I read two books so I can discuss, compare and contrast their philosophy, find the pros and cons of each philosophy, and see if these two philosophies apply to my life. The first book I read was The Four Agreements. The author’s name is Don Miguel Ruiz. Ruiz comes from a family of healers. They wanted him to follow in their footsteps, but he decided to become a surgeon. He had a near death experience and this experience changed his life. He and a few of his friends were driving when he fell asleep at the wheel and his car crashed into a concrete wall. He had an out of body experience. He remembered pulling his friends away from the car. Afterwards, he devoted his life to learn more about self- inquiry. He learned the mastery of the ancient …show more content…
Leonard believes they are cheating themselves from pleasant and rewarding experiences. We as humans can construct and invent. We also have the ability to use linguistics, musical, mathematical and logic, spacial, interpersonal and interpersonal, bodily and kinesthetic to express what we want to say (Leonard 12). Our ancestors had the ability to come together as a well-knit social group. This is one of the things that separated them from animals (12-13). According to Leonard, the path of mastery can bring rewards and heartache, but in the long run you will learn more about yourself. A person must practice diligently to hone their abilities even when there are no immediate results (15). He delved a little into the science of how our brain changes over time after constantly doing something. Karl Pribram was a neuroscience professor at Stanford University. He explained brain body systems. He also explained the habitual system (Pribram 15). In order to learn a new skill one must think and make an effort to change and develop a new way to think and replace old patterns with new patterns. The cognitive system is associated with the habitual system and the hippocampus ( the base of the brain), is associated with cognitive and effort system. Also, the cognitive and effort system become subsets of the habitual system to teach it a new behavior …show more content…
Our society is focused on spending and being a part of the latest trends. They teach that you can get rich quick by the use of violence. There is no growth or patience. Many people believe success should be handed to them without practice or work. This thinking is disastrous in the long run. He mentioned drug abuse and how it stems from society’s view of a good life. The so called good life is a series of climactic events (32). Quick fixes touch everything in our lives. Even the medical fields have fallen prey to this method (33). Since the pharmaceutical companies have taken over the medical field, doctors are no longer correcting ailments. Instead, they prescribe medicine to mask the symptoms. This new wave of thinking has put the country in debt and has created an even bigger gap between the rich and poor
In the book High Price, highly credible author and neuroscientist, Dr. Carl Hart explains the misconceptions that everyone normally has about drugs and their users. He uses his own life experiences coming from a troubled neighborhood in Florida. The book consists of Hart’s life growing up with domestic violence in his household and the chance he had to come out and excel academically. He talks about the war on drugs and how within this war on drugs we were actually fighting the war with the wrong thing.
“The root cause is a vast, multi-layered incommensurability between the institutions of globalized, market driven society and the basic psychological, social and spiritual needs of human beings” (229). Something that is only briefly recognised in public discussion. The normal methods of intervention are enormously expensive with minimal effects. “Illegal drug business and legal pharmaceutical industries” (229) are financially benefiting from the damaging drugs people use. During a time that is almost complete “domination of Canadian thought by the logic of globalization, it is difficult” (229) to even to come up with a good way of improving dislocation. Dodging these tough realities has created a deadlock and caused us to infinitely endure feeble interventions and ridiculous “war on drugs”
The first misconception claims that there is the notion that “evil” is only something committed by despots and tyrants, such as the atrocities studied in human history. Second, is the notion that the medical community is complicit in the decline of society by engaging in a “ridiculous pas de deux.” This meaning that eminently predictable problems attributable to bad choices made by individuals are conceptualized and treated as medical ailments, such as depression. The following point states that while few individuals specifically seek to do evil, virtually all of the evil in modern life (at least within non-tyrannical societies) is caused by the choices made by persons throughout their lives. Fourth, the idea that passing judgment on moral choices and irresponsible behaviors is “wrong.” As a final point, he expresses that the state blindly enables the conduct responsible for the decline of society by rewarding and incentivizing personal irresponsibility.
