Why More Things Need to be Illegal.
This essay is in some small ways and some large ways in contention with my previously post “Quadruple Jeopardy and Sedimentary Law” (beware this old post’s writing quality). In the Quadruple Jeopardy article I argued against certain properties of our current legal system.
Today, America’s legal system lives in the pedantic - in over-defined, specialized legal vocabulary completely inaccessible to the Average Joe. The legal system needs this pedantry so that it can decisively litmus test a given moral situation with consistency. Without bookish definitions, for instance, legal convictions could be applied inconsistently because one judge, jury or another might have a different idea of what “underage” is or what “intoxicated” means.
The pedagogic terminology used in legal jargon defines black-white relationships on existing black-gray-white continua. A BAC of 0.079 is safe to drive with while a 0.08 is not. These are the rules whether you’re a 60 year old Irish pubmaster, unable to get drunk after several kegstands, or an 18 year old college girl with a body mass index that could make Karen Carpenter blush.
Another way to say it. “She turned 18 just yesterday? Have your way with her!” “Her 18th birthday is next week? Sir, I’ll have to ask you to please turn around and put your hands on your head!”
These strict legal definitions are a product of a system that can’t trust itself to be consistent. Loath it would be to find that because “intoxicated” wasn’t given a numerical, calculable value, Oklahoma black men are arrested for having a BAC of 0.07 and white men 0.09 - or that Texan men are arrested on Monday nights with a BAC of 0.02 lower than Friday nights because police officers are in higher spirits as each weekend draws closer.
The verboseness of legal jargon has a double shift. It both tries to discourage the immoral deeds of men and limit itself from inspiring an application of immoral justice.
What my Quadruple Jeopardy article (linked and mentioned above) critiqued in this system was that even these strict definitions aren’t enough to eliminate inconsistency. It critiques a hierarchy of laws that have been built in which a person can be arbitrarily charged with any number or magnitude of accusations. In the article, I gave an example of a man who enters a building whose doors are already open while carrying a screwdriver. My article rejects the analytic tradition of the modern legal system, which is so specific at times that it misses the forest for the trees. Worse, my article argued, strictly defined laws don’t take into consequence very relevant factors - circumstantial information which might scream to be considered. The recent Megan Meier case illustrates these points. The most serious charge brought against the legal system by “Quadruple Jeopardy” is an observation the legal system’s divide with the common man - its distance from a formal set of simple rules that could be understood, applied or examined by good free men.
All of my previous legal critique had been made while keeping in mind an ideal that more activities should be legalized - a liberal standpoint that I found consistent with my view of the individual and the group. I thought that perhaps, in giving an individual more freedoms to do things he might want to do, an he would be encouraged to live a better life. I thought that with nearly unrestricted options, the individual might find themselves more prone to living a fuller life; a life with more variety and more force.
I find myself now considering the antithesis of my former liberalism. Thinking back on two decades of very compressed life, the memories which inspire nostalgia in me first come from those moments where my “force of living” were at a height. Most every instance of this is correlated with a memory of doing something completely moral and justified but where I ran a heightened risk of being caught, jailed, demonized, excommunicated or otherwise harshly perpetrated by the group for no better reason than “consistency”.
The danger of these situations I remember weren’t falsified or pretended. When the danger was real, so was the experience. Or, said another way, while roller coasters give us a drip of adrenaline, we know in the backs of our minds that what we are doing in the amusement park is much less dangerous than the drive will be back to our homes. We allow ourselves to be tricked by the illusion of danger the roller coaster offers to us through its safe mechanism because it gives us something we know we need as human beings.
Roller coasters, movie theaters, T.V. shows and sports events are polite society’s socially acceptable ways to fulfill this human need to feel alive. These safe and accepted alternatives don’t come at no cost. These socially acceptable experiences are “perfected”, recycled, and mediated. They near perfectly perform their duty placating our need to feel alive - they are a simulacra for true human experiences. Unfortunately a fundamental honesty is cursed to necessarily be absent from all of them. Our society has not completely accepted that there is some need for Nietzschean Dionysus among us. Instead, we offer ourselves Dionysian idols; statues allowed in the stands at every football game.
For some time I was for the legalization of Marijuana (article by our very own Apotheosis). But years of observing friends and family members that participate in the consumption of THC has led me to believe otherwise. It would be dangerous to legalize such a harmless thing.
In entertaining the company of several Marijuana users throughout my life it has become apparent that the need being fulfilled by the drug isn’t a physical or mental addiction, nor is it the mind-numbing stupidity that THC inspires in those that indulge. What Marijuana users need from the drug is to do something illegal, edgy. To feel alive, feel like they have secret experiences which they can bring to the grave with them. What Marijuana does for these individuals is open some doors by which Dionysus might parade through. The exhilaration of illegally participating in a drug culture is far more satisfying than forgetting what you were doing for the past few hours.
And so legalizing Marijuana would be the worst thing to happen to these people! As a legal drug, weed would suddenly be no danger and cease to be an experience. Unlike other drugs, which can usually be dangerous given the right circumstances, the only way that weed becomes dangerous is our current social/legal context.
What we need, I think, although I’m not committing myself quite yet, is for more frivolous things to be illegal in addition to the changes I briefly outlined in Quadruple Jeopardy. I want kissing my girlfriend to be illegal, so that every time I do it I feel like I’m defying a world that says “No.” I want buying fountain soda and fatty foods to be illegal. I want cleaning my room to be illegal (I’d certainly do it more often).
Spartan children were told they must steal in order to eat, but when they were caught stealing they were punished severely. This wasn’t sending the children a double message - the children understood clearly. They were to steal food and they weren’t to get caught and all the while they were to become real men with real dangers and real experiences. It didn’t matter that food was “allowed” or “disallowed” - what mattered was the condition they experienced and the balls that they grew.
Tags: illegalization, legal jargon, legal system, war on drugs
January 26th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
A great read, very well written, but I completely disagree with your conclusion.
I’ll use a couple of examples:
If kissing was outlawed, it would be unenforceable, so there wouldn’t really be any danger or risk, hence no adrenaline.
The same can be said about pot or underage drinking. Unless you are dealing, odds are you are not going to be caught. Even if you are, the threat is minimal with small amounts, just a fine or possibly a few days in jail.
I think your arguement only holds true if these laws are enforceable and you have a high probability of getting caught. Even still, I would disagree though. At least personally, if I want to do something, and it is illegal, I weigh the chances of getting caught and the amount of time and effort I’d need to do to get around it, and if it is worth it, I do it. This obviously only applies to things that I think personally are morally permissible.
One thing, semi-related, is that I know personally I’m much more likely to do something if it is illegal and I think that it is stupid that its illegal. It is almost like a symbolic protest. For example, if the government right now started a campaign to eliminate swearing, and made it illegal in all circumstances, I’d fucking swear every fucking chance I got when law enforcement or snitches weren’t present.
I guess in that sense, making things illegal that shouldn’t be provides people something to rally against. But I think there are much better causes.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
*spam I let through for awesomeness* How come only your fingers and toes get prune in the shower and nothing else does?