Rationality self-destructs in the face of authoritarian abuse of power
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 24, 2020
ou've heard of Rome burning while Nero played the fiddle? Well, how about human rights floundering while philosophers examined their metaphysical navels?
Do we still need morality?
Yes, this was a recent topic of discussion among a learned body of panelists at the IAI (the Institute of Art and Ideas, artandideas.org), leading me to conclude that modern philosophy is, indeed, dead (though not for the reasons that Stephen Hawking speculated, since philosophy is really just playing dead out of cowardice) -- and that philosophy is useless when it comes to fighting back against the authoritarian tendencies of our time.
This is one case where my response to the IAI topic had to be about the topic itself, rather than the no-doubt brainy way with which it was discussed, parsed and philologically categorized by the esteemed panel convened for that purpose.
My response:
The very fact that modern philosophy is asking this question shows that rationality, pursued in the abstract, leads to self-destructive madness. The United States was created on the notion of natural law, that there is indeed something more important than the arbitrary decisions of despots. Instead of fretting whether this natural law (and hence basic human rights) even exists, philosophers should be engaged in an all-out struggle to castigate tyrants for replacing the natural law with common law, as has been done in the case of the Drug War. The Drug War is the triumph of contingent common law over natural law, imposing arbitrary limits on a human being's right to mother nature's plants, and thereby massively incarcerating minorities and keeping a myriad of godsend psychoactive plants not merely from 'druggies' but also from depressed patients and soldiers with PTSD, even blocking research on such godsends. So if we want to see the results of considering morality to be illusory, we have to look no further than America's overcrowded prisons or the record-breaking instances of depression in America, or the Drug War-created violence in impoverished cities. Please, philosophy, stop counting angels on a pin and start dealing with the real world: take natural law (and hence human rights) as a given so that you have a leg to stand on when confronting tyrants such as Donald Trump, who now plan to start executing the minorities that the common law has allowed America to throw in jail for the last 50 years.
Meanwhile, if you're starved for good philosophical topics, how about the following: Resolved: that the Drug War is the enforcement of Christian Science Sharia?
The natural law is premised on the idea that an ultimate morality exists. Once we start questioning that assumption, then any tyrant can justify any action based on force and expediency. Slavery, under such a view, is never fundamentally wrong, but only wrong insofar as it does not prove expedient and/or is incapable of being maintained by force of arms.
Author's Follow-up: March 9, 2025
Of course, philosophy is not to be spurned merely because it is often indecipherable at first glance. I do not deny the occasional importance of using specialized vocabularies to express abstruse concepts. But surely there is also a place in philosophy for pointing out glaringly obvious injustices, and this is something that almost no philosopher is doing these days when it comes to the War on Drugs, even though those injustices can be clearly traced to false premises. Surely, the philosopher as such is the expert in flagging false premises. The fact that they do not do so when it comes to the War on Drugs is frustrating, though, alas, understandable, since one can get fired and/or ostracized for being a Drug War heretic in academia.
I conclude I am on my own here because I am the only philosopher in the world who lodged a protest with the FDA over its recent plans to regulate laughing gas as a 'drug.' I alone seemed to recall that anesthetics like laughing gas gave William James his view of reality and that he had conjured his fellow philosophers to use such substances to study new worlds:
'No account of the universe in its totality,' wrote James, 'can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.'
I alone seemed to notice that the FDA's plans were a slap in the face of academic freedom and an insult to the memory of the great American psychologist.
The truth is the Drug War represents all that is wrong with America, philosophically speaking. We are all familiar with its connections with racism and militarism. But the Drug War is also based on what philosophers call a category error: namely, the idea that materialists are experts when it comes to matters of mind and mood. It follows that the failure for philosophers to push back here against substance prohibition is not entirely cowardice but is also motivated by the recognition by modern materialists that the Drug War serves to outlaw precisely those kinds of drugs whose use conduces to a non-materialist understanding of the world. From this point of view, the materialist philosopher says, 'Good riddance to drugs!' because substance prohibition lets them win their case for materialism by default, by outlawing the opposition.
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
Lying billboards in Philadelphia say that "Fentanyl Kills." NONSENSE! If Fentanyl kills, then so do cars, horses and alcohol. PROHIBITION IS THE REAL KILLLER.
Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.
Musk vies with his fellow materialists in his attempt to diss humans as insignificant. But we are not insignificant. The very term "insignificant" is a human creation. Consciousness rules. Indeed, consciousness makes the rules. Without us, there would only be inchoate particles.
I agree that Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy -- but it is common sense that non-Big Pharma drugs that elate could be used to prevent suicide and obviate the need for ECT.
Until we legalize ALL psychoactive drugs, there will be no such thing as an addiction expert. In the meantime, it's insulting to be told by neuroscience that I'm an addictive type. It's pathologizing my just indignation at psychiatry's niggardly pharmacopoeia.
Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.
I think we should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
Materialist scientists cannot triumph over addiction because their reductive focus blinds them to the obvious: namely, that drugs which cheer us up ACTUALLY DO cheer us up. Hence they keep looking for REAL cures while folks kill themselves for want of laughing gas and MDMA.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Clueless Philosophers: Rationality self-destructs in the face of authoritarian abuse of power, published on February 24, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
ou've heard of Rome burning while Nero played the fiddle? Well, how about human rights floundering while philosophers examined their metaphysical navels?
You have been reading an article entitled, Clueless Philosophers: Rationality self-destructs in the face of authoritarian abuse of power, published on February 24, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
