wasting your time? you can choose not to reply and stop looking like you just REALLY need to disagree with everything.

From that answer I take it that you did not take up and quit smoking, therefore you're just talking out of your ass.

everyone i know (including me) has tried to quit. The fact that it involves anxiety, moodswings, migraines, lack of sleep, depression and weight gain doesn't make it easier.

those are well known facts which is the reason why the medical community develops drugs and treatments to help people quit, and I think everyone knows that.

don't give me that bullshit glice did "have to disagree with everything". doesn't even work.

those are the sypmtoms the medical community uses to sell your nicotine patches and therapy etc. etc. anything for you to avoid facing up to doing what needs to be done.

and i did quit knox. i quit after smoking since i was 14 years old. when i was 17 i used to put away a 50gram pouch of tobbacco in less than a week.
i could get through 5 20 decks in a weekend at my worst.

here's the thing knox, you've "tried", but you haven't actually quit.

you don't even want to or else you would.

not enough to actually do it.

there. is that enough?

well, I've been on and off smoking for the past 15 years. Mostly on. So I guess I'd know. But either way, you're doing the usual blah. Save your indignation for something more relevant than how different people have different levels of difficulty when they try to quit smoking. Because that's pretty obvious.

Now, I don't want to quit - at this pont that's very much true.

yeah like I said, I personally believe most people shouldn't probably have children because they aren't responsible enough... but who am I to say?

To suggest anyone should have any control over that would be the most fascist thing ever.

still

I still think that a lot of potential parents should be made to have tests to establish if they are mentally fit to look after a child. Besides, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people aren't fit to look after themselves, let alone bringing up a child. Not that I think it would really happen, but still.

Their assestement could be done in a similar way to how people are diagnosed for other psychological conditions, or something closer to a form of counselling. These methods exist already, so their existence is already a constant cause of debate on their merits and effectiveness in resolving other problems.

The whole fascistic thing I'm not giving much thought to, since we already live in a pretty controlled society as it is, so the imposing of certain new organisational rules within its structure wouldn't be, potentially, anything new or anymore dangerous than what's already here for all to witness.

Also, I am aware that maybe this could only work within a capitalist system in selected areas where ''acceptable'' parenting has become a widespread problem, and the personal conditions of a section of the reproductive population constantly highlight untackled issues.

In a way, what I mean is that it wouldn't be a ''punishing'' tactic couples would be stamped on with for their rest of their lives, more a monitoring of their well-being in order for them to reproduce at the best of their capabilities.

In saying that, I still don't think that it would be a real solution to all problems about parenting in a capitalist society and it never will be.

then what would you do with someone who accidentally gets pregnant? force her to have an abortion? there are so many factors that can determine who is a good paren and who is not. these ideas vary so much... a friend of mine has a child. she is a single mother, doesn't have too much money, lives in a tiny appartment etc etc. she is often frowned upon by the other mothers at the daycare when she arrives on an old bike with her baby in a sling. but the child is healthy, and one of the happiest and sweetest babies i've ever seen.

would rich people with busy jobs be able to have children? many rich kids i knew were very unhappy at home. they could have everything they wanted, but their parents were never there.

i don't want to start another fight but things are never as black and white as they seem. i agree that there are some people who would be better off if they didn't have children (especially for the kids themselves) but that doesn't mean that some higher authority should tell them wether or not they can do something that is as natural as it gets. when this friend i mentioned earlier got pregnant some people were shocked. she really didn't seem to be the type to be a parent, but she turned out to be a great mom.

simply ducking out of this issue because its potentially "fascist" is a soon to be as backwards as believing the earth is flat.

because with biogenetics looming on the horizon a whole new minefield is opening up, and there's no way to reverse the tide. you can refuse to deal with it or deny it but thats just being regressive.

i find it fascinating actually. the fear is that we could genetically engineer ourselves into a kind of infertile retardation which would end the species.

will these technologies be used perfectly? of course not. will there be mistakes and monstrosities? of course. will it likely make things simply "better" or "worse". nope.

there will of course be regressive conservatives trying to get in the way and chanting "some things are best left up to nature!".

but rejecting this technology and leaving it up to "mother gaia" is more fucking retarded than any chromosome deficient damaged tard beast awakening to the world in the arms of a mad scientist.

