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- Newsgroups: alt.drugs
- Path: sparky!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!galois!riesz!jbaez
- From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
- Subject: Re: "ex" smokers of MJ
- Message-ID: <1992Nov17.005656.11103@galois.mit.edu>
- Sender: news@galois.mit.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: riesz
- Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
- References: <1992Nov14.114618.29569@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 00:56:56 GMT
- Lines: 20
-
- In article <1992Nov14.114618.29569@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> mleayr@nyx.cs.du.edu (matthew leayr) writes:
- >One guy I know will be with others when they are smoking,
- >joining in the experience, but will refuse to smoke, despite his having
- >been a regular smoker about a year ago. His reason is that he "starts
- >thinking about things too much" whatever that means.
-
- Sorry, I should have put this in the previous post. I used to "start
- thinking about things too much" without drugs so I can guess what is
- meant (though everyone's head is different). If this makes no sense to
- you I can try to explain ... the ordinary assumptions we make about the
- world to smoothly maneuver our way through it can seem quite dubious
- when one examines them critically, and if one tries to figure it all out
- one typically lands oneself in a nihilistic mess. For example, "Why be
- good?" There is no convincing answer unless one has already implicitly
- decided that it's good to be good. Reflections along these lines can
- easily get very complicated (see any philosophy book) -- and depressing if
- one takes them seriously and doesn't see how to cut the Gordian knot!
- Getting stuck in these issues is characteristic of what they used to
- call a "melancholic" temperament.
-
-
