Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Get off my lawn!
pilsner:
--- Quote from: Boro_Bandito on 12 Mar 2008, 16:22 ---Man, That is the best party idea I've heard in a while. I'm going to have to pull it off. Invite two groups of people, the first has to dress in 20's costume and then have mixed drinks in old bottles with labels like moonshine and absynthe.
Then about half an hour in have the second group show up in police uniform.
--- End quote ---
There's a bar in Manhattan that more or less tries to set out the speak-easy experience. Unfortunately, it's filled with douchebags on the weekend. I'm not sure what would happen if you went there in 1920's police outfits. Could be tragic, could be awesome.
Nodaisho:
Personally, speaking as a 16-year-old in the U.S., the only reason I give a shit about alcohol laws is that it would drive up the price if I wanted to buy any, since I would end up having at least one more middleman than buying from a liquor store. I am not afraid of the police catching me drinking, that is less likely than the alcohol spontaneously combusting. However, my dad would notice, he keeps an eye on me because he knows what teen-aged boys are like, having been one himself at some point in the mesozoic. I could get around him, if I tried, but I don't care enough to do so, I don't really see the attraction to doing something that gets you stupid, the only attraction for me is curiosity, I want to know what it tastes like, and maybe what it feels like to be slightly intoxicated, my self-preservation instincts are too well-maintained to find the idea of getting plastered attractive.
So, I suppose the laws work to stop me, but only because I do not care enough about alcohol to make enough of an effort to bypass the laws. While I do not have any evidence either way, I would guess that the people that care enough to get around the laws are also far more likely to be the people that get dangerously drunk, and I also believe that not knowing when you would be able to drink next would make it more likely for someone to drink as much as they can, which is obviously dangerous.
onewheelwizzard:
On the subject of the "we make our decisions to use drugs because we are more sophisticated/mature" attitude that some people have, I have to admit to having been distinctly guilty of this in the past to varying degrees, and furthermore not really feeling bad about it. I've personally had such powerfully positive and meaningful experiences using drugs that I find it damn near impossible to shake the idea that in some way, somehow, someone who's never taken mushrooms or LSD (or for that matter smoked weed) is legitimately missing out on something important.
I know that in reality, there isn't a single reliable advantage that doing drugs offers anyone. For me personally, it absolutely has been advantageous to take drugs and I feel as if I'm much better off for having done so, but under no circumstances can that sort of thing be generalized beyond my personal experience (obviously). Still, there's a part of me that honestly feels as if there's just something about tripping that helps a person develop their mind, and that the only way someone can take psychedelics and not benefit from the experience is if they somehow manage to completely ignore or even consciously deny that opportunity for development. Sometimes I feel like no matter how objective and sensible I try to be about it, my faith in the potential offered by drug use still kinda puts me in the category of people who consider themselves to be somehow more mature or mentally sophisticated or emotionally healthy because of a lifestyle choice to take drugs, and that's not a category that I am particularly proud to be in ... even though I'm quite happy to credit a significant portion of my personal development to my (entirely subjective and unique to me) experiences with drug use.
It's weird ... the reason why I can't generalize my own positive drug experiences is that I know they're personal to me, but at the same time the reason why they're so powerful is that they've given me the distinct feeling that drugs actually do have some sort of universal power to do good. I guess this is what it feels like to be religious ... you know in your mind that your own choice clearly wouldn't work for everyone on Earth, but you only follow it as closely as you do because it keeps giving you the unshakable impression that somehow it could.
TL;DR I think some drugs are awesome, and I respect and support people's choices not to use them but I'll probably always hold a little hope that someone who doesn't want to use them will change their mind sometime and take the plunge.
(My parents have grudgingly accepted that I do drugs. It's not their favorite, obviously, but they know I'm OK and so they're not worried.)
a pack of wolves:
--- Quote from: ephemere on 12 Mar 2008, 18:41 ---but... they're not ridiculous because literally every single person on earth is capable of aging.
i just don't see what makes a drinking age of 21 so unfair.
--- End quote ---
It's just far too old in my opinion. The idea that you'd get up, go to work, come home and then would have to break the law to have a beer while you watched a film or have some wine with your meal is utterly ridiculous to me. Even though you'd be able to get access to alcohol without too much trouble, just as it was no real hassle for my friends and I to buy booze every weekend from the age of 15, the principle that you aren't allowed it until the arbitrary age of 21 is wrong. Plenty of people I know had been working full time for five years by that point in their lives, or were parents, or at least had been living away from their own parents for years. They were adults, but a drinking age of 21 would treat them like children.
Hat:
--- Quote from: ephemere on 12 Mar 2008, 18:41 ---but... they're not ridiculous because literally every single person on earth is capable of aging.
i just don't see what makes a drinking age of 21 so unfair.
--- End quote ---
Do you not agree in a place with a drinking age of 21, a young person of 20 has all the responsibilities of an adult, and yet doesn't have this adult privilege? I would say it is reasonably unfair to expect all the qualities of adulthood out of a 19 year old for legal purposes while denying them this basic adult pastime.
Quite frankly, I just don't see what makes a drinking age of anything above 18 justified in the first place.
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