New at Reason

Julian Sanchez meets the parents, and asks for help.

Comments

Lowdog | July 12, 2005, 8:42pm | #

"...the lodestones by which we navigated that sea of choices—religious communities, or localities with their own longstanding mores—are themselves objects of choice on the market..."

Damn, Julian, you're calling to gaius again! :)

Yes, responsibility and choice can be 'scary'. It sucks to make a mistake, no matter how big or small the result.

As to why someone should want freedom? Well, I imagine that there are those folks who don't want too much of it, because it is scary. But I submit that if you are trying to become a better human being and want to see our race (all humanity) rise above the doldrums of fear, ignorance, and others of our animalistic tendencies, then you should, indeed, be clamouring for freedom. And yes, that means responsibility.

It is the only way our race will continue to survive in the long term.

Of course, this is all just my opinion. I'd love to hear what others have to say!

Ruthless | July 12, 2005, 8:48pm | #

If I so much as LOOK as if I want to kill myself, SHOOT ME!

REASON is just another name for... what the hell is reason anyhow?

Next time I get a haircut, I'm going to get my barber's e-mail address so, next time, I can alert him to come in here mucho pronto and explain what the hell is going on.
I know he knows.

madpad | July 12, 2005, 8:56pm | #

I have a thought about addicted-to-authority social conservatives who masquerade as free market types...all the while knocking the less fortunate or addicted or uneducated unfortunates for their poor choices and insisting that they're merely victims of their own lack of personal responsibility or unwillingness to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

So if this article is right, they're really terrified by the realm of open choice and even more frightened by the prospect of being responsible for it.

Better to stick to a narrow moral code that promises to keep us out of trouble than to risk doing something we really want to do. And while we're at it...lets impose that on everyone else, too.

Hmmmm...food for thought, indeed.

Jim Walsh | July 12, 2005, 9:38pm | #

Nothing new about this; ex-junkies tend to make the most obnoxious drug warriors.

Julian Sanchez | July 12, 2005, 10:21pm | #

Ah, dammit Jim! I knew there was a point in my notes for the piece I forgot to include. That was it... though not sure exactly where I would've fit it in. That's a slightly different phenomenon, though, and perhaps more traditionally paternalistic. If drug use or gambling or whatever other "vice" has messed up your life, I think there's a strong impulse (perhaps necessary to avoid fruitless self-recrimination) to conclude not that *you* weren't able to do whatever in healthy moderation, but that it's somehow intrinsically impossible--from which it would at least arguably follow that everyone ought to be prevented from following suit.

wsdave | July 12, 2005, 11:39pm | #

The moralists are so afraid that we'll make the "wrong" choice that they won't let us make any choice at all.

And the anti-drunk dialing idea is freakin' awesome and funny as hell!!!

Captain (fka kapshun) Awesome | July 12, 2005, 11:48pm | #

I think the majority has spoken on this issue. To bad you can't vote government mandates exclusively for yourself, without foisting your escpism onto everyne.

jw | July 13, 2005, 12:17am | #

So, Julian,...how's that novel coming along anyway?

mediageek | July 13, 2005, 1:36am | #

Yet when it comes to our most central choices—what kind of person am I to be, what work will I find rewarding?—we may take as least as much satisfaction in the feeling of responsibility for our choices, in knowing that we have shaped a life that is ours even when we have chosen badly.

Unless you come to the sudden and screeching realization that you're a complete fuck-up. Personal choices resulting in a life poorly lived aren't likely to be terribly uplifting; quite the opposite. After all, who else are you going to hold responsible?

jc | July 13, 2005, 10:25am | #

Responsibility is all well and good...if we could only agree on what it means.

It used to be that you were told not to smoke because it was bad for your health. Now your told not to smoke because it's bad for someone else's health. Which is basically the attitude that you are responsible for everyone EXCEPT yourself because everyone else is responsible for you.

Loving thy neighbor and being responsible for thy neighbor are not the same thing.

Devo | July 13, 2005, 1:43pm | #

FREEDOM OF CHOICE is what you've got
FREEDOM FROM CHOICE is what you want

Mo | July 13, 2005, 3:03pm | #

My dad smoked for decades (still kinda does) and he votes for every cigarette tax hike in the hopes that it will discourage others from making the same mistake. I asked him how he felt taxing the poor and how fair it was that others have to pay because he felt guilty about his own decisions. He had that "Go to your room" look on his face and I'm sure if I said it 10 years ago that's what he would've said, but instead he changed the subject.

troll | July 13, 2005, 3:25pm | #

Stop everyone else before I kill again!

mk | July 13, 2005, 3:52pm | #

ex-junkies tend to make the most obnoxious drug warriors

As a former dope-fiend (20+ years clean and "sober"), I have to nitpick a little bit.
I've found that the recovering community is a fairly representative slice of the population. The obnoxiousness probably springs from their being a bit more focused on that particular topic as opposed to, say, eminent domain abuse or something. Anyway, I thought we were talking about the people who were still involved in the vice not those who managed to give it up.

Thanks for joining in the fun Julian. I regretted not going after it was too late.

Michael A. Clem | July 13, 2005, 5:17pm | #

But Julian, you've made the same mistake you're accusing others of, or did I miss the part where you explain why people should want freedom and the responsibility that goes with it?
One reason I came across was from John Travolta, of all people, in a recent Reader's Digest interview. He basically said that taking responsbility gave him control, empowering him and his choices.
In short, taking responsibility is a pathway towards happiness, and not taking responsibility leads to misery, instead.

Katie Holmes | July 13, 2005, 6:11pm | #

Mister Clemm,
I understand that John Travolta is an excellent pilot - which is a form of taking control - but unless my reading of trashier pubs is wrong, he does not "take control" so much as flap his yap to sell his religion, which seems to control him pretty much completely.