I learned that...
1) Materialist disdain for philosophy is, in fact, based on philosophical arguments, even if the materialist is not philosophically gifted enough to recognize this fact, much less the precise nature of the assumptions inherent in said arguments.
2) The Drug War privileges the materialist approach to life by outlawing all substances that might provide us with experiential evidence of more productive alternatives.
Materialism

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James demonstrated how materialists are blind to the depth and meaning of psychological states of ecstasy and transcendence -- or in other words the states that are peculiar to mystics like St. Teresa... and to those who use psychoactive substances like laughing gas. The medical materialist is dogmatically dismissive of such states, which explains why they can pretend that godsend medicines that elate and inspire have no positive uses whatsoever:
"To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce."
And so materialist scientists collaborate with the Drug War by refusing to see glaringly obvious drug benefits. They acknowledge only those benefits that they believe are visible under a microscope. The Hindu religion would not exist today had materialist scientists held Soma to such a standard. But that's the absurd pass to which prohibition eventually brings us in a society wherein materialist science is the new god: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.
This materialist bias is inspired in turn by behaviorism, the anti-indigenous doctrine of JB Watson that makes the following inhumane claim:
"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic."
According to this view, the hopes and the dreams of a "patient" are to be ignored. Instead, we are to chart their physiology and brain chemistry.
JB Watson's Behaviorism is a sort of Dr. Spock with a vengeance. It is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it would seem to justify all their inability to deal with human emotions. Unfortunately, the attitude has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive usage reports or historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide how they are doing. It is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with Drug War ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.
That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a bar chart.
A Quantum of HubrisAssisted Suicide and the War on DrugsBehaviorism and the War on DrugsBeta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on DrugsCommon Sense and the Drug WarConstructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMADavid Chalmers and the Drug WarDogmatic DullardsEvery Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by Drug War propaganda Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick StrassmanHow AI turned William James into a Drug WarriorHow Bernardo Kastrup reckons without the Drug WarHow materialists turned me into a patient for lifeHow Scientific Materialism Keeps Godsend Medicines from the DepressedI've got a bone to pick with Jim HogshireIn Praise of Thomas SzaszMaterialism and the Drug WarMaterialism and the Drug War Part IIOpen Letter to Dr. Carl L. HartOpen letter to Wolfgang SmithScience News Unveils Shock Therapy IIThe Inhumanity of Drug ProhibitionThe Poorly Hidden Materialist Agenda at Scientific AmericanUnscientific American: the hypocritical materialism of Elon MuskWhat Can the Chemical Hold?Why Scientists Should Not Judge DrugsWilliam James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing GasWithout Philosophy, Science becomes Scientism
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US

Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.

This pretend concern for the safety of young drug users is bizarre in a country that does not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.

I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?

At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.

Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.

The drug war controls the very way that we are allowed to see the world. The Drug War is thus a meta-injustice, not just a handful of bad legal statutes.

My consciousness, my choice.

I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.

Most psychoactive substance use can be judged as recreational OR medicinal OR both. The judgements are not just determined by the circumstances of use, either, but also by the biases of those doing the judging.

We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
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