Ok, lets try this again. I already tried writing this and something happened and I deleted it.
I love the way Mill thinks. But I do think his ideas are too simplistic for todays society. If we had the idea that you can do anything as long as it doesn't hurt anyone but yourself, your freedoms would still be limited. Almost anything negative you do today can hurt someone else. If I wanted to smoke pot, and claimed I was only damaging my body, it would still be hurting my roommate by making her smell it and put up with me being high. There are so many consequences. You would have to be very isolated to do anything that wouldn't hurt someone else. You would have to go out to the woods, smoke your pot, and wait for it's effects to wear off before going back to your house. Because if you went back high, you would be hurting people both on the way and when you got there. It just wouldn't really work in today society. That is why we do have laws that are placed to tell us what we can and cannot do becasue it does hurt other people. And when you do hurt other people, you can be punished. Even if you only hurt yourself sometimes, you can still be punished. In Mill's philosophy that can still be hurting others.
In the end, I just think Mill's ideas are too simple for today.
I posted on Ashley's blog.
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I totally a agree. There aren't many things you can do that wouldn't affect someone else. Probably back then they didn't consider emotional affects. A mother is affect seeing her child hurt themselves. A child is affected when they see daddy drinking. So there really nothing you could do that wouldn't hurt anyone.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Steph. Drugs don't just negatively effect the user, but the people around him/her also.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I doubt that in Mill's day people were going around snorting cocaine or smoking pot (but, I may be wrong!). The issues at hand were probably A LOT different that what we deal with in America today.