Hello again, friends, and welcome back to our research into the new philosophy of Humanism. Today, let us begin by establishing the basic truth that each of us is autonomous since we are neither physically nor mentally linked to anyone else. Therefore, each individual is in charge of himself of herself and is 100 percent responsible for his or her actions. No one is responsible for anyone else, with exceptions such as children. That was the easy part. The hard part is applying this philosophy objectively; subjectively applying philosophies leads to chaos.
Drugs/Alcohol: What a person chooses to put in his body is his business. Yet, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans incarcerated for no other reason then they made a personal choice that society does not approve of. Of course, incarceration is valid if someone tries to sell to children -- again, we as a society have agreed that this group needs protection. But all we have to do is apply the lessons of Prohibition to see that legalization leads to less gang violence and the loss of innocent lives, and gives us the ability to tax a lucrative industry while reducing the burden of housing and feeding these "criminals." The other side of that coin is that we need much tougher laws for drunk driving (and potentially drugged driving). The excuse that a person is not in control of himself because he is drunk should be rejected for the simple reason that he chose to drink to the point of being incapacitated.
Leadership: We must demand accountability from ourselves and our leaders. If no one is responsible for his own actions, how do we sort out our problems? Therefore, stop allowing people to defend their actions on the basis that others are doing it as well -- that is a child's argument. And stop allowing our leaders at the highest levels of government and business to use the I-did-not-know defense. We must punish our leaders who seek to avoid censure through ignorance or lies, whether it is Iran-Contra, Enron, or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." When you are in a leadership position, everything that happens is your responsibility.
Prostitution: The men and women who are pro-choice use the argument that a woman has a right to choose what to do with her own body. But many of these same people reject women who want to use their bodies to make money, and they do so in the most disingenuous way. Whenever a woman chooses to work as a stripper, as a naked model, appear in pornographic movies, or a prostitute, these other folks say that these people -- both men and women engage in all these activities -- are being "exploited" or, in the case of women (who dominate these fields), are being controlled by men. Look at what that argument says: that there is this large group of women who do not know how to run their own lives, that they are being controlled by men and that this new group wants to take over the controlling of these women's lives from those men.
But the effect is more of a concern to me. By rejecting the choice to make money by having sex, society condemns the vast majority of these people to being preyed upon by the worst elements in our society. It is because prostitution is illegal that women involved only get 10 percent of their income, if any. It is because it is illegal that they are controlled and (truly) exploited by male and female pimps. It is because it is illegal that they are out on the streets, in fear of their lives and making those streets a draw to many criminal elements and undesirable for most other folks. And another aspect to consider is that there are women who are being held prisoner and forced to be prostitutes. If we make the majority of prostitution legal, it might enable the police to focus on finding these slave operations.
We should accept that women and men have been making this choice in every society throughout history. Get it off the streets thereby creating cleaner and safer neighborhoods, allow them to keep the money they make which in turn will help some of them retire and afford health insurance, and tax this lucrative industry. For a model, look at legal brothels such as the Bunny Ranch in Nevada. We must start supporting people's right to make choices, not condemn them because of our prejudices.
I want to leave you with one final thought. In the readings for one or more of your classes, you will probably encounter someone's actions being defended with the words, "had to." Be very critical of accepting this excuse. There are very few "have to's" in this world; instead, life is usually about making very tough decisions. Because once you let others off the hook with a "had to" excuse, you will find yourself letting yourself off the hook. This leads to a deterioration of character to your great detriment and, through you, society. And in this day and age, character is destiny.