Throughout “Chasing the Scream” many intriguing stories are told from individuals involved in the drug war, those on the outside of the drug war, and stories about those who got abused by the drug war. Addiction has many social causes that address drug use and the different effects that it has on different people. In our previous history we would see a tremendous amount of individuals able to work and live satisfying lives after consuming a drug. After the Harrison Act, drugs were abolished all at once, but it lead to human desperation so instead of improving our society, we are often the reason to the problem. We constantly look at addicts as the bad guys when other individuals are often the reasons and influences to someone’s decision in
On Chapter 7, Frances describes ways the diagnostic inflation can be tamed. He stated, “We are spending a fortune fighting the losing war against illegal drugs, while barely lifting a finger to fight an easily winnable war against the misuse of legal grips”(p. 211). Before reading this book, I would have never imagined that we had a problem with people being prescribed an excessive amount of drugs they do not need. I agreed with Frances when he mentioned ways big pharma could be tamed such as reducing or removing advertisements on televisions, magazines or internet. Advertisements are very powerful and pharmaceutical companies have snuck their way into the homes of individuals. While I was reading France’s ideas, I agreed with a lot of them, but I felt that the people are still
Addiction is one of the hardest difficulties to overcome, yet people often find themselves caught in the world wind of addiction. We all ask the question to what makes a person an addict, or why is it so hard for drug addicts to overcome this problem. However, can we say that getting a hold of drugs is much easier in today’s society, or is it made available to easily. In this day and age, heroine seems to be a major epidemic; furthermore, opiates have been around for centuries. Therefore, people have been battling addiction for as long as opiates have been around. In Drugstore Cowboy, the film takes a look into the life of four people who rob drugstores in order to support
The reason with the old ways do not work, Alexander say, is because “self-destructive drug users are responding in a tragic, but understandable way” (226). It is not their drug- problem that caused the dislocation, but the dislocation that cause the drug problem. He uses the term dislocation to describe the lack of integration with “family, community, society and spiritual values” (226). Alexander goes on to explain that history proves that inability to achieve health opportunities can take on the form of violence, and damaging drug use. Therefore, the “drug problem” (226) is not the problem. The problem is more the “pattern of response to prolong dislocation” (226). Alexander supports this by explaining the reason for the dislocation as being globalized by a society that is market driven which can only be established by the displacement of tradition, economy, and relationships. This has been seen in history before in England during the 19TH century, when “a brutal, export-oriented manufacturing system” was accompanied by work...
Conrad, Peter. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
When societies finally become comfortable with reality, they begin to abandon the murderous laws that impede their growth. Currently, the social stigma and legislated morality regarding the use of illicit drugs yield perhaps the most destructive effects on American society. Drug laws have led to a removal of non-violent citizens from society- either directly by incarceration or indirectly by death - that is genocidal in quantity and essence.
...ion and enormous government expenditure, is highly arguable. The civilization is incessantly changing, and we have to relook at the goals of the anti-drug provision and either it is having the preferred outcome. Some changes in the laws and policies appear essential so as to in fact eradicate the negative effects of drugs on our culture.
Drugs are used to escape the real and move into the surreal world of one’s own imaginations, where the pain is gone and one believes one can be happy. People look on their life, their world, their own reality, and feel sickened by the uncaringly blunt vision. Those too weak to stand up to this hard life seek their escape. They believe this escape may be found in chemicals that can alter the mind, placing a delusional peace in the place of their own depression: “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly halucinant,” (52). They do this with alcohol, acid, crack, cocaine, heroine, opium, even marijuana for the commoner economy. These people would rather hide behind the haze than deal with real problems. “...A gramme is better than a damn.” (55).
One of the main questions that will shape this project is: how would our society be different if people were less dependent on “taking the easy way out,” often using drugs, in order to solve their problems? Currently, I believe that our society would be more productive and learn more if people stopped relying on finding artificial solutions to their problems. Also, people would more easily notice the reality of society, allowing them to notice and solve problems in the world. A claim that I would like to explore would be the idea that this dependence is entirely negative to our society. Some people may argue that people may be better off relying on easy escapes to their problems, as they remain less stressed instead of enduring the hardships of life. I would like to weigh and analyze the positives and negatives of people artificially maintaining a state of contentedness in this essay. Another driving question for this essay would be: in what ways, if any, has the government ‘controlled’ people implicitly? Analyzing possible answers to this question could work to help draw parallels between our society and the society in Brave New World. In Brave New World, the government controls their citizens by giving them soma so that they remain fine with their lives and do not question the way that society runs. Similarly, in our society today, the government attempts to control our knowledge by shaping the way information is
4. Lafollette, H. "Drugs." Reprinted in H. LaFollette. Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
Wolf, M. (2011, June 4). We should declare an end to our disastrous war on drugs. Financial Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/docview/870200965?accountid=14473
Anthony spoke about a drug dealer that threatened his life because he owed him money. Anthony also spoke about his need for more drugs and how his craving caused him to consider stealing something or robbing someone as a means to buy drugs. This type of crime and violence is common and puts a strain on the community because people living in areas where drugs are prevalent, are put more at risk for crimes to be committed against them. In recent years, there has been an increase of illegal drugs which causes more and more people to be effected by them directly or indirectly (Sober Recovery, 2014, para.2). The increase in the supply and demand of drugs eventually takes a toll on the community economically because with the increase of drug abuse means more money has to be spent on more law enforcement presence, medical costs, and social service programs (Sober Recovery, 2014, para.2) which not only effects the community, but the society as a