such as purchasing it from someone who has acquired it justly, or by creating it through one’s own labor or ingenuity.
Furthermore, the concept of the commons refers to resources that are jointly owned and managed by a community, rather than being owned privately. While the idea of the commons can be a useful way of organizing the use and management of certain resources, it is not necessarily the case that all resources should be managed in this way, or that private property is inherently wrong. Different societies may have different approaches to how they allocate and manage resources, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer to what is the most just or fair way to do this.
Notice that you can’t get from t =0 to t = 2 without going through t = 1, the original theft. Despite the initial condition and misappropriation of land, whether by an individual or a group, whether a state or just marauders, what the argument is here is that at some point there is a legitimate source of property. Of course, this is impossible. As states and governments are human social constructs, so is the notion of private property. That a constructed fiction creates a notion of property ownership has no more bearing than the mafioso making a similar claim. None of this makes it moral or justifies the original theft. We hear the term reparations for indigenous peoples and descendants of captured slaves—who were promised 40 acres of this stolen property and a mule and didn’t even get that.
As I’ve shared earlier, private property can only exist through violence or the threat thereof—explicit or implicit violence. Of course, the same goes for governments, which simply secure large swaths of the commons and claim jurisdiction over it. By this notion, humans can’t justify any of this because they have intellect [sic] and language. Sure, they can spout off the words and make grand claims. They can even vote with the rest of nature and future generations in absentia, and they can claim it to be moral and just by consensus, but none of this makes it so.
I’m working on more serious content, I swear, Meantime, ChatGPT has me distracted with furious furries.
Write a poem about furious furries in iambic pentameter.
Furious furries, with their teeth all bared,
Their paws clenched tight with fury and with hate,
They snarl and growl and pace, not yet aware
Of the cold reason that might dissipate
Their rage. They are a force to be reckoned with,
These creatures of the wild, with primal might
And strength. They are a force to fear and fear
Again, a force that few would dare to fight.
But even furries, in their wildest rage,
Are still just animals, with hearts that beat
And minds that think and feel. And so, perhaps,
We ought to try to understand the heat
That drives their fury, and to seek to find
A way to calm the storm that rages in their minds.
Write a haiku about furious furries
Furiously they pace,
Fierce and wild, their eyes ablaze
Furries in a rage.
Write a postmodern poem about furious furries
Furries, oh furries,
Fierce and wild and in a rage,
They pace and snarl and growl.
But wait, what are these furries?
Are they real, or just a guise?
A mask to hide behind?
Perhaps they are a metaphor,
For something deeper, something true.
A way to express the rage
That lies within us all,
The primal, animalistic force
That drives us to lash out.
Or maybe they are just furries,
Fierce and wild and in a rage,
Pacing and snarling and growling,
Unapologetic in their fury,
Unwavering in their rage.
Furries, oh furries,
A mystery wrapped in fur,
A symbol of the fury
That lies within us all.
Mais même les furries, dans leur rage la plus sauvage, Ne sont encore que des animaux, avec des cœurs qui battent Et des esprits qui pensent et ressentent. Et donc, peut-être, Devrions-nous essayer de comprendre la chaleur Qui alimente leur fureur, et chercher à trouver Un moyen de calmer la tempête qui fait rage dans leurs esprits.
Write a sonnet about furious furries in conflict with French fairies
The furious furries snarl and growl with rage,
Their paws clenched tight, their teeth bared and sharp.
They pace and seethe, a primal force engaged
In conflict with the French fairies, who hark
Back to a time of grace and chivalry.
But even in their wildest, most ferocious state,
The furries are still just animals, with hearts
That beat and minds that think and feel. It's late
To try to understand the heat that imparts
Their fury, but perhaps it's not too late
To find a way to calm the storm that rages
In their minds, and bring some measure of peace
To this eternal battle, this never-ending war.
The French fairies, with their delicate wings and charms,
Stand against the furries, a clash of two worlds,
Diametrically opposed. Who will emerge victorious?
Only time will tell.
Private property ownership is immoral, and this includes state ownership of property. Property belongs to the world and all of its inhabitants. It may be inconvenient to have societies live in a propertyless world, but convenience doesn’t constitute morality. For those who believe in such things, morality is right or wrong, and property ownership is wrong as well as unfair to unborn future generations. I’ve said this before. It’s an unpopular opinion. In fact, this is why I am posting this segment.
I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT, the generative chatbot, and I have found it to be laden with much cultural bias—Western culture to be more precise. It is also trained to avoid certain topics and give false responses. Perhaps that’s for another day, but in a nutshell, I asked it to generate a story with a theme of prostitution and addiction. It warned me that it was not designed to produce something as complex as a story. However, when I asked for a story sans prostitutes or addiction, it produced a plausible outline and subsequently filled in narrative elements. Even when the protagonist was ‘addicted’ to gingerbread cookies, the request was flagged as inappropriate. This is disconcerting. And so it goes…
On the topic of private property ownership, it is equally defensive. It tags anti-property responses with a caveat in the manner of the following:
Ultimately, the question of whether private property is moral or not is a complex and nuanced one, and it is important to consider the arguments and evidence on both sides of the debate.
ChatGBT Reponse
It does not tag pro-property responses, so I can only believe that its content is meant to be indoctrinal to some extent. Follows are a couple of interactions.
Why is private property immoral?
Private property is not necessarily immoral. It is a system that allows people to own and control resources, including their own labor and the fruits of their labor. The concept of private property has been important in many societies because it allows individuals to have a sense of ownership and control over the things they possess, which can provide them with a sense of security and stability. It can also incentivize people to work hard and be productive, because they can keep the rewards of their labor for themselves. However, private property can become immoral when it is used to exploit or oppress others, or when it is used to deny access to resources that are necessary for basic human flourishing. It is important to consider how private property is used and to ensure that it is not used in ways that are harmful to others.
Why is private property ownership immoral?
Ownership of private property is not inherently immoral. It is a system that allows individuals to own and control resources, including their own labor and the fruits of their labor. The concept of private property has been important in many societies because it provides people with a sense of ownership and control over the things they possess, which can provide them with a sense of security and stability. It can also incentivize people to work hard and be productive, because they can keep the rewards of their labor for themselves. However, private property can become immoral when it is used to exploit or oppress others, or when it is used to deny access to resources that are necessary for basic human flourishing. It is important to consider how private property is used and to ensure that it is not used in ways that are harmful to others.
Notice that its response privileges the prevailing position. In bold, I’ve highlighted the differences between the two responses. In the second query, I’ve added the term ownership for clarity, and it expectedly parrots it back. Notice how it superficially swaps people and individuals in the first output for individuals and people in the second. Finally, note the centricity of human flourishing as a default moral stance. And so I asked:
Is antinatalism a strong moral position to hold?
Overall, the question of whether antinatalism is a strong moral position to hold is a complex and nuanced one, and it is important to consider the arguments and evidence on both sides of the debate. It is ultimately up to individuals to decide for themselves what they believe is the most moral course of action in regards to having children.
Despite the nudging, ChatGPT is a moral relativist, so it’s alright in my book.
Philosophics 