Wednesday, 19 February 2014

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.

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