[cambraceres]

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Anyone on here want to tell me why smart people do this?

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In general the very bright are not different in matters of ethics from a person within normal parameters of intelligence. You must think abou it like this, the pain of a smart person, and that of a dumb one is the same qualitatively. The absolute bliss of a productive genius is the same in characteristic as that of a blithering idiot.

It is in terms of our emotions that humanity is said to be a community.

Cam

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I never really considered this as an ethical question, and it still doesn't seem one to me now that you've mentioned that angle.

I disagree that people with fewer perceptive powers can perceive exactly what those with greater perceptive powers perceive. This is borne out in real life all the time. That said, ignorance is bliss has a strong basis in truth.

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The old maxim "Ignorance is bliss" indeed has a strong basis in truth. Doestoevsky said, to paraphrase, that a smart person will have a natural tendency toward sadness because, unlike the average working class idiot, they realize just how deep the [censored] they are in is.
However, greater powers of perception and higher levels of intelligence are not the same thing. Intelligence can be seen as a malleable entity, not a static system like a car engine where the oil pressure will be such and such a value, and the gear ratio will be at some other value. IQ is one of the terms used by psychometricists to quantify their science; it is not a purely objective thing as say your abilities of hearing are.

The decision to do or not to do some drug seems to me to be an ethical situation. I see every situation where there is an oppurtunity to use one's power of decision as an ethical situation. How on earth could you say this isn;t one? I have an extremely addictive personality, and thankfully was scared away from hard drugs by the death of my father from drugs, this and watching my mother act like she was out of her mind told me clearly that it was not for me.

That said, I just fill in one thing for another. I simply try to be engaged in things that are not by their own nature destructive. I have actually been obsessed with religion as a child. Th addiction to study and prayer was destructive, but less so than the lure of illicit drugs. Now I am buffeted from one thing to another, and trying to make some sort of decent time of it.

I have to go back to work now