JayB

Although I agree with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other speakers who have made the same arguments, As a non-believer I care less about the particulars of a given religious creed and quite a bit more about the manner in which the adherents conduct themselves. Your true religion - the fundamental beliefs that actually govern your behavior here in the real world where the rubber meets the road - represent your true faith. Quakers - nutty theology but peaceful lives. Fine by me. What puzzles me is that the folks on the Left who spare no effort in excoriating Christian fundamentalists seem to have adopted a much different stance towards Islamists. Despising conservative Christians because they - say - tend to oppose full legal equality for gays makes sense if that's a cause that you are passionately engaged in, but how one can hold these beliefs and at the same time hardly summon a shrug when confronted with the facts concerning the legal status and treatment of gays in countries where Islamic law prevails? Ditto for women's rights, separation of church and state, freedom of the press, and pretty much any other cause that anyone who claims to be a liberal - either in the modern or classical sense - should be concerned with championing around the globe. In one sense, I can understand this in the context of "near enemy" versus "far enemy" thinking, in which they perceive the Christian right to be more threatening because of their capacity to effect political changes here in the US that are at odds with their vision for the country, but I still don't quite understand the relative insouciance that has generally characterized the Left's* response to Islamists and the rise of Islamism. Maybe a self-annointed representative of the Left can explain the incongruity to me. *Honorable exceptions being Christopher Hitches, Salman Rushdie, and a few others.

That's what the attorney representing the skier claimed. IMO the whole notion of "engineering" jumps in terms of known, definable inputs in the same manner that one would engineer a suspension bridge or an electrical circuit is a ludicrous. Anyhow - more inputs from the rumor mill concerning the other major injuries on this feature: "You really need to dig deeper before you come to a conclusion like that. The guy that broke his back was an idiot hucker that was trying a backflip with no backflip experience (even on a trampoline) And the kid that died dropped into a jump from approximately 300 vertical feet higher than was needed to land in the sweet spot, he also had no shirt on, and was on drugs." "Ironically, Booth Creek owns and operates Snow Park Technologies, an internationally renowned terrain-park design firm run by Chris Gunnarson, who is considered one of the world's leaders in development, design and construction of terrain parks. Gunnarson and SPT designed several Winter X Games courses and are in charge of designing parks at all six Booth Creek resorts, including Snoqualmie. While Gunnarson and his team designed the park and the park guidelines at Snoqualmie, local crews are in charge of maintaining the park."

