Philip Seymour Hoffman's Death: Some Things Can Be Both Tragic And Stupid

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.

This Clown Of A Bus Driver Deserves To Be Sacked And Publicly Shamed

People in low level positions abusing their very small amounts of power due to the chip on their shoulder is a phenomenon as old as history. The functionary who invokes policy or procedure as an excuse to be deliberately unhelpful, the petty official who insists on irrelevant rules being followed to the letter, the bus driver who won’t let someone off 20p … this type of behaviour is hardly novel.

A more recent development seems to be bunging on an act: fabricating some threat or offence in order to justify a hissy fit. Two years ago, a Gold Coast train driver caused twenty police to be called because he didn’t like the amount of noise the passengers were making. Now a Sydney bus driver has plumbed new depths of pathos. He decided a crying child was simply too much for him to cope with and told the mother to get off. When another passenger intervened in her support, the driver packed up his cash box, stormed off the bus and refused to continue driving.

This is the type of behaviour one would normally associate with a child; behaviour which would (should) result in a swift kick up the arse. It is not behaviour which can be accepted from any credible adult, let alone someone employed to provide a public service.

Nor can it be viewed in an isolated context. The driver (or his union) cannot be allowed to proffer the excuse of stress, pretend there were “faults on both sides”, have the driver “counselled” and then be back driving a bus.

Why not?

Because it is becoming increasingly common for people employed in service positions to dishonestly claim aggressive or threatening behaviour when a customer has a legitimate complaint about the service they have received or to de facto, unilaterally decide upon the terms and conditions of their employment by simply refusing to do contracted tasks. In short, the device of bunging on an act is attempting to establish a cultural foothold as low level employees form the delusion that they are somehow equal with customers.

The bus driver cannot be allowed to get away with this behaviour. What message does it send to every other public facing employee in a service position? That this new meme of fabricating offence in a pathetic attempt to justify not doing legitimate tasks of your job has currency? That you can get away with acting like a whiny little bitch, inconveniencing customers who unfortunately must depend upon you to do your job properly?

Consequently, the driver must be made an example of … and the public should witness it. Crucify this turd as a warning to any other who might get similar ideas.

In my opinion, as well as dismissal by his employer, this is the kind of behaviour that warranted a beating from the inconvenienced customers; one sufficiently severe to not only serve as a never forgotten lesson to this particular idiot, but also as an example to all other shitkickers who might be tempted to try it on instead of properly doing the job for which, given their low skill level, they are fortunate to have been employed.

Unfortunately, a spontaneous beating is not really practical in the modern age. Can you imagine the driver’s reaction had one of the passengers given him a clip over the ear or a boot up the arse and told him to get back on and drive the bus? He’d have been calling the police, followed by an ambulance, then using the “serious workplace assault” as an opportunity to ask for a lottery win’s worth of compensation.

Fortunately, the modern age does present a modern alternative: public exposure and humiliation.

This is exactly the kind of incident which should have been filmed and broadcast across the internet. The driver should have been named and so viciously lampooned that he dare not show his face for weeks. It is insufficient to merely sack the driver. Let some tabloid show like Current Affair know all about it, including leaking the footage and his name and address (easily done without being traced).

That may seem harsh, but trying it on is an insidious and destructive meme. It needs to be stamped out. Dishonesty and pretence in social transactions are not part of Liberalism. Nor is being soft with fuckwits.

Suppose this bus driver is sacked and hounded by the media and online. How likely is it other whiny shits will think twice before they try on their own brand of chip on the shoulder?