And I agree with the previous poster - where are they going to go? Canada? Mexico?

The fact is that the rich make out like bandits in this society... they'd be foolish to give it all up and go somewhere where the playing field was more level.

"Forgiveness is hard. Forgiveness leaves us open to ridicule and the fear that we are being taken for suckers."

This sounds all very high-and-mighty, but the fact is that we keep forgiving our leaders these terrible crimes by which America has caused the deaths of literally a million and more people since World War II and they keep doing it again and again. They will not stop doing this until they are prevented - by punishing them when they are caught.

If you or I killed one innocent person, we'd go to jail or even be executed. Punishment for murder is just - allowing people to escape the consequences of their crimes is unjust.

Our elected officials knowingly break the law to organize systems to kill hundreds of thousands of innocents and nothing happens to them.

We can "forgive" them once they've paid the price for their crimes. Forgiveness is easy - you simply have to do nothing.

I went through two bad places, one with an illegal salsa bar that the cops wouldn't close down (it's the first time in my life I looked at a cop and knew he was on the take, not a good feeling), the other with a stompy upstairs neighbor.

In the first case, I'd call the cops, scream, bang on things. The noisy upstairs neighbor I dealt with by ignoring the stomping and getting him to turn down his audio stuff.

But now I'm in a reasonably quiet place (and I live in Brooklyn, it isn't that quiet) and I never complain about any noise ever.

It might well be that LW has regular tolerance to noise, and he's simply had two noisy neighbors.

As a general measure, I strongly suggest a good white noise generator. The power consumption is a fraction of a fan, it doesn't blow dust all over the place, and you can change the sound if you have to.

"My own understanding of why drugs like cocaine, LSD, heroin etc. are so dangerous is that they are produced and sold by gangsters and pushers, which among other things means that there is no quality control whatsoever."

....and yet I took LSD over a hundred times in my youth, obtained from different people in different countries, and never got anything other than the same very pure, very low toxicity, extremely psychoactive drug (except twice that I got nothing at all :-D).

LSD is a very strong drug. It is, however, not dangerous the way that alcohol or heroin are. People have accidentally ingested *thousands* of hits of LSD all at once and lived to tell the tale - without medical assistance.

Fifteen years ago, I purchased LSD in Washington Square Park. A homeless poet who I knew came to me and said, "Oh, Tom, there is some really good acid around the park." He brought me to some young people - they were very happy and very serious and very polite. They had these little red gelatin pyramids and I purchased 10 or so. I thanked them from the bottom of my heart for this and they thanked me for the privilege of being able to sell it to me.

There was no question in my mind at any point what I was getting and I later had a lovely, colourful trip on my birthday (with my roommate who hadn't tripped in 20 years).

Psychedelics are generally made and distributed by people who have a spiritual connection to them, not organized crime. Common side-effects reported of these entheogens are increased appreciation for nature, perception of great significance and aesthetic value in ordinary things, intensification of colours, and synaesthesia: none of this is attractive to an antisocial personality.

In a mature society, a psychedelic experience with your peers under the guidance of sympathetic adults would be part of the coming-of-age process. I don't believe I was fully mature (if I am yet mature at all!) until I'd integrated the lessons from psychedelic drug use.

At the same time, the fact that psychedelics are being distributed illegally means that kids are getting to them far too young and without guidance. It is a tribute to how benign these very strong drugs are (I always forget until I'm taking them how cheerful they make you) that we don't have thousands of kids losing their marbles every year this way.

One important lesson of psychedelics is the plasticity of the brain - how you really can reprogram yourself (hopefully to be a better human).

But this lesson is less useful to a child who is still unformed and could be dangerous.

One day, if humans survive, we'll integrate these very-useful and influential substances into our society. Until then, we'll have to rely on the underground for our sources.

... was over ten years ago in a downtown Soho gallery in New York. He was tired and sitting in a chair - underneath a larger-than-life-sized picture of John Cage.

(I was a little disappointed that you didn't mention Cage, Cunningham's life partner and, if possible, an even more towering figure on the arts scene...)

(AND - when are you going to discuss your support for forgiving torturers and murderers? This is a Big Deal to us - it's like Santa Claus advocating the lash - and we really want to hear your authoritative word on this...)

Too close to the truth! How can I laugh at this? (Well, I did, but now I feel guilty.)

Another bullseye. Keep it up! (And check out the link to Asteroid 1 that a previous posted added... hysterical!)