If someone finds a way to make a kickers with 25 foot-plus tables "safe" by any means other than having a snow-cat mow them down, that'd be quite a feat. The reality is that hitting kickers - even hypothetical kickers custom tuned by a panel of NASA engineers between each hit - is inherently dangerous. There was a kid in Colorado who had pro-caliber skills that died attempting a 360 on a moderately sized jump. This is about as probable as Dean Potter falling to his death while soloing a fourth class ridge - but it happened. As with Diving Boards, so it will be with Terrain Parks. "I'm now an official victim of the trial lawyers. So are my kids and the 800 members of our community pool that opened this summer without a high diving board. The three-meter board had been a fixture of our pool at Chesterbrook Swim Club in Fairfax County, Va., for as long as anyone can remember. But the county has declared that it can no longer afford to pay the liability insurance for it--and so we've been grounded. Most of the parents and kids share my disappointment at being cheated out of one of the great joys of summertimes past. No high board means no more "atomic" cannonballs, can openers, jack knives and watermelons, the kind of attention-grabbing dives that boys love to perform, sending a quarter of the pool's water spraying onto unsuspecting sunbathers nearby. And no more graceful teenage girls either, performing double flips with a twist, entering the water with hardly a ripple. So why can't we just have a sign that reads: "Jump off this board at your own risk"? Some of our club members, many of whom are lawyers, say the elimination of the high board is for the safety of "the children." And not just the children in Fairfax County, mind you. Diving boards are disappearing across America. The insurance industry says that most pool-construction companies won't even install the boards anymore out of fear of lawsuits. Texas lawmakers earlier this year enacted a de facto prohibition on diving boards by making the safety standards so stringent that few existing pools can meet them without spending millions of dollars. (The law would require, for instance, that the deep end be made several feet deeper.) As Dallas Magazine informed its readers a couple of weeks ago: "You can kiss your cannonball goodbye." But why? Has there been an epidemic of diving accidents? I asked that question of our own pool manager. He assures me that the number of serious high board injuries at Chesterbrook pool since it was first erected more than 20 years ago is exactly zero. Under a rational insurance model, our premiums should be going down, not up--after all, we've proved that we're not a gang of drunk divers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission calculates that there are about 50,000 serious injuries or drownings at pools each year. That's a big number. But diving board accidents are actually rare. Hard data are difficult to come by, but Pool and Spa News estimates that, out of the millions of jumps and dives off high boards each year, there are, on average, fewer than 20 spinal injuries. Most head injuries actually occur from people diving off the pool's ledge into the shallow end. Diving boards actually reduce these types of injuries because they visually tip off swimmers about which end of the pool is deep. Moreover, the number of annual injuries from diving boards is a fraction of the number from bicycles, playgrounds, tackle football, bungee jumping, skiing and even walking across the street. Which brings us back to the trial lawyers. Diving accidents may be rare, but when they occur, lawyers become relentless in their quest for a jackpot jury verdict. In one famous 1993 case, a 14-year-old boy in Washington state took a "suicide dive"--headfirst with no arms out for protection--off the board of a neighbor's pool. He was tragically paralyzed from the neck down when he hit his head on the bottom of the pool. Despite the boy's own unsafe behavior, the parents' legal team sued every imaginable party--the neighbors, the pool-construction company, the diving-board manufacturer, the pool industry--and the family won a $10 million jury award. Ever since, it's been off to the races. Even cases in which there is no negligence on anyone's part can lead to jury awards of $5 million or more. The plaintiff attorneys often walk off with up to half the loot. "This day and age, you can pretty much sue anyone for anything if there's an injury involved," a spokesman from the Pool and Spa Institute tells me. But the diving-board dilemma is not just a legal matter; it's a cultural one. We Americans have become so risk averse when it comes to our children that we now see unacceptable dangers from even the most routine activities. We have created peanut-butter-free school zones, "soft" baseballs, army figures without guns, parks without seesaws, and full body armor for bike riding. It's not even clear that all these risk-reducing measures keep us safer. The research shows that boys will be boys (the vast majority of sporting accidents involve young males). If they can't get their thrills from diving boards, they will find other risky activities. When I was in college, I lived in a two-story apartment complex with a pool in the middle. There was no diving board, so we climbed on the roof--sometimes drunk--took a running start, leaped across 10 or 15 feet of cement walkway and plunged into the pool. It was incredibly dangerous and incredibly exhilarating. And we did it not even knowing that, if we undershot and broke our necks, we would have had grounds for a million-dollar lawsuit."

'..why do you keep on bringing up "mass marketing campaigns and media saturation?" Manufactured Dissent.

"The hallmark of a respresentative government is that we collectively decide what is okay and what isn't. Excuse me if I misjudge you, but you seem outraged at my suggestion that simply by chosing to live in a society and accept the benefits of its government, you are voluntarily forfeiting your personal freedoms to the will of collective opinion." "No, it does not pertain to those things, until the damage done to society outweighs the philosophical (and administrative) appeal of freedom. You are free to do whatever you want, until it fucks too much with the rest of us. And yes, becoming a drug addict fucks with the rest of us enough that we have laws to discourage that behavior." And.. "No, "harm to the rest of society," consists of injury to or infringement of the rights of specific individuals. Otherwise, how is there any harm?" Are conflicting statements that cannot be reconciled with one another when it comes to the manner in which people treat their own bodies. With regards to the first statement, are you channeling Robespierre here? The primary benefit of our government is the specific boundaries that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights draws around a set of personal freedoms which are not and should never be subject to "the will of collective opinion." Even in those realms where the law stipulates that "the will of collective opinion matters," it's filtered through and limited by the various branches of government, and ultimately it's constitutional legitimacy - not any popular will - that matters. And finally, are all people who use illegal drugs addicts? I think the evidence suggests otherwise. There are laws to protect others from the specific harm that any other individual - addict, madman, sociopath, etc - may commit, so there are already mechanisms for addressing any specific harm that they may cause others. Overeating leads to obesity which has massive costs for society, unprotected sex leads to the transmission of a litany of diseases which the public will have to pay the treatment of - etc. There are a million private behaviors which, while not directly harming anyone else, have public consequences. Your contention that drug use is unique in this respect, and that laws that criminalize drug use rely on arguments that couldn't also be applied to other private behaviors is just plain wrong.

