From Joel Aufrecht, who’s doing some kind of masterful research into what I’m calling “wall theory”: how top-down civilizations control their populations and yet, how laws are made to be broken, for an esoteric few.
“For the record, here are the amounts for various drugs possession of which will get you the death penalty in Singapore:
- 15g of heroin
- 30g of cocaine
- 30g of morphine
- 500g of cannabis
- 1.2kg of opium
- 200g of cannabis resin (hashish)”
I have yet to read about a civilization that did not have both taboos, and rules it viewed as necessary for being civilized. Do we call incest a taboo, or a necessary rule? That’s where ethics gets tricky. In the West, we tend to rely on what we view as proof that something is dangerous to the public, but other societies are more sanguine. They know that some people are going to trainwreck no matter what laws they make, so why bother?
It reminds me of a friend of mine and his theories regarding his large tank of tropical fish: it’ll take care of itself if there’s food balance. The aggressive fish are going to eat some of the smaller fish, so have smaller fish that breed like crazy, and get at least one fish that eats the snails because they do breed like crazy, and have lots of snails to eat the green gunk and you’ll be fine. Are societies ecosystems?