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We are surrounded by taboos. Prohibitions are the main function of the state, an important function of religion and the sacred duty of the citizen (because everyone is bound to have an opinion - what else would such a ban). The most exciting minds prohibitions objects are weapons, drugs and sex. The same theme, the discussion of which rational arguments are intertwined with archaic prejudices, often canceling the possibility of rational discussion. But it is their example zapretitelstva shortcomings displayed most vividly.

In one long-standing transfer of dedicated debates around the legalization of drugs, spectator voiced characteristic relating to the position. She said that she agreed with all the arguments in favor of legalization, but morality does not allow it to take such a position. Thus, given its wonderful definition of morality - it is something that blocks the mind.

There are plenty of rational arguments in favor of the fact that all three phenomena should be legal:

1. Trade in small arms provides an incentive to the development of the industry and contributes to public safety. Studies show that an arms free legislation is one of the factors that reduce the level of violent crime. Legal trunks occasionally fall into the hands of psychopaths, but 99.9% of the civilian weapons used for peaceful target shooting, or simply gathering dust in closets.

2. The Netherlands is a thorn in the side of all the wrestlers with drugs. The Netherlands legalized certain types of psychotropic substances, decriminalized the rest ... and not turned into one big drug houses as they predicted. Now the Netherlands is one of the safest countries in the world. They were able not only to socialize the drug, but also to reduce their number. Against this background, the American doctrine of war on drugs turned spending billions and scored the eyeballs prisons with zero exhaust outlet.

3. If the weapons and drugs can still be attributed to real harm, the harm sex industry purely imaginary. And zapretitelstvo in this area is based only on moral considerations only. But obviously, what harm bring bans most industry workers, depriving them of the protection of the state and giving into the hands of thugs (including - thugs in police uniform).

Quite often there is an option when people fanatically in favor of the legalization of one, but just as fanatically - against the rest. American conservatives have turned the weapons of the Second Amendment in the cult, but are willing to spend billions of public money to protect "public morals" and the content of goons from the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). The Social Democrats for the sex industry and drugs, but against weapons. A evrofeministki behind the criminalization of sex services, but do not give up a good shoal (unless he curled a male chauvinist pig, of course).

What unites these people? What kind of have a common morality? I came to this conclusion: it is the conviction of human malice. As if the man is a wild beast, and only severe restrictions with a view to public quartering kept the beast in a cage. Weapons? Yes, all shoot each other! Drugs? All will become addicted! Prostitution? All will go to a prostitute! And in general, the economic activity of man should surround deaf palisade bans, because this vile beast in the free market will definitely take cruelly exploiting fellow.

It is based on fear. Fear of human nature. Fear is physiologically similar to aggression, which is the standard response to a stimulus - to prohibit, restrict, taboo. But is it really a bad person?

Most other monkeys

On a planet inhabited by several billion people who are convinced that man was created by a supernatural being, and then tempted by another supernatural being, which is why (attention, logic!) Only observance of religious taboos thousand-year-old keeps us from falling into the abyss of violence and depravity. The joke is that even the old scientific concepts largely copied these ideas.

In the 19th century, my grandfather, Freud put forward the hypothesis that the human mind consists of three parts. Super-ego, woven from the social prohibitions, restrains the head of primitive instincts, coming from the "inner beast" Id, Ego and foaming forever torn between them. It sounds plausible. Until zadash simple question - what kind of instincts, and where did they come?

Everyone has heard that "man evolved from apes." In fact, man is the monkey, which has other apes common ancestor. Tellingly, also monkeys, only extinct. The closest cousins ​​in the big ape family to us are chimpanzees. Our common ancestor with them only lived about six million years ago.

Chimpanzees being aggressive, most of the time in the struggle for social status and collective raids on neighbors. Chimpanzees reigns promiscuity, and females are in a subordinate position. They also tend to cannibalism - may eat a representative of another pack (pre-scored him to death), and sometimes are the only ones who are not averse to eat a fellow cub.

For a long time was common point of view, though extinct human ancestors - this is such a big chimp with small eggs. On the projected human and the whole social structure - from promiscuity to merrymaking status (thus went stupid ideas about the alpha and omega males that are sure to show up on any little book "psychology"). Well this left unattended, so even with a weapon?