Just keeping checking the board and you should have no problems hooking up with folks. If you are into cracks, put "The Bend" at Tieton on your hit-list. Mostly single pitch, but the quality, quantity, and density makes it worth the trip for sure. Not sure if you hit the Platte much while you were in Colorado, but the Bend is pretty comparable to Turkey Rocks in terms of all of these qualities. And it's pretty much always dry and sunny over there, so you should feel right at home.

[gratuitous and largely irrelevant gear expenditure related note]Just broke a paddle and spent $300 on a replacement [/gratuitous and largely irrelevant gear expenditure related note] Best I can do is $40 plus shipping.

Wow. Where to begin? It should suffice to say that every argument that you put forth concerning the potential harm to the rest of society could just as well pertain to food, gambling, unprotected sex, or pretty much any other facet of human behavior that one could imagine. The notion that something as inherently vague and subjective as "harm to the rest of society," as opposed to direct injury to or infringement of the rights of specific individuals should serve as the principle which defines the boundaries of individual liberty - beyond which the state may not cross - is much more frightening in its implications and rife with much greater potential for abuse than any "corporate interest" operating in a market economy could ever hope to exert. What can be done? How about accepting that a society in which people exercise their liberties in a manner which you don't happen to personally approve of - and in the process of which some people harm themselves - is infinitely more resistant to becoming enslaved, subject to wholesale indoctrination, and any other gross abuse of power than a society in which the state is endowed with the power to forcibly "protect" citizens from engaging in activities which - however distasteful, wasteful, or unjustifiably risky others may find them - bring no direct harm to others.

$50 for both or $50 for either?

Moderately off-topic here, but.. How did you know you had costochondritis, and how long did it take to go away? I've had pain in my rib-cage after running, lifting, paddling - basically anything involving torso-twisting ever since the last 1/3rd of the season - when I took my most severe beatings in the park. I'm wondering if I may have just repeatedly bruised the hell out of the tissue surrounding my ribcage and its taking a long time to heal.

Uncritically accepting virtually ever proposition put forth by Chomsky and adopting them en-masse as the core of your own world-view hardly puts one in a position to lament a generalized susceptibility to "mind control" in others.

From Larry Flynt: "The Reverend Jerry Falwell and I were arch enemies for fifteen years. We became involved in a lawsuit concerning First Amendment rights and Hustler magazine. Without question, this was my most important battle--the 1988 Hustler Magazine, Inc., v. Jerry Falwell case, where after millions of dollars and much deliberation, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in my favor. My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling. The most important result of our relationship was the landmark decision from the Supreme Court that made parody protected speech, and the fact that much of what we see on television and hear on the radio today is a direct result of my having won that now famous case which Falwell played such an important role in."

