Quotes by Daniel Waterman

“A system of justice does not need to pursue retribution. If the purpose of drug sentencing is to prevent harm, all we need to do is decide what to do with people who pose a genuine risk to society ...”

“The so-called spiritual inquiry must necessarily address questions of authority and power since both individuals and the organizations that represent them generally seek legitimacy from hegemonic i...”

“The term entheogen proposes a radical inversion of customary attitudes towards religion as faith or as something concerned with an ultimate reality or truth that is not a construct: en-theo-gen is ...”

“With drug use related harms, explanatory models are often presented as predictive tools, even though they are [rarely if ever] predictive of consequent behavior or outcomes. Hence, we feel confiden...”

“Moral ideas about what constitutes a meritorious or meaningful use of ones life and opportunities produce specific attitudes towards drug use and intoxication.”

“What better way to oppose the monopolisation of truth and meaning than to go in search of their foundations within ones own psyche?”

“It is easier to exploit and manipulate people if they are fearful or confused, (and discouraged from trusting their own judgment). Our investigation identifies the policy of prohibition as a major ...”

“Being Jewish did not compromise the humanitarian and universalist ideals of my close relatives who, having experienced persecution close hand, were more concerned with bringing about peace, justice...”

“Systems of retributive justice work well as long as they are proportional. However, in complex societies, where the State is the arbiter of justice, proportionality may break down: offences created...”

“Believing in the possibility of resurrection and eternal life, Christians seek redemption through moral behaviour. But moral behaviour does not, in itself, assuage fear of death, on the contrary, w...”

“As Ernest Becker observes in The Denial of Death, the very thought of disobeying authority appears to awaken the anxiety connected with the possible loss, during infancy, of parental love, respect ...”

“if we want individuals to take responsibility for their actions we must first establish a rational, effective and empowering means of separating individual responsibility from that of the collective.”

“The failure of individual responsibility must be compensated for by a collective response and the consequences of such a failure at the collective level often devolve to individuals. The net result...”

“A significant factor often overlooked by those considering the failure of drug policy is the general aim of deflecting or assigning responsibility away from the policy-makers and the moral-majority.”

“Introduction of rational standards to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable forms of drug related conduct allows us to hold drug users fully accountable for any harm resulting from irre...”

“The drug problem cannot be understood without a critical examination of the language and narratives of underpinning the explanatory models invoked to prove that there is a 'drug problem.”

“We are particularly concerned with the question to what degree approval and implementation of an explanatory model minimising collective or institutional responsibility for certain problems and emp...”

“State sponsored medicine and science can function as ideology, inspiring blind commitment, fanatical defensiveness and denial, particularly of outcomes inconsistent with the preferred explanatory m...”

“The recasting of the Origin Myth as a story about the perils of disobedience precipitated a kind of decoupling of scripture from religious experience: when religious authorities began to insist on ...”

“Moral ideas about what constitutes a meritorious or meaningful use of one’s life and opportunities produce specific attitudes towards drug use and intoxication.”