The first blow these representations received on the opening of the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee (the common chimpanzee and the bonobo ancestor lived about a million years ago). And as for the investigation of bonobos took seriously learned: if a chimpanzee "all life - a struggle," that bonobos prefer to replace conflicts sex, and hierarchy - egalitarianism. This bonobo much smarter than their aggressive relatives. To this day, the male bonobo named Kanji is the smartest, after man, monkey on the planet (knows more words than the average Russian policeman). However, libertinskie habits bonobos frightened adherents of morality more than the cannibalistic tendencies of their fellow human beings.

Seething controversy: to whom the two families were close ancestors of man - to aggressive cannibals or a sex maniac? What we get back, if I stop to listen to the church, the state and other authorities? Severe conservatives sympathetic to militant chimpanzees, hippie rave - loving bonobos.

And so it went on until the 80s anthropologist Owen Lovejoy did not explain - the ancestor of humans (. Ardipithecus, 4.4 million years old) did not look like a chimpanzee. He went completely the other way - by monogamy. Ardipithecus form stable couples in which the female care of young, and the males of the family to feed. Sexual selection males contributed to the manifestation of kindness and care, rather than "dominance". The need for power competition for females disappeared, canines of males decreased, following the level of aggression as such. This has opened up opportunities for cooperation and gave a powerful impetus to the development of language and intelligence. As a result, you are reading these lines, and our evolutionary relatives continue to jump from branch to branch.

Our creepy "inner beast", which for centuries supposedly constrain social institutions, religious orders and mysterious Superego - altruist-peaceful family man. Neither cannibalism nor unbridled orgies. The solid boredom.

Instincts? No, not heard

Even more interesting is the case with the instincts - we simply do not have. According to the strict definition of ethology (the science of animal behavior), instincts - is innate behavioral patterns, and sophisticated enough (not to be confused with reflections - just a reaction to a stimulus). For example, the mating dance or aggressive demonstration. There is "an instinctive bias principle" - memorized reaction shifts toward instinct, if even something similar to it. This may or may interfere with learning, and contribute to: social instincts have allowed them to domesticate horses, simply replacing the leader man, whereas with zebras could not crank out anything like this.

But a person is not observed such a shift. Instead, the instincts we have stereotypes that arise in training and education. This explains the diversity of social structures in different parts of the world, the existence of many primitive tribes the most savage customs. Proponents of the concept of "inner beast" happy to tears when it is possible to find another pedophile cannibal, lost in the Amazon jungle. But all these wonderful traditions - the fruit of adaptation to a hostile environment. How long you stretch out in the jungles of the Amazon, as a good man and an altruist?

A number of psychological experiments demonstrate the "human nature" in a bad light. For example, Stanley Milgram experiment, in which the subject, following the orders of the chief in a white robe, was ready to shock the person tortured almost to death. Or the famous "Stanford Prison Experiment" of Philippe Zimbardo, interrupted in the middle - experimental "guards" too experimental tortured "prisoners".

In these cases have something in common - a situation created by the restrictions and prohibitions. Armed "guards" and unarmed "prisoners" in a confined space - an artificial situation, which is based on fear and deliberate inequality. A electroshock and white robes Milgrema ... If Stanford "guards" brutalized just a week, what would you like from people who all life taught to obey authority on the conveyor parents of school-army?

It does our bad nature requires limitations, and vice versa - bad behavioral patterns are created by the bans and restrictions. Putting people in the notoriously unequal conditions, creating an artificial shortage of resources, time after time, pushing them to what they would not do voluntarily. Ugly behavior - product ugly environment. Like poisonous jungles of the Amazon, prisons or army.

It is forbidden to forbid

The situation with the weapons most simple: any weapons there and for me, and a neighbor, or both of us do not. The second option gives the illusion of security, but does not account for the fact that the armed men still remain (the criminals and the state). Thus, the conditions are the very "prison experiment" - some armed, others not. Who will oversee the overseers? Zimbardo?

The danger of drugs based on the fact that a person is not only a dangerous animal, but still limp - in the pursuit of pleasure will drive themselves to death, robbing passing neighbors. For axiom taken assertion that addiction can not resist. These views are based on the old experiments of the 60s - the rat was placed in a special box (skinner box), and pressing a single lever led to drug injection. Rat pressed, then again, and again. And then he went to rob the other rat and implanting the needle pups (in fact, no, of course).

