Ramblings From Justin Penney

This article is about a psychologist that gave a speech at a high school where he said,

"I am going to encourage you to have sex and encourage you to use drugs appropriately. Why I am going to take that position is because you are going to do it anyway. I think as a psychologist and health educator, it is more important to educate you in a direction that you might actually stick to. So, I am going to stay mostly on with the sex side because that is the area I know more about. I want to encourage you to all have healthy, sexual behavior."

This is the message I would prefer to see over, "don't do anything." Because they are! You did, your parents did, and if they say they didn't... they are lying. I think it's better to equip kids with the facts about the world and help them make the best decisions they can in the sticky situations in life. Because they will get sticky and, as a parent, you won't always be there. That's impossible, unless you run a family like a little Hitler in which case you can pretty much assume that your kids will be so screwed up that you would wish they just did a little sex and drugs.

Abstinence education doesn't work, it has never worked and it never will. The things we do are completely natural for humans to try. We are built from the ground up to mature have sex and make more people. Getting high, or altering your mental state is nearly as natural: spinning until you're dizzy, exhilarating experiences: they get you high sure it's your body doing it but it's the same effect. Alcoholic drinks have been around since 10,000 B.C. Ancient civilizations use hallucinogenic plants in their rituals. These are distinctly natural, human behaviors. Copletely denying them, or worse, projecting guilt on to them is really jacking peoples minds up!

On a slightly related tangent, since sex and drugs are treated as pretty sever in the media, shouldn't violence be looked at as worse? If not violence as a concept, since people will fight, even physically, but the severity with which we see it? I was recently at a party where a fight broke out, just a drunken squabble that would have gotten broken up and someone whipped out a knife and started cutting someone. How desensitized are we going to get?

The most dangerous part to our entire society is the people driving it. These so-called moral compasses that get air time to spread their moral message. They prey on the poor and uneducated. They take pseudo-religious morals and bend them to their will to manipulate people who are looking for hope, help or strength.

# posted by Justin @ 12:48 PM