Refer to my post above yours. I agree that nothing is just black and white, and there are always different scenarios to look into, but tell me when was the last time that a regulation made EVERYONE happy.

About the rich and poor thing - No, it would be the same for everyone.

what would be the reverse, being "happy" with the world? i'd find this boring and stagnant, what would be the point then.

to put it mildly the question is not something i find appealing even answering

That's why I admitted that as an idea it could only work in selected troublesome areas. It would overall fall foul with the limitations of being applied in a capitalistic setting and all its contradictions. Anyway, don't give it too much thought.

i recently read an article on how dna could help us choose how our children are.

a japanese scientist recently discovered a way to derive stem cells from regular skin cells, so no dead babies needed.
this could mean that in the end we could give some skin cells, get the stem cells, alter our dna to get rid of the flaws and make a perfected clone of ourselves.

or parents could go see a doctor and say 'i want a blonde athletic girl who is good at guitar and tennis'

in the end normal baby making would be seen as terrible and irresponsible, since it would be too much of a guess to just go for it without knowing what the outcome will be. sex and giving birth would be completely separate things.

of course, this new technology will be expensive. only the rich will be able to get their dna superior children. don't you think this will lead to a society that is even less equal than it is now, with the few people who were lucky to have parents rich enough to pay for their dna treatments being in charge of the less rich and less fortunate? this would basically mean that your level of authority in our society is even more determined by how rich your parents were.

and something that came to my mind: if you already know what you are going to get before you are pregnant, where's the joy in seeing your child develop itself and discovering its talents?

What about pregnancy though? I doubt that all women would be sterilised to pave the way for completely artificial methods of reproduction. Good point you make with the last observation, I think genetics' main purpose is to improve the condition of humans to start with, not necessarily to wipe off all their natural functions and replace them with something else. Of course it can and should be used to help healthier reproduction in the earth's population, but without the dramatic sci-fi undertones that so often are associated with it.

yes, it will, but you can't fight against this for the sake of some impossible equality. its as ethically irresponsible to do that as it is for some christian to refuse their child a blood donation because of their primitive superstitions.

as i said before, its pointless to try and fight against it because you are being regressive. you can try to work on the difficult moral and ethical dimensions and try to draw up a code of how we should regulate the technology, but even then, there will be people who flout the rules, or pay to flout the rules.

what people DO NOT WANT TO FACE is the fact that it is very very possible that the human race, under a capitalist system anyway, without sufficient regulation, would genetically engineer themselves into a kind of horrible homogenuous state that either results in their extinction or drastically sets back diversity and the health of the species.

also, the potential for advancement, for the eradication of diseases etc. is astonishing. but when you face up to these possibilities you face the fear people have of their own shallow biological security be threatened by the potential nihilism of "well why bother to make any more humans anyway". a whole spectrum of questions open up that threaten and challenge the ways people see themselves and the imagined value they put in existence. people don't like the face the idea of a human being created for a specific "purpose". like for example if you were some fantasist who wanted to bio engineer a race of humans designed for a specific type of labour.

the obvious counter point is that by refusing to consider these purposes you are not actually leaving it up to "nature" (which doesnt really exist and wants us all dead anyway unless we fight back). like for someone know to pretend they don't have specific purposes in mind for their children is just denial. children are already "bred" in capitalist societies to replace the labour force and grow up to be able to look after their parents and contribute to making money. this isn't how it is officially explained but it's how things are.

because to even face this possibility means to lose all sorts of primitive illusions about our special place in the world. for christians and secularists alike.

but as i say, denial is irrelevant and you can't go back. unless you are some sort of eco terrorist, and i'm sure there will be a whole movement of those aswell.

you have to be able to see nihilism through to the very end, or else you are just projecting a load of false "purposes" and feel good denailisms into the point of human existence. facing up to bio genetics means you have to face up to the purposelessness of your own existence and that's something that threatens people to the extreme when the find themselves unable to properly come up with a good answer.

my own belief is that these technologies should be used to replace humanity, as tools on the process of engineering ourselves OUT of our current reality and into something else entirely, post human, ex human, whatever you want to call it. and i think it would be a greater tragedy if we destroyed them and our capacity to ever use them and were stuck for millenia in some primitive hippie dystopia than it would be if we went completely extinct.

