"It can be seen that accepted psychological science supports the assertion that people against cannabis law reform are literally moral retards."
Agree or disagree?
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In my eight years as a cannabis law reform activist, I've noticed a trend regarding people's attitudes to cannabis law reform. The more strongly a person was against cannabis law reform, the more primitive and childish their moral system was in most other matters not related to cannabis. It turns out that this hunch is backed up by psychological science, in particular Kohlberg's stages of moral development.
Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist whose legacy was his work on moral development in human beings. His theory suggests that there are six distinct potential stages in the development of a person's ethical intelligence, in three broad categories. There is the conventional stage, which is where the majority of adults are. The is the pre-conventional stage, which is where most children and mentally retarded people are. There is also the post-conventional stage, reached by some 10-15% of the adult population, in which ethical questions are not answered by the brutal calculus of might makes right but by universal ethical principles.
One ethical dilemma that Kohlberg was particularly fond of was the following:
Heinz’s wife was dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors said a new drug might save her. The drug had been discovered by a local chemist and the Heinz tried desperately to buy some, but the chemist was charging ten times the money it cost to make the drug and this was much more than the Heinz could afford.
Heinz could only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends. He explained to the chemist that his wife was dying and asked if he could have the drug cheaper or pay the rest of the money later. The chemist refused saying that he had discovered the drug and was going to make money from it. The husband was desperate to save his wife, so later that night he broke into the chemist’s and stole the drug.
Kohlberg then posed questions to people like:
1. Should Heinz have stolen the drug? 2. Would it change anything if Heinz did not love his wife? 3. What if the person dying was a stranger, would it make any difference? 4. Should the police arrest the chemist for murder if the woman died?
There is a synchronicity between this story and a recent case in the New Zealand news. Rose Renton has been fighting for medicinal cannabis law reform in the aftermath of the death of her son Alex. Alex's doctors were granted ministerial approval to try a cannabis medicine on Alex, who had been in a coma from complications relating to an epileptic illness. Renton was able to get hold of some of the medicine before it was approved, and gave it to Alex although this was illegal.
Coincidentally, Rose Renton's actions were of the exact form that Kohlberg described when he wrote about the characteristics of a higher level of moral development. There was reason to believe that the cannabis oil might have helped Alex although it was illegal. Renton's actions therefore accord with the sixth and highest stage of moral development on Kohlberg's scale, in which a person develops and lives by moral principles that may or may not fit the law.
The belief that the law determines right from wrong, a belief held by many prohibitionists, is described in the fourth stage of Kohlberg's scale, in which a person acts to obey rules so as to maintain the social order and avoid guilt. Moral reasoning at this stage is mostly a matter of the norms of the group in which the person belongs.
Sadly, many cannabis prohibitionists have failed to advance past the first, most bestial stage of moral development - Obedience and Punishment Orientation. At this stage the simple act of being punished for a cannabis offence is evidence that the person has done something wrong. At this stage a person will have no sympathy for someone whose life has been destroyed by a cannabis conviction or by Police action, reasoning that they must have done something wrong otherwise the justice system would have left them alone.
So it seems my little hunch was correct. It can be seen that accepted psychological science supports the assertion that people against cannabis law reform are literally moral retards.
- See more at: http://vjmpublishing.com/kohlbergandcannabis
-------------------- "They consider me insane but I know that I am a hero living under the eyes of the gods."
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The question is: Who is programming them and why?
About ten years ago there was a time line on the wall of the Hemp and Marijuana Museum in Amsterdam going back 8000 years with cloth; and next, at 5000 years this was Shiva's gift to the world.
( you remember indy and the good heart doctor on the rope ladder bridge )
-------------------- To fly to the sun without burning a wing , and lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing - In Search of the Lost Chord / The Moody Blues - 1968 But for a tree to grow to the sky, it's roots must go to the very depths of hell itself - Tantra,the Supreme Understanding - osho
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