Never been to Blackcomb huh? Lineups on the big park all day. Whistler/Blackcomb takes an interesting approach, with separate use fees for the big park, and mandatory helmets. They have also been building top notch parks for more than a decade. The Pass frankly used to buld piss poor parks and severely lagged behind the times. I havent ridden snowboard parks much in the last few years, but I hear they have finally gotten better. Big jumps are not necessarily a lot more dangerous, but they do need to be built properly. Usually that means a long steep landing. The pass had a tendency to build decently sized, but by no means large jumps, with a very short steep landing. Unless you had the speed just right you either didnt make the landing, or you clear the landing, which hurts a lot. People complained constantly, but they didnt ever respond. I think the management figured that the less mass a jump had, the safer it inherently was. I have mixed feelings about the verdict, on one hand it points out the poor practices of the ski area. On the other hand riding a snowboard park has inherent risks and you pretty much assume you will get hurt pretty bad from time to time. I've hit the Blackcomb parks from time to time for ~10 years, and was just there for a week about a month ago, and spent about 1/2 of my time in the park. Even on the weekend, there was never a line for the biggest jumps outside of the XL park. Mid-sized jumps yes, big ones, no. Maybe this is atypical for Whistler, but even back East where there's absolutely nothing worthwhile to ski outside the park, the biggest jumps tend to have a crew of ~20 dudes in their late teens that run laps on them, and when they aren't riding together, there's just no lines for the biggest stuff. Anyhow - this is peripheral. There are good jumps and bad jumps, and some are safer than others - but it's hard to imagine building a jump that's safe for all skill levels under all conditions. Conditions change all day - the inrun may get soft and a starting point that put you right in the landing's sweet spot may leave you decking out in a massive way in the afternoon, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc - and the inverse could happen and put you way into the flats in backbreaking land if you don't judge the speed correctly. I've certainly done both, but it was my fault for misjudging the conditions. Even if the resort had provided physicist and an engineer at the start of the inrun to tell me the exact speed I'd need to hit the landing just right, and provided me with a spedometer - that doesn't guarantee that I wouldn't biff the jump in some fashion or another and wreck myself in a spectacular fashion.

Just for reference purposes, this is a pro skier getting 36 feet of air off of a 20+ foot quarter pipe after being towed downhill by a snowmobile.

So is your argument based on the principle that the state should forcibly prevent people from engaging in voluntary activities that exceed a certain risk threshhold, or on the sheer number of people that harm themselves engaging in any particular activity? If your argument is founded on sheer numbers - which it must be if you claim that the state should forcibly prevent people from using drugs but not free-soloing - then by this logic, the state would be justified in forcibly preventing people from overeating, which currently inflicts a much higher toll on society both in terms of expense and mortality than those who use illegal drugs.

Though I agree with most all your arguments so far, I don't get this one. What have seatbelt laws to do with public good other than protecting the body of the wearer? Seems very similar to the drug prohibitions protecting people from themselves. In fact if you buy the argument that addicts turn to crime and hurt more people, then the anti-drug laws are a lot more toward protecting the public good than seatbelt laws. Are they worried someone is going to get out of control behind the wheel because they aren't wearing a lap belt? The public owns the roads and has some legal claim on them in terms of its ability to set speed limits, vision requirements, etc. Unless you accept the claim that your body represents the same class of public good as a a piece of publicly funded infrastructure, the legal scope for the state to determine what you do with it in private is effectively nil. Accepting that what you do with your body while using a public resource like a road requires some acceptance of the state's authority to govern your conduct while you are using it doesn't justify the proposition that the the state should have the same level of authority over what you do with your body in private anymore than laws against having sex in public justify the government arresting you for having sex in the privacy of your own home. IMO the only proper role for the state with regards to laws that regulate the use of the roads is insuring that a given driver's actions do not pose a threat to other drivers. I don't think that the safety of the driver constitutes an acceptable argument for the state to mandate seatbelt use, except in the case of children or mentally incompetent adults who cannot determine the risks for themselves. Aside from the principal that actions that don't directly harm anyone else should be legal, I also oppose seatbelt laws on the grounds because they give rise to the very mentality that I've been arguing against on this thread - which is that the state has the right and the responsibility to protect mentally competent adults from actions which can only directly harm themselves. The argument for seatbelts in terms of the probability that those who don't wear them will end up having their medical care paid for by the public in some fashion or another is a rather tenuous one, but still stronger than those which insist that state has the right and the duty to protect autonomous adults from themselves.

I'm not sure which weak argument you're referring to. Personal freedom is absolute; laws are merely deterrents. I stand by my assertion that the naive can and should be protected by laws that deter extraordinary risks to themselves. For example, we have seatbelt laws not because we want to crush free will, but because we're pretty sure it makes you safer. I'm also opposed to seatbelt laws for adults who have sufficient health and disability insurance to cover the tab if they jack themselves up too badly. IMO the only defensible argument for seatbelt laws applies in the cases where the state is likely to pick up the tab for your care if you mess yourself up. In any event, driving is a privilege that requires the use of a public good, so seatbelt laws fall into a different class of laws than those that pertain to what people can do with their own bodies. Mentally competent adults exercising a fundamental right to determine what they ingest is something else entirely. If you buy the argument that our bodies constitute a public good that the state should have discretion over that supercedes our own, then your analogy makes sense. Your leap from one to the other with nary a thought for the manifold differences between the two is a classic example of the slippery slope in action. "I stand by my assertion that the naive can and should be protected by laws that deter extraordinary risks to themselves." You mean like soloing, alpine climbing, etc, etc, etc? I'm pretty sure that the actuaries could run the numbers and determine that engaging in either constitutes a far greater risk to the participants than the consumption of any drug known to man. Better get the state on the job and fund a massive bureaucracy of rangers to patrol the mountains and prevent the naive from taking extraordinary risks to themselves.

