Tuesday, 7 October 2008
I’m not sure what exactly is wrong in the morning. Is it a problem of not having enough perspective to justify getting up and moving, or having way too much perspective? Could it be both? Waking up, my mind is somehow not fully acclimated to the world, and often my dreams keep holding on to my awareness as I somnambulate across my room to turn off my alarm. Sometimes I wonder if acting “normal” in societal terms requires thinking on a quite narrow scale . . . Think too much of the here-and-now, and nothing that has ever happened or will ever happen matters; even the here-and-now won’t matter then, because precedent and consequence become irrelevant, even nonexistent. Conversely, think too much in terms of the big picture and once again you find that nothing at all seems to matter.
That the phrase “here-and-now” contains both a space and a time element is important: it is this place at this moment, and the “big picture”, as the converse of the here-and-now, is not just a zoomed-out image of society (or, y’know, the universe1) in its present state, but through all time. I’ve been reading The Botany of Desire, and the author, Michael Pollan2, makes a number of interesting points abut this sort of perspective shift, especially in relation to the use of marijuana and psychedelics. He also touches upon some reasons pot has been the main target of the “War on Drugs”, despite the much more destructive natures of heroin and cocaine, which combined have over two million users in the US alone3. He sums up his main point with a Zen proverb (which is not actually about psychoactive drugs, but can be easily related to them):
Awakening to this present instant, we realize the infinite is in the finite of each instant.
The here-and-now can be just as infinite and expansive as the greatest stretch of spacetime, and can have the same power to render earthly concerns absurd. Pollan says that marijuana, “by immersing us in the present and offering something like fulfillment here and now, short-circuits the metaphysics of desire on which Christianity and capitalism (and so much else in our civilization) depend.” Hence the ban, the war on drugs, the violation of posse comitatus: if the drug lets you see the systems on which our major institutions depend as fundamentally ridiculous, then right there is your casus belli: those systems rely on belief, and if pot undermines that belief, it is a threat.
And this may just be my love of coincidental conceptual confluence contemplating here, but I have to wonder, in our brains’ daily struggle out of the morass of hypnagogia and into the real world, if we briefly flit through the kind of transcendental moment that meditation, fasting, or psychoactive drug use brings, only to forget it immediately thereafter, morning after hazy morning, as we rush out of our homes because we’re late for work.
1Which brings up another point: there isn’t necessarily just one big picture either: stubbing your toe doesn’t matter so much when you remember that you just lost your job, which doesn’t matter so much when you remember that the global economy is tanking and everyone is losing their jobs, which is utterly irrelevant when you consider that someday the Sun is going to expand and consume the Earth . . . just before it dies itself. Sigh.
2I know, right?
3I am just going to go ahead and use a footnote to quote a quote in one of Pollan’s footnotes, here: David Lenson draws a distinction between “drugs of desire” and “drugs of pleasure”, saying that “Cocaine promises the greatest pleasure ever known in just a minute more . . . But that future never comes”, which makes cocaine a kind of “savage mimicry of consumer consciousness”, and might explain why the drug invariably turns people into selfish assholes. Former coke users have told me about the experience of a night on cocaine, and it largely entails just looking for more cocaine . . . 4
4I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this “savage mimicry of consumer consciousness” somehow makes cocaine “acceptable” in our society’s terms, but as I’m hopped up on coffee right now (can you tell?), which contains the socially acceptable stimulant caffeine, I can say that caffeine’s contribution to productivity is a pretty likely factor in its social acceptability: pot isn’t addictive and can’t kill you. Caffeine is, and can. But which drug will you do in front of your boss?
October 7th, 2008 at 02:54
These colors are my favorite that I’ve seen on this so far. Also, I wanted a simple little cartoon this morning after spending all night trying to write a coherent paper on Freud and Marx. Then I was greeted by all your big ideas and got all overwhelmed.
October 7th, 2008 at 09:09
First off, Bunnyyyy!
I’ve heard the argument before, from annoying self-righteous hippies, that psychedelics and pot is banned because of its MAGICAL EYE OPENING POWERS ™, but I think the more likely explanation is not some overarching desire of the powerful to keep the masses down (because seriously who the fuck hasn’t done pot?), but rather a product of poor education and lack of research in the field? Lack of information and fear mongering makes it extremely difficult to conduct meaningful research in psychedelics, and lack of research leads to more misinformation, and it’s a vicious cycle from thereon. Being classified under massive and retarded term of “drugs” (as if caffiene and ibuprofin aren’t drugs but i digress) makes psychedelics seem as scary and destructive as crack cocaine or something, which only makes fear mongering easier, which makes it seem like a bigger conspiracy to the hippies, both of which just feeds the retard cycle even more. I agree that spending that much money to bust teenagers with bad pot is like hemmoraging money. Plus, with the war on drugs, police corruption’s been the highest since the prohibition of alcohol. It’s total bullshit, but not for the reasons that some people think it is.
