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- From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro)
- Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote
- Subject: Re: On Drugs, Bebop and The Wire
- Message-ID: <RSHAPIRO.92Dec31142910@kariba.bbn.com>
- Date: 31 Dec 92 19:29:10 GMT
- References: <RSHAPIRO.92Dec30134941@kariba.bbn.com>
- <SMEHTA.92Dec30164254@kwela.nynexst.com>
- <RSHAPIRO.92Dec31112028@kariba.bbn.com>
- <1992Dec31.170536.26543@sarah.albany.edu>
- Organization: BBN, Cambridge MA
- Lines: 25
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- In-reply-to: rstump@itchy.geog.albany.edu's message of Thu, 31 Dec 92 17:05:36 GMT
-
- In article <1992Dec31.170536.26543@sarah.albany.edu> rstump@itchy.geog.albany.edu (Roger Stump) writes:
- Taking the argument back to the original
- issue, why have so many jazz musicians used narcotics despite what they
- know about the ill effects of doing so?
-
-
- The key word here is "despite". If this behavior occurs *despite*
- common knowledge that it's dangerous, then focusing on the danger is
- not likely to yield any information about the reasons for the
- behavior. This leads back to the my earlier conclusion: it makes no
- sense to be outraged by an article which is attempting to examine the
- reasons for behavior that everybody knows is dangerous, simply because
- the article doesn't dwell on, or pass moral judgement on, this danger.
- The physiological dangers are specificially *not* relevant to
- understanding the cause of the behavior. Morality may be relevant, but
- only in the sense that a counter-culture typically defines some
- aspects of its morality in opposition to conventional morality.
- Certainly counter-culture drug use would seem to fit this paradigm.
-
- Either way, espressions of conventional moral outrage are pointless at
- best, and downright destructive if the effect is to silence less
- moralistic analysis. It's the last point that really worries me: if
- the jazz press is unable to publish articles like this without
- generating moral outrage among its readers, how will we *ever* gain in
- our understanding of this very important issue?
-