Folanator said:
That is total hypocrisy. You cannot tell me that I am looking at just one thing when I think it is the meat of your argument. Not sure who is being the myopic assclown here.
What are you talking about? I made a statement without going into some half-page diatribe, I was letting people fill in the blanks. I let you assume that because they had alcoholism that their lives were already shitty. Good thing you couldn't read between the lines and jumped up and attacked me. Self-imposed myopia. WAKE UP AND STOP ASSUMING THINGS.
You want a diatribe? You got it.
You do have to go into the reasons if you are going to make a statement like that. You cannot say that folks just change with out giving the reasons why they did so.
No I don't. Mark Twain said it best in
What Is Man, when the Old Man tells the Young Man, "Yes. Man the machine--man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man is, is due to his MAKE, and to the INFLUENCES brought to bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved, directed, COMMANDED, by EXTERIOR influences--SOLELY. He ORIGINATES nothing, not even a thought."
Being said that people CANNOT change without exterior influences, it is reasonable for any human capable of decutive reasoning should be able to infer that SOMETHING made them change. Anyone without a sense of deduction (such as yourself, apparently) could just ask. (I realize this is a belief, again I give people to much credit in being able to read between the lines).
I actually have come 180 deg on some of this stuff. I used to look at fat people and think why don't they just stop eating, work out? I am not sure it is that easy. Some people are just genetically pre determined to be fat. It isn't their fault. It isn't like they want to be that way.
Obesity and Alcoholism are two totally different topics. Obesity cannot be avoided in some people's cases. Alcoholism is completely, 100% avoidable. I realize that the ability to avoid something doesn't classify it as a disease, but Oklahoma University is taking the burden responsiblity off of the shoulders of this young man, something I feel very strongly against. So you develop some sort of chemical dependency on alcohol, so? I have the same problem with caffiene. It happens with much weaker and much stronger drugs, but there's no seperate 'disease' for coke, heroin, meth, etc. Chemical dependency /= disease.
This is the type of thinking that the Christian conservatives have with gays. No way that most gays want that life style by choice. Sure there are some that go there for other reasons. They are born that way, they are not going to change.
A whole different issue I've never considered enough so I will not broach. I will, however, say this: if obesity, alcoholism, and homosexuality all deal with chemical imbalances, then America's chemical structure is spiraling out of control
.
I also 100% agree that you are responsible for your actions and must pay the price if you fuck up. If this kid has other legal issues, he needs to make it right. If that means going to jail, go to jail. Restitution is part of the process. Just because you have issues does not make you accountable for your actions.
Point is, it is not as simple as just being a man and quitting as Tibor wrote.
How sure are you? It's the same thing for many many smokers, "I just said, I am not going to smoke any more, so I didn't." I question the validity of that. In the 70s, when you wanted to quit drinking, you just did.