From high priests to peons, citizens of the People’s
Republic of the Arts went to considerable effort to fashion suitably prosaic and sensitive statements (read Jim Carrey’s 6th down) in response
to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death from a heroin overdose, all ensuring the sentiments
sat well within the liturgy.
But witness the high dudgeon from the arts luvvies, hangers on and wannabes in response to
anyone who suggests Hoffman’s death was stupid or irresponsible.
“How insensitive! He was such a great actor! It’s a tragedy!
Such a huge loss for the world.”
It was certainly a tragedy, especially for his family. It
was a loss for the acting profession and his fans, though I don’t believe it’s
delayed a cure for cancer or thrown the economy back into recession.
So yes, a tragedy it was. However, Hoffman’s death was also
genuinely stupid. It was irresponsible, self absorbed and immature. He was a 46
year old man with a wife (actual or de facto) and three young children.
Most people reach a point in their lives when they are
responsible for more than just themselves, whether they want to be or not. Even
people who do not marry and have no children are still expected to become at
least responsible for their own wellbeing. Understanding those responsibilities
and what is required to meet them is a fundamental part of adulthood. It is
also the quid pro quo for liberty.
A man with a wife and three young children shooting up
heroin several times a day for months, eventually in such quantities that he
killed himself is not even remotely adult behaviour.
Characterising addiction as an illness misses the point.
Yes, some are far more susceptible to addiction than others, but no-one
sleepwalks into an addiction; you have to work at it. Addiction is a gradual
process. An intelligent person cannot possibly be unaware that the volume and
frequency of their drug consumption is leading them from casual to habitual use
to addiction. People recognise something is wrong when they begin to develop
the physiological and psychological symptoms of addiction. Despite the
awareness, many still find it very difficult to combat and many exhibit denial
by for example, embracing the addict subculture. But all addicts know they have
a problem, whether or not they put off dealing with it.
The differences between Hoffman and a poorly educated,
unemployed street junkie are Hoffman’s intelligence, education, resources,
social support network and responsibility to his young family. The latter
should have provided the motivation not to use so much that he became addicted
in the first place, or at least to clean up his act when he did. The rest
should have provided the means to achieve it.
His wife asked him to move out of the family home due to his heroin use. I
doubt that came out of the blue. Surely there had been multiple discussions
prior to her asking him to leave. The first one should have been sufficient
motivation to if not stop using, at least only do it sporadically and not around
his kids.
Excuses along the line of: he had such a sensitive soul and
that quality which made him such a great actor also made him vulnerable and
unable to deal with the harshness of the world are bullshit.
Hoffman earned far in excess of the average income for
dressing up and playing pretend. He had a wife and children who loved him. He
had a good education, nice house, friends, fans, wealth, social connections and
a plethora of opportunities to do interesting work. In other words, a life for
which most would feel sincere gratitude.
“But what does it all mean? … I’m so depressed … I can’t
deal with life.”
Grow up, you big, self indulgent baby.
I’ll tell you who should be depressed. A man with a poor
education and a low paying, soul destroying job, who knows that at any time, he
could be made redundant and one step away from his family being homeless. A man
who comes home to a run down, rented house in a shitty neighbourhood, to a wife
and three kids with whom he regularly argues and for whom a six pack of beer is
a treat. That’s a man who I could understand using sedatives to ameliorate his
existential pain.
Even if Hoffman’s depression was endogenous, he had the
intelligence and education to know that continued, heavy heroin use was never
going to help.
Like many addicts, Hoffman at times may well have felt self
loathing when he was high, or had that inner voice telling him to clean himself
up as he decided whether or not to hit up again. A lot of drunks have the same
experience before they start drinking each day.
Even though getting clean / sober is hard work and an addict
has a genuine and well founded apprehension about the emotions they will have
to confront, to continue the addiction is stupid and weak. To get yourself into
it in the first place is stupid and weak. To get yourself out of an addiction requires a great deal of strength and perseverance. Not everyone can summon it.
This is one element of the stupidity of Hoffman’s death.
Something can be stupid yet still be tragic. The irresponsible element of his
death was its effect on his wife and particularly his children.
Children need their parents to provide more than material
and emotional support. They look to them for guidance on how to live. It’s not
like Hoffman’s three children won’t find out the sordid details of how he shut
himself off from his family and effectively acted out a long and tortuous suicide.
What are they going to grow up thinking? It’s hard enough
for children in a divorce, wondering whether their parents actually love them.
How will Hoffman’s children understand why a father who supposedly loved them
would make a choice like that, moreover, make that same choice day after day?
A loyal RTBB follower reading this post prior to publication
commented on its strong moralising, particularly around drug use.
But it’s not Hoffman’s drug use per se which is at issue:
it’s the scale and its effect on his family, of which I have no doubt he was
aware.
I don’t believe it’s wrong for adults with children to use
drugs, any more than it is for them to get drunk sometimes. But you don’t do it
in front of your kids.
Adults often have wine at the dinner table. If they have
friends over for a BBQ, adults will be drinking alcohol. The message to
children is that this is normal adult behaviour. What adults should not do in
front of children is get obviously drunk. Nor should they line up a few rails
on the kitchen bench. That is done discreetly in the bedroom.
Children expect stability, clarity and reliability from
their parents. That’s not what Philip Seymour Hoffman’s children got and that’s
why his death was stupid and irresponsible. For the arts luvvies to gloss over
this obvious fact is moral relativism taken to extremes of hypocrisy, although
they are still well within the bounds set by their refusal to condemn Roman
Polanski (imagine their different reaction had a wealthy businessman done the
same thing).
Perhaps arts wankers’ hypocritical reaction to Hoffman’s
death may have been sufficient to warrant a post, however that’s not what
prompted me.
The reason I did is because I’m sure conservatives across
the Western world are just waiting to use Hoffman’s death in their campaign to
roll back the decriminalisation of drug use. I’m surprised at the restraint of
the US Republicans in particular: I had imagined it would be less than 24 hours
before some conservative Christian senator issued a statement that drugs
destroy families and thus we must redouble our efforts against this scourge.
I have little doubt we’ll see Hoffman’s death co-opted into
the campaign to repeal Colorado and Washington’s legalisation of marijuana …
because marijuana is not harmless; it “leads to other things” and we’ll have
more broken families and fatherless children on our consciences.
Genuine Liberals who want the government out of their
private lives have had our cause harmed by Hoffman’s death. It’s played right
into the hands of conservatives who charge that all liberals want (conflating
liberals and Liberals) is freedom without commensurate responsibility. It
assists their characterisation of liberals as self absorbed, glorified
children, hiding behind moral relativism and lacking the backbone to defend
“values”.
Unfortunately, there is some truth in that description of
many people denoted “liberals” in America. But those people aren’t Liberals.
Most are middle class, dilettante socialists, believing in the benefits of
government involvement in almost every facet of life. Just because liberals and
Liberals agree on the treatment of drugs as a public health issue rather than a
criminal one, doesn’t mean we should team up.
Liberals understand that personal responsibility is the
price of having the government as much as possible out of our private lives. On
that basis, a man of talents and resources, with a young family, who then kills
himself with a heroin addiction deserves condemnation, as much because he will
become a symbol for reactionary conservatives seeking to constrain our civil
liberties as for his renunciation of the moral compact which binds personal
rights and responsibilities.
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