The word "politics" has become attached to a variety of phenomena that were previously thought to be unrelated to the arena of politics—the "politics of experience," "the politics of consciousness expansion," "the politics of therapy." Implied in any such term is the notion that what becomes taken for granted in any society is, in fact, arbitrary and problematic.

We think that, for example, the psychiatrist-patient relationship and interaction is a technical and medical matter in toto, whereas recent thinking in this area has come to the conclusion that ideological, moral, and political considerations are densely woven into the therapeutic process. In a sense, psychiatry becomes a means of upholding one particular ideological view and repressing others, rather than simply helping to make a patient healthy..

Likewise, with scientific definitions of reality we can look at science as an institution that has as its task the verification of a special world-view. The rules of science can be looked at as polemical strategies, facts wielded as ideological weapons.

This view holds that science is deeply involved with ideology, and that the classical view of scientific "objectivity" is completely mythical. This concept of "the politics of reality" is especially important in areas of controversy..

An extremely naive and outmoded "rationalist" position on facts is that human beings are essentially reasonable, and that the truth will win simply because it is the truth. This point of view assumes that reality has a kind of brute hardness to it.

The sociological position is that what is true (whatever this might mean) is less important than what is thought to be true. One of the more fascinating processes to be observed in society is the way in which certain assertions come to be regarded as true. Obviously, different individuals and social groups have different stakes, both ideological and material, in certain definitions of what is true..

Thus gaining acceptance of one's own view of reality, of what is true, is an ideological and political victory. Science has become the basic arbiter of reality. Almost no one aside from the scientist—and even then usually only the specialist within a given field—has any direct contact with the empirical phenomena scientists describe.

The fact that the earth revolves about the sun "makes sense" only when interpreted through specialists; almost no one who believes it has ever tested it for himself or herself. In this sense, scientific truth is not very different from religious truth: We accept it as an act of faith..

In any dispute, we not only want to be morally right, whatever that might entail; we also want to be empirically and scientifically correct. Nothing has greater discrediting power than the assertion that a certain statement has been "scientifically disproven. Generally we search about for evidence to "prove" our value judgments If we believe marijuana use to be morally reprehensible, we want to back up our position with "objective" facts to show that we are also empirically correct—hence the claim that marijuana is physically or psychologically damaging..

Almost no one who believes that marijuana use is immoral also believes that it is harmless; most who view marijuana use with moral indifference do not regard marijuana as damaging (though many feign moral indifference, simply to make their empirical view more credible). We shop around for evidence in much the same way that we trundle through a supermarket, selecting here and there.

Facts are manipulated, wielded as bludgeons, employed as rhetorical devices. Presenting facts in the drug area is more like making a case than searching objectively for evidence.) Any phenomenon is far more complicated than it appears at first blush..

We have been taught to perceive only a small portion of the almost infinite number of possible experiences. Philosophers call this process of selective perception attending. We attend to certain kinds of facts and ignore others. "Seeing" is also "not seeing."

Whenever a certain observation is made, a sociologically relevant question would be not only "Is it true?" but also "Why stress this observation rather than another equally valid one?" Thus almost any conceivable discussion of the harmfulness or relative harmlessness of marijuana could be presented validly, with extensive documentation, simply by attending to one segment of the marijuana reality and ignoring others .fin medical terms marijuana is harmful—damaging and dangerous— to some people under certain circumstances, according to some definitions of harm, at certain dosage levels, in some moods and psychological state.

But marijuana is also relatively harmless medically—for most people, most of the time, at the potency levels generally available, and so on..

There is enormous leeway, then, in presenting different views of a phenomenon, especially one as controversial as drug use. We are ultimately interested not in highly concrete facts but in generalizations from the facts. ("Is marijuana harmful?" "Does marijuana use lead to heroin dependency?" "Does marijuana debilitate driving skills?") Since so many different things can and do happen to so many different individuals, the gates are open to pick and choose those facts that are compatible with our own views.

One of the central concerns of this book will be an exploration of the politics of reality in the area of drug use..

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The politics of reality .-::18135::-.