One could easily toss this red-herring "I'm not against personal freedoms, I'm against the CORPORATE DOMINATION OF THE UNIVERSE!!! [C'mon fellow travelers, I know my other argument was weak, but no one here likes Walmart...]" overboard by granting the government a monopoly on the distribution and sale of all drugs that are currently illegal.

His efforts have set back basic human rights in this country. That is a real, concrete effect, not mere politicing in a vacuum. If he had preached love and tolerance for all, I might shed a tear at his passing, but this guy represents everything unchristian and evil about American evangelical "christianity". Becuase he beleives in a principle different than you, you hate him. Your no different. Hypocrit. but hypocrism is the precise reason for hating falwell - he espoused the message of jesus, which is the uber-hippy message of love-fucking-everyone-and-under-no-circumstances-ever-do-anything-harmful-to-them-judge-not-lest-you-be-judged-yadda-yadda-yadda - a real cut and dried philosophy - but then falwell comletely fucked it up by judging everyone and creating a situation where his followers felt totally justified in hurting them who on this board is more hypocritical then that? There are also some fairly compelling interpretations of Jesus's message that argue that the guy was a messianic, intensely narcissistic leader of a pre-modern doomsday-cult. The Jim Jones of Jerusalem, so to speak. Under that interpretation, the folks waving the spiritual pompoms for The Rapture might actually be closer to the mark.

This is very depressing. There's a reason that we don't let kids vote, drink, drive, live on their own. Before a certain age most kids aren't really capable of making good decisions. Having someone protecting them is a good idea. To assume that kids who live in this kind of protective-bubble world can conceptualize the utility of not being constantly directed and cared for is asking a bit much. Ask that question to kids who are actually out on their own, making their own decisions (like ashw_justin!) and you'll probably get a bit of a different answer than from middle-schoolers. So anyway, this was a long-winded way of saying that the results of Ivan's survey of barely pubescent children is neither unexpected nor too depressing. It's not the kids that worry me, its the adults that share this perspective that concern me. It's a slippery slope from "stop me or I'll smoke crack" to "stop me or I'll eat this Big Mac," and those that argue for the former seem to have a tendency to argue for the latter as well.

Apples and oranges. The negative effects of widespread addiction vs. criminal trafficking are different phenomena, the relative potential magnitudes of which neither of us can claim to know. Where I simply seek to highlight the potential danger for widespread use of hard drugs, you attempt to do explicit mathematics with abstract principles. Take a breath man. I don't want people buying crack at the store because I'm afraid that it will turn our country into a drug-enslaved shithole. And I already said that I'm sympathetic to the idea of natural selection--just that the real manifestation of it is never pretty, especially if it occurs on a massive scale. Here's some conceit for you: why do the lab rats keep hitting the cocaine until it kills them? Clearly they wanted to live? Have you actually got any evidence to suggest that your doomsday scenario will materialize if drugs are legalized? The experience of the Netherlands, and of pretty much every country in the world prior to the advent of laws against drugs and the law enforcement apparatus necessary to enforce them suggests otherwise. People have made these arguments against pornography, gambling, and every other species of vice under the sun, and they all rest on the false assumption that the law is the only operational check on human behavior at work in society. This is about as logical as concluding that enacting laws against suicide would actually curtail the practice, and that if such laws existed, the second that they were rescinded, all of humanity would stampede to the local bridge and do themselves in. "Apples and oranges. The negative effects of widespread addiction vs. criminal trafficking are different phenomena, the relative potential magnitudes of which neither of us can claim to know. Where I simply seek to highlight the potential danger for widespread use of hard drugs, you attempt to do explicit mathematics with abstract principles. :rolleyes:" This argument rests on the assumption that the criminalization of drugs can either eliminate or substantially reduce the use of and addiction to whatever drug it is that's outlawed. Experience says otherwise. So as things stand now, we have a large number of addicts, *and* a system which results in a massive transfer of wealth to organized crime, widespread corruption of the judiciary and law enforcement in less developed countries, rampant street violence, massive diversion of funds away from other priorities into the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders, and the costs both in money and personal liberties that have resulted from the legal and bureaucratic enforcement mechanisms necessary to maintain the present prohibition. You are making the determination that it's worth people who never touch drugs enduring all of the above to save the minute fraction of the population who have hitherto avoided drugs like meth, crack, and heroin because of their illegality - from themselves. Not a reasonable trade, IMO.