I'm jumpin in on the addiction topic as we all know I have a bit of a problem in this area. It is a refusal to quit, but that refusal to quit is directly caused by the substance not only the person. Unless someone TRULY (and I mean you panic can't live without it will do almost anything to get it cant stop thinking about it act out violently when without it physically withdrawl from it) has been addicted to something there is no way they can even fathom what giving up an addiction is, how it feels, how that person feels. It not as easy as just quiting like ppl say. If it was than the world would not have such a huge problem with addiction. It is not ONLY psychlogical it is physical. Your body's chemistry is altered after being addicted to something. Any addiction is a chronic illness. Nicotine is very addictive even more so than most illicit drugs.

[img]billycorganlulz[/img]

try harder

You are not considered the moral debate of taking away someone's right to reproduce (personal "freedom").

One thing is allow science to evolve and research ( people to do whatever they want in that sense) another thing is to give the government the right to determine who's good enough to "reproduce" and who's not. It's really twisted if you think about it and not much different from most fascist ideas - some people are "superior" and we determine who they are, other people are "inferior" and we opress them and control their reproduction.

When you say this idea would work in "troublesome areas" you're pretty much saying the richer would get away with it and the poorer would be the victims.

We're also living in a world in which the great majority of the population (the poorer) have no access to education, birth control or even the idea that there could be any other objective in life.

I agree with Nefeli, education is key, people need choices, not more control.

ok, replace "my own belief" with "what will happen regardless".

Lots of things will also happen regardless. Are you considering them? Have you considered communicating solely by screaming into soiled potties?

no, but i don't inhabit your depraved catholic fantasies, as i'm in my 20's.

and is the suggestion i was "screaming" really what you are going to go with...

so everything i said in my last post you didn't respond to was correct then.

that's debatable. i can't tell you if its correct but i would suspect its the other way round.

Well, if you actually read my longer reply to Nefeli you could see with your own eyes that I made this comment:

''In a way, what I mean is that it wouldn't be a ''punishing'' tactic couples would be stamped on with for the rest of their lives, more a monitoring of their well-being in order for them to reproduce at the best of their capabilities. ''

That doesn't imply that couples would have their right to reproduce taken away from them at all, more their motivations would be more closely monitored. And I don't even think technically you could impose anything like that on the population at large unless we refer again to sci-fi, apocalyptic, barbaric scenarios, which are nothing I was on about at all.

The comment about the rich/poor doesn't imply I am saying anything other than what I said either, the ''troublesome areas'' I refered to weren't meant to be anything other than certain geographical spots. Bad parenting affects the rich and the poor, and more importantly, it also affects the richer in between the two sides, which as you might know has the potential of seeing their wealth shrink due to violent shakes in the economy like everyone else, and ultimately doesn't differ all that much from their poorer counterparts when it comes to certain social behaviours. To suggest that all rich people defy all laws seems also too limited thinking to me.

About the rest - Let's put it this way, if you look at history nothing establishes itself with 100% peacefulness and consideration for all the parties involved, sometimes certain ideas even create mis-balancing within sections of an established majority. All methods of imposing benign or malign rules in society and its structuring have an element that you could define, to use a popular term with the liberal crowd, as ''fascistic''.

Can't write more now because I'm at work. brb

slavery is not nearing its end whatsoever.

this is a capitalist illusion.

what you, knox and millions others refuse to face is that you author your own actions, and that each act of consuming one of your addictions is a choice that you make and that you and noone else has control over. unless you face this fact, you cannot chose to do otherwise and quit. you are making excuses "its hard" "you have no idea what it feels like" etc. this is all irrelevant if you actually choose to quit.

it is irrelevant that it is "hard", as i've said in my earlier posts, this is what people experience when they have no intention of actually quitting and are just waiting to give in again.

and your logic is flawed when you say "if it was as easy as people would say there would be no addiction problem." people also say how hard it is and wildly exaggerate this aswell. the point is all addiction is irrelevant. you either quit or you don't. if you don't it is your choice.

