Unconfirmed Reports

Sunday, 23rd March 2008 [but took me seven months to type it up]

Flurries of marijuana smoke mixed with heavy gusts of snow as I squinted my way through the streets of Amsterdam this afternoon. The outstanding tolerance of other peoples’ tastes here makes me feel like humans are not so bad after all. At the Rijksmuseum, I saw two self-portraits of Rembrandt, one at age 21, one at 55. I could see the same person in both faces, and he looked like a nice guy.

The point is not that marijuana is good. The point is letting rational grown-ups (even me!) run their lives for themselves, make their own personal decisions.

If the past few centuries have seen a pattern of incremental liberalisation and personal choice in law and social convention, then that would arguably put Amsterdam somewhere ahead of the rest of the world in the trajectory of human evolution. This theory may also be supported by noting that Amsterdam was one of the first places to develop modern finance and capitalist economics, from the fourteenth century onwards. In 1602, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange was the first place in the world to issue stocks and bonds. Soon after Gutenberg invented the printing press, Amsterdam became one of the major centres for producing books, since it was far more free from censorship compared to the rest of Europe.

Amsterdam’s early growth as a centre of commerce is inseparable from its religious tolerance, at a time when this was quite exceptional in Europe. The same tolerance now attracts tourism, which can be pretty ugly in the red light district - but all the same, I relish being able to walk down the street smoking a joint, without having to worry about who I might “offend”.