Let me apologize in advance for this twist in logic, but if this is what the youth are thinking, then legalizing hard drugs would be an invitation to use them. They will equate 'legal' with 'okay.' Yes sadly enough, the masses are willing to let the system do their thinking for them. Perhaps all they need are a few overdoses to set them straight... but that could get ugly. Again - the conceit. If academic qualifications were all that mattered, then Ted Kacynski would have become a model citizen.

The United States are not the Netherlands. That's like comparing a spoiled 13-year-old to a college professor. Would you tell your 13-year-old daughter that it's okay to do heroin? (It's okay, she'll just use her judgment.) Intentional oversimplification? First, greater availability would lead to greater consumption. Second, 'legal' equals profitable and marketable. If McDonalds' sexy ad convinces you to try a Big Mac and it sucks, you don't have to buy another one. It's not that simple with hard drugs. Honestly, I want to believe in the ideal of free will and personal judgment. But in practice that ideal is defeated in a society where many if not most people are too stupid to take care of themselves (such as the US). Should we let them kill themselves? Perhaps. Is that going to suck for the rest of us? Yes. But how many will self-destruct? That's the key question--how many addicts does it take to ruin a society? Is that a storm that you want to try to weather? And for what? 'Freedom' to get wasted on hard drugs? Are you counting yourself amongst those too stupid to look after themselves? If not, what grounds do you have for the monumental conceit that your statement rests upon? I've spent time on the shop floor and at the lab bench, and when it comes to exercising the basic judgments necessary to lead a happy and productive life - I can't say that the advantage necessarily always goes to those in academia. As far as the link between legalization and consumption is concerned, there probably would be an increase in both consumption and addiction as a result of legalization - but any adverse effect from either would be no worse than the rampant violence and criminality that flourish under the current regime of prohibition, not to mention the massive transfer of wealth to criminal organizations that results from it, and all of the corruption, targeted killings of judges, etc. When you legalize drugs, you don't eliminate all suffering associated with drugs, but at least the vast majority of the harmful effects are visited upon those who consume them. In my experience the people who argue that the state should be invested with the power to protect people from themselves have quite a bit in common with the folks who are convinced that because they can't imagine living a happy, productive, and ethical life without believing in a particular deity and religious creed, and therefore it's incumbent upon them to insure that others do the same - voluntarily or no. Swap "God" for "State" and the two perspectives are almost interchangeable.

Interesting observation, Ivan. "The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them." The other thing I'd like to point out is that any argument for drug prohibition that is based on the notion that it's society's duty to protect individuals from themselves could also be applied - and would be at least as apt - to free soloing.

Yes - the Netherlands is tottering on the edge of collapse as we speak. The notion that the large numbers of people who don't already smoke crack, inject heroin, etc would do so if it were legal is one of the most idiotic arguments against legalization that anyone has ever conjured up. Likewise, the argument that the illegality of the same constitutes a protective barrier that prevents those who would otherwise abuse the drugs from doing so is equally ridiculous. Per your line of reasoning, if prostitution were legalized, then every man in America who is not currently availing themselves of their services would suddenly do so, because no other considerations are involved in such decisions. Just imagine if Walmart came out with it's own branded line of discount-hookers...! Are you sure you aren't projecting anxieties that you hold concerning your own constitution and temperament onto society at large here?