nicotine is actually one of the least physically addictive substances. i know this is not common wisdom but it is fact. the addiction is purely psychological. there is hard scientific evidence to back this up. it less the nicotine, more the physiological changes in smoking and the dopamine hit it releases. but even these are very very mild when compared to something heroin.

the reason people experience smoking as such a "hard addiction" is because they are psychologically conditioned to expect it to this way.

what you say about the substance controlling the decision. well then perhaps we can agree that the act of quitting is when the person chooses to author their own decision to quit in spite of any pull from the traces of dopamineric rewiring that the substance has caused in their brain.

and actually - this finally lets me make the point i've been trying to make all along. that DESPITE a counter point to this being "oh, but surely then there are times we can say that it wasn't physically possible for the person to quit because their brain simply could not allow them, or overpower their cravings" - i can make the retort " but if the addicted person accepts this as possible, they will never successfully quit. and that this statement is only accurate as a description in hindsight that forecloses the possibility of agency when we can instead say that the person chose to not make the decision to quit."

because you cannot tell me that you are unable to quit, only that you are choosing not to. because if you say you are unable to then you can not know that for sure unless you have already decided not to quit ever. and that is my point, that noone can quit unless they chose to, and that those who aren't quitting chose not to.

allowing me to finally to put my tired contributions to this subject to rest. FINALLY. can't say anymore than that and am sick of trying.

hey, didn't you start smoking again?

lulz

and quit

I'm a smoker who quit too.

boo hoo.

and smoking GAVE me asthma.

Why are you such a cunt? I guess that's up to science to figure out when you die.

Good thing you'll never have your own child.

No, your little sex slaveboy doesn't count.

who is his sex slave boy again?

is it supposed to be me?

because i can tell you that i'd happily leave my self dead in a bin liner on the steps of a charity shop if it meant ridding the world of your music.

but then again i'm melodramatic like that.

No not you, but then again, might as well be.

Bringing up my music again eh? You wish you were half as talented as me.

You probably have no fucking skills at all, probably why you hate the world and are so nihilistic.

yes that's definitely it.

your music represents the world.

i would love myself and the world if i only could sing those "whoa ah oh's" as well as you do.

if only my speech sounded slightly lo fi and muddled in real life.

if i had even a quarter of your talent i'd still be on the wrong track tho. i'd still be an indie musician. would lose the will to live.

i like how you can quantify it tho. it shows how its not just a figment of your imagination.

you are basically saying that the idea is doomed to failure.
which is what nefeli said, so i guess we all agree in that sense and there's nothing else to be said about it.

actually everything ive ever read mentions how nicotine is one of the hardest substances to quit - thats why they have a nicotine patch market - because your brain will actually go insane with the withdrawal (that's why every doctor suggests cutting down before quitting - your chances or not going back to it are higher) and there are severe symptons (migraines, moodswings, panic, heart racing, insomnia, depression) that can last up to 3 weeks, which is a bit more than other drugs (tho many other drugs have more intense withdrawal effects).

it's been proven that the human being can get physically addicted to pretty much anything, of course that some substances are more addictive than others and people can be genetically more or less prone to addiction.

you don't need to be an expert or a doctor to know that, so whoever goes on and on about it's just "willpower" is just taking the opportunity to feel self-righteous and godknowswhatelse.

well my case was the opposite.
I am allergic and being in contact with the allergen somehow makes me more resilient.

for all it's worth....

self righteous? what bullshit. i chose to quit. you chose not to. you wish someone was being self righteous so you can blame anyone else but yourself.

altho if self righteous means facing that each time i smoked was a choice and then making the choice to quit then fine, its probably not a bad thing. but its doesnt, its just the word you use to denigrate anyone that dares take responsibility for what they do, because you hate that idea.

no one recognises how "hard" it is for you because noone gives a shit and noone wants to hear you whine. its your choice, either quit or don't, noone can do it for you so whats the point of giving a shit. its noones fault but your own, despite how hard you might want to pin the blame on someone else "not recognising the difficulties." thats just irrelevant to you quitting.

like I said, I don't wanna quit - and that's nobody's business.
but then again I don't think you've been smoking for over 15 years.
What do think is lately if you can't find a proper reason to rant, argue and get angry you start digging for one.
Which can be funny at times but...