Philosophy
12:22 AM
The Gateway Drug Theory (GDT) is always paraded about in high schools all over the world. It is a rather annoying comment on the society at hand - especially if you look at the drug they choose to demonize. The GDT has a few different version, but this is what I understand of it, picking the attributes that made the most sense to me: the GS is linked to trying harder substances, the environment in which the GS is sold allows for greater accessibility of harder drugs, and the GS causes increased chances of chemical dependence of related substances.
In North America, they generally place all the blame on marijuana as the gateway drug. It's evil! It'll fuck up your life! Try it and you'll be addicted for life! Granted, it does have some adverse effects, it's difficult to get the facts straight due to all the misinformation in the drug culture (e.g. it has never been legal to carry any amount in Canada (or so I was told by an RCMP officer (It was a question! I wasn't charged with anything!))). To me, this seems to be jumping too readily to the side of something they want to demonize and choosing to ignore something they don't want to demonize: Alcohol or Nicotine.
Psychology
10:33 PM
The Attack
Kitty Genovese was an average 28 year old girl who worked as a bar manager in Queens. One night, she closed the bar, drove home and parked about 30m from the building at about 3:15am. She walked around the building to the back entrance where she saw Winston Moseley, who ran after and quickly overtook her. He stabbed her in the back twice times with a knife. Genovese let out a scream "Oh God, he stabbed me! Help me!", which was heard by a few neighbours, and fewer of them recognized it as a call for help. As (bad) luck would have it, it was a cold night and most of the buildings' windows were shut. One neighbour added their contribution, yelling "Let that girl alone!" at the attacker, to which Moseley ran away from.
Philosophy
7:14 PM
In line with Living on the Productive Edge, this post is also a theory that was brought to my attention and, as far as I know, originally created by my friend. I've taken what he's said and put my own spin on it, filling in the blanks that he either hasn't come up with or neglected to tell me.
With this philosophy of social interaction, he claims that the smaller the group when going out, the better the time you'll have. To me, this seems a little too simple because it doesn't leave any room for having a bad time, when that is clearly a possibility. To compensate for this fault, I alter it to: the smaller the group, the higher the stakes are. If we reduce the group down to be only one person (not much of a group, I suppose), then we can see the most extreme form of this theory.
Philosophy,
Psychology
10:12 PM
I just finished watching The Nightmare Before Christmas and it reminded me of something that was said in Roy Baumeister's book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (which, by the way, I highly recommend because it covers the topic very entertainingly and in-depth, with a conversational tone) that says that almost anyone who commits an evil act does not perceive their own actions to be evil. Ironically, most people are trying to do a productive or good act that they think other people will enjoy and benefit from.
Philosophy
9:03 PM
My friend and I have this sort of unspoken pact together where we are both trying to live on the "edge" as close as possible. Getting past the conventional meaning that alludes to living fast, dying young, and just having a generally crazy time, our meaning is something else entirely. Ours relies on the theory that everyone has a comfort zone, and we aim to get outside of said comfort zone in order to attain maximum growth.
I break it down into three major components of the self: Intellectual, Social, and Physical. The main goal is to push yourself to meet and surpass your comfort zone to within a range that leads to optimal growth (zone of optimal growth or ZoOG, if you will). This range is rather small, somewhere between complete comfort and extreme anxiety/failure. The goal within this is to push yourself just slightly past your current limits, attempting to expand them and, eventually, reach self-fulfillment (with regards to ability).
