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So a guy lit himself on fire the other day. On purpose. In some ways, perhaps because we’ve been primed by Buddhist monk seminal example, that remains an ultimate attention-getter of Western modernity. And although most everybody talked a whole lot about it, mostly nobody seemed to care much. I’ve been checking in more than usual for a post here - hoping to tack on - so I didn’t have to go first.
“Performative” seems tough but fair. It seems to me like it was a bad move and and I’m sharing my perspective hoping it leads to productive exchanges.
I used to drink a lot. I still drink a lot, but I used to drink a lot too, and back in the day it got me in trouble exactly twice. Two separate trips to jail, one night each.
The second time I drank too much, went out for tacos, blacked out while driving, and crashed. No one got hurt (thank you Jesus) and I talked my way out of charges. Just one night in the tank and a memory of the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Happy to tell that story but it’s kind of ‘fun’ and not highly probative.
The first time I woke up in a cell not remembering how I got there. I remembered going to a bar with some buddies. A cute girl offered me her drink saying some weirdo had just given it to her. I took it without a thought, we hit it off, and my buddies made themselves scarce. Flash from chatting with her after near-to-zero-as-makes-no-difference drinks to screaming for help banging against the bars.
(Quick tangent: as you might imagine most of the other fellas unfortunate enough to be there that night were screaming back at me. Some variation of “shut up,” with profanity. They were just trying to sleep. I screamed and banged for so long that (quite precisely) like a toddler I eventually tired myself out. Then I just wanted to sleep. So what happened when they brought in a new guy? He started screaming for help, and I started screaming back at him with some variation of “shut up,” and profanity. After all, we were just trying to sleep.)
Of all the “oh shit”ers possible in life, “shooting back a drink someone explicitly warned you might be spiked then waking up in jail” has gotta be up there. I knew I hadn’t had too much to drink - but had absolutely no idea what happened between that spiked drink and ending up in jail. To even list some possibilities is to discount the galactic extent of possibilities.
In between the sleeping and the screaming, your mind will go toward certain things: the things that actually matter.
“Guess my chances with my ex are shot, she’s the only number I have memorized of anyone nearby” (no one else to pick me up). “Hope my dog isn’t too hungry or in too much pain” (without her arthritis medication). “No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried” (what will she think when I call for bail money).
Strangers dying thousands of miles away were...thousands of miles from mind.
This makes me think about the fifth precept
which in nearly all Buddhist texts is specifically targeted against alcohol. But not all.
https://tricycle.org/magazine/reader-responses-fifth-precept/
Perhaps extending the fifth precept to intoxicating ideas is a recent Western Buddhist innovation. And it seems to come in two versions.
Version one is a purity spiral. One extends the fifth precept to make it stricter. Not just Tee-total but heedful of the warning of Dostoevsky against ending up as a Raskolnikov.
Version two is a dilution. One excuses drinking a can of beer because ideas are the big danger. It is safe enough to relax with a beer after work providing that one does not buy into the ideology of alcohol and start thinking that beer is the only way to have a good time and that getting drunk shows that one is a real man.
I'm quite cynical, so I mostly think that "intoxication by ideas" is a dilution, not a purity spiral. But maybe Aaron Bushnell died of intoxication by ideas, and his burns are a later link in the causal chain by which poisonous ideas eventually kill people.
VinoVeritas survives his small-molecule intoxication, while Aaron Bushnell did not survive his big-idea intoxication. And I'm probably not reading the room. The Motte is the wrong place to say "Less thinking please. All these fancy words will mess with your head and you will end up dead."
Edited to remove a stray space that was ending a block quote prematurely.
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