WHY ARE SOME THINGS LEGAL AND OTHERS NOT?

Alcohol is legal, even promoted, while marijuana is illegal, for
example. Alcohol does go back in recorded history a little longer.
Apparently beer first came on the scene during the Neolithic period
around 10,000 BC. Wine is first seen in Egypt around 4000 BC.

At the same time, Marijuana was first used "medicinally" in 4000 BC
in China. Zorastrian and Hindu religious practices dating from 3,000
years ago liberally use marijuana; and the first European use seems
to have been around 500 BC when the Scythians brought it north.

As recreational drugs they are probably about on a par, and they
would probably cause an equal amount of strain on the health system
as both destroy the body in some way.

So why is one legal and one illegal?

How about prostitution?

This has always seemed rather stilted to me. Think about what I am
allowed by law to sell in terms of my own body. I can be a labourer
and use my strength to make a profit. I can use my mind and fingers
to type this column. I can volunteer for psychological and medical
testing. I can cook for someone, or even become a taster. I can sell
my sperm, or my eggs, or become a surrogate mother; I can even choose
to leave my organs behind after I die. Heck I can get paid for taking
off my clothes, but if I want to use any sexual skill I might possess
it is illegal?

The point I am trying to make is that a lot of laws are as much
cultural as they are legal. North Americans have a real problem on
the whole with sex and so most of our swear words are sexual, and
most of the "worst behaviour" we can imagine revolves around sex.

Europe, by contrast, has different hang-ups and so sexuality is not
seen us such a terrible thing. Prostitution is legal or just ignored
in a lot of places.

If you don't think that laws are influenced by culture, just look at
slavery during the 1800s. It was totally legal almost everywhere. Not
only legal, but the vast majority of people could not even fathom a
world without slaves. It was only when culture began to change, first
in England and then in North America, that slavery went out of
fashion and then became illegal.

Although I very much believe that we would eliminate many of
society's problems by legalizing prostitution and marijuana; for
example, unnecessary court and prison time; secondly it would reduce
violence; third it would give prostitutes legal rights they do not
have right now: the main point of using them as an example was simply
to say that our cultural norms decide what is legal and what is not
when it comes to things that are based on "moral" understandings.

Not only that, but what is written down as a law and the importance
we give to that law is based on our feelings more than on any
quantifiable test.

For example, speeding in a subdivision when children are playing is
really, really wrong. Speeding on a four lane highway, is really not so bad.

I bet any one of us could come up with other laws, or variations of
laws that we feel really aren't "bad" to break.

And so we do not condemn people with outraged voices when they break
laws we think are silly anyway.

There were a slew of philosophers in the Enlightenment who took this
on as a hobby. What they eventually got to was that there must exist
certain axial laws or understandings that are primal. There must be
laws which just have to be true. Some believed there were, and some
argued that it all comes down to practicality. For example, it is
easier to stay alive if you do not kill other people. Once you start
killing, someone is going to come after you, so it is a practical
decision not to kill.

In the end, rules are a socially agreed to contract that are based on
the idea that we have to keep our group moving together with as
little friction as possible. We all somehow agree to certain rules in
order to make it work better. Do not steal helps us to keep a handle
on ownership. Do not kill helps us to guarantee our old age. Do not
walk on the grass makes landscaping easier. Keep your dog tied up
means less dog bites or destroyed gardens.

The question is, do we blindly follow the laws of the past, or do we
consciously rewrite them to fit our current societal norms?

This is no abstract question. We are in a period of great change and
uncertainty. For the most part people seem to be trying to fix the
world's current problems by re-invigorating the rules and laws
already in place. No one seems to be stepping outside and taking a
broader view and asking, if it brought us to this place of war,
environmental destruction, and economic ruin; might there not be a
better way to live?

I hope someone starts coming up with the answers. Perhaps if we all
work together we can bring about a cultural shift in the way we see
the world and everything will be all right.

Euripides, a Greek playwright in the 400s BC wrote something we need
to adopt as our slogan: --Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing."