Students exchanged their philosophical ideas while smoking hookah in an open discussion on Wednesday.
About 20 students attended the Undergraduate Philosophy Association and Students for Sensible Drug Policy’s evening of Hookah and Philosophy at Hillel Park.
Four rugs, like Vintage oriental rugs, with shisha, pita chips, hummus, cookies, iced tea and crackers were set up on the lawn for students to discuss philosophical topics ranging from the concept of time to marijuana legalization.
Students could choose from six different discussion groups and six different hookahs.
The first topic on the agenda was time.
Some attendees said they felt time was merely an illusion because it cannot be quantified as actual matter, just like abstractions such as courage and love.
Others discussed how to differentiate between the past and the future and how individuals project themselves into each.
The present, some thought, has to do with relativity and is specific to each individual. As Albert Einstein once philosophized, when one touches a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours; when one is with a girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes, group members said.
As students jumped from rug to rug, new thoughts were thrown into each discourse. The next topic covered the SSDP’s portion of the forum: the ethics of marijuana and other drugs.
The students discussed the war on drugs, saying that the illegalization of drugs increases violence, resulting in the loss of numerous lives.
They questioned whether there could be safe manner to facilitate controlled drug use.
Some felt facilities should be constructed to provide safe houses for addicts who could continue drug use under regulation. The drugs and methods would be clean, and the amounts restricted.
In discord, others said that these hard drug users, such as those addicted to PCP or cocaine, would have little to no chance of being controlled. Providing these “sanctuaries,” the opposition said, would only allow people to destroy their lives.
Their arguments included addiction statistics, the addictive properties of these drugs and the high regression rate of recovering addicts.
The idea surfaced of marijuana being a gateway drug.
Those who disagreed argued that in some countries, other drugs are more popular options. For example, they said, heroin is more prevalent than marijuana in China.
These students felt that more people do drugs when the drugs are illegal. They proposed that a tax or governmental regulation of drugs, if legalized, would help keep their usage in check.
Other topics included the forms and expressions of love and their evolutionary origin and significance.
Students said they enjoyed delving deeper into philosophical ideas with others.
“It’s interesting to hear what everyone has to say about everything,” said College of Arts and Sciences freshman Derek Matthews.
“I’ve been coming to philosophy meetings for two years,” said CAS junior Daro Zukowski. “It’s an opportunity to discuss our own ideas outside of class. A lot of the time, professors don’t realize we have our own philosophy. We lead our own paths.”
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