But a group of researchers of the University of Simon Fraser suddenly thought ... you keep for weeks in the rat close solitary confinement, then put in a box where there is nothing lever, and even surprised that it becomes a drug addict? And if you so themselves? They conducted another experiment. No, not abandoned conservative alone St. Quentin prison with only one syringe in his pocket, though it would be interesting. They lived a lot of rats in a large cage with a bunch of toys. Among the inhabitants of the aviary called "Krysopark» (Rat Park), wishing to join the joys of morphine it was much less than that of the unfortunate victims of single cells. Morphine dependence rats prefer a healthy run in the wheel, chat with fellow and other healthy lifestyle with a straight edge.

Finally, the myth of the "irresistible addiction" has dispelled the doctor of psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University, Carl Hart (Karl Hart - incidentally, a former drug addict and drug dealer from the black ghetto) - He conducted an experiment has on the people, and of "risk groups" (people of the black ghetto ). Every morning they brought the cocaine dose, and then offered a choice of either another dose right away, or money for the end of the experiment. Most oddly, chose the money.

The human brain is the latest data contains 86.1 +/- 8.1 billion. Neurons. The idea that the diversity of possible neural connections and experience can substitute for any single foreign matter - this is a very bold idea. Override maybe you can, but you must first take an alternative, one and all.

What then makes the negative, which is associated with the drugs? Restrictions and bans that create distortions in the economy. They so inflate the prices that tiny percentage choosing "lever" is forced to engage in criminal activities to ensure their penny (in other circumstances) needs. He moves away from society, acquiring the associated criminal sectors. Forbidden drug trafficking is so profitable that entire areas are beginning to specialize in his service (and even entire countries - Latin America, the Golden Triangle, Afghanistan - what, in particular, have, in a report), losing any alternatives. When a society decides to fight the drug addict - it puts him in a cage like a rat, thus perpetuating his addiction. Vicious circle.

Well, the sex industry - according to statistics, more sexual abuse in those countries where there are legal prohibitions, religious taboos and other spirituality: Africa, Latin America, Middle East. Devout Muslim countries are leading in the number of pornographic queries in Google. So bans protect people and bring morality. Perhaps, with the protection of family values, they do better? But, as we have seen, these values ​​were used to bans (darling little older Ardipithecus-paranoid Old Testament prophets). Also, I would venture to suggest that the sex industry, on the contrary, strengthens family values. After all, the availability of cheap sex services around automatically underlines the importance of other things, exclusive of family life, such as mutual trust. Well, or the ability to cook.

Traders fear

Trafficking in arms, drugs and pornography - is a profitable business (especially if it is forbidden). But not so profitable as trade with fear. In the US alone over the 40 years of the "war on drugs" has been spent a trillion dollars and arrested a total of 45 million. Man. For comparison - the entire world cocaine market is estimated at 88 billion dollars, and its consumers are 16-17 million people.... The whole industry (police and prison) well fed at the expense of taxpayers, frightened fictional threat of a general anesthesia. And how many politicians have made a name for itself on the promises finally to defeat the drugs? Hardly they are less than the populists from the opposite camp, screaming about rare victims of legal weapons, but do not notice the plurality of lives saved them (by lowering the level of violent crime). The struggle for morality - another theme of bread, which infests a huge number of unpleasant things. From Arab sheikhs to functionaries of the ROC and the ultra Gopnik.

All of them tend to scare us into thinking about themselves worse than we are. narkobortsa Yevgeny Roizman magazine full of news like "smoky student hacked to death her grandmother." And the idea that someone can smoke a joint without killing grandmother, it seems blasphemous. Federal Drug Control Service Newsline looks about the same. As a deliberate attempt to instill in us a phobia. With a view to its subsequent monetization.

Logic sellers fear is simple: a gun hanging on the wall, be sure to shoot, a prostitute is bound to become your daughter and son - a drug addict. But the real world is much better than it seems: it rusting guns on the walls, in the porn actress daughter pochemu-to are highly moral Mormon families, rats refuse to morphine addicts get a doctorate in prestigious universities in America and the freedom to work better prohibitions.