Lower the Drinking Age!

We gotta fight the man, man. We gotta fight, for our right, to paaaartay.

The drinking age law is one of the most universally ignored laws there is. It's an open secret between college officials, parents, and kids across the country that a huge portion of underage kids drink alcohol. The law has done virtually nothing to curb teen drinking. It was originally intended by Mothers Against Drunk Driving to stop car accidents caused by drunk drivers (which I certainly view as a worthy cause), but the laws are so ineffective that the people who are stupid enough to drink and drive still have no problem getting alcohol. If a law is virtually ignored everywhere, what good is it?

Some might answer that if a law is virtually ignored, we'd be better off strengthening it than repealing it. Well, in the case of alcohol we have some precedent. There was a constitutional amendment banning alcohol. How well did that hold up? There was another amendment repealing the first (chronologically first of the two i mention here, not free speech and all that) amendment, and in between the two a huge black market industry rose in bootlegging. In the case of illegal intoxicants, the answer is never to ban the substance- that only drives up profit for those willing to sell it regardless, and people always find a way to sell it.

Furthermore, lowering the drinking age may actually save lives. In cases of alcohol poisoning, it would reduce hesitation by bystanders to call an ambulance if they thought something was wrong with a friend. Removing the fear of legal or parental repercussions would increase the likelihood that someone in trouble would get the medical attention they need.

I recognize however, that we as a society are probably not ready for no age limit, so I propose lowering it to 18. Why 18? We are legally recognized as adults at 18, and we should have the full rights of an adult member of our society. And, this brings me to the crux of my argument, to a point that I take personally.

I'm a 19-year-old male citizen. If ordered, I could be drafted into the military to go fight and die somewhere for my country. And you're telling me that I can't have a beer before I do? How does that make any sense? This is particularly relevant given how close we came to instituting a draft during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now unfortunately this doesn't look like it'll be changing anytime soon. This issue would matter more to people of the younger demographic who are notoriously indifferent to politics. Any politician who dared broach the subject, other then possibly Ron Paul, would be ridiculed on a national scale, not to mention deeply offend MADD- a powerful political organization, especially compared to us young-uns.

So it doesn't look like anything'll be changing anytime soon. So for now, I'll have to confine my indignation to angrily-worded blog posts and ignoring that particular law even more.

Gender Norms of Altruism

You've probably seen this photo being passed around Facebook: its a newspaper clipping of a guy that was spending his valentines day with his girlfriend in class (college), when a shooter broke in. The guy shielded his girlfriend with his body- she survived, he did not. Not surprisingly the photo's received a zillion "shares" and a jillion comments about how brave, noble, and filled with love he was. This article is in now way meant to detract from what he did. What struck me as... I guess the best word is interesting... is how rare the reverse would have been.

I think our social norms have conditioned us to expect different types of altruism from us. Not that it hasn't ever happened, but I think it'd be much rarer for the girl to have shielded the guy. Now the question is, why? We expect male altruism, in the vein of chivalry, to be directed towards women, but we don't expect for the reverse to be true. Female altruism (based off of my assumptions which could be totally wrong) is generally more directed towards the protection of children. Not to say that the flows of altruism don't overlap, but generally this is pretty much the way things go.

I'm not really sure where to take this line of thought besides noting the oddity. Normally once noticing something like this, I'd usually take a normative stance. I don't think i can here. Altruism is the personal choice of self sacrifice, and I don't really think I have a right to tell people for whom they should sacrifice themselves. The only normative stance I'll take is regarding the original poster's caption, which I think sums up collective societal feelings "What makes a good boyfriend? What makes man? This guy knew what it took to be both, and he paid the price. God rest his soul, in my eyes he is a hero."

I'm not sure manhood (or being a good boyfriend) should be defined by the degree to which you are willing to sacrifice yourself, quite literally, for a woman. Such altruism can't be indicative of manhood, because it requires the presence of a woman to sacrifice yourself for. And really, is it fair to call someone either immature or "a bad man" for not sacrificing your life for a woman? And should women be held to the same standard of altruism as men? Why or why not? Again I'm not sure I can be too normative here. Sociology is said to be the self-consciousness of society- here I raise these issues more for your introspection than anything else.