Also, I feel like I should be an asshole and point out that dose makes the poison. Pot can kill you, as can water, if you take it in large enough amounts - and by large I mean like, inject yourself with 50g of THC every hour. That’d probabily kill you.
October 7th, 2008 at 09:18
Also, I’m pretty sure that amphetamines were more or less acceptable during the 60s, at least more so than now, because they perk you up and make you energetic and alert, unlike alcohol which makes you slow and lazy. Talk about perception.
October 8th, 2008 at 01:49
Lyndsey:
Thanks, I’m glad the colors worked out!
I don’t mean to overwhelm, I’m just trying to write down some ideas that have occupied me lately. I try and do this when I read something I like, but even though it’s a tried-and-true method of retaining information and developing ideas, I almost never actually take the initiative to do it. So now I’m using FC! for that, and you’re paying the price! Sorry!
Heather:
To start, I understand your point about dose making the poison. It would have been more accurate to say that while it’s probably possible for THC to kill you, you’d have to try really really hard to do it (and also nobody’s succeeded yet), whereas a number of people have actually died from caffeine overdoses, probably a large number of them from caffeine pills. To all intents and purposes, I think it’s safe to say that you’re not going to OD on THC.
Anyway!
I didn’t really want this post to be about pot/legality/etc. to the extent that it was, and I think that as a result, I oversimplified and didn’t explain myself well enough on those points (which ended up being the core of the post, oops). I was thinking primarily of altered states of mind, but having just read a book that deals with the subject as it relates to marijuana, I think I let myself get carried away. I get overenthusiastic about books sometimes?
(BTW, I’m going to refer to the US because that’s what I had in mind and it’s what I’m most familiar with.) I don’t believe that if pot was legal, the US government and economy would topple because of some kind of great insight that pot reveals to its users, and I doubt that many politicians really believe this either. Legalizing pot would institutionalize it, make it subject to taxes and regulations, to some extent incorporate it into the economy, and yes, eliminate a massive financial sinkhole. But it’s a cultural taboo, even though, as you say, just about everyone’s done it. For the cycle you mentioned (of fear, misinformation, and inability to perform research) to exist, pot has to have somehow become an issue in the first place.
Which is no reason to invoke conspiracy: more likely, marijuana provided a really easy talking point to get jus’folks riled up about longhairs, like the gay marriage issue gets people in the US riled up today. Alcohol was once demonized widely and even prohibited, but now cheap crap beer is a central part of American culture; just listen to Sarah Palin refer to her conservative base as “Joe Six-pack”. It seems that cultures demonize and lionize certain things to better define themselves, and just what those things are tends to be quite variable. Or rather, politicians demonize and lionize certain things to try and define the culture that they are a part of (and their own roles in that culture). Find something that strikes a chord with the public, and a whole lot of politicians jump on the bandwagon. Soon enough you’ll get some pretty insane policies backed by a shift in a culture’s widely-held opinions. But that’s not a conspiracy, it’s just opportunism.
Personally, I don’t see that as invalidating the point about pot being unacceptable at least in part because using it makes the world appear different in a way that alcohol and caffeine don’t. It’s not that THC necessarily opens up some secret door that lets you glimpse the hidden truth that They don’t want you to know, but it’s the general characterization of the substance as bringing people to a place outside of their responsibilities or outside responsibility as a concept, even—perpetuated in current anti-marijuana ads—that is used to turn public opinion against pot. It’s like each side is telling a different version of the same story. Or the same story with a different moral.
And the times have indeed changed: I don’t know too much about how public perception of amphetamines has shifted, but in the 30s, pot was thought to make people violent! (Especially Mexicans.)
I hope that made some sense. And I’m glad you liked the bunny!
October 8th, 2008 at 04:41
It probably should be amusing that I was in an utter haze yesterday which made responding to this a *very bad idea*.
I am not a fan of mornings either, even though I don’t drink coffee. Though I’ve started drinking tea on work days.
Being in the moment: I have mixed feelings on it. Yes, no, maybe so? If I was always in the moment I’d never get all the stuff I’m supposed to do done. And I’d be really flaky. Hmmmm.
Pot: I’m all for legalizing it as then there would be regulations and taxes and the whole nine yards. Could I expect it to happen realistically? Not really. But hey, maybe some day our culture won’t care so much and then it’ll happen. Or something.